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On July 18 2008 00:26 GeneralStan wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2008 23:53 1tym wrote:On July 17 2008 22:19 Mannerheim wrote:On July 17 2008 06:23 1tym wrote:
I don't understand it when people are saying that we're running out of oil.
NO WE'RE NOT.
America has not even actively started pumping their own oil yet. Plus Canada and Venezuela possesses sand oil enough to feed the entire continents for decades. They will start outsourcing from 2010 I think. Also we have technology to extract oil from plastic.
When people are talking about oil crisis, it's never the extinguishment of oil in next 100 years, it's talking about supply not meeting the demands. So get your facts right. Heh, if you think gas costs are high now, wait until shale oil (which the vast majority of the oil on American soil is, and which is still too expensive to drill and process) is the only type available. It'll be effectively used just to keep the industry going, not for consumers. I never mentioned any cost nor affordability, I stated simple fact that we're not running out of oil, literally. Since you've mentioned it, I believe that demand creates technology. We've come long way with oil prodcution, evolving from primary to secondary to tertiary recovery, aka Enhenced Oil Recovery which could allow up to 30~60% of original oil. Canada and Venezuela alone at the moment posseses tar sand almost equivalent to total conventional crude oil reservoir, not to mention US, EMEA and Russia. Canada's tar sand oil production now takes up about 50% of the entire Canadian oil production. There are talks of Countries like India investing up to 10 billion US dollars in Canadian tar sand industry, and Korea has recently purchased rights to extract 35,000 barrels of oil per day for the next 25 years beginning 2010. Sure there will be initial sturggle and hurdle, but it will only be a matter of time until the whole process stabilizes. Some argue that we have already deployed a system where we can profitably and affordabily extract and distribute oil from the sand. Don't underestimate the power of human technology. I just don't think its worth the effort or technology to try to squeeze blood from a rock when investing in another form of energy will allow us to do away witht he worry of ever running out of fuel.
I wish it was that simple.. No one with right mind would regard Tar sand nor plastic oil as permanent answer to replacing fuel.
However, we need to buy time. We all realise plan A, another form of energy is the way to go, but with current technology it's just not feasible. It's time consuming and risky business. We implement plan B, which is relatively safer and easier to adopt, which will allow us more time to research and analyse, and then there will be phased implementation of plan A.
I won't go into too much detail, but some of the possible answers to Petroleum; Bio-diesel, Bio-ethanol, and hydrogen is not a feasible answer to petrol with current technology, To mention a few, for Bio-diesel production we would need a land size of a 370,000,000 hectares only planting sunflower seeds and rape. I'll leave it to your imagination how big that is.
According to Minnesota University's research, even if the entire corns from corn field in US was made into ethanol, it would only make up to 12% of current fuel usage in US. Not to mention there will not be any corns for consumption.
If we're to use Brazillian sugar cane, we require something like 320,000,000 hectares of land. Note that the entire farming field in Brazil is about 60,000,000 hectres.
Both electronic and hydrogenic charged car relies on electric motor. The difference is electronic car is charged by simply putting the plug into consent and re-charges whereas the latter charges by opposite of the theory you learnt back in high school -> H20 electronically dissected into O2 and H. Oxygen is abundunt so it's not a problem, but what about hydrogen? There are number of techniques, one is water and the other is hydrocarbon. Hydrocarbon is extracted through fossil fuel - which will ultimately lead to extintion of the another type of resource.
One other method mentioned, which is to electronically segregating (can't think of better term) the water. Do you see the irony? You dissect the water, and create oxygen and hydrogen, and put that hydrogen back in to create water and electricity. It would circulate, but the problem is that the energy required to segregate oxygen and hydrogen is 3 times more than what the hydrogenic motor would eventually generate.
To generate 1kg worth of hydrogen, we need something like 65kWh. To accompany the demand of this energy just in Great Britain alone, it would require something like 90,000 wind power generators more than 100M tall.
As I said I believe demand creates technology, and over time we will be coming up with more effective and stable plan. We just need some time.
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United States22883 Posts
On July 18 2008 01:43 1tym wrote:
To mention a few, for Bio-diesel production we would need a land size of a 370,000,000 hectares only planting rape.
Well I'm doing my part.
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to add to your point about biofuels 1tym, even non-edible fuel crops would still be taking up massive fieldspace that could be used for foods right? sounds pretty unethical to me
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they change the debt of "illions" from "m" to "b" to "t" so rapidly, it's like a desensitization scheme. don't expect quads and quints to be far away if we don't stop all this spending, borrowing and then printing (inflating) the dollar. restraining the government from doing what it's not supposed to be doing would prevent so many problems...
fun fact. the FED created 3 trillion dollars since 2005.
you think that kind of inflation won't debase the currency or drive prices up? but noo... it's a magical mysterious cause, that just happens accidentally. the FED is a benevolent, wise, and altruistic institution that doesn't operate for private profits and they know best how to solve the inflation problem: with more inflation.
But apparently, unless you devote your life to a subject, you don't have any right to question. "what? how dare you disagree, do you have an economics degree? oh you do? are you the head of a bank? oh you are? are you ben bernanke. right. so shut up."
it's not hard to understand inflation. everyone understnads counterfeiting. and when theres more money created, it circulates, and when people receive it, they perceive it as increased demand, and as the ripples of this extra money floats around, the laws of supply and demand will say that prices will increase. but KEY is that it increases in a ripple fashion, with the movement of the new credit. who benefits most? the ones who get to use it first, before prices increase.
another fun fact: the FED has printed and expanded the credit via straight up printing as well as the fractional reserve system, since it's birth, the amount of currency has increased more than 25 times in a century.
5 cents used to equal a dollar.
and i've been watching the great brainy anime akagi (about mahjong), in which whenever money is mentioned, they always correct for inflation. i.e "back then, 100,000 yen would be equivalent to presently 1,000,000 yen"
look at other currencies, and always, the past is always worth more than the present. governments never reduce their size and power on their own, as ronald reagan said. the temptation to print money is quite hard to resist. proof? say you had a money printing machine, and funds are tight. i'll give you a million bucks if you can resist. oh wait, you can just print it xp. it's not a magical mystery. they're printing more money, and the poorest and the last to spend lose their purchasing power, while the ones who spend it first gain. if they taxed you 90%, there would be an outrage. but if they spread the tax with direct taxing combined with the more subtle tax, printing, most people will think of the abstract, and not fully understood concept of "the economy" rather than "the government is taking all the fruits of our labor!"
it's an invisible tax.
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On July 18 2008 03:28 crabapple wrote:
they change the debt of "illions" from "m" to "b" to "t" so rapidly, it's like a desensitization scheme. don't expect quads and quints to be far away if we don't stop all this spending, borrowing and then printing (inflating) the dollar. restraining the government from doing what it's not supposed to be doing would prevent so many problems...
fun fact. the FED created 3 trillion dollars since 2005.
you think that kind of inflation won't debase the currency or drive prices up? but noo... it's a magical mysterious cause, that just happens accidentally. the FED is a benevolent, wise, and altruistic institution that doesn't operate for private profits and they know best how to solve the inflation problem: with more inflation.
But apparently, unless you devote your life to a subject, you don't have any right to question. "what? how dare you disagree, do you have an economics degree? oh you do? are you the head of a bank? oh you are? are you ben bernanke. right. so shut up."
it's not hard to understand inflation. everyone understnads counterfeiting. and when theres more money created, it circulates, and when people receive it, they perceive it as increased demand, and as the ripples of this extra money floats around, the laws of supply and demand will say that prices will increase. but KEY is that it increases in a ripple fashion, with the movement of the new credit. who benefits most? the ones who get to use it first, before prices increase.
another fun fact: the FED has printed and expanded the credit via straight up printing as well as the fractional reserve system, since it's birth, the amount of currency has increased more than 25 times in a century.
5 cents used to equal a dollar.
and i've been watching the great brainy anime akagi (about mahjong), in which whenever money is mentioned, they always correct for inflation. i.e "back then, 100,000 yen would be equivalent to presently 1,000,000 yen"
look at other currencies, and always, the past is always worth more than the present. governments never reduce their size and power on their own, as ronald reagan said. the temptation to print money is quite hard to resist. proof? say you had a money printing machine, and funds are tight. i'll give you a million bucks if you can resist. oh wait, you can just print it xp. it's not a magical mystery. they're printing more money, and the poorest and the last to spend lose their purchasing power, while the ones who spend it first gain. if they taxed you 90%, there would be an outrage. but if they spread the tax with direct taxing combined with the more subtle tax, printing, most people will think of the abstract, and not fully understood concept of "the economy" rather than "the government is taking all the fruits of our labor!"
it's an invisible tax.
im too busy with my exams to really answer you, but you are hilarious!
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^ his diatribe is canned, sure, but moral hazard is still a serious issue that really is not spoken of in any sort of public circle.
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On July 18 2008 04:17 jgad wrote:
^ his diatribe is canned, sure, but moral hazard is still a serious issue that really is not spoken of in any sort of public circle.
Well, insurance companies don't quite work without having at least some study of it. Not a topic we see in every day economics talk, though.
By canned, you mean copied from somewhere? I could swear I've seen the same exact sermon before, on TL no less...or that all these rants look the same :p
EDIT - Rereading it, he actually doesn't mention any reason that should be a problem, so nevermind, it probably isn't the same sermon. The sky might still be falling though.
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9070 Posts
I'm not worried at all, cause its an unstoppable process. George W. completely screwed the macro situation and kind of destroyed all the profits of the B.C.'s contra-recession policy, not to mention that the Bank of China is not binded to the dollar anymore
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United States22883 Posts
On July 18 2008 07:40 Ecael wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2008 04:17 jgad wrote:
^ his diatribe is canned, sure, but moral hazard is still a serious issue that really is not spoken of in any sort of public circle. Well, insurance companies don't quite work without having at least some study of it. Not a topic we see in every day economics talk, though. By canned, you mean copied from somewhere? I could swear I've seen the same exact sermon before, on TL no less...or that all these rants look the same :p EDIT - Rereading it, he actually doesn't mention any reason that should be a problem, so nevermind, it probably isn't the same sermon. The sky might still be falling though.
crabapple = gwho
gwho got banned for making another Zeitgeist thread I think.
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The U.S economy is absolutely screwed. In fact it has been due for a serious recession for more then a decade these days. They got around this by using monetary policy. This basically means that when the economy slows you put interest rates down so people borrow and spend borrow and spend and the economy speeds back up again. Now using this policy as a short run tool to deal with fluctuations in the business cycle is fine but if the problem fundamentally is long run then the downturn will happen again and again until that problem is solved.
The consequence of this is that if you actually look at interest rates in the US over about 20 years you see that they go down then up, down further then up, down further than up. A clear downward trend is apparent. This is because as you use expansionary monetary policy your level of debt rises as people borrow more. Thus when you need to use expansionary monetary policy again you need even lower rates to have the same effect as people are less willing to take on debt. Also more and more money is going to repay that debt so another slow down is even more likely. You will inevitably come to a point where your rates are effectively 0 and thus you cannot lower them further Japan had this for some time in the 90's and there are analysts today who think that the US may see a 0% cash rate by next year.
What is the actual underlying problem that is causing this? Well it is basically just a fundamental weakness in the demand side of the economy. It is the foreseeable consequence of the incompetence of the Bush administrations economic policy's who sped the process up significantly, but it is a process which has been continuing for decades. There are two ways which this weakness in demand occurs the first is Federal expenditure. Take for example a dollar given in education expenditure, that dollar gets spend on repairing a roof, it goes into the pocket of the maintenance worker who intern spends it at the super marker. The money cycles through the economy. If you take that dollar from education and give it in a tax cut to the rich it ends up in a Liechtenstein bank account (the infamous bush tax cuts did this, Mcain says he will keep them Obama says he wont, this i think is possibly the most important aspect of the election in my opinion). Or invested in China or so on. In short it does not cycle through the US economy.
This is all done under the principle of 'Supply side economics' this basically means give as much money as you possibly can to the rich. The rich then spend it on the big things like factories and the money trickles down. Well this can theoretically work but in practice it does not as it is invested where return is highest, China India and so on. That money is forever lost to the American people and their economy.
Another factor is Laizes faire which basically means fairs fair, if your a worker getting $3 an hours that's what you deserve. Paying your workers poorly again equates to weakness in demand and thus weakness in the economy over all.
The solution to this problem is quite simple all you have to do is good old fashion expansionary fiscal policy just like what brought us out of the great depression. Using real government spending on heath care, education, social security and so on to boost the economy. But when your running the biggest budget deficit in the history of mankind it is difficult to increase spending like this. It must be payed for through tax increases but not to the people but to corporations who effectively do not pay any tax, and taxes to the rich. These guys are so rich a small increase is all that's needed.
Problems in financial markets are blamed on poor market regulation and while this is to an extent true it was the weakness of the economy which caused this. The problem basically is that the poor have grown too poor, it is no coincidence that the part of the financial system that started this collapse is that which lends to poor people. All the financial markets have done is make the problem may be happen much much faster and spread all around the globe in a heart beat.
While the US economy could easily be fixed and quite quickly the policy makers have thus far not only done nothing beneficial but actually taken steps which may make matters worse,(If you do something and it doesn't work do it EVEN MORE that's the solution) but they wont make it better. American may well need to brace themselves for a deep recession lasting the better part of a decade, they are long overdue. The price of oil is coincidental to this but it will only make matters worse.
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Lasseiz-faire actually means "Let them do their own shit." I think. Or "Leave them alone." French. I'm sure someone can correct my correction.
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To BottleAbuser yeah something like that but its effect in terms of economic policy is basically as i described.
Id also like to point out another thing which has in my opinion screwed the US over and that is that they have effectively maintained a total war economy since around 1941, now they said we will win the cold war because the Soviets will go broke first, and they were right but they apparently did not consider the fact that if they maintain a total war economy they will go broke second. This is to a large extend why the US is going broke today.
Further more i see people talking about how this isnt that bad and they arent worried and so on well let me just point out that while i predict a relatively small slow down in the US then a recovery followed by a deep recession lasting a decade or so after that i will also point out that if the price of oil continues to rise. Which it will, this will lead to a global recession and also massive stagflation. This will feel very similar to the great depression but the great depression was much simpler to solve all you gotta do is expansionary fiscal policy. This time all you gotta do is completely restructure the global economy from the ground up. And as oil pushes inflation higher and higher any given nations capacity to actually make these changes quickly dries up. In the depression there was no realistic chance of downfall of global civilization this time however if we don't play our cards right we could quickly end up in the dark ages and that's not even to mention climate change.
Going around saying that oil is not running out, and running around spending all your money on defense and threatening nations who have done nothing to you and effectively telling Russia and China that Americas gonna take oil by force if necessary only makes matters more difficult to solve becuase really you can do one of two things you can restructure your economy painfully from the ground up, or you can fight ww3 the US is sending the clear signal they want war and Russia and China have no say in the matter they have no choice but to spend huge amounts on defence (defence spending in China and Russia doubles every 3-4 years). Keep a close eye on the price of oil, when it passes $200 a barrel know that we could literally over the space of a week see the collapse of the global economy you no doubt think i'm over dramatising this and so on well i wish that was the case but whatever. Ill just be thankful that i live in Australia, then ill go have a bbq, drink some beer play some Starcraft and watch the news, laughing all the while at the folly of mankind. And by the way i'm actually quite optimistic about all of this Crisis is a catalyst for change, our job is to do our best to make that change for the better. At the end of the day whatever will happen shall happen so we might as well not worry.
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(re: Choros, up two posts)
^ Thus the ultimate failure of the Keynesian ideology. Both sides of the debate you've presented are both predicated on the idea that, through sufficient knob-twiddling and micromanagement, a single body can somehow regulate an entire economy. Be it supply side economics that wants to funnel money into the pockets of the rich, or demand side that wants to drop helicopters of money onto people, the ultimate premise is the same - the central authority believes itself competent to operate the business of the entire nation by means of wealth redistribution. But nevermind tax cuts - consider the Fed itself. Its continued willingness to bail out irresponsible investors is nothing less than subsidising the snake-oil salesman. An entire industry of bankers created huge piles of mortgages they knew to be worthless and sold them off in such a deliberately obfuscated manner that one is forced to conclude that they were acutely aware of the swindle they were pulling.
But did any of them go to prison?
Were any of their assets seized to pay their debts?
Did they have to face up to the consequences of their actions?
No - because the Fed is all too happy to be the insulator between risk and rich assholes. What does he care? All he has to do is shave the coins of the commoners and pass on the winnings to his rich asshole friends. If you or I tried to pull anything like the banks did with the MBS scandal we would be put in prison for fraud and probably a host of other accessory charges. But these guys just get away with it. The problem isn't so much who is or isn't giving money to whom - it's a problem of corruption and fundamental justice. The man behind the curtain is robbing shit blind and putting on a lame pantomime of evening-news politics to explain it all away.
Central planning is essentially doing to the US what Mussolini and Hitler did in their respective regimes. Massive debt is being paid for by inflation to fuel the huge military-industrial complex. This is essentially fascism, but done with a sleight of hand that cleverly disguises its mechanism. Rather than use an iron fist to take the peoples' wealth and direct it into the national war machine, these guys can just move numbers around on ledgers and *poof*, suddenly another five percent of the nations efforts are being expended in the military sector. When you can print the money the sky's the limit. Society is no longer a thing to be regulated by general principles and the collective disinterest, but a pawn of the Great Leader to be put to work towards whatever ends said leader chooses.
But when did this happen? Whatever happened to life, liberty, and equality? Whatever happened to individual freedom - the right to live your life as you see fit and employ your capitals to achieve your own goals? When did being a citizen in a free country become being a slave to a self-righteous gang of oligarchs? History is pretty consistent on this matter - when such men gain concentrated power then corruption goes nuts and everything gets fucked, and all because nobody else has the power and intelligence to stop them.
But so long as we're happy to continue debating Obama vs McCain or supply-side vs demand-side, then nothing is ever going to change. Sit back, debate the morsels which have been fed to you, and otherwise be quiet while these gangsters rob the world blind - that's exactly what everyone has been doing since the bankers bought up all the significant news organisations in 1917, and the same scam has been working ever since. The people need to start putting these white-collar criminal cocksuckers in prison rather than electing them to various offices of supreme ultimate power. And it's not just a matter of one President - you'd have to systematically comb through the entire government/banking/corporate structure and root out a huge chunk of the network of colluding parties. Organised criminals have taken over and it's up to the people to grow some balls and put an end to this protection-money style racket because I absolutely guarantee you that an elected official is not going to change the system in a million years. It would be like waiting for a dragon to slay itself.
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Well ofcourse what your saying is largely true. Ill point out that while command economic policies in Germany and others ultimately were used to fuel the war machine the general people did also feel significantly benefit to this economic surge, further more command economic policies are not inherintly used for war they may be used for the betterment of people generally and this is really what needs to be done to create significant change.
With regard to bailing out risk taking investors well this is a bad thing to do as it effectively instills risk taking within the fabric of your system with terrible consequences but the government and fed are basically stuck if you don't bail them up then the system collapses and causes serious problems in its own right. Now the woeful state of the US economy which is as you note largely because nobody has the power or intelligence to stop them. Well the US were very wise in creating this system. On the one hand you have a poor education system so people have no clue whats actually going on, and on the other hand you have a terrible media which basically tells people nothing worth hearing, thus the people are easy to push around as you see fit.
Another fundamental problem in American society is this attitude that its the land of opportunity is you try hard enough you will become rich, thus if you aren't rich then that is your own fault and why should the rich help you out. Thus the poor give the least assistance to their people than any other western country since the french revolution.
The problem is that the system created by the rich for their greedy self benefit relies upon the economic system for their prosperity just like everyone else. If you want to take from the poor and give to the rich or vice versa that's fine its a value judgment. But if you push this too far (in either direction) then the system becomes unsustainable and begins to collapse. We are seeing this collapse in action. Perhaps the powers that be are wise enough to see this and take steps to rectify it but don't hold your breath. As you comment no elected official will change the system they simply cannot. Its the rich who pay for their election campaign and thus they must do as the rich tell them too.
Frankly a collapse in the US is a long time coming and its hard to say they don't deserve it, but of course it is the poor who suffer the most and they have done nothing to deserve this really.
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USA just has really bad macro right now. That's all.
Also we just need to secure some more expos with gas. 
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United States22883 Posts
Choros, I think you're making a couple of incorrect assumptions. The economic polarity is not nearly as great in America as you seem to believe and it's improving, not getting worse. Rich people don't stick their money in banks, they invest it wherever it is profitable. Sometimes it's China or India or South Korea, but much of it is also back into the US. Look at what T. Boone Pickens just bought up or what Berkshire Hathaway is investing in.
Blame the media and American education? It's a convenient excuse, but the media isn't that poor, especially when it comes to money, and please call me when Australian grade schools teach macroeconomics.
Part of the difficulty is that contractionary policy would be devastating to the public at the moment and the Fed is just trying to keep things stable. Bush's off shore drilling lift may actually be a saving grace when it kicks in, if Congress keeps vying for stimulus packages. I'm not sure how the rich and greedy are at fault for "designing the system" (aside from the fact that educated politicians and economists are wealthy, but not super wealthy), when laisse faire would be much more beneficial to them.
We expect the lives of our children to be better than our own, and we've gotten careless in searching for that end, combined with some terrible spending by our government causing uncertainty and collapses.
Its the rich who pay for their election campaign and thus they must do as the rich tell them too. Whether you believe he will be a good candidate or not, about half of Obama's donations have come from small, first time donations of under $200.
jgad, central planning is also what Japan and South Korea did in the 1970s and 1990s, respectively. It can be both good and bad, so there is no way to know the right answer ahead of time. The Fed operates on a pretty long delay which is the cause of many of their problems, but I don't think this is backroom politics to make the rich richer. Expansionary policies improves the lives of current and near future citizens.
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Well you make some valid points including one that i make myself. I did economics in high school and thought it the best economics course i have done so far (i'm doing economics at university) but hardly anyone actually does economics i think it would be far more beneficial to people than English (our final year compulsory subject) so when the press and politicians talk about economics they can have some idea when its accurate and when it simply is not. When i blame the media a problem that the US and Australia share (though you gotta admit your media has some serious issues tho) and i'm assuming most of the rest of the world also has it as well. Your mainstream audience generally don't understand economics so why even mention it in depth at all. There are media sources in Australia who do talk about such things and they may be in the United States also but the fact is that as long as the main stream media offers effectively no real economic discussion at all it will remain a hinderence to effective economic policy.
With regard to Obama i am in fact aware that a lot of his donations come from small sources and thank god for that too, perhaps there is hope yet. I have no idea really how competent he will be its very difficult to hear policy amongst the rhetoric but one thing i have heard is that he will cancel the bush tax cuts. Very important, if your gonna have a war and jack up expenditures fine but you do not give tax cuts out at the same time its just stupidity, traditionally taxes would rise.
With regard to spending of rich being ineffectual your right they don't just put it in banks but it is vare indeed that profitability in the United States would outway oportunity in the boom towns of Asian and even eastern Europe and South America. Just say 50% of rich investment went into the US that is still a long shot from the near 100% which would result from increases in expenditure on services, capital works, welfare and so on if that money was in federal hands (and spend properly). Or if it was in the hands of workers in Australia the minimum wage for workers is something like $14 and hour, in Canada its around 8ish varies from province to province in the United States it also varies according to state but the highest is 8 right down to no minimum at all. This is why you have people working for $5 an hour dubbed the working poor. How did this come to past well largely because the US successfully de-unionized and while i'm sure some unions still remain well they do not really have any power. Thus poor wages hurting demand and standard of living. I dunno if you are saying laisse faire is good but it certainly is not.
Also ill point out that while economists design the tools used in economic policy i.e reserve banks fiscal policy etc it is not they who have created the US system but the 'real' rich who's faces never grace our television sets.
Any economic policy you care to mention will work some times and not work other times, we can learn from the past to make educated guesses about the effect that will have and although we can never know for sure well such is life we must do as best we can with what we have, The main point about macroeconomic policy in the United States is simply that monetary policy will not work in this instance, American debt is far too high for people to seriously consider taking on more debt. Thus the only real thing to do now is expansionary fiscal policies i never ment to say they should be contractionary maybe there was a typo or something and as long as the economic managers try to rely on monetary policy the situation will deteriorate. In Australia we have a serious problem where our reserve bank is doing contractionary policy when its inappropriate.
We are in a very bad situation for reserve bankers world wide right now however because as the economy slips requiring expansionary policy, inflation is rising too requiring contractionary policy. The result is this kind of limbo, the Federal reserve doesn't really seem to know what to do neither does our own reserve bank in Australia. What must be done is significantly expansionary policies this is the only way we can overcome our infrastructure bottlenecks and capacity constraints in Australia and fundamental weakness in demand in the US this will cause inflation to rise in the short term but hey this is why they call economics the dismal science.
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On July 19 2008 13:56 Choros wrote:
Well ofcourse what your saying is largely true. Ill point out that while command economic policies in Germany and others ultimately were used to fuel the war machine the general people did also feel significantly benefit to this economic surge, further more command economic policies are not inherintly used for war they may be used for the betterment of people generally and this is really what needs to be done to create significant change.
I disagree with that entirely, and on almost every level. I don't think economic fascism is the road to prosperity - it creates change alright, and, in the case of modern governments, ostensibly for this ill-defined "public good" (whatever that is), I will give you that. But let's not delude ourselves into thinking that the Fascist nations of the early 20th century were anything but dystopian nightmares. It's like trying to make an argument for communism by pointing to the economic collapse of Russia post-capitalism, I think. Both are examples of how commanded change was central to the the failures of the state. The benevolent dictator is a fantasy, or at best a transient rarity so scarce that to build a nation on a system of government which relied on conferring absolute power to some such dictator is obvious foolishness.
The problem is that this concept of "the betterment of people" is incredibly subjective. Better for whom? Human endeavour is incredibly complex - there's not just one state of "better" that everyone can agree on, and yet in a command economy you, ipso facto, have to pick a direction to improve society in. The US suffers particularly from this general sense of "Something's got to be done, we all agree", but at the same time nobody can typically agree what that something is. Hakek called it like a group of people convinced that they need to go on vacation together, but who can't agree on where to go. Everyone ends up going where most people probably didn't want to end up. Tough luck. I mean, a dictator sounds like a great idea when he shares your goals and ideals, but no matter what those are the decisions will have to be arbitrary. It's an affront to the concept of fundametal justice - something I'd think actually would be on the list of things common to "the public good".
With regard to bailing out risk taking investors well this is a bad thing to do as it effectively instills risk taking within the fabric of your system with terrible consequences but the government and fed are basically stuck if you don't bail them up then the system collapses and causes serious problems in its own right. Now the woeful state of the US economy which is as you note largely because nobody has the power or intelligence to stop them. Well the US were very wise in creating this system. On the one hand you have a poor education system so people have no clue whats actually going on, and on the other hand you have a terrible media which basically tells people nothing worth hearing, thus the people are easy to push around as you see fit.
Well, exactly - this whole fiasco is the product of command-economy thinking and I cite it as direct support of the above. I mean, if you're happy with rich criminals stealing with impunity then I guess it may be your idea of a utopian future, and I grant you the right to that, but I think that's probably such a unique fetish that I'm sure you can see how forcing an entire nation to operate under it "for the public good" is not the way to go. To do good in the public name the power of money creation was casually granted to these people with little consideration for the consequences and now how do you get it back? Not screwing things up means needing to recognise bad sitations **before** they happen. It's already too late for the McCain/Obama election - the time has passed and society failed the test once again, predictably gravitating towards the intended candidates instead of exercising their brains.
Another fundamental problem in American society is this attitude that its the land of opportunity is you try hard enough you will become rich, thus if you aren't rich then that is your own fault and why should the rich help you out. Thus the poor give the least assistance to their people than any other western country since the french revolution.
This is because people like to again confuse concepts. If it was a truly free society then, yes, I would absolutely agree with the statement that you are what you make of yourself, but the US, and most all other countries, are not free countries. Far from it. It is in fact this monumental intereference in the economic activities of their citizens that is largely responsible for this poverty. Taxes, licences, fees, forms, registrations, reporting - a hundred miles of red tape suffocates a normal person attempting to take up enterprise for themselves and otherwise the economic rules are rigged in favour of old money. The land of opportunity nonsense is just another (albeit old) tired propaganda line - it pulls on the classic sense of nationalism to essentially justify an unjust system and then audaciously does so by citing the very virtues of a free society whose removal it is intended to disguise. It's the goof of all time.
The problem is that the system created by the rich for their greedy self benefit relies upon the economic system for their prosperity just like everyone else. If you want to take from the poor and give to the rich or vice versa that's fine its a value judgment. But if you push this too far (in either direction) then the system becomes unsustainable and begins to collapse. We are seeing this collapse in action. Perhaps the powers that be are wise enough to see this and take steps to rectify it but don't hold your breath. As you comment no elected official will change the system they simply cannot. Its the rich who pay for their election campaign and thus they must do as the rich tell them too.
By the rich for the rich - I won't disagree with that, but wealth redistribution on top of that is just the nail in the coffin, imo. If the rich can't be trusted with the money supply, what makes you think they should be trusted to redistribute wealth in any sort of equitable way, if such a thing is even possible? Surely once you put the power of monetary creation AND wealth redistribution out there you are handing the world away on a silver plate.
If you want to take from the poor and give to the rich or vice versa that's fine its a value judgment.
I wouldn't say it's a value judgement at all - it's demonstrably unjust. I think there's an illusion, however, that social welfare programs are an act of compassion or giving - they're not. By means of their monetary powers the rich are stealing more from the poor BY FAR than the poor are getting back in socialist measures. The net effect of this system is that the rich take all and then ration out what *they* feel people deserve. Socialism is not compassion - it just tugs at the heartstrings of the naive until they're so emotionally worked up they can't tell giving from taking.
Frankly a collapse in the US is a long time coming and its hard to say they don't deserve it, but of course it is the poor who suffer the most and they have done nothing to deserve this really.
Exactly - this I agree 100%
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jgad, central planning is also what Japan and South Korea did in the 1970s and 1990s, respectively. It can be both good and bad, so there is no way to know the right answer ahead of time. The Fed operates on a pretty long delay which is the cause of many of their problems, but I don't think this is backroom politics to make the rich richer. Expansionary policies improves the lives of current and near future citizens.
I won't argue that it's an effective way to get something done, but there are very clear social and economic controls in South Korea and Japan that would, even considering Starcraft, would preclude me ever wanting to move there and live there. I don't think that central planning is ever the best solution - it's always *a* solution, of course.
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