Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: JasonC; Travis McGee
I deny that gratuitous expansion of credit picks your pocket

Oh really? Well, you are a fool because it also picks your pocket. All those folks who own Park Ave condo's, and fly private jets to vacation houses in the Virgin Islands. That was all bought with money derived through expansion of credit, and it is drawing on goods and services in the US economy, driving up the prices of goods and services that I would like to purchase with my salary. So yes, damned straight it picks my pocket.

107 posted on 03/12/2008 7:20:00 PM PDT by AndyJackson
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 105 | View Replies ]


To: AndyJackson
No, it doesn't pick my pocket and it doesn't pick yours either.

Park ave condos existed and were owned before you were born and have nothing to do with contemporary credit.

The rest is the same tired class warfare nonsense.

Everything anyone ever does in economic life changes the value of every commodity you possess, and plenty you don't possess. Is this a reason for no one else to be allowed to perform any economic action of any kind? It is not.

If one man lends to another to fund some new production, neither of them you, and the loan is sensible and makes economic sense and produces new value, then there is more value in the world after it than before, and none of that value is yours. Does that pick your pocket? It does not.

If two men agree to work together to make something, do so, and others like it and bid for it, and in doing so are drawn away from something else you work at or own or sell, does this pick your pocket? No, it does not. Buggy whip makers aren't robbed by Henry Ford. The value of their goods and services changes, but they had no prior right to those values, beyond their real usefulness to other men.

And you have the freedom to pick every commodity you want to hold or own, and to avoid any other. If you think one class of them is a bad deal, you needn't hold it, and you are not wronged in any way by someone else choosing to, even unwisely.

If some potential customer of yours goes to Vegas and bets on red and loses, and then can't buy something you offer, you have not been wronged by the house in Vegas, or by him. Because you had no prior right to the value of his goods. The bare potential that he might choose to do things that would benefit you more than what he did choose to do, is not an economic right that can be violated if that doesn't pan out.

You are not wronged in any way by modern financiers and their modern finance. Sometimes other free men will even manage to do stupid things that make everything harder for the whole society, because it is poorer for their mistakes than it would have been for more enlightened decisions. But that still isn't wronging you, because you have no prior right to other men always using their freedom wisely. It is their freedom, not yours, and they are not your slaves.

You need an attitude adjustment, stat. Also, you haven't got a conservative bone in your body and you are on the wrong site, thinking as you do.

109 posted on 03/12/2008 9:22:01 PM PDT by JasonC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 107 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson