Posted on 07/04/2009 10:32:05 AM PDT by GoodDay
Despite a number of differences I have with Ayn Rand on issues of religion and philosophy, her 1957 magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," definitely steered me away from the leftist upbringing I had, and introduced me to the world of conservative ideas and authors: Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, Isabel Paterson, and many others.
Universally panned by literary critics of the day, "Atlas" was, nevertheless, a bestseller in 1957, and continued to sell about 100,000 copies a year for 51 consecutive years. 52 years later -- just after the inauguration of zerobama -- "Atlas" has apparently tripled its sales and has been flying off the shelves at bookstores.
For those who have never read it, "Atlas Shrugged" -- originally titled in its draft form "The Strike" -- is about a mixed-economy United States falling rapidly into full-fledged socialism. As it does so, all the highly competent people of individual accomplishment -- in business, science, and the arts -- mysteriously start to resign their positions, quit their jobs...and disappear. Naturally, the disappearance of these achievers -- these "Atlases" whose productivity carries the rest of the world -- causes the crash of the economy and society in general to occur ever more rapidly. Why these people are disappearing and where they are going is the core of the plot...which I certainly won't give away. Love her style of writing or hate it, "Atlas Shrugged" is relevant and essential reading today.
I read it twice in rapid succession in high school, lo these many years, and am now rereading it in light of the aggressive attempts at a socialist coup in our country. There's a passage toward the beginning of the novel that flabbergasted me, since it predicts with great accuracy the "bailout mentality" started by Bush and continued and augmented under zerobama. The passage also describes how industry is complicit with government in its own regulation and what it expects to gain from it (i.e., protection from competition).
The scene has to do with attempts to regulate the railroads, an industry that plays a starring dramatic role in the novel, as well as being an effective visual metaphor for goal-oriented achievement in general.
Here is an excerpt of Miss Rand's description of the regulation from "Atlas Shrugged":
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"The proposal which they passed was known as the 'Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule.' When they voted for it, the members of the National Alliance of Railroads sat in a large hall in the deepending twilight of a late autumn evening and did not look at one another . . .
. . . No railroad was mentioned by name in the speeches that preceded the voting. The speeches dealt only with the public welfare. It was said that while the public welfare was threatened by shortages of transportation, railroads were destroying one another through vicious competition, on 'the brutal policy of dog-eat-dog.' While there existed blighted areas where rail service had been discontinued, there existed at the same time, large regions where two or more railroads were competing for a traffic barely sufficient for one. It was said that there were great opportunities for younger railroads in the blighted areas. While it was true that such areas offered little economic incentive at present, a public-spirited railroad, it was said, would undertake to provide transportation for the struggling inhabitants, since the prime purpose of a railroad was public service, not profit.
Then it was said that large, established railroad systems were essential to the public welfare; and that the collapse of one of them would be a national catastrophe; and that if one such system had happened to sustain a crushing loss in a public-spirited attempt to contribute to international good will, it was entitled to public support to help it survive the blow . . .
. . . The Anti-dog-eat-dog-Rule was described as a measure of 'voluntary self-regulation' intended 'the better to enforce' the laws long since passed by the country's Legislature. The Rule provided that the members of the National Alliance of Railroads were forbidden to engage in practices defined as 'destructive competition'; that in regions declared to be restricted, no more than one railroad would be permitted to operate; that in such regions, seniority belonged to the oldest railroad now operating there, and that the newcomers, who had encroached unfairly upon its territory, would suspend operations within nine months after being so ordered; that the Executive Board of the National Alliance of Railroads was empowered to decide, at its sole discretion, which regions were to be restricted . . ."
“The de-regulation crowd pushed like heck to make it easier for mortgage bankers to process mortgages with less regulation.”
Hello there parsi!
Could you please tell me who these de-regulation folks are?
From my understanding it was the government regulations that forced banks into a situation where they had to loan to certain groups else be accused of things like “redlining”.
In fact - a younger Barak Obama served as legal counsel for ACORN on the issue of redlining.
It was folks like Bawny Fwank - government regulation people - who pushed this sort of thing.
In fact - Bawny hasn’t learned his lesson. He wants Fannie Freddie to “relax” again.
As far as Wall ST. - their largest contribution as far as I can tell would that nasty little thing called the credit default swap.
SW - who really thinks the people running the show actually belong in jail.
Part trois. (This is as high as I can count in French and I am not sure even this is right.)
“Thank GOD we have division-of-labor and capitalism, where everyone’s good is achieved by each person providing a good or service needed or wanted by someone else...To regulate capitalism is simply to abolish it and replace it with socialism, even if only incrementally. This incremental socialism always makes things worse ... until finally capitalism is abolished entirely and replaced with all-round central planning.”
Oh, this is a false dichotomy from Hades, which in Rand’s philosophy, destroys concepts.
You present two choices - laisse faire cap or centralized planning. BeeEss!! There are degrees of regulation. One society may wish to set minimum wages and stop there. Another may add weight and measure standards. And so on. To go whole hog centralized planning has only been done by a few societies and those have all flopped.
Do you really think that Australians,Canadians, Swiss, Germans, Danes, Finns, British, French, Spanish, Swedes, etc. are all living in totalitarian regimes with no personal freedom? And no economic freedom?
Heck, many of them are living better than us, and all are market driven economies where people can achieve. They all have differing degrees of regulation. Do you really think Americans are so stupid that we can’t come up with sensible regulation? But one of the holdbacks in America are people like you in the laisse faire camp. Every attempt at regulation, sensible or otherwise, is treated like a heresy.
Common sense dictates that an economic system can be over-regulated. Many European countries did so back in the 70s and 80s. Too much time off. Too many benefits. And yeah, we kicked their a**es in the market. Now, however, we are competing with economies like India, China, Mexico etc. where their workers live in shacks, and have little, and now we are getting our butts kicked. Unless we want to live like a third world country, we have to respond with gov’t intervention, and it will happen. You can either be there to make sure it is sensible and within some bounds, or you can pick up your marbles, go home and pout while your country falls to pieces around you.
And before you come back with me being a liberal, let me remind you of another famous liberal you may have heard of. His name was Douglas MacArthur. He was tasked with rebuilding Japan after WWII, and being the flaming liberal that he was, he instituted labor unions, and minimum wages, and worker protections, and business regulation in Japan.
parsy, who says darn if it didn’t work.
Oh darn, now you’re jumping on me too! I can’t type fast enough to keep up!
Anyway, the CRA mandated more loans in poor areas, if possible, so credit restrictions were loosened. The poor folks paid their bills, so loans to the wealthier were also loosened. This turned into a debacle.
Frank did push for loosening, but GOP was all for it too. The mortgage guys didn’t give a crap because they were making commissions on the packages and probably getting kickbacks.
Credit card companies were practically given carte blanche (Spanish for a “white cart” which is what rich folks in Spain used to have because they could afford paint whereas the peons could not afford paint due to the inequities inherent in the unregulated capitalistic system. ) with bankruptcy reform wherein less poor victims of the legal loansharking could resort to bankruptcy.
parsy, who hopes that answered it.
I agree with all of that, except - it all started with CRA.
CRA started a dominoe effect.
As usual with liberal meddling - something is done in the name of compassion and unintended consequences wind up hurting more people in the long run.
CRA is government regulation.
FannieFreddie encouraged the mortgage guys w/ their false claims to great revenues.
Turns out Wall Streeters weren’t the only ones interested in mult-million dollar bonuses.
So Fannie Freddie gives a false illusion of safety - semi government backed - misleading the investors.
It’s a virus that infects the whole system.
It all started w/ the government - perpetuated by the government. And the crooks are still trying to “help.”
SW - who still likes you, and is going to bed now if you don’t want to answer right away :)
Part Quattro:
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It’s only libs, trolls, frauds, etc., who harp on “perfection” because they don’t live in the real world; ... It’s this utopian, un-real-world aspect of the liberals’ thinking that ultimately makes them so dangerous. Once they get that “vision” of utopia, there is nothing they won’t do to try to achieve it: from incremental hampering of voluntary exchange on the market to gulags and psychiatric prisons. It’s all done to make laissez faire “just a little more perfect.””
I actually agree with you on most of this. The Utopian vision is the road to hell usually. I don’t seek perfection, I only try for “better.” it is not possible for everybody on earth to be 100% happy and 100% equal. However, that don’t mean that things can’t be better. If for example, minimum wages, don’t provide a basic amount for life, then you are going to have more problems. More people will choose to stay on welfare if a job doesn’t get them ahead. Some people are just lazy as bat guano, and wouldn’t work under any circumstances. But many people can not afford a job.I have two clients who are industrious and want to work but can not because of the loss of medical benefits. One has AIDS and the other a multitude of physical problems.
I don’t know of a better alternative than capitalism. Like I have said before, while Rand sees it as “The Unknown Ideal” I see it as, “Well it beats being a commie.” That being said, sensible regulation can make it better.
For example, livable minimum wages, keep the costs of employees off the taxpayer and puts it on the employer where it belongs. That keeps business from being “looters” ala Rand.
parsy, who is far from an Utopian.
I don’t think it ALL starts with gov’t. The sharpies are always trying to find some way to separate people from their money. Always have and always will. For example, gov’t didn’t start Madoff on his path. Effective gov’t oversight would have stopped him short of $65 billion scalping.
Gov’t regulation can certainly cause problems, but it is not rational to try to do away with regulation. All human societies have had to have regulation of business transactions or there would be no society.
parsy, who says goodnight!
That is, in fact, the way it actually works. That's the reason we even have the accumulated wealth that we do have.
The invisible hand thing.
I can tell you don't know much about the subject yet you have strong feelings about it. Another liberal trait. Anyway, Adam Smith's metaphor of the "invisible hand" had more to do with the overall coordination of production and pricing on a free market than it did about the social function of division of labor: if there's a wheat crop failure and the price of bread rises, the higher price induces others to invest in bread production (as a way of cashing in on the new high price); the new investment leads to more bread production; the new bread production leads to a greater supply of bread; the greater supply of bread reduces the price of bread. No "bailout" or "emergency remedies" by government needed.
But the bread one earns is paid by the boss or the customer. And a clever and greedy boss can up his take by passing his costs onto someone else.
You clearly have no idea of what you're talking about. "Costs" are always passed onto someone else or else every business -- even the ones you liked, assuming you like any at all -- would go bankrupt. So try to concentrate parsy-who-really-does-think-about-these-issues and focus your thoughts and explain more clearly what you mean. An unclever and ungreedy boss who did NOT pass his costs onto someone else would very soon cease to be a boss.
So give the guy frying the eggs in Waffle House $6.55 per hour, and let society pick up the rest of what it takes the guy to live.
If the guy frying he eggs in Waffle House is getting $6.55/hour then he's overpaid. A moronic job like frying eggs is really only worth no more than $5.00/hour...but guess what? The government has made it illegal for many of the zhlubs applying for the egg-frying job to offer their services to the clever greedy boss for $5.00, even though they would LIKE to have the job at that rate. (The PR section of "Government Regulation Central", of course, phrases the advertising of its minimum wage laws differently; they make it sound as if they are protecting the poor zhlub from "exploitation" and imposing a stiff "regulation" on the greedy employer. That's merely advertising. The reality behind the advertising is that the minimum wage law simply prevents the zhlubs of the world from offering their services at a wage they would be quite willing to accept under freedom. What happens to the zhlubs under minimum wage? They simply remain permanently unemployed -- thank GOD, therefore, for welfare! They get to go on the dole!).
So who exactly is this guy frying the eggs for $6.55/hour? Why it's Joe the Electrician! He's skilled labor and could easily be getting a starting rate of $25/hour...except that all the jobs for beginning electricians have been taken by the electricians' union, which he cannot afford to join. The electricians' union demands that its members get $65/hour, -- and since there's only so much money in the local economy's "wages-fund" -- businesses have nothing left over to hire our boy, even at a much lower rate. So he applies for a job frying eggs at Waffle House. The clever greedy boss is overjoyed since he thinks he's getting someone who knows how to set an alarm clock and get up in the morning and show up on time. He's right. How greedy of him. The problem is this:
Now we have a guy who's capable of creating $25/hour of value for others working way below his capabilities by being put in a stupid position of creating only $6.55/hour. Additionally, someone else (aforementioned zhlub) who could have been adding $5.00/hour of value to society has been disallowed to do so, and has been taken out of the economic equation altogether. Rather than adding even a little value to society, he is now a drain on society by being put on the dole.
Frankly, the serf system worked better than this because at least the serf had the basics of life at the time. During slavery days, many slaveowners would free their slaves when they hit old age. Noble gesture? Hardly. No production so pass the cost along.
Scratch a troll, find a pro-serf, pro-slavery liberal. I love it that those touting the benefits of serfdom and slavery never imagine in their utopian scenarios that THEY would be the serf or the slave. We never hear any one of them say, "If I were a serf, I sure would be a lot happier, even in my dotage, remaining in bondage. I loved serfdom and bondage when I was in my prime; I know I'll continue to love it in my old age." We never hear that. It's always related neutrally in the third person, "Serfs would be much happier in bondage. How greedy and cruel of their masters to free them." I guess it never occurred to anyone to poll the aged serfs to find out what they thought about it.
I don't want to awaken you from your utopian fantasy of how you believe other people ought to live their lives or what ought to make them happy. But your argument is stupid. Nearly all serfs and almost all slaves were uneducated; they had zero skills for the free world. What you aver about "aged serfs" could just as easily be claimed (and has been so claimed) about ALL serfs and ALL slaves of ALL ages. And you know what? There were, apparently, some serfs and some slaves who agreed with you. Some did not want to live freely (as a recent article in Der Spiegel notes clearly about some former East Germans pining for the good old days under the STASI and communism). Guess what I'm going to say next? That's right.
None of that makes any difference. It doesn't matter if you believe serfs and slaves are happier under bondage; it doesn't matter of some (or even all) of these serfs and slaves agree with you. What economics can say WITHOUT ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER is that serf-labor and slave-labor must, by their very nature, be INEFFICENT labor. And in a market economy, institutionalized inefficiency in labor is a drag and a drain on EVERYONE ELSE: on everyone's money, on everyone's natural resources, on everyone's time, and on everyone else's labor.
The best reason AGAINST serfdom and slavery is not that it's bad for the serfs and the slaves -- you've just argued that it isn't bad at all but a positive good -- the best reason is that it's bad for the rest of society who live as freemen. The best thing for the rest of society, would be to free the serfs and the slaves and start paying them market-level wages.
The problem is that the division of labor is good. And capitalism is good. Its just that dark side needs to be addressed. Too many conservatives fail to see the dark side.
Too many trolls and phony conservatives harp on a supposed "dark side" to laissez faire capitalism, yet cannot show any evidence of this from the real world. They present evidence based on their fantasy-utopias in which businesses are not supposed to be serving the wants of consumers, but are assumed to be "benefits organizations" serving the retirement wants of its employees. That's the direction GM went in and we all see what that led to.
GoodDay, who believes that farsy's bloodied fingers from typing are a just punishment for his foolish posts.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. ”
Note that this is NOT the individual welfare, but the GENERAL WELFARE. The welfare of our society. part of that welfare is to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our children and their children.
This is not, let us establish a government to make sure the rich guys stay rich, or let us make a gov’t where somebody can pile up a fortune at the expense of others.
It is about establishing rules for us all to get along, have peace, and be able to go about our business with as little gov’t interference as possible.
If you read the Const, you will see that commerce could be regulated. It is part of a gov’ts function.
IMHO, you would do well to recognize this legitimate function of gov’t and work to keep it in the bounds the founding fathers intended. To do this, you have to get off this laisse faire kick. Deal with reality.
parsy, who does not want to think of all the ends Barney has gone to...
First, as regards trolls and morons. I know that I am not a troll. Believe it or don’t.
I may be a moron. I say that because when it comes to economics, its a very wide discipline that interacts with politics, ethics, justice, and darn near everything else out there. I can not claim absolute knowledge about all aspects. All I can do is read, study, think about it, and try to integrate what I have seen in my life with the theoretical.
What I must do ethically is be prepared to defend my ideas and in good faith enter into debate and discussion. If I am a moron, then I eagerly await intellectual correction. What is important to me is reality, and if I am wrong, I want to know. I do not wish to go thru life in moron status. But I will defend my position and will not flip without convincing.
Now, to your idiotic statement (ok, just kidding)
Once more: THE WEALTH OF THE SUPER-WEALTHY “HAVES” CONSTITUTES THE DEMAND FOR LABOR — THE SALARIES AND WAGES — OF THE “HAVES” AND THE “HAVE LESS.” By “spreading the wealth around”, you hurt the lower economic classes. Egalitarian socieites are always poor societies.
NOnononononono! The demand for labor is spread among all levels of society. It does not trickle down from on high by the generous wealthy. A middle class guy needs his car fixed. A poor guy needs his taxes done. A wealthy guy needs his gold golf clubs polished.
By spreading the wealth around, you create demand at a level where there is a higher marginal propensity to consume and drive your society. What the super wealthy may have,is a pool of wealth for investment, but that pool could be created by spreading the wealth around enough where there becomes a marginal propensity to save.
The higher the income, the higher the MPS, and the less demand, and particularly the less sensible and sustainable demand.
parsy, who is in the middle of a severe thunderstorm
Be honest. There’s 10 of you all typing this.
“Costs” are always passed onto someone else or else every business — even the ones you liked, assuming you like any at all — would go bankrupt. So try to concentrate parsy-who-really-does-think-about-these-issues and focus your thoughts and explain more clearly what you mean. An unclever and ungreedy boss who did NOT pass his costs onto someone else would very soon cease to be a boss.
What I am complaining about is the employer who needs an employee, but just doesn’t want to pay what it costs to have an employee. So lets say it cost about $2,000 per month for a person to survive in a basic fashion, or $12.00 per hour. That basic rent, utilities, car, fuel, food, clothing, insurance.
But, Bob Cheapo, the employer, only pays $7 per hour and leaves Hardworking harry, about $800 short on that. So Harry doesn’t get health insurance and car insurance. Who picks up the difference? Taxpayers and whoever he hits in his car.
Bob Cheapo’s competitors, even if they want to do the right thing, will be prohibited by competition from doing the right thing.
These costs should be passed along to the customer, in a readily recognizable form called a “price”. Instead, Cheapo is a looter in Rand’s terms.
parsy, who is putting bandaids on his fingers.
If the guy frying he eggs in Waffle House is getting $6.55/hour then he’s overpaid. A moronic job like frying eggs is really only worth no more than $5.00/hour...but guess what? The government has made it illegal for many of the zhlubs applying for the egg-frying job to offer their services to the clever greedy boss for $5.00, even though they would LIKE to have the job at that rate.
Work is honorable and maybe a egg-fryer doesn’t merit $50,000 per year. But he has to make enough to live,or he has little incentive to work. And no, no sensible person wants to work for not enough money to live. And what ethical person would want to take a persons work time,and pay them not enough for a basic living?
parsy, who used to live on minimum wage
“Nearly all serfs and almost all slaves were uneducated; they had zero skills for the free world.”
Again, BeeEss. Who do you think did the frigging work? Somebody famous said, “Sooner or later everything degenerates into work.” Can you imagine some fop Squire getting out there and doing the work?
parsy, who has twice had his dang electrical outlets pop with the lightening
Frankly, the serf system worked better than this because at least the serf had the basics of life at the time. Scratch a troll, find a pro-serf, pro-slavery liberal.
Again, BeeEss. I am not defending serfdom or slavery. I am simply pointing out that your view of capitalism has produced a system where a worker works and does not even make the basics of life. And, you think it is ok!
This is where you get third world problems. Create a permanent underclass and America will be unrecognizable.
And regardless of what you think about wages, do you not at least have the good sense to realize that you must pay a man enough to live? Or is that not your problem?
parsy, who does not want a permanent underclass
Both excellent suggestions.
The government is also always trying to find some way to separate people from their money.
There were already laws and regulations concerning Madoff’s bad behavior. There were people who tried to alert the “authorities”.
Unfortunately the authorities weren’t interested in investigating and enforcing the law.
It reminds me of when gun control advocates have hissy fits after a tragedy demanding new laws when clearly existing laws have already been violated.
I never said to do away with all regulation - certainly, in hind sight, the Glass-Steagull Act wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
It would be wise to regulate CDS’s, as it appears to be sophisticated insurance fraud.
But to expect that government should tell banks who to lend to and how? And be “effective” ? defies common sense.
Government simply is not “effective” at much of anything.
People are getting worked up over the the losses on Wall St. and don’t seem to add up the numbers being sucked by D.C. Our dollars - our children’s dollars, and so on and so on.
You’re upset about Madoff?
What do you think Obama is up to right about now?
SW - who needs more coffee
“parsy, who does not want a permanent underclass”
ahhhh....there it is.
And I don’t mean that in a bad way.
I live among “rural poor”, people who many would describe as the permanent underclass.
Now you’re getting into socioeconomic pseudo spiritual issues here that perist throughout all societies.
It is easy to be idealistic until you work with some of these folks.
It is easy to be jaded after having spent more time with them.
All I can really say (because this issue exasperates me) is that no matter who is charge - capitalists - communists - or even a royal family - there is always going to be an underclass.
As far as I can tell - they cannot be convinced to live otherwise.
Thanks for your post. I’ll be checking out the discussion.
I don’t think BO is going to have much choice but to pump money like crazy into economy. Then the debt is going to have to be monetized because there is no other way to pay it off.
And yes, gov’t is inefficient, and stupid, and wasteful. Just take a look at the education system. How much money has been spent trying to teach algebra to people who will never use it. 12 years at least for each kid, and you still get illiterates. Some go to college and still can’t write good english.
Guns-—I just watched Bowling for Columbine last nite. I liked Sicko, but this one was stupid. I don’t know what the point was. However, Heston was too stupid to put forth any argument. Moore trampled all over him.
parsy, who has to take his truck for a hail damage estimate
Neither Hades nor false dichotomies “destroys concepts.”
You present two choices - laisse faire cap or centralized planning. BeeEss!! There are degrees of regulation.
To the extent you regulate voluntary exchange in the market, you infringe on individual freedom in the market. The little enclave of involuntary exchange carved out by government diktat is a little piece of socialism co-existing within a larger capitalistic market framework and (more importantly) sponging off of it.
One society may wish to set minimum wages and stop there.
BeeEss! Absolutely impossible except in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Minimum wage laws make it illegal for workers to offer their labor for less than the law permits. If he offers it for less, and the employer agrees, the transaction is considered illegal (though, of course, it will only be the employer who will be punished, since he is automatically assumed to be an “exploiter”). The upshot of minimum wage laws then is, must be, and has always been, an increase in unemployment. A number of empirical studies back this up but you don’t need empirical studies to understand why this must be so. THEREFORE...a country that merely wishes to have minimum wage laws WILL find itself with an additional unemployment problem. Will it do nothing? I doubt it. It will either create “make work” jobs, subsidized by taxpayers, or it will put the kid on the dole and pay him to remain unemployed. Let’s say it puts the kid on the dole. Now we have another problem: a rising class of “kids on the dole.” They get into trouble; they commit crimes; they have nothing to do. There will probably be a gang problem (this is true in almost all the European countries that have a “dole” system). Now there’s a policing problem. So the minimum wage created the additional teen/minority unemployment problem; that created the dole problem; that created the crime problem; that led to a gang problem; that led to a police-hiring problem; this will lead to a budget problem (“should we raise taxes to hire more police to deal with the gangs? Or should we cut, e.g., fire fighting, school hiring, or sanitation to get the extra funds?”).
Every attempt to “regulate” voluntary exchange on the market will -- not “may” but “WILL” -- lead to a cascade of unintended and unforeseen consequences on OTHER GROUPS AND SECTORS OF THE ECONOMY that will do two things: (i) it will make matters worse even when viewed by the advocates of the original legislation; and (ii) it will require a further act of legislation -- either repeal of the first regulation, or (much more likely) the imposition of another regulation to attempt to deal with the unintended problems created by the first regulation. That is why regulation always tends toward full-fledged, all-round economic planning. It was always that way in history and it is so now.
To go whole hog centralized planning has only been done by a few societies and those have all flopped.
And yet the left keeps on trying to impose all-round central planning, does it not? Wanna know why? Because, incrementally, each act of regulation leads to other effects on other sectors of the economy that were not foreseen. Those effects are always negative. To deal with these negative effects requires either that the first regulation be repealed, or that new ones be added (government always prefers the second because it provides a stronger rationale for its growth). What started out as 1 regulation soon becomes 2, then 5, then 10, etc., until the entire economy is regulated and “planned.” A Nobel laureate in economics named F.A. Hayek wrote a famous book about this called “The Road to Serfdom.”
Do you really think that Australians,Canadians, Swiss, Germans, Danes, Finns, British, French, Spanish, Swedes, etc. are all living in totalitarian regimes with no personal freedom? And no economic freedom?
No thanks to the left. The fact that all those countries are not YET fully planned is due entirely to the fact that they still have freedom of speech (more or less) and still have people who understand something (more or less) about capitalism and laissez faire, and who -- when their economies get planned and screwed-up enough -- win elections. Keep in mind that they all have high levels of chronic unemployment (with which the U.S. is catching up) and which they simply live with as a fact of life.
Heck, many of them are living better than us, and all are market driven economies where people can achieve.
In fact, some are more market-driven in certain sectors than is the U.S. I mentioned in another thread that many countries are privatizing some or all aspects of their postal systems in order to take advantage of private-sector efficiencies and innovation. This is much bolder than anything the U.S. is doing about its mail delivery system. Sweden turned down a plea from Saab to bail it out, saying that the Swedish government was not in the car production business. We nationalized our car production. Belgium, it turns out, has had a competing private education system to the official government one for years that many of its citizens take advantage of. Neither France nor Germany has the same sort of single-payer healthcare system as the UK or Canada. To the extent they are truly market-driven, they live better than the U.S. non-market-driven sectors; to the extent they are non-market-driven, they live worse than the U.S. market-driven sectors.
They all have differing degrees of regulation.
And they all have different degrees of problems in proportion to the extent of their regulation. The more regulation, the more problems; the less regulation, the fewer problems. Hong Kong, before its return to China, had no minimum wage and no labor legislation. Guess how much unemployment it had?
Zero. None. That means that everyone who wanted to work could find a job. There was no government-created shortage of jobs, or a government-created glut of labor. The supply of labor intersected the demand for labor and all sellers of labor found buyers; i.e., all who desired to be employees found employers.
Do you really think Americans are so stupid that we can’t come up with sensible regulation?
There’s no such thing as “sensible regulation” in the economic sphere. There’s only regulation that serves the interests of X, and regulation that serves the interests of Y. If X and his group have the ear of government, then they consider the regulation to be “sensible.” If government wishes to serve the interests of consumers -- giving them as wide a latitude as possible to make free choices based on the kind of information that they choose to get -- then it would naturally regulate as little as possible, and it would tend toward a policy of laissez faire. If, however, it really wished to serve the interests of the X group or the Y group at the expense of everyone else, then it would tend toward a policy of interventionism, statism, and eventually, socialism (either along the Nazi lines or along the Bolshevik lines). So to answer your question, YES, I do think that American politicians are too stupid to come up with sensible regulation.
But one of the holdbacks in America are people like you in the laisse faire camp. Every attempt at regulation, sensible or otherwise, is treated like a heresy.
No, it’s treated like a catastrophe in the making. Recent economic and political history bear this out.
Common sense dictates that an economic system can be over-regulated.
Common sense dictates that one FIRST study economics before having opinions about economic policy.
Many European countries did so back in the 70s and 80s. Too much time off. Too many benefits. And yeah, we kicked their a**es in the market. Now, however, we are competing with economies like India, China, Mexico etc. where their workers live in shacks, and have little, and now we are getting our butts kicked.
Ummmm, but, we were not living in shacks when we kicked the butts of the European countries, so living in shacks has nothing to do with anything. People were living in shacks PRIOR to the introduction of capitalism in India and China, etc., and as they continue to re-invest profits and accumulate wealth and save, they will replace the shacks with little houses and then the little houses with big houses. That’s how we did it. The reason Asia is kicking our butt is that we have made ourselves uncompetitive with them: we pay workers artificially high wages, thus creating a pool of permanently unemployed. They pay their workers what the going rate is on the market (which, for most light industry, is very low). You don’t have to have workers living in shacks to be competitive. You simply need a free labor market – “free” meaning unregulated workers and unregulated employers.
Unless we want to live like a third world country, we have to respond with gov’t intervention,
It’s precisely government intervention that has created inflation, deflation, unemployment, recessions, and depressions (not to mention that other economy-killer and wealth destroyer, war). Government intervention created a shortage of housing by imposing rent controls; it created a shortage of gasoline in the 1970s by imposing price controls; it created a glut of labor by imposing a wage control (the minimum wage). Productive individuals are the economy; not government.
and it will happen. You can either be there to make sure it is sensible and within some bounds, or you can pick up your marbles, go home and pout while your country falls to pieces around you.
And before you come back with me being a liberal, let me remind you of another famous liberal you may have heard of. His name was Douglas MacArthur. He was tasked with rebuilding Japan after WWII, and being the flaming liberal that he was, he instituted labor unions, and minimum wages, and worker protections, and business regulation in Japan.
This brings up another point. Economics is a science, and either I am successful at articulating a certain proof or I am not. Economics is not a matter of "common sense" any more than physics and chemistry rest merely upon "common sense." So here’s my question: what makes you so sure that you have any “common sense” at all regarding economic policy? Since you’ve made it a point purposely NOT to study economics methodically, how do you know that any of your opinions are really based on “common sense” and are accurate and true, or whether they are just based on your feelings about things?
GoodDay, who believes that parsy’s bleeding fingers from typing are his just punishment for posting foolish things.
There is always a choice.
Money has already been pumped into the economy like crazy.
Keynesian economics has failed.
Of course even Keynes did not advocate this type of thing.
The current course is going to create much more pain for a longer period of time.
Liberals claim to love JKF, but fail to emulate his fiscal policy. Fortunately Reagan DID emulate JFK in that area.
The first rule should be “do no harm” or “do no MORE harm”.
Education - married to an educator here - much discussion takes place w/ hubby - a conservative in a sea of liberalism.
Didn’t Heston have alzheimers?
Are you really going to go there?
And you are aware Moore is a master at cherry picking, cherry - editing, and propaganda?
SW - heading off to a little league game.
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