On December 24 2011 03:47 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Watch this entire video. "Never in history has the quality of life for the common man increased so dramatically as in 19th century USA in which government played a minimal role."
That's an incredibly ignorant comment to make.
The story of the 19th and 20th century was that the common worker got his ass exploited and hard. Things like benefits, a 40 hour work week, a living wage, laws against child exploitation these didn't exist until after WWI. The common man got absolutely shafted during the 19th and early 20th century while men like Rockefellar, Carnegie, JP Morgan made enormous sums of money. It took nearly 20 years of progressive policies to actually make the common man's life livable. Until the government stepped in, you had people working 80+ hours a week for pennies because they had no choice.
On December 23 2011 16:43 aksfjh wrote: If it is indeed how you say it is, kiarip, then why have investors flocked to US (and other countries) bonds? Bank credit is at an all time high, with banks able to borrow at record low rates, and yet they continue to choose to put their money in the safest bets they can, for guaranteed payout. If cheap credit was really a reliable source of unsafe investment, we'd see people jumping all over toxic assets in an attempt to find the "diamond in the rough."
the market adopted to the crashes. Investors see that it's not safe to invest in private sector anymore, so they buy bonds instead... Of course we're avoiding the currency crisis by having China buy-out our inflation... Everything works until it doesn't, record low rates is a good reason to buy bonds, seemingly, because the banks offer low rates, so you don't want to put money there, and the economy has shown to be declining still, so you don't want to invest either, so they buy bonds, of course if a currency crisis occurs or nears occurring people all of a sudden realize that this wasn't such a hot idea, and of course like always those that find out last will lose the most.
On December 23 2011 16:43 aksfjh wrote: If it is indeed how you say it is, kiarip, then why have investors flocked to US (and other countries) bonds? Bank credit is at an all time high, with banks able to borrow at record low rates, and yet they continue to choose to put their money in the safest bets they can, for guaranteed payout. If cheap credit was really a reliable source of unsafe investment, we'd see people jumping all over toxic assets in an attempt to find the "diamond in the rough."
the market adopted to the crashes. Investors see that it's not safe to invest in private sector anymore, so they buy bonds instead... Of course we're avoiding the currency crisis by having China buy-out our inflation... Everything works until it doesn't, record low rates is a good reason to buy bonds, seemingly, because the banks offer low rates, so you don't want to put money there, and the economy has shown to be declining still, so you don't want to invest either, so they buy bonds, of course if a currency crisis occurs or nears occurring people all of a sudden realize that this wasn't such a hot idea, and of course like always those that find out last will lose the most.
But where's the risk taking and heavy betting that supposedly comes with the loosening of credit? I know how t-notes and bonds work, but you seem to believe that investors would rather speculate in gold and buy bonds instead of financing people things they can't actually afford, or become venture capitalists.
On December 23 2011 16:43 aksfjh wrote: If it is indeed how you say it is, kiarip, then why have investors flocked to US (and other countries) bonds? Bank credit is at an all time high, with banks able to borrow at record low rates, and yet they continue to choose to put their money in the safest bets they can, for guaranteed payout. If cheap credit was really a reliable source of unsafe investment, we'd see people jumping all over toxic assets in an attempt to find the "diamond in the rough."
the market adopted to the crashes. Investors see that it's not safe to invest in private sector anymore, so they buy bonds instead... Of course we're avoiding the currency crisis by having China buy-out our inflation... Everything works until it doesn't, record low rates is a good reason to buy bonds, seemingly, because the banks offer low rates, so you don't want to put money there, and the economy has shown to be declining still, so you don't want to invest either, so they buy bonds, of course if a currency crisis occurs or nears occurring people all of a sudden realize that this wasn't such a hot idea, and of course like always those that find out last will lose the most.
But where's the risk taking and heavy betting that supposedly comes with the loosening of credit? I know how t-notes and bonds work, but you seem to believe that investors would rather speculate in gold and buy bonds instead of financing people things they can't actually afford, or become venture capitalists.
Why would anyone want to become a venture capitalist? What are they gonna invest in? there's no good investments to be made, and they're all scared shitless after a couple of crashes.
Sorry to break the off-topic discussion... But it's such a breath of fresh air to see evidence that people are finally starting to take Ron Paul seriously, or at least see him as a realistic alternative for the extremely shady and historically inconsistent alternative candidates.
On December 24 2011 03:47 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Watch this entire video. "Never in history has the quality of life for the common man increased so dramatically as in 19th century USA in which government played a minimal role."
That's an incredibly ignorant comment to make.
The story of the 19th and 20th century was that the common worker got his ass exploited and hard. Things like benefits, a 40 hour work week, a living wage, laws against child exploitation these didn't exist until after WWI. The common man got absolutely shafted during the 19th and early 20th century while men like Rockefellar, Carnegie, JP Morgan made enormous sums of money. It took nearly 20 years of progressive policies to actually make the common man's life livable. Until the government stepped in, you had people working 80+ hours a week for pennies because they had no choice.
Why do you, though rather typically, cite a comparison of that era to modern times, as a reason for why someone is being ignorant in explicitely comparing that era to earlier times? It makes no sense. Of course things generally look worse and worse the further back in human history you look, but many extremely primitive times are often and rightly looked upon in a positive light, because they were times of great, if only partial, leaps forward. I would like to see for once someone address the guilded age critically while also honestly, by attempting to demonstrate how it was somehow a period of stagnation of human progress, or worse.
NY Times: "Powerful republicans have pledged to destroy him" [Ron Paul] - This is exactly why we need to fight even harder for Ron Paul, people, and vote for him in the primaries. The Powerful and Corrupt politicians want him out.
Gingrich has failed to obtain the required number of signatures to participate in the Virginia primary. (NYTimes)
I'm guessing this is when the next republican frontrunner for a week arises. I still don't see a scenario where anyone but Romney takes the nomination. As much as the internet loves Ron Paul, I don't see him surviving a campaign where Romney goes negative on him, like he is doing with Gingrich.
Perhaps you haven't actually paid attention to the history of how economic policies play out. Increased regulation is always a reaction to serious market problems when regulation wasn't present previously. If the market didn't have a major failure, the regulation never would have been suggested in the first place.
Increased regulations are never the reaction to market "failures." It's a natural human tendency to witness something bad happen and demand that it be fixed. Now these "failures", in actuality, are the low points of the fluctuations that occur with an unconstrained market. Enacting laws in events like these does nothing but hamper growth for everybody. Friedman starts talking about this at ~16:38-17:30 in the video below.
There has never been nor ever was a truly successful free market ever in the history of mankind. Either the market didn't succeed, or it did but wasn't actually a free market with no government regulation. You might ask yourself why multiple countries in Europe are doing significantly better than the U.S. in many areas of their economy despite having significantly more government regulation.
Every time we take a step towards deregulating the markets, we wind up increasing the wealth gap. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Maybe you don't care about the poor.
Watch this entire video. "Never in history has the quality of life for the common man increased so dramatically as in 19th century USA in which government played a minimal role."
Milton Friedman also had a debate where somebody tried using the Scandinavian countries as a counterexample, which he promptly destroyed. I'll try to find it and post it shortly. Basically his response was that socialism and high levels of taxation work only in very homogenous societies because that's already built in the construct of socialism itself, to make everybody the same. Additionally the dramatic rise in wealth of countries like Norway directly coincides with the oil boom in the North Sea during the 1960's and the corresponding capitalistic sale of petroleum products.
Now, on a philosophical level, I suggest you read this chapter from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche was a huge critic of socialism/communism and writes that attempts at forcing equality are always born out of envy. This book, and this chapter particularly, is one of the most insightful and important writings in all of human history imo. + Show Spoiler +
On the Tarantulas
Look here, this is the hole of the tarantula! Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Its web hangs here; touch it, make it tremble.
Here it comes, willingly – welcome, tarantula! On your back your triangle and mark sits in black; and I know too what sits in your soul.
Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, there black scabs grow; your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge!
So I speak to you in parables, you who cause the souls to whirl, you preachers of equality! Tarantulas you are to me and hidden avengers!
But I want to expose your hiding places to the light; therefore I laugh into your face my laughter of the heights.
Therefore I tear at your web, so that your rage might lure you from your lie-hole lair, and your revenge might spring forth from behind your word “justice.” For that mankind be redeemed from revenge: that to me is the bridge to the highest hope and a rainbow after long thunderstorms.
But the tarantulas want it otherwise, to be sure. “That the world become full of the thunderstorms of our revenge, precisely that we would regard as justice,” – thus they speak with one another.
“We want to exact revenge and heap insult on all whose equals we are not” – thus vow the tarantula hearts.
“And ‘will to equality’ – that itself from now on shall be the name for virtue; and against everything that has power we shall raise our clamor!”
You preachers of equality, the tyrant’s madness of impotence cries thus out of you for “equality”: your secret tyrant’s cravings mask themselves thus in your words of virtue!
Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy, perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers: it erupts from you like a flame and the madness of revenge.
What is silent in the father learns to speak in the son; and often I found the son to be the father’s exposed secret.
They resemble the inspired, but it is not the heart that inspires them – but revenge. And when they are refined and cold, it is not the spirit but envy that makes them refined and cold.
Their jealousy even leads them along the thinkers’ path; and this is the mark of their jealousy – they always go too far, such that their exhaustion must ultimately lay itself to sleep in snow.
From each of their laments revenge sounds, in each of their praisings there is harm, and being the judge is bliss to them.
But thus I counsel you my friends: mistrust all in whom the drive to punish is strong!
Those are people of bad kind and kin; in their faces the hangman and the bloodhound are visible.
Mistrust all those who speak much of their justice! Indeed, their souls are lacking not only honey.
And when they call themselves “the good and the just,” then do not forget that all they lack to be pharisees is – power!
My friends, I do not want not be mixed in with and mistaken for others.
There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and at the same time they are preachers of equality and tarantulas.
They speak in favor of life, these poisonous spiders, even though they are sitting in their holes and have turned against life, because they want to do harm.
They want to harm those who hold power today, for among them the sermon on death is still most at home.
If it were otherwise, then the tarantulas would teach otherwise; and they after all were formerly the best world slanderers and burners of heretics.
I do not want to be mixed in with and mistaken for these preachers of equality. For thus justice speaks to me: “humans are not equal.”
And they shouldn’t become so either! What would my love for the overman be if I spoke otherwise?
On a thousand bridges and paths they shall throng to the future, and ever more war and inequality shall be set between them: thus my great love commands me to speak!
Inventors of images and ghosts shall they become in their hostility, and with their images and ghosts they shall yet fight the highest fight against each other!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and trifling, and all the names of values: they shall be weapons and clanging signs that life must overcome itself again and again!
Life itself wants to build itself into the heights with pillars and steps; it wants to gaze into vast distances and out upon halcyon beauties – therefore it needs height!
And because it needs height, it needs steps and contradiction between steps and climbers! Life wants to climb and to overcome itself by climbing.
And look here, my friends! Here, where the tarantula’s hole is, the ruins of an ancient temple are rising – look here now with enlightened eyes!
Indeed, the one who once heaped his thoughts skyward here in stone – he knew the secret of all life like the most wise!
That struggle and inequality and war for power and supremacy are found even in beauty: he teaches us that here in the clearest parable.
How divinely the vault and the arch bend and break each other as they wrestle; how they struggle against each other with light and shadow, these divinely struggling ones –
In this manner sure and beautiful let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely let us struggle against each other!
Alas! Then the tarantula bit me, my old enemy! Divinely sure and beautiful it bit me on the finger!
“Punishment and justice must be” – thus it thinks. “Not for nothing shall he sing his songs in honor of hostility here!”
Yes, it has avenged itself! And alas! Now it will also make my soul whirl with revenge!
But so that I do not whirl, my friends, bind me fast to this pillar here! I would rather be a stylite than a whirlwind of revenge!
Indeed, Zarathustra is no tornado or whirlwind; and if he is a dancer, nevermore a tarantella dancer!
-Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Well there's some truly revisionist history.
The US did not develop economically due to 'free markets' or 'free trade'. The US developed economically due to obscene tarrifs on everything, which in turn allowed a domestic manufacturing industry to be created. For most of the period from 1800 to 1945 the US had a more protected market then France, go google Hamilton and his views on infant industry protection.
Claiming that there was 'minimal government interference' in that period is disengengous at best. If the US in the 1800's had done what neo-liberal economic theory had told them, which is to specialize into your comparative advantage, you would still be a nation of farmers producing wheat, logs and furs for the British and have an average annual income equal much lower then you currently do.
Milton Friedman is one of those economists that approach economics in the way Ricardo did it: If the reality doesn't match the theory then it's too bad for reality. We all know the theory has to be right after all.
CNN actually edited the Ron Paul "storming off" interview cutting over 30 seconds, the interview actually ended rather than Ron Paul storming off as CNN claims.
On December 24 2011 03:47 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Watch this entire video. "Never in history has the quality of life for the common man increased so dramatically as in 19th century USA in which government played a minimal role."
That's an incredibly ignorant comment to make.
The story of the 19th and 20th century was that the common worker got his ass exploited and hard. Things like benefits, a 40 hour work week, a living wage, laws against child exploitation these didn't exist until after WWI. The common man got absolutely shafted during the 19th and early 20th century while men like Rockefellar, Carnegie, JP Morgan made enormous sums of money. It took nearly 20 years of progressive policies to actually make the common man's life livable. Until the government stepped in, you had people working 80+ hours a week for pennies because they had no choice.
Why do you, though rather typically, cite a comparison of that era to modern times, as a reason for why someone is being ignorant in explicitely comparing that era to earlier times? It makes no sense. Of course things generally look worse and worse the further back in human history you look, but many extremely primitive times are often and rightly looked upon in a positive light, because they were times of great, if only partial, leaps forward. I would like to see for once someone address the guilded age critically while also honestly, by attempting to demonstrate how it was somehow a period of stagnation of human progress, or worse.
Well because in between now and then, there was worker solidarity that forced governments to intervene. Why wouldn't you compare now to then when in between you have government intervention that made the worker's conditions much more tolerable. Why is it that during this same period of time, an overthrow of the landowners and the capitalist system in violent or peaceful revolution was so very attractive? And why was it during the same period, the governments that did not experience revolution headed it off by first trying to crush the worker movements and later trying to appease them with enough policies to steal the socialist thunder? Is it perhaps that the workers were extremely oppressed, sometimes living in wage peonage?
I think in a lot of cases now, unions have over-stepped their bounds and have been dying out as a result. However, at the time, they were absolutely essential to fighting for better working conditions- working conditions we still enjoy today albeit eroding again. But then as is the case now, workers fighting for reasonable living conditions is met with extreme hostility and in the past outright violence.
On December 25 2011 03:03 Derez wrote: Gingrich has failed to obtain the required number of signatures to participate in the Virginia primary. (NYTimes)
I'm guessing this is when the next republican frontrunner for a week arises. I still don't see a scenario where anyone but Romney takes the nomination. As much as the internet loves Ron Paul, I don't see him surviving a campaign where Romney goes negative on him, like he is doing with Gingrich.
Perhaps you haven't actually paid attention to the history of how economic policies play out. Increased regulation is always a reaction to serious market problems when regulation wasn't present previously. If the market didn't have a major failure, the regulation never would have been suggested in the first place.
Increased regulations are never the reaction to market "failures." It's a natural human tendency to witness something bad happen and demand that it be fixed. Now these "failures", in actuality, are the low points of the fluctuations that occur with an unconstrained market. Enacting laws in events like these does nothing but hamper growth for everybody. Friedman starts talking about this at ~16:38-17:30 in the video below.
On December 24 2011 01:11 Whitewing wrote:
There has never been nor ever was a truly successful free market ever in the history of mankind. Either the market didn't succeed, or it did but wasn't actually a free market with no government regulation. You might ask yourself why multiple countries in Europe are doing significantly better than the U.S. in many areas of their economy despite having significantly more government regulation.
Every time we take a step towards deregulating the markets, we wind up increasing the wealth gap. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Maybe you don't care about the poor.
Watch this entire video. "Never in history has the quality of life for the common man increased so dramatically as in 19th century USA in which government played a minimal role."
Milton Friedman also had a debate where somebody tried using the Scandinavian countries as a counterexample, which he promptly destroyed. I'll try to find it and post it shortly. Basically his response was that socialism and high levels of taxation work only in very homogenous societies because that's already built in the construct of socialism itself, to make everybody the same. Additionally the dramatic rise in wealth of countries like Norway directly coincides with the oil boom in the North Sea during the 1960's and the corresponding capitalistic sale of petroleum products.
Now, on a philosophical level, I suggest you read this chapter from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche was a huge critic of socialism/communism and writes that attempts at forcing equality are always born out of envy. This book, and this chapter particularly, is one of the most insightful and important writings in all of human history imo. + Show Spoiler +
On the Tarantulas
Look here, this is the hole of the tarantula! Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Its web hangs here; touch it, make it tremble.
Here it comes, willingly – welcome, tarantula! On your back your triangle and mark sits in black; and I know too what sits in your soul.
Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, there black scabs grow; your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge!
So I speak to you in parables, you who cause the souls to whirl, you preachers of equality! Tarantulas you are to me and hidden avengers!
But I want to expose your hiding places to the light; therefore I laugh into your face my laughter of the heights.
Therefore I tear at your web, so that your rage might lure you from your lie-hole lair, and your revenge might spring forth from behind your word “justice.” For that mankind be redeemed from revenge: that to me is the bridge to the highest hope and a rainbow after long thunderstorms.
But the tarantulas want it otherwise, to be sure. “That the world become full of the thunderstorms of our revenge, precisely that we would regard as justice,” – thus they speak with one another.
“We want to exact revenge and heap insult on all whose equals we are not” – thus vow the tarantula hearts.
“And ‘will to equality’ – that itself from now on shall be the name for virtue; and against everything that has power we shall raise our clamor!”
You preachers of equality, the tyrant’s madness of impotence cries thus out of you for “equality”: your secret tyrant’s cravings mask themselves thus in your words of virtue!
Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy, perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers: it erupts from you like a flame and the madness of revenge.
What is silent in the father learns to speak in the son; and often I found the son to be the father’s exposed secret.
They resemble the inspired, but it is not the heart that inspires them – but revenge. And when they are refined and cold, it is not the spirit but envy that makes them refined and cold.
Their jealousy even leads them along the thinkers’ path; and this is the mark of their jealousy – they always go too far, such that their exhaustion must ultimately lay itself to sleep in snow.
From each of their laments revenge sounds, in each of their praisings there is harm, and being the judge is bliss to them.
But thus I counsel you my friends: mistrust all in whom the drive to punish is strong!
Those are people of bad kind and kin; in their faces the hangman and the bloodhound are visible.
Mistrust all those who speak much of their justice! Indeed, their souls are lacking not only honey.
And when they call themselves “the good and the just,” then do not forget that all they lack to be pharisees is – power!
My friends, I do not want not be mixed in with and mistaken for others.
There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and at the same time they are preachers of equality and tarantulas.
They speak in favor of life, these poisonous spiders, even though they are sitting in their holes and have turned against life, because they want to do harm.
They want to harm those who hold power today, for among them the sermon on death is still most at home.
If it were otherwise, then the tarantulas would teach otherwise; and they after all were formerly the best world slanderers and burners of heretics.
I do not want to be mixed in with and mistaken for these preachers of equality. For thus justice speaks to me: “humans are not equal.”
And they shouldn’t become so either! What would my love for the overman be if I spoke otherwise?
On a thousand bridges and paths they shall throng to the future, and ever more war and inequality shall be set between them: thus my great love commands me to speak!
Inventors of images and ghosts shall they become in their hostility, and with their images and ghosts they shall yet fight the highest fight against each other!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and trifling, and all the names of values: they shall be weapons and clanging signs that life must overcome itself again and again!
Life itself wants to build itself into the heights with pillars and steps; it wants to gaze into vast distances and out upon halcyon beauties – therefore it needs height!
And because it needs height, it needs steps and contradiction between steps and climbers! Life wants to climb and to overcome itself by climbing.
And look here, my friends! Here, where the tarantula’s hole is, the ruins of an ancient temple are rising – look here now with enlightened eyes!
Indeed, the one who once heaped his thoughts skyward here in stone – he knew the secret of all life like the most wise!
That struggle and inequality and war for power and supremacy are found even in beauty: he teaches us that here in the clearest parable.
How divinely the vault and the arch bend and break each other as they wrestle; how they struggle against each other with light and shadow, these divinely struggling ones –
In this manner sure and beautiful let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely let us struggle against each other!
Alas! Then the tarantula bit me, my old enemy! Divinely sure and beautiful it bit me on the finger!
“Punishment and justice must be” – thus it thinks. “Not for nothing shall he sing his songs in honor of hostility here!”
Yes, it has avenged itself! And alas! Now it will also make my soul whirl with revenge!
But so that I do not whirl, my friends, bind me fast to this pillar here! I would rather be a stylite than a whirlwind of revenge!
Indeed, Zarathustra is no tornado or whirlwind; and if he is a dancer, nevermore a tarantella dancer!
-Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Well there's some truly revisionist history.
The US did not develop economically due to 'free markets' or 'free trade'. The US developed economically due to obscene tarrifs on everything, which in turn allowed a domestic manufacturing industry to be created. For most of the period from 1800 to 1945 the US had a more protected market then France, go google Hamilton and his views on infant industry protection.
Claiming that there was 'minimal government interference' in that period is disengengous at best. If the US in the 1800's had done what neo-liberal economic theory had told them, which is to specialize into your comparative advantage, you would still be a nation of farmers producing wheat, logs and furs for the British and have an average annual income equal much lower then you currently do.
Milton Friedman is one of those economists that approach economics in the way Ricardo did it: If the reality doesn't match the theory then it's too bad for reality. We all know the theory has to be right after all.
Uhm no... Government spending was at like 3% or something during the 19th century. It was trivial.
If you want to talk about tarriffs and the interstate commerce commission as government interferances then you're quickly going to run out of topics to discuss .
No one will deny the existence of tariffs but you will find very, very, very few people on the side of tariffs today. It was active intellectual dispute back then. By now it's a battle long gone (and won by the free traders). Tariffs harm countries.
The US still grew thanks to it's relative openness to the rest of the world and especially the functioning market economy domestically. That's why tons and tons of people fled stagnant economies in Europe to make a better life for themselves in a freer country.
And the idea that specializing into your comparative advantage will keep you doing the same thing or not get you the most value out of your time is truly revolutionary economics! Be sure to tell that to anyone working a daily job today! Heck, maybe I should quit my programming job and get a job at Burger King. Or maybe I should try my best to succeed in particle physics !
On December 24 2011 03:47 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: Watch this entire video. "Never in history has the quality of life for the common man increased so dramatically as in 19th century USA in which government played a minimal role."
That's an incredibly ignorant comment to make.
The story of the 19th and 20th century was that the common worker got his ass exploited and hard. Things like benefits, a 40 hour work week, a living wage, laws against child exploitation these didn't exist until after WWI. The common man got absolutely shafted during the 19th and early 20th century while men like Rockefellar, Carnegie, JP Morgan made enormous sums of money. It took nearly 20 years of progressive policies to actually make the common man's life livable. Until the government stepped in, you had people working 80+ hours a week for pennies because they had no choice.
Why do you, though rather typically, cite a comparison of that era to modern times, as a reason for why someone is being ignorant in explicitely comparing that era to earlier times? It makes no sense. Of course things generally look worse and worse the further back in human history you look, but many extremely primitive times are often and rightly looked upon in a positive light, because they were times of great, if only partial, leaps forward. I would like to see for once someone address the guilded age critically while also honestly, by attempting to demonstrate how it was somehow a period of stagnation of human progress, or worse.
Well because in between now and then, there was worker solidarity that forced governments to intervene. Why wouldn't you compare now to then when in between you have government intervention that made the worker's conditions much more tolerable. Why is it that during this same period of time, an overthrow of the landowners and the capitalist system in violent or peaceful revolution was so very attractive? And why was it during the same period, the governments that did not experience revolution headed it off by first trying to crush the worker movements and later trying to appease them with enough policies to steal the socialist thunder? Is it perhaps that the workers were extremely oppressed, sometimes living in wage peonage?
I think in a lot of cases now, unions have over-stepped their bounds and have been dying out as a result. However, at the time, they were absolutely essential to fighting for better working conditions- working conditions we still enjoy today albeit eroding again. But then as is the case now, workers fighting for reasonable living conditions is met with extreme hostility and in the past outright violence.
People being poor is one thing. It's perfectly understandable for someone in that position to try to improve their lives in whatever fashion they can.
That doesn't mean they were right. It doesn't mean that new laws or increased taxation made things better either.
You're just involved in a logical fallacy where you follow: 1. People have hard lives -> 2. People complain to government. -> 3. New laws / policies are adopted -> 4. 10 years later people have better lives.
neglecting that the same, or even better, improvements might just as well have come without the interference.
As a simple example. Why on earth do modern nations have a ban against child labor? It doesn't make any sense at all. It probably never made any sense to enforce one either. Yet people look at it and say "oh, we've come a long way thanks to government" when in reality child labor stopped because parents became wealthy enough to support their toddlers going to school.
On December 25 2011 04:45 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: CNN actually edited the Ron Paul "storming off" interview cutting over 30 seconds, the interview actually ended rather than Ron Paul storming off as CNN claims.
The other time I was reading this: Gloria Borger (pseudo-reporter) is married to Lance Morgan. Morgan is according to the web site of his employer, Powell Tate,”chief communications strategist at Powell Tate in Washington, D.C. He specializes in developing and executing communications strategies for public policy debates, crisis communications and media training.”
I had enough of CNN, along with all the MSM, I would never forgive the one sided story of Libya. Btw, I also want Ron Paul to win (he is easily the best) and I'm not even american.
I don't see how it is a logical fallacy when worker solidarity directly forced the government to change labour laws so that we got things like 8 hours a day/ 40 hours a week, overtime, and increasingly stringent safety standards (rather than firing the poor bastard for getting his arm chopped off because the factory owner was too cheap to make the machinery safe. It's cheaper to hire the next guy waiting at the gate than make any changes.)
I agree that it is not necessarily the case that this was the only way that these change could have occurred. In history, you can not argue that had these specific events never occurred, this general outcome never would have happened. We just don't know that. However, it doesn't make what I said illogical either. There is a clear line of cause and effect that created the better working environment we had today. Furthermore, there was very little movement on the part of the capitalist to create these changes on a wide scale. It was much easier to label the organizers as communist agitators, to berate the workers for being ungrateful and maintain status quo.
See it may have occurred without government intervention, but I don't know what the compelling argument would be. With the exception of some philanthropists, most capitalists supported status quo and attempted to use government force on their behalf as well. (Bring in the troops or police to drive out the tent cities in California of displaced farmers from the interior.) Furthermore, you if you have one philanthropist giving decent wages and decent working hours/ conditions, trying to compete against the robber barons, who is going to win?
As to child labour. Two things with that. 1) Children were being used for the worst and most dangerous jobs (they were small, so they can fit into all sorts of tight places with spinning gears, or shove them up chimneys.) 2) An increased value was placed on education. Compulsory education and a ban on child labour go hand in hand as even up to my grandpa's era, farmers were pulling their children out of school during planting and harvesting. But child labour on the farm and child labour in the factories during industrialization are completely different animals.
Edit. To add further defence to my argument as not being illogical. Not only do I have a specific historical case, but in fact almost every single example I can think of backs my case. Both US and Canada had similar resistance from the capitalists to any sort of reform to labour's working conditions. And in both cases, reform was created through government intervention and in my opinion prevented widespread revolution by pacifying the workers. But it was not just in North America.
All over Europe, workers were banding together because of there terrible working conditions. Capitalists looked to government to protect their interests and the governments that tried to destroy the workers' unions by force tended be overthrown in violent revolution. And the ones that were not overthrown either clamped it down by a union of big business and government (fascism) and turning the problems elsewhere (scapegoat) or the movements were co-opted by adopting some of the policies thus causing formenting revolution to lose it's steam.
As much as communism is seen to be the anti-thesis of freedom or good government, there is a reason why it was so attractive at the time. Friedman be damned in this case, but the working conditions were really crappy for most labourers. Now the solution that communists advocated was completely untenable, but it does speak to a widespread problem in every single industrialized (or industrializing) country in the west. The solution of government intervention to improve working conditions seems much better. Now it could be argued that we are choosing between the lesser of two evils. However, in every historical case that I can think of, the workers plight was rarely, if ever improved because of the compassion of philanthropist capitalists. In every historical case I can think of, the capitalists only changed their tune, when workers united enough for governments to pay attention (or not and then get overthrown) to then strong arm the capitalists into making real changes to the working conditions.
I don't know, are there cases where this has naturally occurred? Because all I can see is if the business owner can get away with it, they will. Even to the detriment of their own workers. (Modern examples- Mexican landowners simply shut off water to their tenant labourers because they can save money that way. Or Malaysian businessmen attracting Vietnamese labourers at a certain price, but then paying them substantially less upon arrival. The Vietnamese have no recourse because they don't know the language and are trapped in debt, living in Malaysia, sending what little they have back to their family.)
On December 25 2011 04:45 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: CNN actually edited the Ron Paul "storming off" interview cutting over 30 seconds, the interview actually ended rather than Ron Paul storming off as CNN claims.
On December 25 2011 03:03 Derez wrote: Gingrich has failed to obtain the required number of signatures to participate in the Virginia primary. (NYTimes)
I'm guessing this is when the next republican frontrunner for a week arises. I still don't see a scenario where anyone but Romney takes the nomination. As much as the internet loves Ron Paul, I don't see him surviving a campaign where Romney goes negative on him, like he is doing with Gingrich.
On December 24 2011 03:47 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
On December 24 2011 01:11 Whitewing wrote:
Perhaps you haven't actually paid attention to the history of how economic policies play out. Increased regulation is always a reaction to serious market problems when regulation wasn't present previously. If the market didn't have a major failure, the regulation never would have been suggested in the first place.
Increased regulations are never the reaction to market "failures." It's a natural human tendency to witness something bad happen and demand that it be fixed. Now these "failures", in actuality, are the low points of the fluctuations that occur with an unconstrained market. Enacting laws in events like these does nothing but hamper growth for everybody. Friedman starts talking about this at ~16:38-17:30 in the video below.
On December 24 2011 01:11 Whitewing wrote:
There has never been nor ever was a truly successful free market ever in the history of mankind. Either the market didn't succeed, or it did but wasn't actually a free market with no government regulation. You might ask yourself why multiple countries in Europe are doing significantly better than the U.S. in many areas of their economy despite having significantly more government regulation.
Every time we take a step towards deregulating the markets, we wind up increasing the wealth gap. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Maybe you don't care about the poor.
Watch this entire video. "Never in history has the quality of life for the common man increased so dramatically as in 19th century USA in which government played a minimal role."
Milton Friedman also had a debate where somebody tried using the Scandinavian countries as a counterexample, which he promptly destroyed. I'll try to find it and post it shortly. Basically his response was that socialism and high levels of taxation work only in very homogenous societies because that's already built in the construct of socialism itself, to make everybody the same. Additionally the dramatic rise in wealth of countries like Norway directly coincides with the oil boom in the North Sea during the 1960's and the corresponding capitalistic sale of petroleum products.
Now, on a philosophical level, I suggest you read this chapter from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche was a huge critic of socialism/communism and writes that attempts at forcing equality are always born out of envy. This book, and this chapter particularly, is one of the most insightful and important writings in all of human history imo. + Show Spoiler +
On the Tarantulas
Look here, this is the hole of the tarantula! Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Its web hangs here; touch it, make it tremble.
Here it comes, willingly – welcome, tarantula! On your back your triangle and mark sits in black; and I know too what sits in your soul.
Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, there black scabs grow; your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge!
So I speak to you in parables, you who cause the souls to whirl, you preachers of equality! Tarantulas you are to me and hidden avengers!
But I want to expose your hiding places to the light; therefore I laugh into your face my laughter of the heights.
Therefore I tear at your web, so that your rage might lure you from your lie-hole lair, and your revenge might spring forth from behind your word “justice.” For that mankind be redeemed from revenge: that to me is the bridge to the highest hope and a rainbow after long thunderstorms.
But the tarantulas want it otherwise, to be sure. “That the world become full of the thunderstorms of our revenge, precisely that we would regard as justice,” – thus they speak with one another.
“We want to exact revenge and heap insult on all whose equals we are not” – thus vow the tarantula hearts.
“And ‘will to equality’ – that itself from now on shall be the name for virtue; and against everything that has power we shall raise our clamor!”
You preachers of equality, the tyrant’s madness of impotence cries thus out of you for “equality”: your secret tyrant’s cravings mask themselves thus in your words of virtue!
Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy, perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers: it erupts from you like a flame and the madness of revenge.
What is silent in the father learns to speak in the son; and often I found the son to be the father’s exposed secret.
They resemble the inspired, but it is not the heart that inspires them – but revenge. And when they are refined and cold, it is not the spirit but envy that makes them refined and cold.
Their jealousy even leads them along the thinkers’ path; and this is the mark of their jealousy – they always go too far, such that their exhaustion must ultimately lay itself to sleep in snow.
From each of their laments revenge sounds, in each of their praisings there is harm, and being the judge is bliss to them.
But thus I counsel you my friends: mistrust all in whom the drive to punish is strong!
Those are people of bad kind and kin; in their faces the hangman and the bloodhound are visible.
Mistrust all those who speak much of their justice! Indeed, their souls are lacking not only honey.
And when they call themselves “the good and the just,” then do not forget that all they lack to be pharisees is – power!
My friends, I do not want not be mixed in with and mistaken for others.
There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and at the same time they are preachers of equality and tarantulas.
They speak in favor of life, these poisonous spiders, even though they are sitting in their holes and have turned against life, because they want to do harm.
They want to harm those who hold power today, for among them the sermon on death is still most at home.
If it were otherwise, then the tarantulas would teach otherwise; and they after all were formerly the best world slanderers and burners of heretics.
I do not want to be mixed in with and mistaken for these preachers of equality. For thus justice speaks to me: “humans are not equal.”
And they shouldn’t become so either! What would my love for the overman be if I spoke otherwise?
On a thousand bridges and paths they shall throng to the future, and ever more war and inequality shall be set between them: thus my great love commands me to speak!
Inventors of images and ghosts shall they become in their hostility, and with their images and ghosts they shall yet fight the highest fight against each other!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and trifling, and all the names of values: they shall be weapons and clanging signs that life must overcome itself again and again!
Life itself wants to build itself into the heights with pillars and steps; it wants to gaze into vast distances and out upon halcyon beauties – therefore it needs height!
And because it needs height, it needs steps and contradiction between steps and climbers! Life wants to climb and to overcome itself by climbing.
And look here, my friends! Here, where the tarantula’s hole is, the ruins of an ancient temple are rising – look here now with enlightened eyes!
Indeed, the one who once heaped his thoughts skyward here in stone – he knew the secret of all life like the most wise!
That struggle and inequality and war for power and supremacy are found even in beauty: he teaches us that here in the clearest parable.
How divinely the vault and the arch bend and break each other as they wrestle; how they struggle against each other with light and shadow, these divinely struggling ones –
In this manner sure and beautiful let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely let us struggle against each other!
Alas! Then the tarantula bit me, my old enemy! Divinely sure and beautiful it bit me on the finger!
“Punishment and justice must be” – thus it thinks. “Not for nothing shall he sing his songs in honor of hostility here!”
Yes, it has avenged itself! And alas! Now it will also make my soul whirl with revenge!
But so that I do not whirl, my friends, bind me fast to this pillar here! I would rather be a stylite than a whirlwind of revenge!
Indeed, Zarathustra is no tornado or whirlwind; and if he is a dancer, nevermore a tarantella dancer!
-Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Well there's some truly revisionist history.
The US did not develop economically due to 'free markets' or 'free trade'. The US developed economically due to obscene tarrifs on everything, which in turn allowed a domestic manufacturing industry to be created. For most of the period from 1800 to 1945 the US had a more protected market then France, go google Hamilton and his views on infant industry protection.
Claiming that there was 'minimal government interference' in that period is disengengous at best. If the US in the 1800's had done what neo-liberal economic theory had told them, which is to specialize into your comparative advantage, you would still be a nation of farmers producing wheat, logs and furs for the British and have an average annual income equal much lower then you currently do.
Milton Friedman is one of those economists that approach economics in the way Ricardo did it: If the reality doesn't match the theory then it's too bad for reality. We all know the theory has to be right after all.
Uhm no... Government spending was at like 3% or something during the 19th century. It was trivial.
If you want to talk about tarriffs and the interstate commerce commission as government interferances then you're quickly going to run out of topics to discuss .
No one will deny the existence of tariffs but you will find very, very, very few people on the side of tariffs today. It was active intellectual dispute back then. By now it's a battle long gone (and won by the free traders). Tariffs harm countries.
The US still grew thanks to it's relative openness to the rest of the world and especially the functioning market economy domestically. That's why tons and tons of people fled stagnant economies in Europe to make a better life for themselves in a freer country.
And the idea that specializing into your comparative advantage will keep you doing the same thing or not get you the most value out of your time is truly revolutionary economics! Be sure to tell that to anyone working a daily job today! Heck, maybe I should quit my programming job and get a job at Burger King. Or maybe I should try my best to succeed in particle physics !
What I'm trying to point out to you is that even on the most basic level (world trade) governments have always controlled markets, especially during era's of rapid economic development. The income rise in the period described by the guy I quoted was not due to 'a free internal market', it was due to the rapid industrialization of an agricultural economy. Which was only made possible due to high tariffs, because at that point in time free trade without tariffs would have killed any opportunity for the development of industry in the US itself.
The US up to 1945 was NOT 'relatively open', but was infact one of the least open economies in the world. It was run on the basis of complete 'infant industry protection', because the economy was not ready for integration into a world market. Hamilton understood this principle very well. The US Steel industry was created behind a 100% tariff wall, and similar stories can be told for Nokia, Samsung, Hyundai or KIA just to name a few. Next to that, there are many people (including relevant economists, such as Chang at Cambridge, or Reinert to name someone from your own region) who don't see tariffs as black and white and see them as essential in the economic development of LDC's.
I have no idea what you're trying to say about comparative advantages, I'm guessing it's an attempt at sarcasm but it fails to convey your point. My point was that a neo-liberal theory of comparative advantages assumes factor normalization to occur, but we can all see that it isn't happening (increasing gaps between rich and poor). Without factor normalization, all that comparative advantages achieve is in keeping certain countries (or people) locked in their economic position in life. A country with a comparative advantage in sewing soccer balls with their teeth will never become rich, neither will an individual with a comparative advantage in flipping burgers.
'How countries got rich by free trade' is complete revisionist history. There might be a single counterexample, which is current day Chile (mainly natural resource based), but for every other country there are plently of economic scholars pointing out how it is just a lie. Free trade has its benefits for sure, but only once you're already rich and enter an equal (or unequal in your favor) playing field. This applies to national economies also. Markets can lead to a better allocation of resources and will generally lead to higher total welfare, but if you start off with an economic situation as broken as in the US (and many developped countries in general), more market means more inequality and a higher concentration of wealth among fewer and fewer people. That doesn't fit nicely into the whole neo-liberal story, but it is the empirical reality, which neo-classical economics have a healthy disregard for.
'How countries got rich by free trade' is complete revisionist history. There might be a single counterexample, which is current day Chile (mainly natural resource based), but for every other country there are plently of economic scholars pointing out how it is just a lie. Free trade has its benefits for sure, but only once you're already rich and enter an equal (or unequal in your favor) playing field. This applies to national economies also. Markets can lead to a better allocation of resources and will generally lead to higher total welfare, but if you start off with an economic situation as broken as in the US (and many developped countries in general), more market means more inequality and a higher concentration of wealth among fewer and fewer people. That doesn't fit nicely into the whole neo-liberal story, but it is the empirical reality, which neo-classical economics have a healthy disregard for.
Well it's true to a certain extent. Once you are the industrial powerhouse and the manufacturer of the world, then free trade is most beneficial for you and you get rich off of free trade. But it ignores how you got there, which is exactly what you are saying. Mercantilism was a system based on tariff walls, but because Britain industrialized first, they could manufacture far more than they could sell in their own empire, so they needed free trade to break into new markets. But of course free trade is damaging to any of the local economies, because they couldn't produce like Britain could.
And so, as you wrote, this is precisely when America's giant tariff wall went up- to protect American industry because at the beginning their manufacturing industry couldn't outcompete British products. America only dropped those tariff walls, when free trade was beneficial for their manufacturers. America was then the manufacturers of the world and champions of free trade because of course their manufacturers needed more people to sell to.
So yeah. I think I agree- if you are looking at who is developing their manufacturers, it seems to be that they hide behind tariff walls until they can out compete everyone and then suddenly they are great proponents of free trade, getting rich everywhere. Now if you don't care about your manufacturers (Canada), then you just sell away all you resources and buy back the manufactured products from everywhere else. Which is exactly what is happening with things like the Keystone pipeline. We will never have our manufacturers out compete anyone, but free trade means we trade lots... of raw resources in keeping with essentially a colonial economy.
President Obama holds a wide lead among Hispanic voters when matched against potential Republican challengers, even as widespread opposition to his administration’s stepped-up deportation policies act as a drag on his approval ratings among that group, according to a new poll.
The survey, conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, revealed a general-election weakness for Republicans among an increasingly influential voting bloc — with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry each winning less than one-fourth of the Hispanic vote in hypothetical matchups against Obama.
Obama leads Romney by 68 percent to 23 percent and Perry by 69 percent to 23 percent among Hispanic voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points for the sample.
EPT
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