Clearly capitalists didn't exist in the first days of humanity (at least not by definition we'd recognize). It's worth noting out that historically capitalist revolutions result in systems with governments.

1/21/2012 10:48:15 AM

Quote :

"How about the mountains of evidence showing us that deregulated capitalism doesn't produce better bosses and owners than the politicians you're pointing out?"

What evidence? Additionally, a senator is 1/60th away from impacting 300 million people in a $15 trillion economy. What executive of some fortune 500 company wields that kind of power? I mean, I hear your point that congress critters and executives are to an extent one in the same but I'm just not buying that this mythical deregulation oft referred to by the progressives is driving everything that ills us. It seems to me a lack of enforcing actual law and general laziness on the part of regulators has is screwed more than anything. Hell, just take MERS for an example. A system designed specifically to screw municipalities out of titling/recording fees and to bypass centuries old property law and not a single state attorney anywhere had anything to say about this until long after the bubble burst?

Quote :

"It's dealing with a violent ape by taking the chains off"

So long as the ape knows he will be shot given actions that warrant it then why wouldn't we take his chains off? Just because he has the capability to harm doesn't mean he will.

Quote :

"Now you justify systems based on how it "can be shown to improve quality of life"?"

You focused on the wrong parts. The point was that I don't believe we are anywhere near (and may never be) a system where we can feed computers enough data that it can make policy that is
free of favoritism, crony influence, and doesn't infringe on individual liberty

The point about quality of life is I think a rational data driven person of libertarian persuasion and is naturally skeptical of a top down system would be forced to question their beliefs if you really could show them such a system is "fool proof" so to speak. By what metric you measure that by I don't know. Quality of life is just an example.

Quote :

" what technology CAN do is empower people by making freedom/movement and gathering/presentation of information easier for them to do on their own. "

Oh I hear you loud and clear. I yearn for the day that we are free of the MSM shackles and people can get objective data and make their own decisions...but fuck man, do you look around? Are you really that insulated in academia that you don't see the reality that is the United States? We are a nation of spoiled, lazy, video game playing, politically apathetic, sheep prone to being herded into tight little groups like our genes dictate. I've asked you this on numerous occasions....just how do you propose to change this? I don't see our population "waking up" until they are forced to do so and they won't be forced to do so until life in America is so shitty we won't recognize the place.

Quote :

"You realize there's not one axis of governmental/political systems that every system falls upon, where at one end is free markets and the other is e-Stalin, right?"

I don't think anything I posted would imply I ever thought this.

1/21/2012 11:07:00 AM

Quote :

"What evidence? Additionally, a senator is 1/60th away from impacting 300 million people in a $15 trillion economy. What executive of some fortune 500 company wields that kind of power? I mean, I hear your point that congress critters and executives are to an extent one in the same but I'm just not buying that this mythical deregulation oft referred to by the progressives is driving everything that ills us. It seems to me a lack of enforcing actual law and general laziness on the part of regulators has is screwed more than anything. Hell, just take MERS for an example. A system designed specifically to screw municipalities out of titling/recording fees and to bypass centuries old property law and not a single state attorney anywhere had anything to say about this until long after the bubble burst?"

A senator is not that close ... there are plenty of things moving in his way. The political process, the other branches of gov't, the effectiveness of regulators, practical funding issues, etc. Certainly some actions of Senate can lead to really bad results (imagine if we banned farting for instance), but it's a different sort of power than the power a factory owner exerts when he puts people out of work to control prices. (This is in a way more autocratic.)

Think about how powerful guys like Gates, Carnegie, etc are. When you consider a handfull of guys were responsible for incidents like the Enron fraud (leading to collapse and unemployment for tens of thousands of people, loss of pensions, etc), the problem is clearly not just with government. Nothing about stripping government solves the problem here (in principle) anymore than simply adding government.

Quote :

"So long as the ape knows he will be shot given actions that warrant it then why wouldn't we take his chains off? Just because he has the capability to harm doesn't mean he will."

That supposes someone's around to do the shooting. What if the ape coerces those men? What if he's a rich ape and gives them a bunch of bananas, buying them off?

Quote :

"You focused on the wrong parts. The point was that I don't believe we are anywhere near (and may never be) a system where we can feed computers enough data that it can make policy that is free of favoritism, crony influence, and doesn't infringe on individual liberty"

You're probably right, and that's why we have to be aware of these things. They don't just stem into our computer models. They don't just stem into our utility functions. They stem into our definitions of words themselves.

The best we can do to combat crony influence is to be aware of it in thought and in action. To be aware of how the powerful have shaped our perceptions and our words, and to be aware of how they maneuver practically. The more open our entire system of organization becomes, the closer we'll get to wiping this crap out. But you tell me: can you get away with more when your ledger is open or closed?

Quote :

"The point about quality of life is I think a rational data driven person of libertarian persuasion and is naturally skeptical of a top down system would be forced to question their beliefs if you really could show them such a system is "fool proof" so to speak. By what metric you measure that by I don't know. Quality of life is just an example."

"Fool proof" has to mean something like "is the system stable to internal forces", in my opinion. Just because neoclassicals (or whoever) can construct a nice logical picture of how some system is supposed to work (under various assumptions of human agency and its properties) doesn't mean it would work in the real world. It could leave out certain aspects of human personality, behavior, tendencies, etc. We both agree with this notion.

Nobody's asking for "liberty" to be taken away. What socialists and more self-aware liberals tend to question is the definition of liberty being used. Liberty as defined by American libertarians tends to focus on economic liberty, or the liberty of folks to do things with what they own. Suppose there are 3 bosses in the world, and they collude. You're born into that world, and everything is owned; thus you must live in a way where they extract rents from you, or pay you wages. Maybe you could save up eventually to become an owner yourself (if you could accumulate enough money to make it worth their while or convince them otherwise), but it seems like a strange notion of "liberty" that I could choose to work for any of 3, all of whom stipulate nearly the same set of constraints upon my life's possibilities. If all 3 demand I don't smoke cigarettes and could enforce that demand, I wouldn't be free to do so.

This is really a semantic issue or an intuitive issue at its core. Some folks think that ownership, liberty, etc are all defined implicitly in nature and that our words just need to conform to these objective properties (kind of a Platonist view, but fine). Others recognize that these words come with class-based definitions; thus the libertarian with his notions of ownership and liberty, trimmed to favor the private property holder.

Quote :

"Are you really that insulated in academia that you don't see the reality that is the United States? We are a nation of spoiled, lazy, video game playing, politically apathetic, sheep prone to being herded into tight little groups like our genes dictate. I've asked you this on numerous occasions....just how do you propose to change this? I don't see our population "waking up" until they are forced to do so and they won't be forced to do so until life in America is so shitty we won't recognize the place."

You notice how often I'm so furious or disgusted I can't control my rudeness? It's because I do look around, see what you're talking about, and it really upsets me. I have no fucking idea how to proceed from here other than to announce my conclusions and things I think are useful to point out. Part of the fight at this point has to get people looking inward at their own concepts, their own language, and to ask whether or not these things weren't trimmed to support certain conclusions.

[Edited on January 21, 2012 at 11:27 AM. Reason : ]

1/21/2012 11:26:04 AM

Quote :

"Loneshark, there's a tool I use to find out if the things I'm thinking have any merit or basis in reality, why don't you try it"

And look how that google 100% verified what I said. Most of us are clearly not obese. Your own graphs show it to be only 22%. How delusional can you be to do the research, verify my position as correct, put it in your own post, then try to chastise me for not looking looking it up? Shit, I thought obesity was worse than you found it to be. You just showed me that you were more wrong than I thought you were.

Quote :

"Here Loneshark, great example of the government sitting back and letting individuals act on their "rational self interest" without collective oversight/self-reflection:"

So, when the government seizes all the private land in a country, nullifying all private claim to the property, then that now abandoned property gets vandalized, you blame private property?

Perhaps the most important benefit of private property is for someone somewhere to have a directly motivated incentive to protect the property from vandalism. Public property is owned by no-one, at best managed by government workers with no personal stake in the property. Here in America we know this all too well, as regions where the government owns less than half the forest area suffers nearly all of the illegal harvesting, over-harvesting, over-hunting, disease outbreaks, squatting, and forest fires.

If you want to see true anarchy, then the closest you can often come is government owned property.

Quote :

"Fine, then just buy your TV and programming from companies who won't show them. Libertarians, tell me again why this hasn't worked."

The adverts can be funny, I personally find adverts from ambulance chasers more offensive than fast food adverts. So most people don't mind them compared to other advertisers on offer, so there is no reason for networks to discourage them. But for you personally who does dislike them, they have a solution for sale. It is called a DVR, such that you will never again need to watch any commercial of any kind. You can also sign up for HBO and Cinemax, which are advert free. Netflix is also free of advertising.

1/21/2012 11:31:24 AM

Quote :

"Suppose there are 3 bosses in the world, and they collude."

All systems have their limits. Private property as a concept is very robust. It functions without a state to enforce it. It is easy for humans to understand. And it is highly productive, ensuring land has some protection against vandalism, ensuring land is used in some productive way, and incentivising against abuse. But nothing is perfect. An idiot can buy land and ruin it. The system has a strong check upon such behavior, as bankruptcy will tend to separate the land from the idiot. The system also has strong check against monopoly, as land prices shoot up at any attempted monopolization, running the potential monopolizer out of resources.

But, no system is perfect. If the government seized all of Utah and gave it to Bill Gates in exchange for some favor, I would be in favor of a political re-distribution of the private property of Utah out of Bill Gates' hands. I would immediately call to recognize squatters' rights until the emergency was over. But what can this possibly have to say about America today where the government has not done such a thing for 400 years? (The largest land holder in the world is Queen Elizabeth II, whose ancestors did not buy the land in any private property sense).

1/21/2012 12:11:38 PM

Quote :

"When you consider a handfull of guys were responsible for incidents like the Enron fraud (leading to collapse and unemployment for tens of thousands of people, loss of pensions, etc), the problem is clearly not just with government."

sure. if you COMPLETELY ignore the gov't actions that set the stage for Enron to do what it did, then you could make that argument. And by "gov't actions" I don't mean "deregulation." Rather, I mean "absurd regulations". Enron occurred because of the inanity of the gov't attempts at supposed deregulation, even though what they really did was just put in different regulations that anyone in their right mind would have seen would cause enormous problems. Enron came in and gamed that market, a market with GOVERNMENT PRICE CAPS. think about that before you try to pass of Enron as an example of "gov't deregulation". Moreover, Enron was allowed to do much of what it did BY THE GOV'T, ITSELF! Enron didn't just dick around and magically fail. It knew what it was doing was shady, it asked permission from the gov't, and then got it. Yet you say this is Enron's fault alone?

1/21/2012 12:30:38 PM

Quote :

"sure. if you COMPLETELY ignore the gov't actions that set the stage for Enron to do what it did, then you could make that argument. And by "gov't actions" I don't mean "deregulation." Rather, I mean "absurd regulations". Enron occurred because of the inanity of the gov't attempts at supposed deregulation, even though what they really did was just put in different regulations that anyone in their right mind would have seen would cause enormous problems. Enron came in and gamed that market, a market with GOVERNMENT PRICE CAPS. think about that before you try to pass of Enron as an example of "gov't deregulation". Moreover, Enron was allowed to do much of what it did BY THE GOV'T, ITSELF! Enron didn't just dick around and magically fail. It knew what it was doing was shady, it asked permission from the gov't, and then got it. Yet you say this is Enron's fault alone?"

Oh I'm not saying it's Enron's fault alone. There was certainly collusion throughout the process. Ken Lay was personal friends with the Bush family; the Enron dudes were remarkably well connected politically. In order for fraud as massive as Enron to get pulled off, you needed across the board collusion of varying degrees

Enron relied a lot on mark-to-market accounting. You seem to think they simply came in and gamed the system after it was established, but the fact is that they were integral in pushing much of it through

[Edited on January 21, 2012 at 12:37 PM. Reason : .]

1/21/2012 12:36:57 PM

Quote :

"but it's a different sort of power than the power a factory owner exerts when he puts people out of work to control prices. (This is in a way more autocratic.)"

Come on, factory owners don't control prices and you know this. Competition, though slow as it may be some times because of the capital involved in certain industries, is alive and well. I'm certainly interested to see you cite some modern day examples where this isn't the case. Additionally, why do progressives frame losing a job as some sort of end of times situation, especially given the generous support by the state? The only time losing a job becomes really pernicious is during recessions. Why do we not show equal concern for the business owner who has invested in an employee only to see him leave?

Quote :

" When you consider a handfull of guys were responsible for incidents like the Enron fraud"

It wasn't a handful of guys. It was 100s potentially thousands of accountants that helped enable the fraud and then attempted to cover it up by shredding documents. Look, I'm not sure your point here. It takes one person to break a law, are you suggesting we remove all laws so they can't be broken? Is the outcome of 1,000 people losing employment any different when 1 person does the cost cutting versus the other 50000 that own the company looking out for their own interests?

Quote :

"Nothing about stripping government solves the problem here (in principle) anymore than simply adding government"

Like you, I think it is a matter of education. As sheeps, we readily trust authority and we think the government exists to look out for us. That isn't consistently the case. Given that we have regulation and it does nothing to protect us, I'm not sure why the complaints for reducing it. If we make folks aware that there actually isn't anything on the books to protect them from harm/loss then these people will make their own choices. Do you think if we told the folks doing business with MF Global that there is a decent chance if things get bad the company will steal their money they'd do business with them? Hell no. These folks, like many dreamers of the wise and playing field leveling government, didn't think such a thing was possible. They were wrong.

Quote :

"The more open our entire system of organization becomes, the closer we'll get to wiping this crap out. But you tell me: can you get away with more when your ledger is open or closed?"

This is what scares the shit out of me. Our system is pretty fucking open, peoples minds arent. Plenty of studies exist that opposing facts only manage to close peoples minds. I'm not hopeful there is anything that will ever change this reality.

1/21/2012 12:42:34 PM

Quote :

"You seem to think they simply came in and gamed the system after it was established, but the fact is that they were integral in pushing much of it through"

and you don't understand that the gov't specifically said they could use mark-to-market accounting in 1992ish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal#Mark-to-market_accounting

Quote :

"Despite potential pitfalls, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the accounting method for Enron in its trading of natural gas futures contracts on January 30, 1992."

1/21/2012 12:44:08 PM

Quote :

"Come on, factory owners don't control prices and you know this. Competition, though slow as it may be some times because of the capital involved in certain industries, is alive and well. I'm certainly interested to see you cite some modern day examples where this isn't the case."

The system's full of manufactured scarcities at various levels. I'm curious why you think modern examples are more important than, say, historical ones, since we're discussing a system and not the current practical implementation of it. You think the steel pools and price fixing are not relevant to discussions of relatively deregulated capitalism?

Quote :

"Additionally, why do progressives frame losing a job as some sort of end of times situation, especially given the generous support by the state? The only time losing a job becomes really pernicious is during recessions. Why do we not show equal concern for the business owner who has invested in an employee only to see him leave?"

In a monetary economy, in order to survive or live a decent life, you need to get money. For people who don't own productive capital (and who are not able to bring goods to market themselves), the only option is to sell one's labor for money (wage labor).

It's precisely in times of recession "progressives" are most concerned; when output rolls back there's less demand for labor. When people lose their ability to bring in money, times get hard (as you point out). This is precisely what people feel sympathy for (the hard situation), and while it may be bad for a boss who has to let someone go (being constrained by his own balance sheet), losing an employee is not on the same scale as losing your own ass.

Quote :

"It wasn't a handful of guys. It was 100s potentially thousands of accountants that helped enable the fraud and then attempted to cover it up by shredding documents. Look, I'm not sure your point here. It takes one person to break a law, are you suggesting we remove all laws so they can't be broken? Is the outcome of 1,000 people losing employment any different when 1 person does the cost cutting versus the other 50000 that own the company looking out for their own interests? "

I tend to think that as more people are in the loop, and the more people get to look at and think about it, the less we'll see massive fraud like we did at Enron. It's not clear how deep the deception went, but I imagine a lot of the employees were surprised when shop was closed up.

I don't follow much of the logic in this passage here, but I'm not really denying that crowds can get out of hand. Far from it. It's just that concentrating power in the hands of a few individuals is not necessarily going to increase "human liberty", and the philosophical solution to this is rethinking the politics itself, not the definition of "liberty".

Quote :

"Given that we have regulation and it does nothing to protect us, I'm not sure why the complaints for reducing it. If we make folks aware that there actually isn't anything on the books to protect them from harm/loss then these people will make their own choices. Do you think if we told the folks doing business with MF Global that there is a decent chance if things get bad the company will steal their money they'd do business with them? Hell no. These folks, like many dreamers of the wise and playing field leveling government, didn't think such a thing was possible. They were wrong."

So is the argument that we're simply not culturally advanced enough for self-determination, and that we should give up instead of working toward that goal?

Regulators can get bought out and corrupted. Why is the solution scrapping regulation instead of holding regulatory bodies accountable? I realize the second requires a cultural shift, but do you really think we need masters so much that we can't even grope in a direction away from their control?

Quote :

"This is what scares the shit out of me. Our system is pretty fucking open, peoples minds arent. Plenty of studies exist that opposing facts only manage to close peoples minds. I'm not hopeful there is anything that will ever change this reality."

Would require a change in culture for sure.

Quote :

"and you don't understand that the gov't specifically said they could use mark-to-market accounting in 1992ish."

What don't I understand about it? I'm explicitly pointing it out. I'm just trying to figure out what your point is, and why you believe that once the government is fully removed from possible control by the people that the situation would stabilize or improve. What's driving the greed here is money-power and desire for money; all the government trickery is simply jumping through loops in existing barriers (or, in many cases, opening the loops for themselves).

1/21/2012 12:55:37 PM

Quote :

"Regulators can get bought out and corrupted. Why is the solution scrapping regulation instead of holding regulatory bodies accountable? I realize the second requires a cultural shift, but do you really think we need masters so much that we can't even grope in a direction away from their control? "

Our masters demonstrate they cannot be trusted, and your response is to call for a cultural shift against their own interest to make them better less corruptible masters? Seriously?

Utopian nonsense. Design the system such that the good done by government is maximized and the damage done by government is minimized given the people we have. You cannot base your political philosophy upon assuming people can be made better than they are. And given the people we have, it is insane to ask the people of government to attempt to do certain things.

1/21/2012 4:18:50 PM

Quote :

"How about the mountains of evidence showing us that deregulated capitalism doesn't produce better bosses and owners than the politicians you're pointing out? Right-wingers totally miss that executive power is still power/authority, and bosses/owners can come to wield as much power as any politician. Liberals are half-awake about this, you're right, but so are you. Only people who recognize that both private and public authority are still just that (authority), and that authority breeds class-interests, understand that the current problem is a mixture of private and public sources."

This is a good point.

1/21/2012 5:53:47 PM

Quote :

"What don't I understand about it? "

as I understood what you were saying, Enron was an example of a business, by itself, causing a huge problem. But that simply wasn't the case. It was able to make the huge problem by means of the gov't, and the gov't gave its blessing to one of the root causes of the fiasco when Enron asked!

1/21/2012 7:29:29 PM

^ I will evidence burro's point.

Quote :

""I did not believe Mr. White, nor any of the other Enron executives I spoke with, were being honest or forthcoming about EES's profits," Olson said. "When I pressed Mr. White for an answer he said, 'One word: California.'" "

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0510-03.htm

1/21/2012 7:53:59 PM

Im not gonna read the thread, so this might be a little off topic, but from the OP:

Quote :

"Every other species on Earth will eat its food supply into nothingness in the absence of predators, this is the primal version of the Tragedy of the Commons. So why are humans immune? Is a spark of rationality, even one competing with irrational instincts, lusts, emotions, religions, etc, sufficient for Capitalism to work?"

I don't think this is exactly correct. All "mature" natural systems eventually come into a relative equilibrium barring a lot of outside influence. It remains to be seen if humans are capable of realizing that a rapid growth and then die-off are avoidable (as you see in new ecosystems). Certainly individuals realize that but it remains to be seen if it can spread widely enough to actually change the momentum.

For me its not so much the economic system, but the values of that system which lead to the problems. That is to say it may be possible for humans to still utilize a free market system and avoid ecological disaster IF the values of society are shifted from what we find today.

If a free market system priced in the opportunity costs of future generations, ecosystem services, biodiversity, maybe even aesthetics? etc then I think we would see a much more sustainable system emerge. Unfortunately, our current system has been either unable or unwilling to take such things into account.

1/21/2012 10:10:54 PM

Tieing the causes of Enron to the government is fucking stupid and an embarrassment to the conservative cause.

1/21/2012 10:25:17 PM

I'm pretty sure the point McDanger is trying to make is that Enron used its influence to create loopholes for itself, whereas if there was no government regulation it wouldn't have even had to go to those lengths to commit the fraud it committed. Government failed massively in this case, but the solution isn't to get rid of government because then it would become even easier for this type of thing to happen. Considering how much money the Enron executives made and the fact that they were never really prosecuted, many other people in their position would attempt the same things. The only thing keeping it from happening more often is because regulations are there to prevent it.

1/22/2012 2:20:21 AM

Don't you understand how moronic you sound? Enron broke the law. Enron didn't secure "regulations" that allowed it to break the law. It broke the fucking law. We aren't going to legislate good people. My reply wasn't in response to McDanger anyway.

1/22/2012 8:53:35 AM

Quote :

"Enron didn't secure "regulations" that allowed it to break the law. It broke the fucking law."

Honestly, you really don't have the story straight.

1/22/2012 10:47:44 AM

Clearly not. There was no regulation they secured that said "let us commit fraud via accounting tricks". Fraud is fraud. This isn't a difficult concept.

1/22/2012 10:56:02 AM

Quote :

"It remains to be seen if humans are capable of realizing that a rapid growth and then die-off are avoidable"

They are avoidable, but I don't believe it will be avoided forever.

However, you seem to be mistaken over what form our future collapse will take. Thanks to technology, I believe a free society could weather any future situations. However, free societies do not last forever. Be it 100 years or a thousand years, war will come. The culture of peace we have enjoyed for over a half century will pass, yet nuclear weapons will always be with us.

The world was largely peaceful from the 1815 to 1908. Over 90 years. Our world has been largely peaceful since 1945, less than 70 years. Get enough generations between those that slaughtered themselves and us, and we too might feel the need to sacrifice freedom and liberty in the name of our government being bigger and better than everyone else.

To suggest we will suffer a die off any other way seems absurd to me. All other problems merely make it harder to live comfortably, not kill us off in large numbers.

One of my biggest complaints against big government stems from this fact that all of the preventable end of the world scenarios begin with a big government.

1/22/2012 11:05:41 AM

Quote :

"Thanks to technology, I believe a free society could weather any future situations"

Assuming you can afford the technology. Its true that America will likely be "relatively OK" in the face of ecological disasters, but we are also relatively rich in money, resources, and power. The rest of the world wont be as lucky.

Quote :

"The world was largely peaceful from the 1815 to 1908."

I don't think you can really say that. The Civil War, The US crushing all the Natives in the West, the Spanish American War, a shit ton of stuff going down in Europe that I don't even know about etc etc. How are you defining largely peaceful?

Quote :

"To suggest we will suffer a die off any other way seems absurd to me. All other problems merely make it harder to live comfortably, not kill us off in large numbers. "

But you are ignoring one of the primary reasons for war -- its to extend your empire so that you can have access to more resources. So war will likely come before populations are overextended, but the result is still the same.

Quote :

"One of my biggest complaints against big government stems from this fact that all of the preventable end of the world scenarios begin with a big government. "

Again, its not the system that will eventually lead to disaster but the values of that system. Whether you have big or small government, its the idea of endless growth and domination of natural resources (including other human beings) that eventually leads to conflict. However, a small shift in perception could avoid the troubles we can all see are coming

1/22/2012 11:50:10 AM

Quote :

"Clearly not. There was no regulation they secured that said "let us commit fraud via accounting tricks"."

actually, yeah, they kinda did. not on all of their shenanigans, but on some of them, ones that started the ball rolling, they most certainly did obtain the gov't's blessing.

Quote :

"I don't think you can really say that. The Civil War, The US crushing all the Natives in the West, the Spanish American War, a shit ton of stuff going down in Europe that I don't even know about etc etc. How are you defining largely peaceful?"

I think he is talking about major, global-scale wars. We all know there were some wars in that time, but they were mostly internal conflicts, not entire continents of several countries going to war and involving other continents.

1/22/2012 12:22:18 PM

Quote :

"Whether you have big or small government, its the idea of endless growth and domination of natural resources (including other human beings) that eventually leads to conflict. However, a small shift in perception could avoid the troubles we can all see are coming"

The phrase "endless growth" has no meaning to me. The system has never been dependent upon endless growth, as demonstrated by the fact that it does not endlessly grow. Recessions happen. There is no economic reason why the system would not keep operating even if per-capita incomes fell every year due to resource scarcity or political interference (see recent history).

As for domination of natural resources, it makes no sense to have humans dominated by inanimate objects. So who else should be in charge but humans?

Quote :

"But you are ignoring one of the primary reasons for war -- its to extend your empire so that you can have access to more resources."

No, so your government can control more resources and manage them on behalf of your nationalist interests. If foreigners are willing to sell me whatever I need, then I have no need to have my government invade them. But in a big government world, the first things that go up are trade barriers. Just as the U.S. Government is attempting to do right now to prevent the export of our cheap natural gas, to keep domestic prices artificially low. If America had a small enough government, it would find itself dominated by the industry it is attempting to restrict and would not do this.

1/22/2012 1:03:39 PM

Quote :

"If America had a small enough government, it would find itself dominated by the industry it is attempting to restrict and would not do this."

That sounds much worse.

1/22/2012 2:12:53 PM

Much worse than global thermonuclear war?

1/22/2012 3:05:05 PM

Quote :

"The phrase "endless growth" has no meaning to me. The system has never been dependent upon endless growth, as demonstrated by the fact that it does not endlessly grow. Recessions happen. There is no economic reason why the system would not keep operating even if per-capita incomes fell every year due to resource scarcity or political interference (see recent history)."

The system needs continued growth to keep people happy enough so that they continue to buy into it. The system isn't working if a majority of people are starving. If the globe sustained negative growth for several years in a row that is exactly what we'd see. In our current recession we only had one year where there was actual negative global GDP growth (2008 I think) all of the other years were just slow downs and we still had record numbers of people standing in soup lines. It doesn't take very long in these types of conditions before people start demanding a change in the system, and if its a majority then you can reasonably say things would likely change (for the better or for the worse who knows).

Quote :

"As for domination of natural resources, it makes no sense to have humans dominated by inanimate objects. So who else should be in charge but humans? "

I probably wasn't clear, humans are still in charge, however their attitude and approach to resource consumption is different. Today the coal baron asks himself "Can I strip mine this coal out of the ground and get it to market for cheaper than the market price?" Instead the equation would be more complex "what are the costs to future generations? Does this mountain provide services to the community as it stands now?" etc etc Its a shift in values. The baron either asks himself these things or, even better, those questions are somehow calculated into the market price.

Quote :

"No, so your government can control more resources and manage them on behalf of your nationalist interests. If foreigners are willing to sell me whatever I need, then I have no need to have my government invade them. But in a big government world, the first things that go up are trade barriers. Just as the U.S. Government is attempting to do right now to prevent the export of our cheap natural gas, to keep domestic prices artificially low. If America had a small enough government, it would find itself dominated by the industry it is attempting to restrict and would not do this. "

Humans band together to help ensure their survival (or in this case prosperity), and they have since the beginning of time. I think its unlikely that foreigner will be willing to sell you whatever you need in a scarcity dominated world. Only the hyper-individualist cheers high gas prices while his neighbors are freezing. These people exist, but they are not a majority of humanity. Governments are just a reflection of these values.

[Edited on January 22, 2012 at 6:10 PM. Reason : .]

[Edited on January 22, 2012 at 6:13 PM. Reason : ....]

1/22/2012 6:09:55 PM

A recession is a particular animal. Unemployed people don't just earn less, they earn nothing. But, recessions are not a long-term feature outside of sustained regime uncertainty. So, putting recessions to the side, there is nothing inherent to a free system which makes it unreasonable to have both low unemployment and long-running loss of per-capita GDP. After the system has allocated all attainable resources to their highest valued uses, the resultant sum is simply lower than last year. Falling productivity just means it takes more labor to produce as much as we produced last year, which means plenty of jobs struggling just to produce what we produced last year. Without governmental interference, the economy will have a booming industry employing ever more workers producing whatever resource it was that we found to be short, be it food, fuel, building materials, whatever.

Quote :

"The baron either asks himself these things or, even better, those questions are somehow calculated into the market price."

but those calculations are already being run. Futures markets exist running decades into the future. If the coal could reasonably be expected to be worth more to future generations than it is worth to current consumers, then someone would shut down the coal mine, sell futures contracts, and profit. But to the best of my knowledge, such a decision is insane, because the best evidence we have is that future generations will be more resource rich than we are. We today do not begrudge our relatively dirt-poor grandparents for all the oil they pumped out of Texas. I similarly doubt our relatively rich grandchildren will begrudge us what we use.

Quote :

"Only the hyper-individualist cheers high gas prices while his neighbors are freezing."

Only a hyper-nationalist (racist) prevents a capitalist from transporting goods from where they are relatively plentiful to where they are relatively scarce. All resources are always scarce. Their relative scarcity is reflected in the price. If natural gas costs more in Britain than it does in America, why should a brit freeze to death unable to buy gas at any price just so Americans can save a few dollars on their heating bills? Only a government (and apparently you) could think this is the right thing to do.

1/22/2012 7:25:22 PM

LoneSnark, would you mind adding "I think/believe" to the beginning of all of your sentences so that people who haven't caught onto your schtick yet won't be confused into thinking you actually use facts? K thanks!

1/22/2012 10:19:57 PM

Normal readers should be able to recognize which sentences represent facts and which do not. For example, if it sounds like something that can be found in a textbook, such as "relative scarcity is reflected in the price" or something easily verified through wikipedia such as the existence of something called "futures markets", readers should be able to interpret these as facts. When I use words like "to the best of my knowledge..." I think the average reader can deduce that I am drawing deductive conclusions. I do realize some readers such as yourself might not catch the implications of generalization, such as when I say "We today do not begrudge our relatively dirt-poor grandparents...", which anyone else would obviously conclude is not fact, as on a planet of six billion certainly someone somewhere does begrudge their grandparents for energy use. Even if it was fact, there was no possible way I could have known, making it a guess, or better described as an opinion of what I believe best resembles the truth.

All that said, this is an internet forum. Nothing said here by anyone should ever be blindly accepted as "fact", myself included. If anyone here says something that totally conflicts with your understanding, feel free to explain your functional understanding and how it differs. Maybe the actual truth is somewhere in the middle.

For example, a movie on this subject was shown here at NCState (a fact) proclaiming the perpetual growth requirement of capitalism. The mechanism was the banking system's tendency to make fixed payment loans at interest, which would eventually bankrupt all consumers, as a falling absolute income would render fixed monthly obligations ever more of a burden until the system collapsed. But this was obviously bunk, as the average inflation rate during the 19th century was quite negative (a fact) yet personal bankruptcy was no more prevalent than today. While real income managed to grow while absolute income fell, people still managed to pay their bills because the occasional pay-cut was expected and therefore consumers and their lenders managed to plan around it.

1/23/2012 1:01:40 AM

Quote :

"the perpetual growth requirement of capitalism"

Well, there is a reasonable presumption that a growth requirement exists if dividends average 2% yield and any reasonable account would put the total expected return from stocks at >5%. The fundamental cash balance dictates this. The other side of the coin is that when dividends are much greater than expected total return then there is a reasonable presumption that the stock market expects contraction.

When the dividend yields re-balance then I will agree that capitalism doesn't have a growth requirement.

1/23/2012 2:01:32 AM

Quote :

"A recession is a particular animal. Unemployed people don't just earn less, they earn nothing. But, recessions are not a long-term feature outside of sustained regime uncertainty. So, putting recessions to the side, there is nothing inherent to a free system which makes it unreasonable to have both low unemployment and long-running loss of per-capita GDP. After the system has allocated all attainable resources to their highest valued uses, the resultant sum is simply lower than last year. Falling productivity just means it takes more labor to produce as much as we produced last year, which means plenty of jobs struggling just to produce what we produced last year. Without governmental interference, the economy will have a booming industry employing ever more workers producing whatever resource it was that we found to be short, be it food, fuel, building materials, whatever."

For my own information, when in recent history has a society sustained negative GDP growth for several years in a row and unemployment not skyrocketed?

Quote :

"Futures markets exist running decades into the future"

Really? I'd say at most they run 5 years into the future, a relatively short amount of time. They don't price in the things I named, they only price in what they think the future price will be (there is a difference IMO). In the coal baron example a mountain might be the headwaters of a watershed that supplies water to several towns, and if left alone it could do that for nearly eternity. Its hard to price that but at some point in the future that could be nearly priceless. Things like that just aren't priced into our current system

Quote :

"because the best evidence we have is that future generations will be more resource rich than we are. We today do not begrudge our relatively dirt-poor grandparents for all the oil they pumped out of Texas. I similarly doubt our relatively rich grandchildren will begrudge us what we use."

I actually do begrudge my ancestors not conserving oil a little more. Specifically more recent generations during the oil crunch in the 70s. That was a wake up call to start thinking about alternatives and our country epically failed in trying to answer. The longer our economy is dependant on oil the more painful its going to be when we attempt to transition away from it. That shit has caused us a lot of headaches since then, we may have been able to avoid Iraq if we were less dependant on it etc.

I'm just not that really sure our grandkids are going to be that much better off than we are (measured in wealth the way we measure it today). I think some recent reports from the UNEP, IEA, World Bank and IMF are starting to indicate that view. Its only going to become more obvious with a little more time.

Quote :

"Only a hyper-nationalist (racist) prevents a capitalist from transporting goods from where they are relatively plentiful to where they are relatively scarce. All resources are always scarce. Their relative scarcity is reflected in the price. If natural gas costs more in Britain than it does in America, why should a brit freeze to death unable to buy gas at any price just so Americans can save a few dollars on their heating bills? Only a government (and apparently you) could think this is the right thing to do. "

I was only pointing out a pretty common human behavior, that we tend to join with our neighbors before we join with some abstract person on the other side of the world when we think it benefits our survival. Despite the best efforts of our current system, people still feel community with those that live nearby and that part of human nature isn't going anywhere.

Its unfortunate but we see the opposite of your example is also true. People often support local workers struggle for higher wages but when you call attention to workers on the other side of the world threatening to commit mass suicide due to their conditions people can't really be bothered. Its because those foreigners are abstract, just like a freezing british person.

But this is getting pretty far away from the original argument here



[Edited on January 23, 2012 at 8:18 PM. Reason : .]

1/23/2012 8:15:51 PM

Quote :

"we may have been able to avoid Iraq if we were less dependant on it etc"

we would have been able to avoid Iraq if we were less dependent on policing the world, blowing up brown people, and sticking our nose into other people's internal affairs

1/23/2012 8:58:05 PM

I'm not gonna argue it too much, because its getting way off topic but:

those reasons played a role in going to Iraq but ultimately oil is the reason why we ended up in Iraq. If we were just concerned with blowing up colored people and "policing" then we would have been engaging in Africa off and on for a while now. But those regions just don't matter (except Libya and Nigeria, both Oil producing states)

1/23/2012 9:12:20 PM

well, you are correct, but not for the reasons you think you are. The oil connection occurred in 1953, and we've been tripping all over that decision ever since

1/23/2012 9:15:20 PM

I will come back tomorrow for the rest of your post. I have time for this. Switzerland is entirely dependent upon oil, yet they have never invaded anyone. Every industrialized country on this planet is entirely dependent upon cheap oil. The vast majority of them did not invade Iraq and would never have invaded Iraq if America's leaders had chosen not to. Compared to European and Asian countries, America imports far less of our oil than they do. Yet it is us that keeps invading oil producing states. It has nothing to do with oil and everything to do with our large military. We want to police the world by invading weak states that are important, and being oil producers makes them seem important in our eyes. If God had moved all the oil out of the third world, the U.S. would still be sending armies to the third world to secure whatever came next on the central planner's list, be it tin, rare earths, or friggin' coffee.

Disband the U.S. military down to the size of, say, that of the European Union, and we will never invade Iraq again. But no, according to you the size of government has nothing to do with how government acts.

1/24/2012 12:04:12 AM

Quote :

"If God had moved all the oil out of the third world, the U.S. would still be sending armies to the third world to secure whatever came next on the central planner's list, be it tin, rare earths, or friggin' coffee. "

lol, well that's the story of the 19th century.

1/24/2012 12:44:20 AM

What are we arguing about again?

You do realize that Switzerland's per capita oil usage is almost half of the United States right? Some states are more dependant than others. Also several nations in the European Union DID send their puny armies to Iraq and then several of them were major players in the Libya fiasco. Its not just America.

Switzerland doesn't have an army (to speak of). Is it because they have small government? Well by a lot of metrics they actually have what some in america would call "big government." They don't have a military because thats their tradition, they as a nation value pacifism and the government reflects those values. If Americans held the same views then we likely wouldn't go to war either. Unfortunately thats not really America's mantra, there are multitudes of people in this nation that believe in shooting from the hip and taking whats theirs; not to mention the people in power that know it will be good for their bottom line etc.



You keep implicating me saying that I think we should be invading everyone and I believe we should have a huge military and that I'm a racist and building all these strawmen when I never said any of those things. The only argument I was making was that it is a natural human tendency for humans to feel community and buddy up with their neighbors when they think it will help ensure their survival, especially in times of scarcity. So before we start arguing over the meaning of Iraq perhaps we should go back and take a look at how the argument originally started.

[Edited on January 24, 2012 at 6:49 AM. Reason : .]

1/24/2012 6:47:21 AM

1/24/2012 9:05:19 AM

^^ I never said you said those things. You said "oil is the reason why we ended up in Iraq" and "we may have been able to avoid Iraq if we were less dependant on it". I said invading Iraq had nothing to do with our level of oil consumption and everything to do with our huge military. You have now recanted your previous position, accepting that "They don't have a military because thats their tradition...If Americans held the same views then we likely wouldn't go to war either." A statement leaving no room for oil dependence. So the conversation is over. In the parlance of internet forum rules, I win.

Quote :

"You keep implicating me saying that I think we should be invading everyone and I believe we should have a huge military and that I'm a racist"

What else can I think? Your response to me pointing out America's tendency to build a huge military and use it to kill foreigners is not to agree with me that such behavior is despicable, your response is that it is "a natural human tendency for humans." Maybe you do find trade barriers, resource nationalism, and a huge government military despicable, but you still have yet to say so. You specifically dance around it, spouting tales of "Humans band together to help ensure their survival...Governments are just a reflection of these values." You have told me this three times now, leaving me to guess whether the words "natural human tendency" are the words someone uses when describing despicable behavior. To me, this sounds like a defense of group action in general, even though the specific group action I have cherry picked here eventually leads to war and potential extinction of the species.

Quote :

"during the oil crunch in the 70s. That was a wake up call to start thinking about alternatives and our country epically failed in trying to answer."

You have misread the 70s. We have had over 30 years of cheap oil after that decade, so choosing to stick with oil was clearly the right choice with hind-sight.

Quote :

"The longer our economy is dependant on oil the more painful its going to be when we attempt to transition away from it."

I do not believe any such transition is going to be necessary. However, even if we assume it is, transitioning early would be far more painful than transitioning at the right time due to the false starts and an imposed massive misapplication of resources. When the time comes, prices will rise and people will transition. Try to do it early and you risk fracturing the social fabric as people dedicate their efforts not to using less oil, but to circumventing the governments imposed shortage.

1/24/2012 3:29:11 PM

Ok, well in the interest of time I'd like to rewind back to the crux of my argument before the sidetracks:

Our system is dependant on infinite growth and we live in a finite world, therefore our system (or any system based on endless growth) cannot last forever.

and you eventually said:

Quote :

"A recession is a particular animal. Unemployed people don't just earn less, they earn nothing. But, recessions are not a long-term feature outside of sustained regime uncertainty. So, putting recessions to the side, there is nothing inherent to a free system which makes it unreasonable to have both low unemployment and long-running loss of per-capita GDP. After the system has allocated all attainable resources to their highest valued uses, the resultant sum is simply lower than last year. Falling productivity just means it takes more labor to produce as much as we produced last year, which means plenty of jobs struggling just to produce what we produced last year. Without governmental interference, the economy will have a booming industry employing ever more workers producing whatever resource it was that we found to be short, be it food, fuel, building materials, whatever. "

Do you have any evidence this is true? Im just being curious here, the bolded part goes directly against Okun's law and a majority of all empirical data since forever.

1/24/2012 5:50:15 PM

Evidence? Sure. The middle ages are rife with this exact outcome. The plague would kill lots of people, per-capita income would rise for a decade or so, then begin a slow gradual decline back to subsistence wages as population grew until malnutrition brought population growth in line with productivity growth. It was called the iron law of wages. This came to an end with the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution drove productivity growth above the population growth rate.

There is no law that production growth must always exceed population growth. But that was a long time ago under radically different circumstances. As such, the persuasive evidence is deductive. Unemployment occurs when wages exceed labor productivity, so firms lay off unproductive workers. As unemployment increases, wages fall until wages are in line with productivity, firm profits rise and expand production employing more workers, ending unemployment. This is how any free market matches supply with demand. All falling productivity means is that the price where supply meets demand should fall over time.

Markets allocate all factors of production. I see no where in the mechanism that growing resource scarcity (predictably higher prices over time) should halt standard operation.

[Edited on January 24, 2012 at 7:39 PM. Reason : .,.]

1/24/2012 7:29:41 PM

Quote :

"firm profits rise and expand production employing more workers, ending unemployment"

Your deduction ends for me when production isn't able to keep expanding due to resource scarcity. the result is, as you pointed out, famine and disease. Again, if people are starving I don't think the system is working.



Yes, I realize that technology can increase the efficiency of resource use and can increase the marginal product of labor to allow continued expansion. But, I believe, there are real world limits to this and at some point there just isn't enough (even at 99% efficiency use)

1/24/2012 11:29:50 PM

Americans have not starved to death due to economic scarcity for hundreds of years. The world-bank calculates subsistence at less than $1 a day. Americans today rake in $129 a day. As such, per-capita income needs to fall an absurd amount before we even need to consider the possibility of subsistence living.

Again, all resources are always scarce. That they are a little more scarce than we are used to doesn't change a damn thing. If food scarcity is increasing, then as prices rise consumers spend more of their income on food and less on big houses and new cars, workers will leave these sectors for the food production industry. Yes, real per-capita GDP has fallen as we now have fewer new homes and fewer new cars as consumers cut back there to cover their food bills. But the diversion of resources and workers away from these other industries will succeed in boosting food output to satisfy the demand.

1/24/2012 11:45:55 PM

^

1/24/2012 11:48:41 PM