Because you put other people in danger. And because it’s really, really foolish of you.
Pretty much, yes; the same class of lunacy, and often the same people.
And what evidence do you have that it isn’t? And people are not remotely " sicker than ever before". The opposite is true.
Not inherently, but business by its nature rewards psychopathic behavior. Especially if there’s no strong government regulation and oversight to keep the predators in check.
Because unlike business, it isn’t their job to exploit people. And because democratic governments are more under the control of the people than any business.
Then it would be a libertarian government.
Because it would give them a worse set of choices, and the most likely result is they would get scammed and a worse education.
I regard the Second Amendment as destructive to society, a danger to the freedom of the American public, and primarily used as a tool to manipulate people into surrendering liberty in the name of guns. And no, the public is no more safe from oppression with it than without it.
Price gouging will only occur from a Monopoly because other will undercut their prices. As I said before, natural monopolies are rare, and antitrust laws should prevent them from occurring, keeping competition alive in all markets. Of course people who own a corporation are interested in turning a profit. But you are insinuating that that desire is inherently contrary to social justice. I disagree. Businesses that innovate and lead to a revolution in how we live and improve our quality of life contribute to social justice. This type of innovation should be encouraged in a free market.
People WOULD have an alternative to buying any product. But I understand your concerns are frequently held by those on the Left in reaction to a libertarian ideology. What if we had basic safeguards you could agree with, antitrust laws, minimum wage laws, food and safety requirements, restrictions on pollution, etc. And THEN we shrunk the government down to its Constitutional size and scope and adopted the other reforms I have suggested. Would you support them then?
The problem is we have been living with Corporatism for so long now many companies are vastly more powerful than they would be in a Free Market Libertarian society. I think it would be fair, in a transition phase, for the government to break up these monopolies and encourage new business and free enterprise through tax incentives and other means. Once we have achieved the reforms I am advocating, we would see every market have a vibrant, competitive energy with dozens of competitors vying for the public to patronize them. The issue is how to get from here to there.
Your right, I don’t want to focus on my beliefs about Vaccines. This is a topic about libertarian ideology. But suffice to say, I believe in the very near future we will be changing our tune drastically as we see increasingly negative health effects in our population from all the vaccines we are giving people. Just wait.
Because they are very low risk. Do you understand how low the risk for terrorism really is? You are more likely to be struck by lightning twice in one year than to be the victim of a terrorist attack. Yeah, I don’t think every man, woman, child, young and old alike should be scanned and harassed at the airport.
This is just me, but I would gladly take the risk to be free of this nonsense every time I fly. Are you really afraid of terrorism? Would you not feel safe on an airplane without having full body scanners at every airport and knowing that peoples toothpaste has been taken from them? I certainly wouldn’t feel any less safe without this bullshit. To each his own.
I agree with you that many vaccines are inappropriate. The present flu vaccine may be a good example. (I wasn’t aware U.S. planned mandatory administration of that vaccine). But it’s a far cry from “some vaccines are inappropriate” to “there should be no mandatory vaccines whatsoever” which is how you started. (I wonder if I could get you to retreat to a “centrist” position on many of your points by challenging you to think. BTW, I hope you realize that the anecdote “jrodefeld didn’t vaccinate and jrodefeld is still healthy” has little probative value.)
On the subject of economists endorsing your position on interest rates, URL’s would be good. But first, let’s find out what your position is! It started as “central banks should not set interest rates” but seems to have migrated to “recently the Fed set inappropriate rates.” And as for short-term interest rates being set by the “free market” it would be nice to see a URL that demonstrates that to be even plausible in today’s financial world.
And of course, that government should sometimes adopt fiscal and monetary polices opposite to what a “free market” would adopt is well-known in Keynesian theory. (I see Keynesian theory being denounced by some right-wingers; AFAIK, however, this is just more right-wing nonsense.)
Can I first ask, What are your qualifications and formal education in matters of economics? Since you take such a smug posture, you must be some kind of expert. :rolleyes:
The government DOES NOT allow competing currencies PERIOD. To do this, we would have to repeal legal tender laws. Look at the following links:
The creators of the Liberty Dollar were arrested and charged on the following reasons:
“conspiracy and other charges in connection with an alleged unlawful operation to publish, possess and sell for profit, coins in resemblance and similitude to U.S. coins. All four defendants are also charged in the alleged conspiracy with uttering and passing, and attempting to utter and pass, a coin of silver in resemblance of genuine coins of the United States in the denominations of five dollars and greater, and intended for use as current money.”
Thus, it is ILLEGAL to circulate competing currencies. What I am advocating is repealing legal tender laws.
You know, for many years it was illegal for americans to own gold. This existed from 1933 to 1974. You act like the effects of inflation are irrelevant because it occurs over a longer period of time. How many average poor or middle class families do you know who have the foresight and economic literacy to own gold to protect their savings? Very few do. For these people the standard of living has been steadily going down as their paychecks buy less and less each week. I understand the effects of inflation because I have studied economics. If you really want to understand inflation, try reading this link:
No, that is why I advocate a Gold Standard. I don’t advocate a Fiat currency controlled by Congress. By the way, when the Constitution says Congress has the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, it means that it is Congress’s responsibility! They are not allowed to defer their responsibility to a third party. The Federal Reserve is unconstitutional for that reason. Come on, man. Any true student of Constitutional law should understand that. As far as the Treasury is concerned, they hold the Gold reserves. And they print the money.
This is completely false. Consider what Congressman Ron Paul wrote about a similar complaint that there isn’t enough gold, which is another argument your side makes:
*"I find it amazing that economists can make statements like this, for it is an elementary principal of economics that if one raises the price of a commodity, one will always have enough of that commodity. What we saw in the run up of gold prices is in fact the raising of the price of gold to match the depreciation of the dollar that has occurred, and still is occurring.
Simply put, there will always be enough gold so long as no one interferes with the free market mechanism.
At $700 an ounce the United States government has enough gold reserves to more than cover all the Federal Reserves notes outstanding. If we were to establish a gold standard by the procedure I have outlined in my bill H.R. 7874, then the world would be fully informed of the gold holdings of the United States Government and the price of gold could adjust accordingly, so that when redemption of our greenbacks - our Federal Reserve notes - began, the price would be the market-clearing price. Quite simply, the statement that there is not enough gold is false. It is a scare tactic used by opponents of the gold standard."*
You clearly have no idea how relatively easy it would actually be to reinstate the Gold standard. There would be a transition, but after that, we would be prosperous once again.
It is completely false that if someone exchanges certificates for gold, the system collapses. You clearly know nothing about how a gold standard would operate in reality. The only reason why anyone would want to exchange their certificates for gold is if they had some reason not to trust the government. Even then, not everyone would withdraw the gold at once. Just the threat keeps the banks and our government honest. Why do you think the Founders advocated that only gold and silver be legal tender? Because they recognized that was the only way to ensure governments don’t grow exponentially and abuse the rights of the people. It was to ensure freedom.
Since you clearly need to learn more about the gold standard, read this article written by esteemed libertarian economist Murray N. Rothbard,
See, you are adhering to the faulty logic of modern Keynesian economics which insists that the Federal Reserve “stimulate” our way out of recessions and depressions. This is utter nonsense. I adhere to the Austrian School of economic thought, which has given us great intellectuals and Nobel laureates alike. By the way, the great Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises was one of the few to correctly predict the stock market crash and resulting depression of the thirties years before anybody else. The same is true today. Adherents of the Austrian School, such as Ron Paul and Peter Schiff, were able to correctly predict the current economic meltdown before anybody else because they believe in superior economic theories.
The Great Depression was caused by excessive expansion of credit during the 1920s by the Federal Reserve drove the country into a great depression. And everything that our government did (Both Hoover and Roosevelt) greatly exacerbated the problems and prevented a recovery. See the following link:
If you care to, here is a much more involved “e book” about the Austrian explanation for the Great Depression:
We can hardly have a reasonable discussion of economics if you don’t even understand the causes of the Great Depression. As to your notion that no economists dispute that we need a central bank to “print money in emergencies”, nothing could be further from the truth. The following economists dispute that because they understand we should tackle the causes of the “emergencies” rather than just the effects:
Ludwig von Mises
F.A. Hayak, Nobel Laureate
Henry Hazlitt
Murray Rothbard
Carl Menger
Ron Paul
Peter Schiff
There is a reason these men were able to see these economic crises coming a mile away. It is because they understand the fundamental problems with our economy in ways the Keynesians can’t even comprehend. You would do well to study some Austrian economics before making ridiculous statements like, “If you take away the ability to expand the money supply at will, then you are dooming us to continually repeat the mistakes that caused the Great Depression.” What nonsense. Read up, man.
You probably thought you “got me”, right? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but it seems you are the one who needs to bone up on your economic studies. Since you did so well here, why don’t you take a shot at responding to the rest of my post?
I didn’t change my position. I think vaccines should be offered on a voluntarily basis, rather than being mandatory. But this doesn’t mean I think all vaccines are bad. Its just that I think people get way too many, and NONE of them should be forced on the population. What do you think would happen if we all stopped getting vaccinations tomorrow? There would be outbreaks of black plague and we would all die? I am personally opposed to most vaccines but I have no reason to deny them to anyone who wants to get one.
You seem to be suggesting that I am somehow changing my position, when I don’t think I am at all. I stand by this statement: The Fed should not set interest rates. At all. The market should set interest rates.
Well, you may be disappointed to learn that I reject Keynesian economics because its effectiveness is refuted by history and it simply doesn’t work. I adhere to the Austrian School of Economics. You know the great Austrian economists correctly predicted the Great Depression before it occurred. Keynes didn’t do that. And they correctly predicted the current crisis years before anybody else. The reason is they believe in superior economic theories and understand the fundamental cause of recessions and depressions. If you want to learn more about this school of thought I suggest you read some of the literature at this link:
I would be interested to hear your take on Austrian theory.
A great many people would die, yes. Just as right now, thanks to the anti-vaxers people are dying of disease who wouldn’t be otherwise. Herd immunity requires that enough people be vaccinated to work.
I wonder if you understand that vaccination is altruistic. A parent is happy not to give his kid a rubella vaccine because the kid isn’t going to get rubella! Why not? Because it’s caught by exposure to a contagious human, but all the other kids have been vaccinated, so don’t have rubella! But what if all parents refused the vaccine? I don’t know if the “Golden Rule” plays a key role in your philosophy, but reread the previous sentences until you understand why government forces your kid to get certain vaccines.
I went to the website you mentioned; clicked on “The Federal Reserve as a Confidence Game: What They Were Saying in 2007” and found:
This start makes me doubtful that this “paper” is serious economic theory, but I will study it. Meanwhile, where’s your cite for a serious thinker that believes “free market” setting of short-term interest rates is plausible today? This “paper” certainly isn’t it.
Whew! This thread reminds me of a cat fight I once saw. All that was visible was a 5 ft cloud cloud of flying fur.
Where to begin?
As I’ve said before to the point of boring everyone, we live in a Corporate Kleptocracy.
The coup was completed in 1889 when SCOTUS granted corporations personhood and with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890, the first federal statute to identify corporations as people.
Wall Street, oil companies, defense contractors are all govt sanctioned criminal enterprises. They OWN the govt and hire their own “regulators”.
Progressives, conservatives, and independents. All smugly irrelevant.
Yeah. I always use the rolleyes smilie, too, when I’m talking to a physicist who’s trying to explain that dark matter is matter out there in the universe.
I’m not trained in physics, though I’ve probably read more about it in the last five years than you have in your entire life, but I always give the real physicists one of these, :rolleyes:, then explain that the real reason that there’s an unknown gravitic force in the universe is the exceptional size of my penis.
It’s always an interesting moment in a debate when someone shoots himself in the foot by being unable to read his own cite.
No, it is not ILLEGAL.
They were arrested, as your own cite explicitly states if you had actually bothered to read it, for creating coins resembling the US dollar. They could have, if they so wished, created coins called Sparmafunq Tollagars. They could have traded their gold and silver Sparmafunq Tollagars for any goods and services that other people agreed to. This is because–and please pay attention this time–they are free to use gold and silver however much they like. It’s for creating too close an imitation of the US dollar that they got busted for. The United States government is quite picky about that. A US dollar is what the gummint say it is, not what some poor dimwitted libertarian protester wants it to be.
But you don’t even leave it there. In your blind haste, you’ve now demonstrated that you don’t understand legal tender, either. Legal tender simply means, as I alluded to in my post but did not explicitly point out, that any debt can be discharged with offering US dollars. What you obviously don’t realize is that debts can also be discharged, even now, by whatever other means both parties agree to. If I show up to pay my rent with Sparmafunq Tollagars, and my landlord is cool with it, I can pay my rent with Sparmafunq Tollagars. The legal tender law works in a different way: It means that if I’m in debt 500 bucks, the debt must be discharged if I offer him 500 bucks. He can’t suddenly turnaround and demand Sparmafunq Tollagars (or x ounces of gold) out of the blue. But again, that does not mean that we can’t find alternative methods of payment. I could pay in Euros, or RMBs, or in cow chips, as long as both of us agreed. It’s simply that, if I’m in debt, the debt must be discharged with legal tender.
And by the way, Ron Paul is a nutter, not an economist. If we establish multiple currencies as legal tender, then people would pay their debts not with the strongest, but with the weakest currency available. It would lead to bad juju, an reintroduction of Gresham’s Law as bad money would drive out the good. Everyone would pay their debts with the most worthless of the legal currencies, while they hoarded the more valuable currencies. Inflation would rise to the adjust to the value of the most worthless of the currencies. This is another very straightforward economic fact that you would know if you’d studied it formally.
Look, an economics education takes a lot of math. Mathematics causes one to be familiar with the Greek alphabet. So I could, if I wanted, read through the ancient Greek philosophers in their original language and recognize all the letters. I could even do it for five years. But the result would be worthless, because I don’t understand Greek. I wouldn’t even know if I were reading the right books.
Great.
So we should both be in favor of government regulation mandating that everyone save an appropriate percentage of their income, in the proper inflation fighting form. Right?
I’ve never had a blind man attempt to describe the sunset to me, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.
Someone has to enforce the standard. That’s why it’s a standard, and not just everyone carrying around ounces of gold everywhere. The gold standard is paper that represents gold. People use the paper because carrying the gold is a major pain in the ass. But someone has to ensure that, if Mr Foreign Speculator wants to trade in his paper for gold, he gets the gold. And who is that?
It’s the government. And who decides whether to keep using the standard, to keep paying out gold or whether to stop? Why, it’s still the government. And which institution could be specifically empowered to drop the standard whenever it fucking wishes? Why, it’s still the government. A gold standard would not take away Congress’s power over the money supply. They could take a vote, any time they liked, and say: “We’re tired of this stupid standard. We’re the government and we’re keeping our gold in our cave, and all of you mofos can suck on it.” And poof! That’s the end of the gold standard. FDR dropped the gold peg to fight the Depression, and there was not damn thing that the idiot libertarians at the time could do about it.
Gold is not magic.
I’m not a student of constitutional law, or any other kind of law, so I’m not going to argue the issue. I’ll stick to the econ.
I will point out, however, that Congress delegates shit all the time. If it were impossible for them to do so, then the Supreme Court would’ve pointed that out about 5,000 years ago. (Or 100. Whatever.) You apparently have a different constitutional interpretation. Given your astounding ignorance of economics, I will henceforth assume that your knowledge of constitutional law is about as deep as the coffee table ring left by a cold beverage.
I specifically pointed out that the government could buy up more gold, and drive up the price. I made special note of it. Then I pointed out the problems with the plan. This you ignored, because you’ve never thought this issue through before in any depth.
We could, indeed, bid up the price of gold. Yes. True. I already specifically pointed that out.
It would, however, be an entirely artificial method to bid up the price. It’s the government entering the gold market. It’s the government that has to enforce the standard. It’s the government that has to tax its citizens to afford to be able to purchase gold reserves. And who benefits? All the wannabe Auric Goldfingers in the world who cackle in delight as the US government, by purchasing a lot of gold, suddenly makes their own private hoards much, much, much more valuable. If the US attempts to return to a gold standard, then it would be a transfer of wealth from US taxpayers to other people, like Russian government, which has some natural resource deposits.
And it would not be easy. It would be hideously expensive and deflationary and would plunge the entire nation into a massive recession. This is a previous thread on the topic in which I and others explain this process in excruciating detail.
I did not mean to imply that, though on rereading my post, I can see how you might’ve gotten that impression.
No, the system can withstand a person here or there withdrawing gold. What it cannot withstand is for that process to continue indefinitely. There must always be gold in the cave. In order for there to always be gold in the cave, people can’t keep taking gold out. There have to be enough incentives for people to want to keep the paper, and not take the gold. The gold reserves must be stable. You can lose some gold here and there, but most of that gold will stay exactly where it is, just as I said, gathering dust in the cave.
Except when it didn’t. Which was all the time.
You already cited a bunch of stuff about how the government used to regulate and control possession of gold. Well, of course they did. Why? Because controlling a gold standard is tough, and it helps to have some heavy-handed laws in place, even with the standard, to make sure that the government’s supply of gold is stable. The gold market didn’t become truly free until after Nixon dropped the standard completely.
And now I can add the foundation of this country to the list of topics you claim to have knowledge about. Fantastic.
Personally, I typically limit myself to the fields in which I have experience, but I guess there’s something to be said for naively believing whatever you’d like to believe, and then claiming that you’re an expert, while ignoring people with real knowledge. That’s certainly one way to go through life.
I keep telling the astrophysicists that my cock is responsible for all that unknown space stuff, but they never seem to believe me.
But if I just keep repeating it to myself late at night, whispering incessantly through the tears, I’m sure they’ll eventually come around.
The Austrian school had many important contributions to economic theory. They expanded the range of economic knowledge, broadened our horizons, allowed us to see things we had not seen before. And for that, I salute them.
Newton gave us calculus. For that, I salute him. But Newton spent the rest of his life doing alchemy.
The good contributions of the Austrians have already been incorporated. They are already accepted. The rest was, unfortunately, alchemy. It was wrong. It has been discarded by modern economic thinkers. It has been discarded by modern libertarian economic thinkers. Let me repeat that, with emphasis: Professional economists from all over the economic spectrum reject it. Milton Friedman rejected it. Paul Krugman rejects it. If you want input from the current popular libertarian blogs, the ones written by real professions, I can point to many of them. All prominent modern economists reject the notion. You are not just arguing with me, you’re not just arguing with the “Keynesians”. You’re arguing with all of them. Every last one of them.
Hayek did some important work. von Mises did some important work. Adam Smith did some important work, too. But it’s outdated. The good ideas were incorporated, the bad ideas were discarded. You’re wondering around with all the bad ideas in your ideas, ideas from long dead economists, and you’re ignoring all of the economists, including the libertarians, who are telling you that you’re full of shit. The Road to Serfdom is a great and important book. But that doesn’t mean that we should listen to Hayek forever. We have to pay attention to new ideas.
Gold is not magic, and Hayek was not right about everything.
The start of the recession is in dispute, even today. Citing the tired, sad scribblings of long dead economists, and their economically illiterate groupies who still try to carry the torch, does not erase the genuine research that have been done since that time. But the Federal Reserve was, indeed, the entity most responsible for driving the country from recession into depression. True. And the problem was that it did not maintain the money supply. It allowed deflation to happen. Scott Sumner is a small-government libertarian economist. He thinks we should scale down the size of our government to something approaching the Singapore model. He is no friend to fiscal stimulus policies. But the graph in that link is one of the most fantastic pieces of evidence I’ve ever seen.
He is posting parts of his book on the history of the depressing on his blog. Read them, if you’re interested in a bit of modern thought. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but god damn if he doesn’t make the first compelling case I’ve ever seen against fiscal stimulus. It’s good economics, and I’m going to have to think long and hard about it, to see if I need to change my attitude toward government deficit spending in a time of economic crisis. I’ll listen to Sumner, because he’s knowledgeable, he’s given the issue a helluva lot of thought, and he argues his case convincingly.
But even so, Sumner believes that the Fed didn’t stimulate the economy enough during the Depression. He thinks they didn’t do their job. He’s knowledge enough to make his case. You can cite the tired dead economists, or modern “Austrians” like Peter Schiff all you want. Peter Schiff was wrong about most of the things he said. He’s not an economist, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
And you are wrong as well. Repeatedly. About everything you write.
No, I didn’t “get you”.
You did this to yourself. And now you’re digging yourself deeper. All I did was give you a shovel.
And unregulated capitalism also fails. In fact, Marx’s particular form of Communism was an extreme reaction to the obvious failures of the unregulated free market.
No … I’m saying that *unregulated *capitalism is a bad system. You’re trying to solve complicated real-world problems with a simplistic one-size-fits all ideology. Sometimes the free market does wonderful things. Sometimes it produces cruelty and oppression. The sensible thing to do is decide which is which on a case-by-case basis instead of coming up with a grand utopian scheme and applying it universally to all situations.
It is A potential threat to liberty, but its certainly not the more significant threat that we face in America right now.
Which makes no difference if the more predatory companies already drove you out of business IN THE SHORT RUN. Exploitative business practices produce an obvious short-term gain so there is a constant pressure to engage in them to make just a little more profit. There’s a ratchet effect: Companies that are slightly more exploitative do slightly better in the short run, putting pressure on others to match their practices to stay in business in the short run. The result is a race to the bottom. It’s an example of the classic prisoner’s dilemma. The companies, by making the most rational decisions to protect their own interests at each step, eventually bring about a situation that’s worse for everyone.
Liberty is AN ideal we should strive for. But not the only one. I would rank justice and compassion just as highly. And if you mindlessly pursue pure liberty without also seeking justice and compassion, you will find only oppression.
Except for the elections we have EVERY TWO YEARS. :rolleyes:
I’d be very happy if the federal government would work harder to prevent us more aggressively from corporatism. Unfortunately all the “free market solves everything” people keep stopping it.
Then start small and prove how well it works. First run a city on libertarian principles, or a state, and show how amazing your utopian ideas are in practice.
I’m not insinuating. I’m directly stating: Continually increasing profits comes at the cost of reduced quality goods and the well being of employees.
My cite is the last 200 years of industrial history. Without government regulation we would still have:[ol]
[li]No child labor laws[/li][li]No standardized work week and overtime pay[/li][li]No workplace safety standards[/li][li]No minimum wage[/li][li]No product safety standards[/li][li]No recourse to collusion between companies and blacklisting of people in a given field.[/li][/ol]All of these things get in the way of profit.
Many times in real life the alternative is to starve or otherwise be unable to function in society. Do you really think there is a viable alternative for purchasing gasoline for the majority of the US? Relying on public transport is not an option since it is very sub-par in many areas and moving next door to where I work is completely impractical.
Such as dumping medicare and education spending? No. The problem with your statement of “Constitutional size and scope” is that is presumes that things such as medicare, membership in the UN, and education are somehow unconstitutional. I’m not even sure how you define “Constitutional size.”
Besides, it’s not some sacred document that’s the Holy Word of God. It’s just a piece of paper with some decent guidelines on it. I don’t think it should be easy to change the Constitution, but it damn well should be mutable and ever changing. Time marches on and what was fine in 1787 is not what we need now.
I think one of the best parts is that the framers of the US Constitution were smart enough to realize that and included the means to alter it from the start. If it’s truely bothering you that medicare is not specifically mentioned by name in the US Constitution that can be changed. Would you be okay with that?
You are still ignoring start up costs. All the tax breaks in the world aren’t going to suddenly allow for the building of more oil refineries by John Doe off the street.
It’s fine to say businesses would be better off with more competion, but you have no plan for how to get there and stay there. Breaking up large companies and preventing them from reforming would be the height of government regulation on business.
Breaking them up and then somehow not expecting them to promptly merge back into two or three megacorporations is ignoring the last 200 years of history.
I’m still unclear on how you can rail against current corporations and the problems they cause and come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with them would be to stop forcing them to follow minimum standards and just work it out themselves. It’s like deciding that a 5 year old kid is going to figure out for himself that he needs to eat something besides candy if he want to stay healthy.
I know, you know, and many other people know just how low the risk is. But the majority of the US feels safer with it. This encourages them to fly more. I can promise you that if you stood up today and did away with all security screening you’d seen a massive drop in the number of passengers. TSA’s number one job is not keeping us safe, no matter how much they like to think so. It’s keeping people happy and spending money on air travel.
The cat is out of the bag and it’s not going back in. Air travel has changed in the last 9 years and there is no returning to the way it was. You also did not provide an example of a non-racist, non-bigoted way to determine high risk travelers. Don’t feel bad if you can’t. Nobody else has yet either.
I’ll repeat it again: **Just like Communism, Libertarianism only works if you believe people will put the wellfare of others over a small gain for themselves. **I know it’s weird that two directly opposite models have the same flaw, but there it is. If you could get businesses to take the high road and bypass profit for greater social good it would work out just fine. History is full of examples of this not being the case.
I don’t disagree with anything you have said. I do think our country has become a Corporate Kleptocracy. I also agree that it started with granting Corporate Personhood, thus giving corporations the same legal rights as people. It continued when we allowed the banks to form a cartel and take over our economy. This encouraged the corporations to look for a handout, rather than competing fairly in the market environment.
Some liberals take your position and use it to justify a larger more intrusive government and moving towards socialism. I think this is wrong. We should reform capitalism and go back to Free Markets. We perhaps could put in additional safeguards to prevent the corporations from taking over again.
Its worse than that. They don’t ask for handouts, they steal it in plain sight. The only “legal” way to rob a bank is from a board room.
Progressives, conservative, independents all suffer from the belief that there is some way to take our govt back from corporations. Corporations ARE the govt and they are not likely to give up their power. They OWN all three branches of our govt and are fronted abroad by the US military. In other words, all left/right debates in this country are moot.
Well, what should we do then? You seem to think that there is no hope. I agree it is a daunting taste, but we really don’t have a choice. We can roll over and passively allow the corporations and bankers to continually abuse us and steal every last penny from the working class, or we can stand up to them in whatever capacity we are able. Obviously we need to have some sort of a revolution in this country beyond just electing Democrats and Republicans. We need to stop watching tv, read more, become informed on the issues and get involved in our local communities.
You know, as much as liberals like to make fun of the teabaggers, I have some sympathy for them. People are losing everything, their home, their job, and their standard of living, and they are lashing out. Many are misinformed on key issues, but they are right to be outraged. And for all their faults, the truth is they do for the most part direct their anger towards both Republicans and Democrats alike. So, for concerned liberals like yourself (I assume you are a liberal?), rather than making fun of these people you should be reaching out and uniting with them to take on this Corporatist system. We should not be fighting amongst ourselves, we should be fighting against the people who have screwed us over (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Military contractors, Blackwater, Big Oil, and politicians of all stripes).
Do you have any better ideas of how to overcome this system we currently have?
This is not helping your cause, even slightly. In fact, it makes you sound perfectly irrational and hurts your credibility. I know it is hard for me to listen to someone who claims to be well-educated arguing for a perfectly free market when he is willing to listen to Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher over the entire weight of scientific knowledge. Honestly, this just makes me think that a perfectly libertarian society would go to hell even faster than I previously assumed.
Have you listened to yourself?! I mean what in the hell does “If vaccines are so important, why are people sicker than ever before with all these new mandatory vaccines?” even mean? You are 25, the same age as me. Do you honestly think more people are sicker now than ever before? How many of your peers are in wheelchairs from polio? Scarred from smallpox? Sterile from the mumps? Do you know ANYONE who has ever had the measles, diptheria, rubella, or whooping cough? Vaccines not only work but are possibly the greatest technological triumph of the past century.
I applaud your belief in your body’s immune system and whatever the hell “natural supplementation” means. You should be thanking literally all of society for getting vaccinated so that you can take advantage of herd immunity.
And why on earth is a libertarian arguing about the evils of a pharmaceutical company? You think without a CDC putting out reliable, scholarly, scientific data in a form consumable by the general public that things would be better? Yes, I am sure that not every medication in existence is necessary and that there is a tendency to overmedicate in general. Vaccination has nothing to do with this. Please, identify to me a vaccine that we “don’t really need”. If your answer involves something about preventing disease that people aren’t likely to get, just stop. There is a reason we don’t get those diseases anymore and it is called vaccination.
In addition to avoiding the TV, I’d also recommend avoiding some of those crackpot websites!
Hi again, jrodefeld. You’re obviously a young, intelligent person concerned about America’s direction. Good! We need more like you! It would be nice to all band together and change America’s direction (like Sarah Palin asks us to do :dubious: ); it’s just too bad we’ve trouble agreeing on the direction!
If you’ve kept an open mind, you’ve learned a lot from this thread. You’ve learned why governments mandate vaccinations, something you didn’t seem to understand before. You know that serious economists regard your monetary ideas as silly. (I’m still waiting for the paper explaining “free markets setting short-term interest rates” )
One of the hardest things to do, especially in political debate, is to admit one was wrong and then change one’s views. But you now have the opportunity to reflect on what you’ve learned, review some more balanced books. Many people, including yourself, would be delighted to see you come back in a few weeks with a more nuanced understanding. There are many intelligent Dopers who’ve addressed your questions; wouldn’t it be wonderful to see that their efforts weren’t wasted?
There is no hope for civilization as we know it. Rising population with increasing energy demands on finite resources coupled with our doomed-to-fail economic system which depends on increasing said demands along with global warming is setting up our global population for a big die off. The Big Transition is upon us.
Humanity has NEVER faced anything like this before. Govt could help ease the transition but the folks in power really don’t give a shit … simply, they’re content to be the last to starve. And, by and large, the American people are complicit in their greed, myself included.
I’m 69 and was born into what I can see was the truly privileged generation in this country. I’m retired on minimum SS and not counting the extras such as subsidized HUD rent and a generous Medicaid, my income puts me in the top 13% of the world’s population.
And, paradoxically, I’m much better off than my fellow retirees who managed to put something away for their golden years. Because, by virtue of their “wealth”, they are not eligible for the numerous perks to which my “poverty” entitles me, they are struggling to pay for health insurance when I can walk into any clinic for a $2 co-pay.
I have no illusions about my complicity as a beneficiary of Coporate America’s rape of the world and utter disregard for the welfare of this country and its people but, OTOH, I have have no guilt. Hey, everybody is born somewhere. I’m not a religious person but call it karma.
Short of herding the whole bunch into Gitmo, good luck. Blackwater will see to it that the question never arises.
I agree.
But there is really only one issue, what is my community going to look like when the shit comes down? What happens when the grid collapses and delivery trucks stop rolling into Safeway? The problem is, whenever you bring up the subject, folks think you’re being a bit melodramatic.
If my scenario outlined above proves true, prepare to join the crowd.
Got it ?
I’m a progressive anarchist. WTF, I’ll admit it, I voted for Obama but after a year of Bush in Blackface, I’ve had it.
Perhaps this will help. It’s A talk given by Dr. Albert Barlett Professor Emeritus Department of Physics University of Colorado at Boulder “Arithmetic, Population and Energy” in 8 9+ min segments.
Once this is digested, we can talk about our so-called financial system.
Oh sure, now you get into the hard questions. You’re certainly correct that it’s a lot easier to look at something and say it won’t work than it is to decide what the next step should be.
To use the sports analogy you used way back in this thread, the US is the Detroit Lions. We use to be good enough to be gauranteed a spot on TV every Thanksgiving because everyone wanted to see us. Now we’re still in the spotlight but our level of play is getting embarrassing.
First, we need to stop drafting wide receivers (calling for more deregulation) over and over again as if that’s the magic cure for our problems. We’ve gotten a new coach (Obama) and he seems to have some ideas and is at least willing to listen to his assistants on what needs to be done. (Although it remains to be seen if it all works out or not, but at least he’s trying)
We have problems with the front office though. Some of them are trying to make things better and build up the club. Some of them are more like the owner in Major League and are hoping that by running the team into the ground they can move to a new city where everything will be unicorns and rainbows.
(The current Republican strategy of “just say no” to anything and everything to get Obama to fail)
As you’ve noticed this still leaves us with a terrible team, just in a new city. Even if the plan succeeds, what next?
Well, in my opinion it’s time to stop drafting wide receivers. We can just say we’re in a building year or ten and hope to draft our way out of our problems. Or we can look around at the rest of the league and see if we can’t make a trade or two.
Canada is right next door and has an incredibly stable banking system. For a long time our two banking systems were identical and both were faced with many of the same pressures. But in the 80’s the US decided to deregulate banks, leading to them taking on ever increasing amounts of risk and handing out loans to people who really, really should never have gotten them. This has backfired on us.
Canada never allowed it’s banks to take on that much risk and is now sitting in a pretty good spot. Why can’t we move towards a system similar to theirs? It doesn’t have to be identical, but we could certainly learn from it.
Or health care. Every other first world nation has national health care. Why do we continue to think that it’s going to destroy civilization? It seems that it works everywhere else. Again, I’m not saying we need to slavishly copy another country, but we could create one for ourselves based on the available examples.
But this isn’t easy. We have the Teabaggers who as you noted are upset and ignorant. Not a good combination. They’re angry and they don’t know why. The problem with the Teabaggers is that for the most part they don’t want to know why. They like their issues to come in soundbites and cliched phrasing. It makes everything simple to understand. Rather than taking the time to learn what’s going on they simply wait to be told why they are upset by others.
They’re the ultimate in the “Microwave Generation” of politics. They don’t have the attention span to focus on any issue for more than a few minutes so whoever can grab their attention in the flashiest manner wins. Content doesn’t really matter. Ironically, almost all of the Teabaggers are far too old have grown up as part of the Microwave Generation. Go figure.
What should we do with them? Nothing really. They don’t want to be educated and are not a significant demographic. The most optimistic polls of their numbers are 15% of the population with the true number probably much lower. The world is passing them by and it’s time the US did them same. Like Secessionist after the Civil War or Segrationist after the Civil Rights Movement they will either join the rest of us or fade out of existence.
As for the companies you mention Goldman Sachs and Citigroup would be fine under increased regulation. Military Contractors do need more oversight. The oil comapnies? You’ve got me there. A Windfall Profits tax would make me feel good, but there are reasons why it may be a bad idea. Ultimately moving away from our dependence on oil would be the best solution, but I don’t see that happening any time soon and am just as guilty of depending on it as anyone else.
Blackwater is an embarrasment to the US. And pretty much to humanity in general. Some steps have been taken, such as the decision not to renew their contract in Iraq. I’d like to see them just given the boot completely instead of waiting for a contract to expire, but at least it’s a start. Never letting them take a Federal contract again would be great.
I don’t know whether to thank you or curse you for starting this thread. I subscribed some time before I first posted because, as I’ve pointed out, partisan debates are irrelevant at this point. Only because I have too much time on my hands (courtesy of World Inc.)) do I look in on these little slug fests and laugh for crying. But you sucked me in.
I see in you, noted above by Septimus, an honest and inquiring open mind. Congrats! You’re 9/10 of the way there. And just 27?. You wouldn’t be on these boards w/o a vision and the testosterone/estrogen driven ambition to improve the world.
You are much more likely to live well into the ‘interesting times’ promised by the Corporate Juggernaut (Obama ridden/driven at the moment) than I. I figure my minimum SS will be the last shoe dropped to announce the end of the charade of govt’s personal interest in anyone’s welfare. You and your children (and mine) will live with what we’ve been able to put together in the next 20 years. That’s the window.
So what you gonna do?
I suggest:
Move to a community somewhere in a bio-region (watershed) blessed with good sun, surface water and arable land, mild winters a plus.
Encourage your new mayor to work with neighboring colleagues to create the Greater Local Consolation Project. (Home Rule is sanctioned where I live)
a) Protect the headwaters.
b) While dollars are cheap, communally stock up on the technological spoils of Capitalism’s alternatives to oil.
Howabout solar powered wifi for the local net, where can we drop your net book and solar panel?
Windmill farms?
Lots of plastic pipe for irrigation.
Tightly rationed local fuel dumps to ease the transition to mule and plow and buggy?
Community freezers?
EMTs live free?
)
You’re certainly correct that it’s a lot easier to look at something and say it won’t work than it is to decide what the next step should be.