Oh, it had to be in there…
I love this sort of i-know-i’m-right infodump. Should I do one from the SocialDem/Green side?
See, thats the problem. Mises’ magnum opus is called Human Action because he argues that human behavior is too complex and irrational to be understood using mathematical theories and centrally managed. In fact, Keynesians use complex mathematical models to cover up the fact that their ideas are so irrational that even a child could understand how ridiculous they are. A scientific gloss does not impress me.
Common sense and self evident axioms are critical to the study of human beings and their desires and behavior. The value of money is critical. The issue of morality and power is paramount. Read Human Action and you will be sure to be blown away by Mises’ intellect and reasoning.
The central issues are this:
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We (the Austrians) want to limit government power and maintain the value of the currency.
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We want a low public debt and to maintain an accountable government by allowing people to exchange their paper money for gold should they lose trust in their government.
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We understand that paper money always self destructs throughout history. This is easily understood to a student of economic history. The nations with Sound Money survive and thrive. The nations who embark on inflation and fiat currencies self destruct under an avalanche of debt.
You are asking me to give up on this rational, common sense, to embrace a bullshit economic school that uses a scientific gloss to convince me that deficits don’t matter and we can survive indefinitely on the “creation” of wealth through a printing press?
Are you kidding me? Think about what you are really saying.
You do realize that most countries have fiat currencies, right? When do you predict this self-desctruction will occur? 1950? 1970? When?
This is a fair question. I would consider most of the mainstream networks and outlets to parade propaganda and bullshit to their audiences. Sometimes they do have good guests on, but not enough to make it worthwhile. I would suggest you don’t watch these networks, but catch the youtube of someone good who gets interviewed by these networks.
This is just my opinion, but the people I listed are very smart, have gotten predictions overwhelmingly right and are non partisan. I would add G Edward Griffin to that list. He wrote the definitive book on the Great Depression called The Creature from Jekyl Island. There are plenty more good sources. I haven’t even gotten into the book list I would recommend.
If you are interested, simply pay attention to those guys and visit the websites. See if they are right. Follow their track record vs the mainstream outlets and judge for yourself.
Better than who? I believe that if McCain was elected in 2008 literally nothing would be substantially different policy wise. The media would just spin things differently.
The “lesser of two evils” mentality is destroying this nation. Peoples standards are so low. There are enough betrayals from a liberal perspective for all of you to be marching in the streets next to the tea partiers. But you won’t because you are scared to death of a president Sarah Palin in 2012. This has got to stop.
I don’t need to do this but I will:
We still have 80,000 troops in Iraq. Obama has doubled the contractors in Iraq.
We have massively escalated the war in Afghanistan.
Guantanamo Bay is still open
He supports bailouts of Wall Street
His economics team is stacked with insiders and cronies like Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Alan Goolsbee, and others
All his economic predictions have failed so far. His economic policies have failed.
We still have renditions and secrets prisons.
His health care bill is a giant corporate welfare check made out to the Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries
There is plenty more I could go into. How can you defend the guy?
No, but liberal frequently want MORE government intervention, MORE welfare, MORE spending, etc. If you don’t consider Obama a liberal, fine. I call him a Corporatist. That is the most accurate description for him. I am referring to what liberals would see as their ideal, which from my understanding is completely impossible both economically and logistically. Don’t liberals want universal health care? Don’t liberals want high regulations on the market and a large welfare state? Don’t liberal support Keynesian economics and Central Banking? Most do. So, respond to my criticism of what you think is your ideal government.
Okay, this confuses me. If the underlying ideas behind Keynesian economics are so dumb even a child would laugh at them, then why do so many economists agree with Keynes? Are they deliberately endorsing theories that they know will be destructive to the economy? Why would they do that? How would destroying the economy be of benefit to them?
That is very reasonable of you. I agree completely. Obama, in my mind has gotten pretty much everything wrong. That certainly doesn’t mean if we vote him out of office his replacement will do any better. That hasn’t been the trend in the past.
So this article is wrong?
Well, I voted for Nader. Would you say that Obama is better than Ralph Nader? If you mean struggling against reality in that I should just hold my nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, I completely disagree. People need to find more ways to be involved in overthrowing this system that voting every four years. Its ridiculous.
By the way Bob Barr, who ran as the libertarian, claims he has come around and now understands that we need to get rid of the war on drugs. He was heavily criticized by libertarians for his well known conservative stances in the past. He went out of his way to show he has seen the light on this and other issues. I wasn’t very impressed with him. Most libertarians were too busy fighting for Ron Paul in the Republican Primary to pay attention to the libertarian party. I wasn’t impressed with Barr. Thats why I voted for Nader.
The more I hear him recently, the more I think that Bob Barr is better than most. Everyone can make mistakes.
Standard Libertarian whacknuttery, huh? Okay. You don’t have to go into great detail, but why not tell me how far off I am in my assessment of the facts?
You could make an effort.
This is hilarious. Its not worth responding to. You should be a comedian.
Except that I severely doubt that the health care bill would have happened under McCain. And I suspect he would have handled foreign diplomacy quite differently as well.
What do you suggest we do, then, if not vote for the guy who’s the closest to a reasonable candidate?
It can. I believe I am very progressive. I am referring to the progressivism that gained popularity in the mid 20th century that emphasized massive growth of government, the welfare state, entitlements, regulation of the market, etc.
I believe these things are the opposite of truly progressive government. The Founders of this nation were the true progressives. They established the first government that emphasized individual liberty and free enterprise. A progressive society would evolve towards greater liberty, more freedom, more peace, more tolerance and greater equality of justice.
Instead the brand of progressivism that was common in the mid 20th century was a progressive loss of liberty, more economic inequality, more wars, more authoritarianism. This is not progressive in my mind.
A truly libertarian society would be progressive. We could once again be the example of human liberty that would be the envy of the world.
Maybe those were the cliff notes. :eek:
I realize you are being overwhelmed by posters responding to you and you attempting to respond to them, so I’m going to wait to see if my later questions and some by other posters are answered before answering your question here. I admire the fact that you are attempting to engage what is, for all intents and purposes a hostile audience, and you are doing so in a cool and calm manner (by and large :p). I know how that can be, especially when pretty much everyone in a thread is against you, and a lot of folks are hounding you to respond to THEIR posts, right now!
To be brief, from what little I’ve read so far leads me to strongly believe you are one of those Libertarian types who see conspiracy everywhere in the government, want the US to get back on something like the gold standard, etc etc…to me, that is ‘Standard Libertarian whacknuttery’, since I don’t find it reality based. As I said, I actually have libertarian leanings myself, but I think that the big ‘L’ Libertarians are nearly a religious sect in their fervor and are completely out of touch with reality…POLITICAL reality…in this country. To my mind, real solutions to our real problems entail working from within the system, not solutions that entail the total destruction of the system and the supposed rebuilding of a better world. That smacks of the same kind of whacknuttery that the Communists got in 1918 and are still going through in some parts of the world.
I’m going to let it go at that for now, because you are making a good faith effort to engage a number of posters, and, honestly, your efforts would be better spent engaging them than me on all this. I would appreciate if you could answer my later question at some point, but it’s not really critical. FWIW, I’ll be following the discussion. Good luck with this…you are going to need it around here. 
-XT
The difference between liberals and conservatives isn’t that liberals believe in large government while conservatives believe in small government. In fact, liberals and conservatives both want a government of about the same size. The difference is that liberals want good government, while conservatives want bad government.
Moreover, “small government” and “free market” are far from synonymous. See, for example, Cap and Trade. Liberals want to expand the government in such a way as to replace our current socialist energy industry with a free-market energy industry, but the people who claim to hold the free market sacred and to denounce socialism are fighting it tooth and nail.
As to the OP itself, have you ever read Borges’ short story “The Library of Babel”? The premise is, it’s a library that contains, not just every book ever written, but every book that could possibly exist: Every sequence of letters in order is in one of those books somewhere in the library. In order to contain all of these books, the library must, of course, be unimaginatively vast… But it contains no information whatsoever. One could, in fact, greatly increase the information content of Borges’ library by burning the vast majority of the books in it.
See, I knew if you put your mind to it you could make specific claims. They’re almost all wrong, though.
There are currently 56,000 soldiers, or rather there will be after they rotate out.
Obama ran on that. Also, if we left Afghanistan right now it would fall to the Taliban. That’s bad. Really, you should look it up.
Because the Republicans are hysterical pussies and drummed up mouthbreathers against this.
The wall street bailouts were necessary. I thought you understood economics?
So? I’m pretty sure they understand economics better than you do.
Like keeping us out of the depression? As for the prediction, you’re probably talking about keeping unemployment low. That was a prediction made on info we had at the time. When the more accurate info was available, it was worse than we thought.
That does suck. But he’s cut them down.
That allows millions of people to access health care and actually costs less.
Because your attacks are laughable.
I’m sorry, but you weren’t serious, were you? Liberals want good government, while conservatives want a bad one. Really?
-XT
Ah yes, Austrian Economics. Isn’t that what Arnold used to stabilize the economy of California?
Your ‘what-ever-it-is’ has a few good points, wrapped up in nonsense. You have highlighted a number of actual problems, then place the blame on random people and philosophies. You don’t offer any solutions. Your own history of events demonstrates that changes in political philosophy don’t make a difference. You specifically note that the presidents who embraced the largest parts of your philosophy increased the national debt the greatest.
When Reagan was sworn in (1980), the national debt was: $908,000,000,000
When Clinton was sworn in (1992), the national debt was: $4,065,000,000,000
When G.W. Bush was sworn in (2001), the national debt was: $5,760,000,000,000
When Barack Obama was sworn in (2009), the national debt was: $10,124,000,000,000
So why aren’t you arguing for Clintonian economics?
Sorry, but this nonsense makes the diatribes of one of my evil twins sound like the epitome of reason. So display some backbone and pose your issues one at a time so we can tear them apart.