I took it the way Quartz did too.
*
“The Daily Telegraph argues that this is a necessary correction.”
“Yeah. They say that about the Black Death, too.”*
Not a big deal now that you’ve clarified it. I was genuinely interested in seeing what the Daily Telegraph had to say about the Black Death.
I think they were for it before they were against it.
Maybe I am missing something but it seems to me that you did not understand the question. You were asked to show an example where a market planned by the government worked better than a free market. I fail to see how your answer is in any way connected to the question.
The thread is about an absolute free market. The government moved away from regulating Fuel Economy standards towards and left us to the wolves. The free market just cares about immediate profit and stock growth. Not long, not making sure people can get work to put food on the table. The damage it’s doing to the economy and employment is very real. We’re trashing the dollar, and our futures, just so some idiots can get a hummer or escalade to compensate for his micropenis.
Seriously depending on a region known for shouting “death to America” for the bulk of our energy supplies, as the lack of regulation for oil consumption has done, doesn’t sound like mismanagement to you?
Continuing the trend of regulating higher MPG requirements, or discouraging dependence could have prevented this clusterfuck.
But thanks to the free market enjoy financing the Iranian nuclear program everytime you go to work.
Not really.
You are a participant in free markets. Is this what you say of yourself?
Not necessarily.
I don’t disagree that we should strive for energy independence, but it isn’t like you just pass some law and everything works. Since you aren’t even actually proposing any solutions to the problems you perceive, I cannot even evaluate your claim, but I am suspicious that you have even a basic footing in economic behavior or thought given the first two quotes.
Are there people concerned with only short-term gain? Surely. Does this characterize economic activity in America? Not as far as I can tell, but I wonder what evidence you have.
I can neither confirm nor deny that the Daily Telegraph supports the bubonic plague.
Dude please hit a return after you quote. This is what your text comes out as otherwise:
Well it sure seems to act like it does. Explain the low MPG cars suddenly being exposed to a high cost world then. Gas as a limited resource is something a trained monkey could figure out. Especially when it mostly comes from a region that hates us.
This makes my brain hurt. Sluring me as one of them does in no way justify it. Say I am one of them (oh shame on me for existing in America!) would that make my words any less true? I’m telling you it was a bad idea because it is! As the current reality shows.
Incidentally I drove a 40 MPG Geo Metro for most of my adult life. All it took was one idiot with a micropenis compensator SUV to undo the gains of that.
Really, well I and the quadrupled gas prices, unemployment they’re causing beg to differ. Even if the region is friendly they still have a monopoly through OPEC. People, being the precious creatures they are, tend to be greedy and want to get as much for something as they can.
Ahh, that’s another issue for another thread. I have to go to work, but if someone wants to start that thread they’re more then welcome to. If not I’ll start it tomorrow if I have the time.
Some ideas I’ve seen would be to tax petroleum use to discourage excess use and higher fuel efficiency. Simply continuing the trend of increasing MPG requirements would have helped alot too.
And since you feel like insulting my economics knowledge I should point out someone like commiting logic blunders the one you posted above shouldn’t throw stones.
You call me ignorant then you say this.
Absolute free market vs. planned economy is a rather pointless debate to have. No one with half a brain believes we should have either one. The more sensible question to ask is: Should we have more regulation or less?
I know of at least one Nobel-winning economist who says the best response to the current financial crisis would be more regulation.
I do not understand what liking someone has to do with selling them something. You keep repeating it.
I’m not slurring you as one of them; in fact, I assumed that you were not someone who was concerned only with short term gain, since you seem so preoccupied with making sure people are not concerned only with short term gain. I took that as an opportunity to, possibly cryptically, point out that you, in fact, are part of “the market” so your assessment of it should be revised.
“Current reality” has not shown me that America’s economic agents are concerned only with short-term gain.
I do not believe we agree on the use of the word “undo”.
I don’t see what that has to do anything. Demand for energy increases. Prices rise. Yes, the situation is somewhat more complicated than this but the mere fact that the price of something in high demand fluctuates goes nowhere to supporting your thesis, which is apparently that everyone in America is a greedy bastard with penis envy, except possibly (though not necessarily) people who drive 40MPG cars.
I do not believe evidence bears this thesis out, since pretty much every convenience of modern life, and every precursor to that, could not have happened without cooperation and long-term planning.
That’s interesting. If I were to suppose your tax idea had merit, it would be because, for some reason, the economic agents in the fuel market are incapable of sound judgment, or that there are some kind of perverse incentives or externality that a tax would actually correct. Can you elaborate on how this tax is supposed to work?
Maybe. But at what cost? Or did you find a free lunch somewhere…
I didn’t really feel like it. I don’t know what your knowledge is. For all I know your post was just some emotional response and when you rose to the challenge you would smack me down proper. Perhaps if you left off the penis envy talk it would help. I put returns in for you, perhaps you can do that for me?
a) I didn’t call you ignorant. b) It was rhetorical.
48 posts and no definition of success or failure, I don’t think you can make progress in this debate without those definitions. Chief Pedant has a good point with taking a longer view (100 years) but you also need to clarify a whole list of items related to quality of life, competitiveness, etc.
Example:
If a company holds a monopoly for 50 years but is eventually toppled, is that considered success or failure of the free market? The collateral damage could be many lives without access to a key resource, but where do you draw the line when in these debates? Some free market types I’ve talked to found that situation to be perfectly acceptable.
A key problem is defining where to set the “success” point as related to a zillion variables, and how to quantify that point.
Which is why I said, in the OP:
“Of course, the real issue is not between zero oversight and total control. The question is: what is the level of oversight/regulation/intervention that is optimal for the best functioning of society”
To clarify, I wasn’t trying to say your thread was stupid, just that much of the discussion that has followed wasn’t as interesting (to me) as what I hoped to see.
I was really hoping someone might have some comments on whether or not the ideas raised in the article I linked are good ones. (I could always start my own thread on it, but it seemed reasonably relevant here.)
I’m interested to hear what those of you with some economic knowledge have to say, particularly because I myself am pretty clueless about many aspects of the economy. We’re talking McCain-level ignorance here. 
Regulation and oversight should come in tiers. Commodities like oil, electricity, and health insurance (which are partially or completely immune to one or more of the laws of supply and demand) should be heavily regulated with a socialist iron fist. People should not be getting rich by selling things that are not subject to the rules of supply and demand. These should be bought and sold only by the government.
Things that are necessary for a modern lifestyle but are lower on the “basic needs” scale, like public transportation, telephone service, and internet access should have much less regulation, but still have some small amount of oversight and intervention by the government.
Things that people buy because they want them, like entertainment, furniture, clothing, and anything else that doesn’t fit in the previous categories shouldn’t be financially regulated at all except to ensure that they were manufactured ethically and are safe to use.
Again, I believe most people in this thread are just confusing two totally different things. Market freedom and market regulation are not contradictory at all and in many cases are complementary. Think of it this way: freedom of movement means you can go where ever you want and the government does not tell you where you can or should go. Traffic regulation anhances freedom of movement, id does not diminish it. Freedom of movement is restricted when certain people are allowed to go places where other people are not allowed to go (like a private place). As long as those two different things continue to be confused the discussion is meaningless because you have those who say market needs regulation (which it does) but then confuse restrictive measures which are not regulatiry but restrictive and those who say the market is better when it is freer and then confuse regulatory measures (which would be good and in no way against the freedom of the market) with restrictive measures. If you do not understand this you are just not understanding the most basic part of the equation. Saying people should be free to move around the country is NOT the same as saying they should be able to drive on whatever side of the road they want.
I totally disagree that oil, electricity and health insurance are partially or completely immune from the laws of supply and demand. You made a very serious allegation which I believe is totally unfounded. I could just as well say food, water and the pursuit of happiness are totally immune from the laws of supply and demand and it would be just as unfounded.
There are certain goods (in the widest sense of the word goods) which may not be well covered by the payment of a price and these may not be best allocated by the free market. Again, Hayek covers this in The Road to Serfdom so it is nothing new.
Again, you are confusing regulation with allocation which are not contradictory at all.
Regulation can be good from the most essential items to the least necessary and it has nothing to do with allocation. Government intervention in the market (not regulation but assigning ends, not means) is generally bad in any case, from the most essential to the least important.
I’ve said that in exactly one post.
That has what to do with the market’s failure to manage energy sources?
Well call it what you will. One selfish jerk driving a 11 mpg SUV for vanity cancels out the gains of two three people driving fuel efficient autos toward energy independence.
Our President (even the idiot the current one is), the symbol of the might and power of out country, actually, physically begged Saudi Arabia for oil, on behalf of you, and the American people (assuming you’re American). It’s made our country into a nation of beggars. It’s made you a beggar, weak and pleading for help.
Think about that. Think about that hard. A true patriot is someone who loves their country enough to correct it when it’s wrong.
Fuel isn’t that important to the economy eh? You think all those goods magically teleported to the shelves fully assembled and ready for use or consumption? This isn’t bottled water. Energy is part of the life blood of our technological society. Name three things that don’t depend on energy at some point. One of our primary energy sources was horribly managed by under regulated market forces.
Nice straw man. Have fun torching it.
My point is the market screwed up because of lack of regulation.
Explain Enron, explain the Republican party, or is flat out lies “co-operation”?
Over all the free market is about competition. That’s why it usually does better. We get the best of everything because of it. One thing it stumbles on is monopolies because surprisingly enough when there’s just one main source there’s not much competition. OPEC is a defacto monopoly. One the rest of the market pushed us into. Sure there’s other energy sources, and oil sources, but not in the volume we need, nor what our fleet is fitted for.
It’s not my idea. It’s what most of the developed world does.
Hmm, maybe the cost of GM being able to compete instead of being on it’s deathbed. Oh wait that’s not a cost, that’s a plus!
The transition towards energy independence wouldn’t have been trouble free but it’d be better then it is now, or as bad as it may get.
Or two.
Nothing. It was responding to your comment about being concerned only with short term gain.
I don’t see how it cancels out your gains. It is as if you suddenly drove an 40MPG car? I guess I’m assuming you would be driving something. It’s true that he made it as if you didn’t drive at all, comparitively, except that you were driving, so…
Beggars typically do not pay for what they are begging. So I guess we’re not beggars.
Huh? I didn’t say that at all.
How was it mismanaged? How should have it been managed?
I’m sure that’s one of your points. I am asking you to defend that point by, at a minimum, explaining why you think it was mismanaged.
I am not a republican, I consider myself a Democrat, and I’m not sure what Enron has to do with it, seeing as that was accounting fraud.
Then it should be that much easier to answer my question.
? What? Are you saying GM should have made more fuel efficient… wait, it doesn’t even matter. If GM cannot compete, it is not the government’s responsibility to step up and make it compete.
A free market is a plus for consumers. The businesses have to compete with price,innovation, better service or something to distinguish them. That is why it is natural for business to inhibit competition. If they can agree to split a market ,they can charge higher prices and not waste money on improving the product or price competing.
The function of the government is to prevent them from colluding . Trust busting and breaking up monopolies is a function of the government in behalf of the American people. When corporations collude like the oil companies ,the prices are whatever they say they are. Want gas pay what we say. Drive down the street, same price. All go up at once or all go down at once.
erislover
I think we’ve both made our cases and see each other’s side as well as we’re going to.
Let’s let the folks at playing along at home have a go.
Forget the absolute free market system: Today’s announced bailout of, not one company, but of the whole financial sector, at the of hundreds of billions of dollars, shows that the current system had failed.
They could have let it all collapse, which would have demonstrated its failure, but that would come at a huge cost to all citizens and society as a whole. So they decided to stop it from heading over the cliff.
The financial system has failed.
It’s like Daddy lets his kids try their hair-brained scheme on how to make money, and even though it works for a while and they make a lot of money, after a while the scheme goes sour and not only are the kids losing all their money, but the situation is threatening the entire family’s financial situation, and may even destroy the whole neighborhood.
So Daddy steps in and bails them out.
Unfortunately, instead of using this turn of events to realize that this is a hair-brained scheme and tell them to knock it off and find a new game to play, the kids will most likely be allowed to return to business-as-usual once this storm is over, only to wait for the next, unavoidable, storm.
Who knows, the next storm may be too big even for Daddy to save his kids.
You are right, it’s failed. We should go back to being hunters and gatherers I guess…
-XT