Posted on 09/19/2011 5:08:38 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
The Coming Collapse: “We Can Buy Time, But We Can’t Change the Outcome”
By Aaron Task | Daily Ticker – Fri, Sep 16, 2011 1:23 PM EDT
The Ayn Rand Institute held its annual "Atlas Shrugged Revolution" dinner Thursday night in New York City.
In attendance were a number of financial luminaries and hedge fund managers, including Peter Schiff of EuroPacific Capital, John Tamny of RealClearMarkets, Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management and Scott Schweighauser of Aurora Investment Management.
The setting was the tony St. Regis Hotel on Fifth Avenue but there was nothing pleasant about the primary message coming from both the speakers and those in attendance: Western civilization is heading for hell and a hand basket, just like Rand predicted in her seminal novel.
In the accompanying video, ARI president Yaron Brook tells Henry why Rand's devotees believe the global economy is "heading for collapse."
In a nutshell, Brook believes politicians and policymakers have "no solutions" for the problems facing the globe.
"The fundamental problem," Brook says, is with the philosophical belief our society has that governments can solve problems and more rules and regulations are the answer to our economic ailments.
Barring "real structural change" to our economic underpinnings toward self-reliance and true laissez-faire capitalism, "we can buy time, but we can't change the outcome," Brook says.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Recovering_Democrat: “But collapse is not the only option to effect that change.”
I believe you’re right. People still have a choice. We can either elect leaders who are willing to roll this back, or we can continue on the same course until it comes apart. My concern is that the longer we delay, the more difficult it’s going to be. The Democrats aren’t going to be any help whatsoever. All they want is more of the same: more taxes, more regulation, and more entitlements. I think about 20% of the population are hard core statists.
no-to-illegals: “On this planet trial and error, mostly error, rule the day, simply because nobody is intelligent enough to avoid error.”
So what about the millions of Americans, including FReepers, who understand what’s going on and want to change it? Are we all unintelligent, too? No. Your point is nonsense. A lot of people know exactly how to solve this mess. It’s called returning to the small government, free market, and individual responsibility that created our great wealth in the first place.
A lack of morality is our problem, not intelligence. There are still many millions of moral Americans left who do not think it’s right to steal from their neighbors.
The problem isn't the leaders...the problem is the 50% of our population that don't WANT to roll this back. Go read the comments to that article at the source.
As long as their are two camps in this country who have DIAMETRICALLY opposite world-views, politicians will not solve the problem. Instead we will merely slip closer to the abyss, with both sides blaming the other and growing further alienated from each other.
This needs to be repeated.
There's not going to be a way of escape out of this mess, we're headed to a one world government and there's nothing we can do about it. One of the things people don't understand about Biblical prophecy about the End of Days is that the Anti-Christ doesn't come on the scene initially due to some great military victory, but because he offers a way to solve an economic crisis that seems to be unsolvable. There's a very good chance that this present crisis is the beginning of that final crisis, but only time will prove if I'm right or not.
This could very easily prove to be something other than that crisis, but considering the situation in the Middle East right now and how closely things are lining up with the description of the coming war according to Psalms 83, I'm pretty sure that this is the beginning of the final collapse.
Well my humble opinion is that there are NO business cycles save one, an annual cycle driven by the seasons.
The rest is driven by the ebb and flow of policies of governance, emerging technology, war and various other issues driven by human choice.
The fact that we have gone from wise to stupid in the way of monetary policy may be a recurring phenomenon but it isn’t cyclical. Human choices aren’t inevitably governed by a cycle.
Rather than holding a fatalism that is engendered by the belief in cycles in human behavior, I prefer the optimism that people can get a clue and keep it for thousands of years perhaps.
Teach your children well.
Axeslinger: “The problem isn’t the leaders...”
It’s the leaders and the people who support them.
Axeslinger: “...the problem is the 50% of our population that don’t WANT to roll this back.”
True, except we don’t know what percent are committed to destroying this country via socialism. We’re still generally a conservative majority country. The rest are getting a good lesson in Obama economics. It seemed like America’s great days were over when Carter was president. Then came Reagan.
It’s not hopeless.
I have a small glimmer of hope. 9/11 brought us together for what, 6 months? If the two different views of government's role cannot find a way to reconcile themselves with each other...it's over. It's just a matter of timing.
But, 9/11 brought us together for what, 6 months?
Agreement and would add two words ...
Teach and prepare your children well.
6 hours... about the amount of time before leftists were saying we deserved it, or asking what we did to make them attack us, or pleading for no response from our government or military.
“All the supporters of socialism/communism need to be “outed” and ridiculed.”
Oh, it needs to go FAR beyond outing and ridiculing. They are traitors.
The Ayn Rand Institute held its annual “Atlas Shrugged Revolution” dinner Thursday night in New York City. This is a short article about what was discussed. It confirms the idea that the book is a template for what is happening.
“I’m pretty sure that this is the beginning of the final collapse.”
So now we have 3 views of what’s ahead:
1.Your apocayptic view; the end is near
2.Recovering_Democrat and CitizeUSA’s optimistic view; that given application of free-market policies and backing off by the federal government the bad chaos and fighting can be avoided.
3.no-to-illegals cyclical view that the chaos and war is unavoidable, but not necessarily the end.
Of course there is the fourth view, also optimistic, but founded on a view of human nature that runs counter to the historical and cyclical reality that no-to-illegals appears to hold: that with enough education of the ignorant, redistribution of resources by the elite exercising authority, and negotiation and compromise between competing groups, the war and chaos we all see just ahead can be avoided.
Anybody have a fifth or sixth idea of how the continuing “crisis” will be resolved?
"Rebellion is always an option!!"--Jim Robinson
And, of course, secession.
It's fiction, of course, and it's a bit of a mystery to me why people should expect more out of it than that. Nevertheless, it contained some parts that were not Rand the theorist expounding, but Rand the observer recalling what she'd seen in Russia as a young student. Those, to me, seem the most persuasive parts of the novel, the bum's narrative of events at the Twentieth Century Motor Company being particularly brilliant in that regard.
What will fail is the question, and what will work? Rand took her post-fall communities back to subsistence farming and a barter/theft economy, which is about as low a level as is likely to be experienced here in the United States, in my opinion. Within that model, however, economics works perfectly well. She felt, and I agree, that it wasn't too far from the beginnings of the country past the point where everything had to be imported from Britain. She felt, and I agree, that the more laissez-faire economic model present at the time was responsible in large measure for the country's success, and that subsequent attempts to layer government control had fallen to the temptation of thinking that the control was the economy.
But the economies of the time weren't really isolated villages surrounded by farms, they contained local banking, local currencies, trade with neighboring regions, local defense, in short, all those things that we tend to over-idealize a bit these days as a golden age. What we sometimes don't like to recall is the failure rate of all of these but it's there in the records if we care to look.
The significant difference is in regional communication, which is the reason we have a continental economy and the reason Rand focused her novel around the Taggart trains. There was such communication before the trains, of course - the story of the Erie Canal is little less than astounding - but the national economy as we know it would be critically affected if train transportation were to fail between regions and truck transportation were to fail within them. Poorly crafted energy policies could do that; in fact, may already be doing so.
And so the focus will be on the local, which is why location out of the cities and toward small towns that have associated agricultural or fishing activities may be at a premium. I think most preppers agree on that issue. But the cities won't be empty, and as long as it is economically advantageous to run oxcarts full of grain down broken asphalt, someone will do so. But not from Topeka to Los Angeles.
What Rand posited that I do feel is likely under these circumstances is a breakdown of central authority, and I agree with her that it is unlikely to die easily or peacefully. There is very little actual violence in Atlas Shrugged, far less than I think will happen if people actually do start to starve. But we've seen breakdowns of central authority before in history. Once Rome fell and the empire split, the economic status of the independent manors changed very little; those endured through feudalism to the restoration of central authority under the Merovingians. Village life did not need central authority, but it was much more limited than the cosmopolitan empire provided. There were free cities, there was private banking, currencies, and eventually transportation. Some of this stuff took until the Renaissance to fully recover. A thousand years give or take a little.
I'd suspect that our own experience is likely to be much quicker, only because so much of this will not have to be re-invented, but merely restored. But the people who ate during all of this were near the manors and villages. Just some rambling thoughts.
Hadn’t thought of those two.
Here’s two more:
The people become sullen and wander around wearing only expressions of sadness and despair on their faces.
And of course, WE DIE!
Following up on your reply, Nip:
What have businesses been doing relentlessly at least for the past 25-30 years? Investing in technology for improved service and productivity; constantly downsizing (to improve service and improve profitability and productivity); emphasizing customer service (for improved profitability, sales and customer loyalty). The result is: businesses are sitting on lots of cash, have record levels of profitability, and are investing overseas for expansion purposes.
When is the last time any of these principles were pursued in the public sector? State or Federal? How about never?
What about our public institutions? Like our school system? Forget about it!
Idiotic.
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