|
On January 09 2011 22:29 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:free market utopianists (aka all of you libertarians): please read this book ![[image loading]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51NETC9QoUL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg) http://www.amazon.com/Private-Abuse-Public-Interest-American/dp/0226076431its only 160 pages and it will explain, with evidence, why a pure free market is retarded. it has a lot to do with allocation of resources and corporate practices getting more corrupt more quickly than you'd expect. also, life expectancy as a statistic means absolutely nothing. cultural diets and habits (like killing each other) often factor in more to that number than a country's healthcare system, so life expectancy does not reflect quality of healthcare in the slightest. not. in. the. slightest.
I read a few reviews and any excerpts I could find. The main thesis seems to be that government has to respond to "failures of market-based approaches" with regulations, and therefore that a belief in that market-based approach will only lead to an even bigger government.
That is partly true, but if you increase regulations because something fails, then you have to decrease regulations when something does not fail. They regulated charter schools because one school was mismanaged. Why not deregulate the other charter schools? It's a clear bias and a failure of democracy, not a failure of markets. Humans will always fuck up some things, and if you only increase regulations when they do so you might as well increase regulations all-around, hell, even outlaw the thing you regulate, because that's where that bias will take you anyway.
There's also a bias on blaming the lack of regulation for failure rather than the abundance of regulation. I don't see any deregulations of banks despite pretty good evidence that over-regulation was a big factor in the latest financial crisis. Yet it is more regulation that is called for...
Also, when was the last time you witnessed something like a big hairdressing scandal? I'd call that a pretty free market. I don't see any calls for it to be further deregulated though. Weird.
So to me it basically carries an anti-democratic message which I could certainly sign. 
|
On January 10 2011 06:52 Mayfly wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2011 22:29 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:free market utopianists (aka all of you libertarians): please read this book http://www.amazon.com/Private-Abuse-Public-Interest-American/dp/0226076431its only 160 pages and it will explain, with evidence, why a pure free market is retarded. it has a lot to do with allocation of resources and corporate practices getting more corrupt more quickly than you'd expect. also, life expectancy as a statistic means absolutely nothing. cultural diets and habits (like killing each other) often factor in more to that number than a country's healthcare system, so life expectancy does not reflect quality of healthcare in the slightest. not. in. the. slightest. There's also a bias on blaming the lack of regulation for failure rather than the abundance of regulation. I don't see any deregulations of banks despite pretty good evidence that over-regulation was a big factor in the latest financial crisis. Yet it is more regulation that is called for...
You make some interesting points, but I disagree with the above statement. The banks failed because they took on too many risky investments. No more, no less. It was just a matter of time until too many people defaulted on their risky loans.
No regulation forced the banks to make these risky loans, and obviously regulation could be made to prohibit excessive amounts of risk. So therefore I question why you think that 1) more regulation wouldn't have prevented the banking collapse 2) over-regulation was the cause?
edit:
to me, what is more debatable is the motivation behind the banks making these horribly risky loans that were just bound to backfire eventually. Was it a mere mixture of stupidity and greed (most likely) or was it because the banks knew they were "too big too fail" and that they would get bailed out if anything happened?
Sadly, if they didn't know that they were "too big to fail" previously, well, they know it now. Makes that abuse all the more likely in the future.
|
On January 10 2011 06:52 Mayfly wrote:
There's also a bias on blaming the lack of regulation for failure rather than the abundance of regulation. I don't see any deregulations of banks despite pretty good evidence that over-regulation was a big factor in the latest financial crisis. Yet it is more regulation that is called for...
You got warned for trolling in the "congresswoman shot" thread, yet continue to troll here? I don't know if that is a very smart decission.
|
On January 09 2011 21:55 Nilrem wrote:
There is a slight problem with that request. When looking to a Socialist State, well, there is none. There are examples of attempts to create one, but never has there been a true Socialist State. So asking to give an example of one is simply misleading. And because there has be no true Socialist regime, using China as an example is flawed.
There is no true socialist state and there is no true free-market state. The truth is that there is no way to have a purely socialist state b/c everyone believes in meritocracy. You receive what you deserve. All those countries like USSR start with lofty goals of a nation where everyone gets an equal share, but they always transform into fascism. The book Animal Farm is a good allegory of how this happens. The true flaw of socialism is that everyone needs a reason to go to work and do a good job. In capitalism there is higher wages and bonuses. Socialism you get it even if you work or not that's why China is changing. Socialism can work with political theory where everyone has an equal say, which we call a democracy, but economically non-viable. (Although, I'm not in favor of an uneducated democracy we have now, where too few people know too little economics and history, which leads them to vote emotionally instead of logically.)
There will be never be a purely socialist states, but all the experiments in history for a socialist state has failed miserably. That's why I cite those examples (ie USSR and East Germany) inferring socialism doesn't and will never work. Although, I'm in favorable for a well-educated democracy, I'm not in favor of socialist economics. It's too expensive and we can't afford it now more than ever.
|
On January 10 2011 07:02 MforWW wrote:
to me, what is more debatable is the motivation behind the banks making these horribly risky loans that were just bound to backfire eventually. Was it a mere mixture of stupidity and greed (most likely) or was it because the banks knew they were "too big too fail" and that they would get bailed out if anything happened?
Sadly, if they didn't know that they were "too big to fail" previously, well, they know it now. Makes that abuse all the more likely in the future.
I heard a talk from a financial analyst about the reasons for the banks massive failure. Part of it was greed, part was just gambling but another severe fact was that risk assessment was based on a flawed model.
Basically it all came down to estimating the intercorrelation of the risk of the mortages. The problem is that no one knows how high that correlation is and small differences in correlation coefficients have a tremdous impact on the distribution of risk in the model. The correlation was set to a too low level in the model, leading to on overly positive evaluation of the risks which, in turn, encouraged more speculative investment in financial derivates.
|
On January 10 2011 07:42 Electric.Jesus wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2011 07:02 MforWW wrote:
to me, what is more debatable is the motivation behind the banks making these horribly risky loans that were just bound to backfire eventually. Was it a mere mixture of stupidity and greed (most likely) or was it because the banks knew they were "too big too fail" and that they would get bailed out if anything happened?
Sadly, if they didn't know that they were "too big to fail" previously, well, they know it now. Makes that abuse all the more likely in the future. I heard a talk from a financial analyst about the reasons for the banks massive failure. Part of it was greed, part was just gambling but another severe fact was that risk assessment was based on a flawed model. Basically it all came down to estimating the intercorrelation of the risk of the mortages. The problem is that no one knows how high that correlation is and small differences in correlation coefficients have a tremdous impact on the distribution of risk in the model. The correlation was set to a too low level in the model, leading to on overly positive evaluation of the risks which, in turn, encouraged more speculative investment in financial derivates.
Right, that sounds pretty close to the answer I come up with. It was a mixture of stupidity/greed, with more of an emphasis on the stupidity side (aka, the flawed model based on flawed assumptions).
Once the risk was too high, it was simply a matter of time until it all combusted.
|
On January 10 2011 07:53 MforWW wrote:
Right, that sounds pretty close to the answer I come up with. It was a mixture of stupidity/greed, with more of an emphasis on the stupidity side (aka, the flawed model based on flawed assumptions).
Once the risk was too high, it was simply a matter of time until it all combusted.
The biggest problem now is that the guys in charge have learned that failure will be rewarded with taxpayer-financed bail-outs. Ergo, we now see business as usual.
|
On January 10 2011 06:52 Mayfly wrote:I read a few reviews and any excerpts I could find. The main thesis seems to be that government has to respond to "failures of market-based approaches" with regulations, and therefore that a belief in that market-based approach will only lead to an even bigger government. That is partly true, but if you increase regulations because something fails, then you have to decrease regulations when something does not fail. They regulated charter schools because one school was mismanaged. Why not deregulate the other charter schools?
I couldn't say it better that Mayfly. You have deregulate bad regulations as well as add good regulation. You can't create laws to the point where most people can't understand it without a good lawyer. There are too many nonsensical laws to the point where people are afraid to try something new like open up a new business because they don't want to get sued. My friend's father's small business got sued recently for lack of handicap facilities in the bathroom in small restaurant. They fought and lost paying out 50,000 dollar. No wonder people are afraid. This is a family run restaurant where dad and mom work the kitchen and their kids work the service. The guy that sued many other small businesses as well. This guy with his lawyer basically goes around exploiting bad regulation to hurt small businesses.
And SpiritoftheTuna, I read some of that book. But, it just seems to bash republicans. Yeah, Republicans sucks, but so do the Democrats. Obama is doing the same stuff that Bush did. What does that have to do with the failure of the free-market? Nothing.
The recession was a direct cause from poor monetary management by the Federal Reserve and policies enforced by Congress to promote Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae. The huge banks go crazy because they know they'll get bailed out. Bailing out people because they make mistakes is not the structure of the free-market, it's actually against everything it stands for. All people want a fair chance to succeed and fail on their own merits. But, governments has allied themselves to big corporate interests and has caused major inequities in the market.
Contrary, to what some liberals believe, free-market libertarians are not for big corporations, we're for the small little guy working out of his garage trying to start-up a new business. Unfortunately regulations hurt small guys more than big guys because the big guys make the regulations.
|
On January 10 2011 07:12 Rflcrx wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2011 06:52 Mayfly wrote:
There's also a bias on blaming the lack of regulation for failure rather than the abundance of regulation. I don't see any deregulations of banks despite pretty good evidence that over-regulation was a big factor in the latest financial crisis. Yet it is more regulation that is called for...
You got warned for trolling in the "congresswoman shot" thread, yet continue to troll here? I don't know if that is a very smart decission.
I didn't troll there and I don't troll here. Opinions other than yours do not equal trolling. Good day, sir.
|
On January 09 2011 20:07 Balthasar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2011 19:13 Barca wrote:
Republicans pledge to lower the deficit! They become voted into office!
Republicans increase deficit by extending Bush tax cuts for the wealthy!
Oh ok I'll grant you that most Republicans suck like most politicians suck. But, tax cuts don't necessarily mean higher deficits in the long run. In fact, the more money the private sector gets to keep, the more money it can give to the government later on through reinvestment. Why start strangling the goose that lays the golden egg? Milton Friedman gave a great example of why the people should be able to keep the money and choose where to spend it instead of the government. There are four types of spenders in the world. 1. People who spend money they didn't earn for other people 2. People who spend money they didn't earn for themselves. 3. People who earn money and spend it on themselves. 4. People who earn money and spend it on other people. The most responsible is obviously 3 & 4 ie the private sector. 1 & 2 leads to irresponsible spending patterns ie Governments.
Well one of the problems with corporations is that they sometimes fall into # 1+2.
Because The CEOs of the companies spend the "corporation's" money. The CEOs didn't earn the "corporation's" money, the "corporation" earned it.
In the same way that "the People" don't spend their tax money, the legislators + executive bureaucrats spend it.
As for a perfect free market, corporations hate it (as do unions/workers) Anyone that wants to make money Hates a free market. And one of the best ways to stop a free market is the government. There are also some things the government is needed for a free market which makes pure laissez-faire not work and lead to distorted markets...but government can also be used to distort markets.
|
On January 10 2011 09:11 Krikkitone wrote:
Well one of the problems with corporations is that they sometimes fall into # 1+2.
Because The CEOs of the companies spend the "corporation's" money. The CEOs didn't earn the "corporation's" money, the "corporation" earned it.
In the same way that "the People" don't spend their tax money, the legislators + executive bureaucrats spend it.
In Germany it is even worse. If CEOs perform really bad, their contracts are dissolved and they get a nice severance payment. Also they are insured against managment errors, meaning that if someone actually would sue them for mismanagement, their insurance company would cover the costs. That means that, in fact, CEOs have the same power as entrepreneurs do and often earn more money but do not take the same risk. This is outrageous for three reasons:
1. it promotes short-term profit maximizing, often at the cost a company's substance
2. it actually rewards mismanagement
3. it devalues entrepreneurship (which is the worst of all three)
I can only hope that the situation is not the same in the US or other countries.
|
On January 10 2011 09:28 Electric.Jesus wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2011 09:11 Krikkitone wrote:
Well one of the problems with corporations is that they sometimes fall into # 1+2.
Because The CEOs of the companies spend the "corporation's" money. The CEOs didn't earn the "corporation's" money, the "corporation" earned it.
In the same way that "the People" don't spend their tax money, the legislators + executive bureaucrats spend it.
In Germany it is even worse. If CEOs perform really bad, their contracts are dissolved and they get a nice severance payment. Also they are insured against managment errors, meaning that if someone actually would sue them for mismanagement, their insurance company would cover the costs. That means that, in fact, CEOs have the same power as entrepreneurs do and often earn more money but do not take the same risk. This is outrageous for three reasons: 1. it promotes short-term profit maximizing, often at the cost a company's substance 2. it actually rewards mismanagement 3. it devalues entrepreneurship (which is the worst of all three) I can only hope that the situation is not the same in the US or other countries.
That's pretty much it, its probably the case for all countries with anything like the modern corporation.
That is perhaps the biggest problem with the structure, a disconect between the decision maker and the results of the decisions.
Another is the fact that any connection that is there is only short term... an executive can come and "turn around" a company for 5 years, and then move on to another company, but having left the first one in a poor long-term position they don't care.
Ideally managers would only be compensated for long-term results.. but that is hard to do, since they need some compensation before long-term results are available.
|
On January 06 2011 12:57 Acid~ wrote:Show nested quote +On January 06 2011 11:24 t3hwUn wrote:
Wow I love how TL hates on right wingers... I get flamed for being a troll for posting unpopular political opinions elsewhere and then I read this... Fail.
And to get back on topic +1 for no more obama socialist policies. If I wanted to live in Europe I'd move there... What's funny is that Obama is about as socialist as Sarkozy...
Sarkozy > Obama :/
|
On January 10 2011 07:02 MforWW wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2011 06:52 Mayfly wrote:On January 09 2011 22:29 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:free market utopianists (aka all of you libertarians): please read this book http://www.amazon.com/Private-Abuse-Public-Interest-American/dp/0226076431its only 160 pages and it will explain, with evidence, why a pure free market is retarded. it has a lot to do with allocation of resources and corporate practices getting more corrupt more quickly than you'd expect. also, life expectancy as a statistic means absolutely nothing. cultural diets and habits (like killing each other) often factor in more to that number than a country's healthcare system, so life expectancy does not reflect quality of healthcare in the slightest. not. in. the. slightest. There's also a bias on blaming the lack of regulation for failure rather than the abundance of regulation. I don't see any deregulations of banks despite pretty good evidence that over-regulation was a big factor in the latest financial crisis. Yet it is more regulation that is called for... You make some interesting points, but I disagree with the above statement. The banks failed because they took on too many risky investments. No more, no less. It was just a matter of time until too many people defaulted on their risky loans. No regulation forced the banks to make these risky loans, and obviously regulation could be made to prohibit excessive amounts of risk. So therefore I question why you think that 1) more regulation wouldn't have prevented the banking collapse 2) over-regulation was the cause? edit: to me, what is more debatable is the motivation behind the banks making these horribly risky loans that were just bound to backfire eventually. Was it a mere mixture of stupidity and greed (most likely) or was it because the banks knew they were "too big too fail" and that they would get bailed out if anything happened? Sadly, if they didn't know that they were "too big to fail" previously, well, they know it now. Makes that abuse all the more likely in the future.
Well, you could look at the legal action against banks that declined more mortgage loans to minorities than they did to whites. Regulators wanted racial equality and it didn't matter that minorities didn't qualify for loans as much as whites according to the standards set, it simply looked bad that were declined more. The guarantees on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae didn't help, either.
I have absolutely no respect for bankers, stockbrokers, most economists or anyone in finance really, but first blame in this case should go to the regulators.
On another note I think everyone is being pretty unfair to big corporations. This could be understood evolutionary speaking, since there were no big corporations until very recently in human history. We have no built-in method of understanding them. They are big, weird, and shady to us. So we regulate the hell out of them and tax them more than we do smaller corporations or households (when was the last time you had someone knock at your door to inspect what you were doing?). I don't think this is fair considering:
1. Big corporations are more transparent than small, since whatever they do will involve more people.
2. Big corporations are easier to monitor, since "bad things" that are done in one place will probably be done in many places.
3. Big corporations are easier to discourage from doing "bad things" (just look at the green thing going on in most big corps).
4. Big corporations are the reason you are rich.
|
On January 10 2011 08:05 Balthasar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2011 06:52 Mayfly wrote:On January 09 2011 22:29 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:free market utopianists (aka all of you libertarians): please read this book http://www.amazon.com/Private-Abuse-Public-Interest-American/dp/0226076431its only 160 pages and it will explain, with evidence, why a pure free market is retarded. it has a lot to do with allocation of resources and corporate practices getting more corrupt more quickly than you'd expect. I read a few reviews and any excerpts I could find. The main thesis seems to be that government has to respond to "failures of market-based approaches" with regulations, and therefore that a belief in that market-based approach will only lead to an even bigger government. That is partly true, but if you increase regulations because something fails, then you have to decrease regulations when something does not fail. They regulated charter schools because one school was mismanaged. Why not deregulate the other charter schools? And SpiritoftheTuna, I read some of that book. But, it just seems to bash republicans. Yeah, Republicans sucks, but so do the Democrats. Obama is doing the same stuff that Bush did. What does that have to do with the failure of the free-market? Nothing.
That's a terrible way to approach the book; no matter how strongly a book is framed at democrats vs republicans (and I didn't think this was that strongly framed as such), you should be reading the content/evidence, not worrying about the partisanship. I think both democrats and republicans are being retarded, but that has nothing to do with the actual content of the book itself. Who cares which party enacted the stupidity? The point is that it was stupid in the first place.
Also, do you have an idea how to prevent the historically-way-too-quick speed at which small businesses merge into large corrupt ones? That's one of the biggest issues with the libertarian approach, in my opinion. It doesn't matter how strong your "small businesses are best at meeting market demands" argument looks on paper, it's usually easier/more efficient to get large and start forgetting about some of the market. Especially given that capitalism encourages mergers because it makes all the managers and CEOs rich.
edit: to the post above, yeah okay not all big corporations may be bad, but the nature of large is that they are best at slimming down everywhere that's not profitable. I feel that that axiom makes them shady by nature, though I have no evidence for that tbh. I'd have to do more research.
by the way, how do you feel about agribusiness? i know it's been a huge success in feeding people, but is factory farming worth it? (random tangent, you don't have to answer this question haha)
|
Also, another issue of libertarianism I feel is that, no matter how transparent corporations are, there is no guarantee that the average consumer will have the time/energy/knowhow to access relevant information as to whether to support such a corporation (by consuming their goods/services). That in itself is a lack of transparency. It doesn't matter if 40% of the country knows that walmart is fucked up, if the other 60% keep buying, walmart will survive. Speaking of walmart, isn't it a case where their sales are greatly driven by the poverty of their consumers? If you're on minimum wage, you don't get to care how immoral your wholesaler is, you just buy the cheap shit. How do you get around that without regulation?
edit oh wait you guys dont think walmart is evil do you... i guess this is why liberals and conservatives can never get along.
|
On January 09 2011 22:43 Electric.Jesus wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2011 22:29 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:free market utopianists (aka all of you libertarians): please read this book http://www.amazon.com/Private-Abuse-Public-Interest-American/dp/0226076431its only 160 pages and it will explain, with evidence, why a pure free market is retarded. it has a lot to do with allocation of resources and corporate practices getting more corrupt more quickly than you'd expect. also, life expectancy as a statistic means absolutely nothing. cultural diets and habits (like killing each other) often factor in more to that number than a country's healthcare system, so life expectancy does not reflect quality of healthcare in the slightest. not. in. the. slightest. Seems an interesting book. Do you have any idea what a better idicator of healthcare-quality is? I thought if the WHO uses it, it cannot be that bad, but I am, admittetly, no expert on this topic. Also, I think there is a clever alternative to a pure free-market approach that I find rather promising, namely libertarian paternalism. You can read about it here: ![[image loading]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Ti5fSVSJL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg) http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294580456&sr=1-1basically it is about shaping decision in a way that uninformed people will per default chose what is best for the average joe while still maintaining free choice.
This looks like a really interesting book, I love psychologically-integrated approaches. Too many people seem to underestimate the power of our psychological tendencies, it's pretty refreshing to see an approach based around that power.
As for indicators of healthcare quality, I don't think there is an objective/quantitative measure that covers everything. I mean one measure could be how much a country successfully encourages its residents to exercise and eat well (and that'd be a really important one), but that measure would be (mostly) outside the hospital, so such a measure lies in a different realm entirely. Do you know what I mean? Health has such a broad scope that trying to measure it with one number is a completely flawed and misleading approach.
|
On January 09 2011 21:47 Electric.Jesus wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2011 20:14 Balthasar wrote:
Then name me a socialist nation where socialism worked.
You see, the problem is that people have different definitions of socialism. What you refer to as socialist states, most people would call a fascistoid surveillance state. It is charatceristic for the countries you name to have a political elite that has access to luxury and personal liberties while the majority of the people do not. Most poeple here on tl that argue in favor of socialism are in favour of its core principles "equality, justice, solidarity". I, for my part do not know any state that implemented actual socialism, hence it is quite difficult to name one where socialism succeeded.
There are some examples of (anti-authoritarian) socialism. It worked, but it always got destroyed by outside forces pretty quickly. these are examples of actual socialism as it was intended once ("equality, justice, solidarity").
1. Paris Commune 1871: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune
2. Spanish Revolution 1936 (probably best, large scale example): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_revolution
3. Makhnovshchina 1918-1921: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory
|
@Ido. Yeah still no such thing as socialist state. Apparently according to the wiki on Spanish Revolution 1936, they were part libertarian.
|
On January 10 2011 13:04 Balthasar wrote:
@Ido. Yeah still no such thing as socialist state. Apparently according to the wiki on Spanish Revolution 1936, they were part libertarian.
Yeah thats where it gets tricky.
true socialism is meant to be libertarian (-> libertarian socialism). but this has nothing to do with free market capitalism and all this stuff. maybe this sounds strange to someone from the United States where "libertarian" gets equated with free market capitalism. one has to get things straight here.
Mikhail Bakunin said in 1867:
"liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality" - and oh, how he hit the mark back then. and this is how socialism was meant to be.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
