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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 11:14 pm 
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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 12:28 am 
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Well Stip, I got to OKC airport, and worked on it. Then I got to Hartsfield, and I worked on it. It's almost done, but on my Blackberry. And I am plum exhausted.

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 12:51 am 
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LW, have you ever missed a flight because you weren't finished composing an RM post?


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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 1:05 am 
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washing machine wrote:
LW, have you ever missed a flight because you weren't finished composing an RM post?


:haha:

No, but I have almost missed a flight from prolonged TSA molestations.

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:39 pm 
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LOL @ Bernanke saying that the FED does things so people feel wealthier and spend more, he actually wants people to dig themselves in debt, the dude is a fuckin maniac.

He also said that he hope to helps the house marketing by making houses more expensive. He claims that people will more likely to buy a house if the price rises, the very same logic that started this whole mess.

Fuck that guy.

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Thu Sep 13, 2012 9:46 pm 
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That's why we live in an inflationary world. Whether you like it or not, rising prices acts as an artificial agent to get people to buy stuff. Gotta buy now while the getting is good! According to monetarists, people don't buy during deflationary periods because they will stand on the sidelines, then economies spiral downward. Deflation, as we've seen in the housing market, is bad for debtors. Who wants to buy a house if its value deflates! Then you're underwater!

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Thu Sep 13, 2012 9:58 pm 
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LittleWing wrote:
That's why we live in an inflationary world. Whether you like it or not, rising prices acts as an artificial agent to get people to buy stuff. Gotta buy now while the getting is good! According to monetarists, people don't buy during deflationary periods because they will stand on the sidelines, then economies spiral downward. Deflation, as we've seen in the housing market, is bad for debtors. Who wants to buy a house if its value deflates! Then you're underwater!


Call me crazy, but people could buy houses to...you know...live in, isntead of treat it like some magical money maker.

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 12:52 am 
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I don't necessarily disagree, but the inflated values of homes have been one of the things (alongside debt) that have kept this country going in the face of stagnant wages. I'd rather see them fix the later instead of dicking around with the former

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:05 am 
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stip wrote:
I don't necessarily disagree, but the inflated values of homes have been one of the things (alongside debt) that have kept this country going in the face of stagnant wages. I'd rather see them fix the later instead of dicking around with the former


What's the functional difference? In both cases you're attempting to artificially manipulate the value of a given commodity in the feigned idea that it's actually going to have a positive impact on the aggregate economy.

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:09 am 
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Inflated prices and debt are double plus good.

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:10 am 
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the later leads to a more equitable economy and, to my knowledge, has not recently failed in a spectacular fashion

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:11 am 
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Human Bass wrote:
Inflated prices and debt are double plus good.


human bass is thodoks in bumper sticker form.

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:40 am 
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stip wrote:
the later leads to a more equitable economy and, to my knowledge, has not recently failed in a spectacular fashion


You really don't pay very much attention to Europe do you?

Just to rehash - the median household wage in France is 19,000 Euros. Only ten percent of households in France earn the equivalent of our $75,000 mark. What kind of spectacular failure would we have to achieve as a nation to regress to that level?

If artificially manipulation of wages to create a more equitable society doesn't fail in a spectacular fashion, then what on earth has caused: Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Ireland to fail. To be soon followed by France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the whole of Eastern Europe.

Why artificially create a more equitable economy when the people themselves can earn their way to a more equitable society? At what point do people actually think that equability supersedes actual quality of life?

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 2:48 pm 
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From the Blackberry...

First we need to talk about Marx. You description of Marx's philosophy and prophecy is only half presented, and thus becomes irrelevant.

Marx saw emancipation of slaves and serfs as nothing but a necessary means of freeing up labor for gentry classes now turned capitalists. Marx saw capitalism as a necessary means to transition into socialism and communism, but not after a century and a half of remarkable growth and quality of life improvements. Marx saw monopolization of land and permanent indentured servitude where workers were perpetually kept in a state of "barely surviving." He saw a purposeful, nefarious plot where the workers were kept in over supply to suppress their wages, which would either cause the implosion you see, or give cause for the workers to revolt. He did not see any difference between feudalism and capitalism - merely that emancipation was nothing more than a means of turning people into a new form of slave - a slave to need. Marx NEVER envisioned what capitalism has brought us. Marx was wrong too, as he saw capitalism and industrialization as a necessary requirement to build the capital resources for the proletariat to seize. But communist Russia was quite successful in going from feudal agrarianism to full blown industrialism and bypassing the capitalist stage. Marx did indeed view capitalism as the next step of slavery and a failure of distribution, but he ignored the emergence of the petit burgeouise, and overlooked the capitalists need for skilled workers. American 19th century capitalism really tears down his vision. He also overlooked the dynamic nature of capitalism and capital flow, the reality of opportunity costs, and the fact that if one of the workers had a profitable idea that the capitalist would invest in it. Marx was awful in his analysis of the rise of the banking class and the vital role it played in risk management and capital appropriation. And from this rose the petit burgeouise that was largely entrepeneurial middle class - that was subsequently preyed upon in the workers revolutions of the world. Capitalism may concentrate more and more wealth in the hands of the few - but this is not true ipso-facto. And the fact that it can, and is happening, is no indication that it's failing or is requisite to the system. The success and breadth of wealth generation is a summation of individual inputs. And if the inputs on the bottom stagnate or regress in proportion to others, then the concentration of wealth and its distribution is not immoral or unethical or an indication of some endemic systematic failure.

You speak of demons in my head - I couldn't disagree more. The idea that capitalism is bound to consume itself by some purposeful extraction of wealth from the workers is completely false. If this were the case, then Carnegie Mellon, and Vanderbilt University would not exist, and Ford would have paid his workers a sustainance wage. Of course maintaining skilled and educated people costs money, but it is NOT a one sided responsibility from the rich to supply these resources! Those with legal agency (adults) have a responsibility to their own personal investments, and those that largely support K-12 education should not be endowed with supporting an evergrowing pit of money that is not providing a return on investment.

You say that if you have a solution to a problem that you should not be tied down to capitalists. Why not? Again, when you say this you are socializing risk for privatized gain. If I have an idea, it will either be discarded due to risk and unprofitability or poor planning, or those with capital will compete for the idea. This manages risk and appropriates capital while keeping interest rates low. It creates balance. What is the problem with this structure?

You are completely wrong about my view on the interdependency of society. I think I've said this before, but I don't view myself as an island. I just don't wish to be enslaved into interdependency and to have my will subsumed by the majority - whether it be tyrranical or not. There is no origin of debt between myself and anybody else at birth prima facie. I wish to be as interdendent as I want to be, and shouldn't be forced into these relationships. You're right that we're interdependent, but all of our actions, choices, and mutually beneficial exchanges are finite. They're not the web of faux interdependence that people like you try to manufacture society into being. Capitalism is not extraction - it is exchange. My employer isn't extracting anything out of me. I labor, they give me money. That's the beginning and the end of our relationship. From there my employer takes my labor and risks the final product on the market to other individuals in independent transactions with no gaurantee that they will profit from it. Your model of extraction presumes that all capitalists are always successful, and that their success will never fall prey to creative destruction.

And here's the thing. With this model you forward, you are hindering the failure of bad ideas. By constructing a bureaucratic social regulation system and ignoring the real demands of society, you create the rent seeker, who becomes more concerned with using government as a means to self-preservation, as opposed to making meaningful economic contributions for society. The bureaucrat economic manager is going to do everything he can to preserve his job and personal economic security.

You keep talking about how interconnected we are, and you keep talking about the responsibilities of the rich, but what are the responsibilities of the poor? And how do we ever escape this model? I'm still bothered by the fact that the ignorant masses can establish their needs, but cannot be trusted to manage them. I'm still bothered by the fact that man is flawed, so we establish other men to manage us. You talk of the corporation over and over. The corporation is managed by executives who discharge the will of the shareholders. But fail to take into account the fluidity of markets and the corporations customer. When corporations become too distant from their customer and fail to account for their needs, there arises opportunity costs for others, and the process of creative destruction can take its course. This is a rational, natural, mutually beneficial societal construct. But the government institution? There is no such mechanism for this to take place. You speak of the rural rail line and proclaim that the voters elect officials who should deal with the rail line. But here's the thing, the rail line gets lost, hell, even the ethanol subsidies get lost to: two wars, abortion debates, healthcare mandates, auto bailouts, trillion dollar stimulus packages, bank bailouts, and it all simply turns into politicians fighting to take back what they can for their constituents - whether it's responsible, much less profitable or not. By federalizing ALL local issues, the local issues get lost. By instituting a federalization process, hundreds of thousands of issues that would NEVER pass a popular muster in a national referendum are lost, hidden, and forgotten about as consituents simply look to get back what they put in by voting in candidates that maintain the status quo. The structure is entirely corrupt and NOT reflective of what you purport it to be. Stating that the people are fine with the rural rail line, or even AMTRAK as a whole, simply because they vote in people who perpetuate it, is PREPOSTEROUS. The people are voting in representatives to meet their own personal needs and special interests. The people in Jersey may support that rail line, but nobody else does. They're voting on local issues that matter to them, whereby the only way to meet their local needs is via the feds.

I do not elevate property rights above others. I view them on an equal plane as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One cannot outweigh the other. When you minimize property rights in lieu of other positive rights, you rob people of their right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That person becomes a tax serf. A person laboring for the benefit of another that did no labor for that property.

FedEx and UPS do not directly compete with the USPS. They have their own niche market. Hyundai, Ford, and Toyota are shooting themselves in the foot because they are competing against an entity they can never beat. They are taxed to support their competitor. In Ford's case the contracts supported by bailouts are pushed upon them via the UAW. Youy think they want this relationship? Who would ENTER into a market and compete against GM? It's no longer a fair market.

You talk about how alternatives that I speak of happen. If that's the case, then why the need for the government apparatus?

My last item in my notes is about how unpragmatic you are about capital flight. I find it bizarre that you are so incredibly pragmatic about how you wish society would function, but with capital flight you are as UNpragmatic as possible. Instead of looking how to FORCE capital to stay here, despite that it may not have any positive effect, and even destructive effects, why not examine what leads to capital flight in the first place and adopt policies to preserve that capital here? We can preserve capital in this country naturally by building skills in the work force. I really don't understand HOW you even monitor it in the first place. Our recovery is weak specifically because people aren't capturing what is in demand or solving problems. They're rent seeking and trying to extract wealth via government dictates to meet their needs instead. Mm…

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 3:13 pm 
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I totally am not reading that.


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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 3:55 pm 
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LittleWing wrote:
From the Blackberry...

From the PC

LittleWing wrote:
First we need to talk about Marx. You description of Marx's philosophy and prophecy is only half presented, and thus becomes irrelevant.


ohhhkay. What is this in response to?

LittleWing wrote:
Marx saw emancipation of slaves and serfs as nothing but a necessary means of freeing up labor for gentry classes now turned capitalists. Marx saw capitalism as a necessary means to transition into socialism and communism, but not after a century and a half of remarkable growth and quality of life improvements. Marx saw monopolization of land and permanent indentured servitude where workers were perpetually kept in a state of "barely surviving." He saw a purposeful, nefarious plot where the workers were kept in over supply to suppress their wages, which would either cause the implosion you see, or give cause for the workers to revolt. He did not see any difference between feudalism and capitalism - merely that emancipation was nothing more than a means of turning people into a new form of slave - a slave to need.


I don't think I'd agree to that. Marx had a progressive view of history. He would not have equated capitalism with freedom, but it was a necessary and useful development on what he saw as the road to socialism.

LittleWing wrote:
Marx NEVER envisioned what capitalism has brought us.

Marx thought capitalism was necessary to end the problem of scarcity. He didn't really doubt its productive capacity, just its ability to distribute that production. That's why he saw capitalism as a necessary transition to socialism. The idea that capitalism could be bypassed is Lenin and co.

oh, I see you are about to say that.

LittleWing wrote:
Marx was wrong too, as he saw capitalism and industrialization as a necessary requirement to build the capital resources for the proletariat to seize. But communist Russia was quite successful in going from feudal agrarianism to full blown industrialism and bypassing the capitalist stage. Marx did indeed view capitalism as the next step of slavery and a failure of distribution, but he ignored the emergence of the petit burgeouise, and overlooked the capitalists need for skilled workers.


That's fair, but skilled workers are probably never going to be the majority of workers in an economy, nor do skilled workers escape the problem of having to sell their time, and the subsequent exploitation that follows.

Certainly Marx underestimated the resiliency of capitalism, especially when one factors in the way welfare state politics softens the cutting edge.


LittleWing wrote:
American 19th century capitalism really tears down his vision.

Oh? How is that?


LittleWing wrote:
He also overlooked the dynamic nature of capitalism and capital flow, the reality of opportunity costs, and the fact that if one of the workers had a profitable idea that the capitalist would invest in it. Marx was awful in his analysis of the rise of the banking class and the vital role it played in risk management and capital appropriation. And from this rose the petit burgeouise that was largely entrepeneurial middle class - that was subsequently preyed upon in the workers revolutions of the world. Capitalism may concentrate more and more wealth in the hands of the few - but this is not true ipso-facto.


I'm not sure how anything you've said changes that. What you've demonstrated is that membership in the upper class is potentially dynamic.

The core of marxism and marxist economic philosophy is his argument that capitalism is fundamentally extractive and exploitative (the moral critique) and that the concentration of wealth makes it unsustainable. I'm not sure how you're addressing that here?



LittleWing wrote:
And the fact that it can, and is happening, is no indication that it's failing or is requisite to the system.

No, the process can be reversed and contained (I am not a socialist, after all). But this seems to require a regulatory and redistributive state to contain the excesses that seem to always accrue.


LittleWing wrote:
The success and breadth of wealth generation is a summation of individual inputs. And if the inputs on the bottom stagnate or regress in proportion to others, then the concentration of wealth and its distribution is not immoral or unethical or an indication of some endemic systematic failure.


It's not immoral or unethical under your values. The same with system failure. Your assumptions that
A: the regression at the bottom is primarily the result of individual failure rather than something heavily influenced by economic and political structures
B: That the purpose of an economic system is to reward individuals (the reason why individuals participate is for their personal reward but that's a different issue)
C: that those not doing well under this system will be happy to accept their fate.

Are all easily contested.




LittleWing wrote:
You speak of demons in my head - I couldn't disagree more.


Oh I'm sure you couldn't.

LittleWing wrote:
The idea that capitalism is bound to consume itself by some purposeful extraction of wealth from the workers is completely false. If this were the case, then Carnegie Mellon, and Vanderbilt University would not exist, and Ford would have paid his workers a sustainance wage.



Marx never denies that individuals can choose to do different things. After all he predicts that socialism will be led by a vanguard that comes from the capitalist class. His point is that the system as a whole creates certain imperatives and rewards certain types of behaviors that ensure that the vast majority of people participating in it will make the same choice. Carnegie's book 'the gospel of wealth' argues that all wealthy people should donate basically all their wealth to private charities and foundations. Some wealthy people do that. But somehow the vast majority of the money seems to stay in their hands. And ask the people who worked for Carengie and Vanderbilt if the universities named after them (and my school is housed in an old vanderbilt estate) make them feel better about how they were treated.

Ford did get this better than most, bless his anti-Semitic soul. But Ford also paid wages well above going market rates. Exactly the kind of thing that your Littlewing forbear 100 years ago would have gone apoplectic over.

LittleWing wrote:
Of course maintaining skilled and educated people costs money, but it is NOT a one sided responsibility from the rich to supply these resources!


No of course not. Who says it is? And the rich do not pay 100% of the taxes in this country either. But addressing the needs of a population requires resources, and those who have more of them can and should be expected to contribute more.


LittleWing wrote:
You say that if you have a solution to a problem that you should not be tied down to capitalists. Why not? Again, when you say this you are socializing risk for privatized gain.


I don't see how arguing for non profit and public enterprises are socializing risk for private gain, unless again you are insisting on 100% universal access of a particular service (which should make you supportive of socialized medicine and social security). Hardly anything is universally accessed The measure is whether or not the country as a whole is better off with whatever service or organization we're talking about. There's no obvious place to draw that line. that's why we have politics.

LittleWing wrote:
If I have an idea, it will either be discarded due to risk and unprofitability or poor planning, or those with capital will compete for the idea. This manages risk and appropriates capital while keeping interest rates low. It creates balance. What is the problem with this structure?


It's often an excellent model when risk or unprofitably aren't an issue. But sometimes, especially in the early stages of research, risk is very high and so the public supports research which the private sector later exploits for private gain while denying the public origins of the research. And sometimes something is necessary but not profitable. And in those cases what you describe is a horrible model.

My wife is a type one diabetic. it's not profitable to treat that. The money is found in the lifestyle/type II diabetes. As a result far more of the research on diabetes goes into curing/treating type II. Is curing type I now less important?


LittleWing wrote:
You are completely wrong about my view on the interdependency of society. I think I've said this before, but I don't view myself as an island.


Perhaps not, but basically every conclusion you draw starts from that premise. Your cognitive dissonance is your own cross to bear.

LittleWing wrote:
I just don't wish to be enslaved into interdependency and to have my will subsumed by the majority - whether it be tyrranical or not.

So you are not an island, but plan to live your life like you are?

No one wants to be 'enslaved' to interdependency or have their will totally subsumed by the majority. That's why we have rights. But what is needed is to strike a responsible balance between the way we are interconnected and our desire to be independent, not simply rejecting one or the other out of hand.

LittleWing wrote:
There is no origin of debt between myself and anybody else at birth prima facie.

Sure there is. Or alternately, there may be a debt society owes you, depending on the demographics surrounding the accident of your birth. you are not born into a state of nature. You are born into a preexisting set of social arrangements that advantages some people and some behaviors over others, and you will either benefit or be harmed by that.

LittleWing wrote:
I wish to be as interdendent as I want to be, and shouldn't be forced into these relationships.

You are in these relationships. Remember how you just said above you aren't denying the existence of interdependence. What you want is the privilege of denying that these relationships impose obligations.


LittleWing wrote:
Capitalism is not extraction - it is exchange. My employer isn't extracting anything out of me. I labor, they give me money. That's the beginning and the end of our relationship. From there my employer takes my labor and risks the final product on the market to other individuals in independent transactions with no gaurantee that they will profit from it. Your model of extraction presumes that all capitalists are always successful, and that their success will never fall prey to creative destruction.


It presumes nothing of the sort. And the exchange metaphor makes sense when the two parties contracting are largely equal in terms of power. For most workers this isn't the case.

LittleWing wrote:
And here's the thing. With this model you forward, you are hindering the failure of bad ideas. By constructing a bureaucratic social regulation system and ignoring the real demands of society, you create the rent seeker, who becomes more concerned with using government as a means to self-preservation, as opposed to making meaningful economic contributions for society. The bureaucrat economic manager is going to do everything he can to preserve his job and personal economic security.


Sure, that's a risk, although one can just as easily classify the entire finance industry that is the lifeblood of capitalism as rent seeking since they are largely concerned with extracting rent rather than ensuring the development of useful and productive industry.

And I am certainly in favor of attaching work or other useful social obligations to the accrument of public benefits. And I am also in favor of doing what can be done to ensure that public programs are made dynamic and innovative and that less useful ones are curtailed.

But (as per our various conversations about democracy) when the debate is whether or not these programs have a right to exist we distract ourselves from the more useful conversation of figuring out how to make the ones that we have work better.

And finally, your description below:

Quote:
The bureaucrat economic manager is going to do everything he can to preserve his job and personal economic security.


is a problem with bureaucracies in ANY organization. There's nothing special about public bureaucracies in that regard.



LittleWing wrote:
You keep talking about how interconnected we are, and you keep talking about the responsibilities of the rich, but what are the responsibilities of the poor?

If you want to have a conversation about what their responsibilities are I'd be happy to. I think you'd fine that we have a lot of overlap. But this isn't a gotcha moment, LWing. I'm not denying that they exist. They just don't tend to come up in our discussions.


LittleWing wrote:
And how do we ever escape this model? I'm still bothered by the fact that the ignorant masses can establish their needs, but cannot be trusted to manage them.

I'm not sure what that means.


LittleWing wrote:
I'm still bothered by the fact that man is flawed, so we establish other men to manage us.

And we in turn need to manage and police them. I actually have a great deal of respect for the political acumen of the founders and people like Machiavelli. And all of them preach a message of vigilance. Complex societies need rulers, but rulers cannot naturally be trusted and so have to be policed. I just also think that this warning applies to the economic realm as well. I don't share the curious blindspot some people seem to have about markets and corporations. I think people in positions of power are often the same everywhere. But large organizations are necessary for a larger interdependent society, and therefore ways to police their excess become important.

If workplace democracy was stronger the government would have to do less. Precisely because trust needs to be earned and is never guaranteed, and because everyone should have a say in the laws that govern them, we need democracy. We have it, anemic as it is, in politics. Until we have it in economics (and I reject that the market provides that function beyond some basic elements of consumer preference) democratic government is the best vehicle available for providing those checks on powe.

LittleWing wrote:
You talk of the corporation over and over. The corporation is managed by executives who discharge the will of the shareholders. But fail to take into account the fluidity of markets and the corporations customer. When corporations become too distant from their customer and fail to account for their needs, there arises opportunity costs for others, and the process of creative destruction can take its course. This is a rational, natural, mutually beneficial societal construct.


yes, let us all be thankful for the financial collapse of 2007 and the beneficial recurrent recessions that are the product of poorly policed economic systems.


LittleWing wrote:
But the government institution? There is no such mechanism for this to take place.

Elections, lobbying, public engagement. There are huge flaws with the contemporary practice (or lack therefore) for each of these but the mechanisms exist.

LittleWing wrote:
You speak of the rural rail line and proclaim that the voters elect officials who should deal with the rail line. But here's the thing, the rail line gets lost, hell, even the ethanol subsidies get lost to: two wars, abortion debates, healthcare mandates, auto bailouts, trillion dollar stimulus packages, bank bailouts, and it all simply turns into politicians fighting to take back what they can for their constituents - whether it's responsible, much less profitable or not. By federalizing ALL local issues, the local issues get lost. By instituting a federalization process, hundreds of thousands of issues that would NEVER pass a popular muster in a national referendum are lost, hidden, and forgotten about as consituents simply look to get back what they put in by voting in candidates that maintain the status quo.

sure, that's a valid critique of our system. But national referendums aren't necessarily a great way to handle this either. And the size of our country is a problem. I'm not denying that. But states are often not useful demarcations given the interdependent and national/transnational nature of our economy. And of course the existence of rights (gun rights/gay rights, etc) complicate issues of local autonomy because we don't want to allow local prejudices to override rights claims.

You seem to believe that I think our democracy works great. I don't. the courses I teach, all of them (and I've researched, developed, and taught 18 different classes thus far) are all fiercely critical of our practice, and every paper that students have to write for me (I don't really give exams) revolve around them exploring the disconnect between democratic theory and the day to day practice of our institutions.

I just think that what you propose, once you move beyond your often fair critiques of what we have, would make things worse. Much worse. We live in a large, messy, imperfect world, and our politics and economics will always reflect that. It's just a question of which model will hold the whole rickety thing together longer.

My acceptance of what we have stems from the fact that I have abandoned utopian expectations. The cynicism and frustration that is often so apparent on this board seems to usually come from the fact that, whether consciously acknowledged or not, there is still hope that things can be dramatically different, and so we're let down when they aren't. But we go to war with the army that we have and we are the people that we are. So how can we make it suck just a little less or push people slightly in the direction of making them a bit better. Since sucking just a little less can still do a ton of good for a ton of people, given the scale we operate under.



LittleWing wrote:
I do not elevate property rights above others. I view them on an equal plane as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One cannot outweigh the other. When you minimize property rights in lieu of other positive rights, you rob people of their right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That person becomes a tax serf. A person laboring for the benefit of another that did no labor for that property.

I'm sure you do, but the paragraph you just wrote really seems to indicate that your understanding of all these rights is bound up in how you understand property rights.


LittleWing wrote:
My last item in my notes is about how unpragmatic you are about capital flight. I find it bizarre that you are so incredibly pragmatic about how you wish society would function, but with capital flight you are as UNpragmatic as possible. Instead of looking how to FORCE capital to stay here, despite that it may not have any positive effect, and even destructive effects, why not examine what leads to capital flight in the first place and adopt policies to preserve that capital here? We can preserve capital in this country naturally by building skills in the work force.

and at what point did I ever give an indication that I am against this?

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 3:58 pm 
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Skitch Patterson wrote:
I totally am not reading that.


the important thing is that we now know you didn't read it, and therefore don't have to wonder about it.

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 4:02 pm 
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If you would like a more detailed defense of my views, littlewing, you could do worse than preordering

"A Better Kind of Liberty": The Theory and Practice of the New Deal. I believe Red Mosquito gets a shout out in the acknowledgements.

But if you wanted to wait until the far cheaper paperback version comes out next year I'll understand. The hardcover runs are really meant for libraries and people with research budgets or more discretionary income than I have.

It's kinda long Skitch, so it may not be for you.

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 4:09 pm 
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Stip, you are easily the most consistently thorough poster on the board. LittleWing is a close second.

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 Post subject: Re: Apparently people care...the ongoing saga of the US Economy!
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 7:57 pm 
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Bunch of nerds in here. What his this place turned into?

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