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On February 17 2013 19:01 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2013 16:17 sam!zdat wrote:
edit: sorry, I'm really confused. you're going to have to explain how you interpret this exhibit. The Keynesian theory that an increase government spending is the way out of a depression or lessen the effects of a depression. Wars incur massive government spending. So many economists (google would turn up most economists) argue that the spending incurred from WW2 was huge in getting us out of the great depression. If only we could do this kind of spending in every depression! What JonnyBNoHo has there is the disgusting truth about the whole story of what happens. We ration common goods like sugar, and you can't even go where you want in your car. Government sells its bonds on patriotism, and gives kickbacks, (but they aren't selling on their own merits!). If you would like the summary in rap form, hear this one out in 30 seconds. Some call WWII spending a case in point, but it comes with nasty side effects, perhaps significant to outweigh the benefits.
Yeah, I get it... You realize Keynesianism is just bandaid Marxism, right? Keynes just rediscovered what Marx already knew and pretended he didn't know about Marx so the west would accept it (Keynes did not discover the "crisis of effective demand"). Only Keynes decided the best thing to do would be to shovel more babies into Moloch. good going, Keynes.
So yeah, the people suffer so that we can take away their livelihood to restart the military-industrial machine. Is any of this supposed to be a problem for me? Obviously it wasn't good for SOCIETY, but it was good for CAPITALISM.
On February 18 2013 01:13 hypnobean wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2013 15:45 Dagan159 wrote:
Marx was right for the early 1900's... industrialization led to the dumbing down of the jobs in the workforce, however, now with advances in technology jobs are becoming more and more diverse and requiring more and more technological skill. I would argue just the opposite in fact, though one thing Marx underestimated was the extent of the globalization of production. The industrial proletariat in the United States is rather small, with more low wage workers working mindless service jobs. Look at China, or Indonesia, or Vietnam, or Nicaragua, or Guatemala - there are certainly workers there who are working the miserable jobs that people in the U.S. pretend don't exist anymore. And they are necessary to support our high standard of living, though... out of sight, out of mind, I suppose.
Yes, we have exported our proletariat so we don't have to look at them. Plus, they aren't real people, because they have different color skin, so who cares if we exploit them? go globalization! Go america!
On February 18 2013 01:39 TerribleNoobling wrote:Show nested quote +Look at China, or Indonesia, or Vietnam, or Nicaragua, or Guatemala - there are certainly workers there who are working the miserable jobs that people in the U.S. pretend don't exist anymore. And they are necessary to support our high standard of living, though... out of sight, out of mind, I suppose.
The poverty of the third world is not an indictment of capitalism. These people are poor precisely because their societies do not have well respected property rights because they do not have capitalism. Contrast the communist policies of the Nicaraguans with the limited government approach of Botswana or Hong Kong and compare the resultant prosperity and lack thereof.
You're a facile idiot.
On February 18 2013 03:38 farvacola wrote:I've not seen you post before, hypnobean, but I like yo style 
yes yes please stick around
On February 18 2013 01:18 aksfjh wrote:
I wish I had a better understanding of economic history so I could represent what happened with WWII.
better start readin those books
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On February 18 2013 04:21 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2013 01:18 aksfjh wrote:
I wish I had a better understanding of economic history so I could represent what happened with WWII. better start readin those books
I have too much to learn about engineering before I run off on some tangent for economics/history. I know there's a big argument to be made on the front of WWII, which establishes why it lifted us out of depression and is backed by good economic data (and not "GDP rose because people died and there was less 'capita'!"), I don't know where to look for a comprehensive list and classic rebuttals. Going to stick to control systems and transistors for now. 
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Well, I guess you'll just have to believe whatever I tell you then, won't you 
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Nah, my default with you is to be skeptical! The only people (on this board) I defer to in most cases are StealthBlue and paralleluniverse.
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aksfjh the broken window fallacy demonstrates how WWII could not have ended the depression. The theory, incidentally, was that the great depression was brought upon by a failure of aggregate demand. Consumers were not spending enough money, the economy went down the shitter, but the government stepped up to the plate employing everyone in arms manufacturing sopping up this falling demand with lots of gov'ment money and everything was great and we all rode off into the sunshine together singing kumbaya.
The broken window fallacy is this. Imagine that a kid is playing and throws his ball and it breaks a shopkeeper's window. Superficially this seems like it is good for the economy. You see the store owner must pay the glass man to fix his window, the glass man can now buy milk, the milk man can buy some other shit, etc. etc. But the crucial point is this : if the store keeper's window had not been broken he would have then been able to buy something else, say a new suit from a tailor. the tailor could then purchase some rare coins, the coin salesman could buy some comic books etc. etc.
The resources which were employed during WWII could have been employed instead on civilian uses. Creating new factories or other forms of capital to make the labour force more productive (and thus raise wages). Or it could have been spent on improved living conditions, more time off, more consumer goods etc. all depending on the demands of consumers.
War is massively destructive. Even when your cities are not being bombed or looted, there are very little peace time uses for tanks, bombs etc and even if there were a lot of this equipment gets destroyed and hundreds of thousands of (it's sort of weak to think of them this way, since of course every human is so much more than simply what he does for work) able bodied workers died (and ergo could not produce anything). None of this is a recipe for economic prosperity. War is not good for the economy.
Another aspect to this depression was Hoover's (yes, Hoover's) New Deal. I say Hoover's because FDR did not really create the New Deal it was in fact an extension of Hoover's policies. FDR himself was a callow and unimaginative man. Hoover undertook a great expansion of government intervention into the market place... things like price controls, paying farmers to kill pigs, massive public spending programs... all of these things hurt the economy and delayed the healing process wherein malinvestment is liquidated and resources are shifted from capital goods industries (where they are misallocated on account of artificially low interest rates fooling entrepreneurs about consumer time preference) to consumer goods industries.
Another feature was regime uncertainty. Hoover and FDR specifically established broad powers of wealth confiscation. FDR, for example, stole everyone's gold (believe it or not). This lead to regime uncertainty. People are not very likely to go about creating wealth if they think the government is just going to take it from them. There were a lot of factors for why the great depression was so 'great'.
It was only after the war was over, and after taxes were cut massively, that the economy really started to recover.
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On February 18 2013 08:42 TerribleNoobling wrote:
aksfjh the broken window fallacy demonstrates how WWII could not have ended the depression. The theory, incidentally, was that the great depression was brought upon by a failure of aggregate demand. Consumers were not spending enough money, the economy went down the shitter, but the government stepped up to the plate employing everyone in arms manufacturing sopping up this falling demand with lots of gov'ment money and everything was great and we all rode off into the sunshine together singing kumbaya.
The broken window fallacy is this. Imagine that a kid is playing and throws his ball and it breaks a shopkeeper's window. Superficially this seems like it is good for the economy. You see the store owner must pay the glass man to fix his window, the glass man can now buy milk, the milk man can buy some other shit, etc. etc. But the crucial point is this : if the store keeper's window had not been broken he would have then been able to buy something else, say a new suit from a tailor. the tailor could then purchase some rare coins, the coin salesman could buy some comic books etc. etc.
The resources which were employed during WWII could have been employed instead on civilian uses. Creating new factories or other forms of capital to make the labour force more productive (and thus raise wages). Or it could have been spent on improved living conditions, more time off, more consumer goods etc. all depending on the demands of consumers.
War is massively destructive. Even when your cities are not being bombed or looted, there are very little peace time uses for tanks, bombs etc and even if there were a lot of this equipment gets destroyed and hundreds of thousands of (it's sort of weak to think of them this way, since of course every human is so much more than simply what he does for work) able bodied workers died (and ergo could not produce anything). None of this is a recipe for economic prosperity. War is not good for the economy.
Another aspect to this depression was Hoover's (yes, Hoover's) New Deal. I say Hoover's because FDR did not really create the New Deal it was in fact an extension of Hoover's policies. FDR himself was a callow and unimaginative man. Hoover undertook a great expansion of government intervention into the market place... things like price controls, paying farmers to kill pigs, massive public spending programs... all of these things hurt the economy and delayed the healing process wherein malinvestment is liquidated and resources are shifted from capital goods industries (where they are misallocated on account of artificially low interest rates fooling entrepreneurs about consumer time preference) to consumer goods industries.
Another feature was regime uncertainty. Hoover and FDR specifically established broad powers of wealth confiscation. FDR, for example, stole everyone's gold (believe it or not). This lead to regime uncertainty. People are not very likely to go about creating wealth if they think the government is just going to take it from them. There were a lot of factors for why the great depression was so 'great'.
It was only after the war was over, and after taxes were cut massively, that the economy really started to recover.
Except the broken window fallacy doesn't really work very well. True the shopkeeper still has the money if the window was never broken but that is no guarantee that he will spend it, the broken window acts as a method of forcing the spending. He cannot run a shop with broken glass all over the floor and thus must pay to have the mess cleaned up and a new window put in. The money may have been there but the war among other things forced it to be spent.
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On February 18 2013 08:42 TerribleNoobling wrote:
a lot of this equipment gets destroyed and hundreds of thousands of (it's sort of weak to think of them this way, since of course every human is so much more than simply what he does for work) able bodied workers died (and ergo could not produce anything). None of this is a recipe for economic prosperity.
it is when you have a crisis of overproduction
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The crises wasn't 'overproduction' (creating wealth is a good thing!). The problem was the manipulation of interest rates. It should be obvious that the problem of general depressions, not failures of specific industries or firms, but failures over all, has something to do with money, because what else aside from money touches all aspects of the economy? You see businessmen are good at making profits. Of course there are always some losses, when entrepreneurs fail to bring consumers what they desire, but over all they do pretty well. So why the sudden cluster of errors which we see in a depression?
Interest rates on the market are determined by how much consumers save over all. They are determined by their time preference (a high time preference means you want things NOW, a low time preference means you are a bit of a saver). Unfortunately central banks take it upon themselves to tinker with interest rates, because they think they are omniscient and can plan the economy and because easy money / credit is often useful politically. These low interest rates fool entrepreneurs into thinking that consumer time preferences have been lowered, and thus they shift resources towards capital goods industries (which they would do if time preferences were lower, if consumers demanded goods more in the future than in the present, i.e. if they had increased savings).
If it was a crises of overproduction, as sam!zdat suggests, then why are the problems concentrated in capital goods industries, and not in consumer goods industries?
Ultimately, consumer time preferences have not changed, and these malinvestments in capital goods industries must be liquidated. You see the depression is actually healthy phase of the boom-bust business cycle. It's when things are getting better. Then government steps in to save the day, and they make the problem worse. One cure is to artificially lower interest rates! And you start the whole cycle over again.
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Which is why Harry Browne said "Government is good at one thing, breaking your legs, handing you crutches, and then saying 'look if it wasn't for us you wouldn't be able to walk'"
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On February 18 2013 08:42 TerribleNoobling wrote:
aksfjh the broken window fallacy demonstrates how WWII could not have ended the depression. The theory, incidentally, was that the great depression was brought upon by a failure of aggregate demand. Consumers were not spending enough money, the economy went down the shitter, but the government stepped up to the plate employing everyone in arms manufacturing sopping up this falling demand with lots of gov'ment money and everything was great and we all rode off into the sunshine together singing kumbaya.
The broken window fallacy is this. Imagine that a kid is playing and throws his ball and it breaks a shopkeeper's window. Superficially this seems like it is good for the economy. You see the store owner must pay the glass man to fix his window, the glass man can now buy milk, the milk man can buy some other shit, etc. etc. But the crucial point is this : if the store keeper's window had not been broken he would have then been able to buy something else, say a new suit from a tailor. the tailor could then purchase some rare coins, the coin salesman could buy some comic books etc. etc.
The resources which were employed during WWII could have been employed instead on civilian uses. Creating new factories or other forms of capital to make the labour force more productive (and thus raise wages). Or it could have been spent on improved living conditions, more time off, more consumer goods etc. all depending on the demands of consumers.
War is massively destructive. Even when your cities are not being bombed or looted, there are very little peace time uses for tanks, bombs etc and even if there were a lot of this equipment gets destroyed and hundreds of thousands of (it's sort of weak to think of them this way, since of course every human is so much more than simply what he does for work) able bodied workers died (and ergo could not produce anything). None of this is a recipe for economic prosperity. War is not good for the economy.
Another aspect to this depression was Hoover's (yes, Hoover's) New Deal. I say Hoover's because FDR did not really create the New Deal it was in fact an extension of Hoover's policies. FDR himself was a callow and unimaginative man. Hoover undertook a great expansion of government intervention into the market place... things like price controls, paying farmers to kill pigs, massive public spending programs... all of these things hurt the economy and delayed the healing process wherein malinvestment is liquidated and resources are shifted from capital goods industries (where they are misallocated on account of artificially low interest rates fooling entrepreneurs about consumer time preference) to consumer goods industries.
Another feature was regime uncertainty. Hoover and FDR specifically established broad powers of wealth confiscation. FDR, for example, stole everyone's gold (believe it or not). This lead to regime uncertainty. People are not very likely to go about creating wealth if they think the government is just going to take it from them. There were a lot of factors for why the great depression was so 'great'.
It was only after the war was over, and after taxes were cut massively, that the economy really started to recover.
I know what the broken window fallacy is, and I know you vastly misrepresent what happened to the economy in WWII, I just don't have the breadth and depth of economics to refute you on every minute detail. At the very least, I know that the boom after the war occurred before taxes were cut.
What you (and others) appear to try to be doing in this topic is not to show a yearning for understanding of economics or politics, but rather rewrite what has been established already by much greater minds than ours. That is why I hesitate to go into detail to refute a great deal what has been said in this topic over the past couple of pages. I feel I have no right to educate a great number of people on these matters, and even if I did, my voice would vanish against the backdrop of your giant ego.
In contrast, Jonny offers some very well backed up claims on current policy and directions that portray his personal views. Sam does the same, while sometimes goading us to turn towards philosophical debate that is beyond the realm of US politics and seemingly his area of expertise. Both are insightful and attempt to portray ultimate truths instead of painting a picture of "well, everything you know is wrong!"
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On February 18 2013 09:07 TerribleNoobling wrote:
Which is why Harry Browne said "Government is good at one thing, breaking your legs, handing you crutches, and then saying 'look if it wasn't for us you wouldn't be able to walk'"
that's capitalism. Impoverish the soil with industrial agriculture, then sell you supplements. Sell you cigarettes, then sell you cancer drugs. Sell you cities in which you can't get anywhere without cars, and then sell you cars.
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Capitalism is really nothing more than a series of exchanges between individuals. What on Earth could you possibly have against two people making a mutually beneficial exchange?
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Like I said in the other thread, your worldview is atomistic and mechanical and has no adequate understanding of complexity (you are a nineteenth-century subject who has somehow found himself in the 21st century, without an adequate map of the territory). You cannot understand a complex system by imagining two people trading coconuts on an island somewhere.
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But that's exactly what it is, your protestations to the contrary not withstanding. That is all that the market is. It's just two being realizing they can be better off if they exchange. The problem is, this reality doesn't fit your narrative. Because this isn't exploitative, or evil. It's incredible. It's the reason why capitalist nations are so prosperous and those where there is no private property, where violence and aggression are the norm are not. For more on that subject I suggest Hazlitt's great work 'The Conquest of Poverty' (available online for free, just google it).
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On February 18 2013 09:19 sam!zdat wrote:
Like I said in the other thread, your worldview is atomistic and mechanical and has no adequate understanding of complexity (you are a nineteenth-century subject who has somehow found himself in the 21st century, without an adequate map of the territory). You cannot understand a complex system by imagining two people trading coconuts on an island somewhere.
Indeed. You have to remember the monkey in between that facilitates the trade and takes 2% of all coconuts and sand dollars that are traded.
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And don't forget that dude w/ the big stick and the other dudes who comes in and takes 50% of all the coconuts you harvested and beats you to death if you protest his tax.
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On February 18 2013 08:12 aksfjh wrote:
Nah, my default with you is to be skeptical!
well my goal is to try to get you to doubt everything, so that's just fine by me. Now try to be skeptical about the need for skepticism, and you'll be entertained for hours.
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On February 18 2013 09:24 TerribleNoobling wrote:
And don't forget that dude w/ the big stick and the other dudes who comes in and takes 50% of all the coconuts you harvested and beats you to death if you protest his tax.
Grover Norquist, is that you?
I think you are twisting the context far too much to fit a very narrow narrative of government=bad into a larger issue of taxation.
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I just don't understand how people can complain endlessly about every little voluntary interaction between two people financially, and yet when the state coerces you into giving them all your money, that's just fine and dandy. It seems perverse to me that people think it's wrong to trade, but somehow it's okay for the government to threaten you with violence to get you to do stuff.
Personally I do not like being threatened with violence. I prefer to interact with others voluntarily.
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the modern state and capitalism are inextricable institutions
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EPT
