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Wealth is subjective, and people value goods differently. Thus there can be a "drain on the economy" in the sense you can create and destroy wealth (voluntary exchange which creates wealth, and war/violence that destroys wealth). What Coward is wrong about is that you can drain the economy of a certain dollar value: An economy transforms inputs (land, labor, capital, consumables) into more highly valued outputs, and in the end, money isn't an input.

The philosophies of classical liberalism / libertarianism (ref. For a New Liberty) and Agorism would seem to meet all three of these requirements. They're certainly based on theories "of man's nature", reasonably well organized, and perfectly sincere. Perhaps we should consider requesting protection as an organized "religion"?

What about Freethought? There might be some difficulty regarding its "institutional quality", but it's a bit more than just a "personal moral preference", and should qualify on the other two points.

You seem to be invoking the myth of the natural monopoly.

http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_2_3.pdf

It's time for the republicans to disown Lincoln. Freed the slaves? Pshaw. Lincoln was an autocrat bent on centralizing government power in order to implement his economic utopia. source

Which sort of proves that most of the assumptions by those in love with Capitalism are at best incredibly dishonest. If people were guaranteed a relative level of stability (guaranteed housing, health care, food, and education) while being allowed to concentrate on what they love, you'd see humanity advancing by leaps and bounds.

I find your enthusiasm charming, but I consider it rather naive.

Who will provide the housing? If I don't like the housing, do I have the "right" to turn my nose up at it and demand better? Who will decide whether I deserve better housing?

Who will provide the health care? Everyone wants an infinite amount of health care; how do you ration it? If you pay the doctors well, where will you get the money for it? If you don't pay the doctors well, how do you get good ones?

Who will provide the food? Sometimes I like a fancy steak dinner; how often will I get one, and who decides?

But never mind these questions; let's get down to the important ones. Where on Earth, and when, has this been tried and shown to work?

The USSR was structured something like what you are describing. In theory, Communism gave to each as they needed. In reality, the economy was so bad that the USSR had a negative GDP: they were subtracting value. They took valuable iron ore and turned it into lousy Soviet steel. Then they took the lousy Soviet steel and turned it into lousy Soviet automobiles. The people were hungry, the health care was abysmal, and pollution was horrible.

The Pligrims tried something like what you described when they first arrived in America. It didn't work out.

In this country, in Chicago, there were massive "projects" built to provide housing for the poor. It didn't work out.

It turns out that people work both harder and smarter when they benefit from their work. And top-down-planning economies cannot possibly keep up with a a chaotic free market (and the creative destruction associated with it).

It is often argued that pure capitalism is heartless and cruel. But pure communism and socialism have even worse horrible disadvantages. If I'm going to live under pure anything, I'm going to choose the capitalism.

So, I'm happy that you have this faith in the innate goodness of humankind. But sorry dude, I don't think it's going to work.

steveha

You do know that Somalia has improved steadily since the disolution of the state, and at a faster rate than it's state ridden neighbors? Their private law system, the Xeer, has been somewhat disrupted by the US backed Etheopian invasion, but I'd still prefer it to any of it's neighbors. They have the best and cheapest cell phone service in all of Africa, and their living standards have improved by every measure, life expectancy, infant mortality, per capita income, you name it.

http://mises.org/story/2701

Quan Ha is absolutely right. The irony of being force to pay for your own oppression is positively Kafkaesque.

Our Enemy the State

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audio

Our Enemy the State

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audio

The Flexner Report is the reason why "modern medicine" costs so much. To quote the article:

One of the consequences of Flexner's advocacy of university-based medical education was that medical education became much more expensive, putting such education out of reach of all but upper class white males. The small "proprietary" schools Flexner condemned, which were contended to be have been based in generations-old folk traditions rather than relatively recent western science, did admit African-Americans, women, and students of limited financial means. These students usually could not afford six to eight years of university education, and were often simply denied admission to medical schools affiliated with universities. At the same time, the Report tended to delegitimize existing women doctors and doctors of color. While many such doctors continued to practice, usually within underserviced clienteles, they did so under proscribed circumstances and for less pay. In general, the standardization of medical education advocated in the Report led to the domination of American medicine by well-off white males. It also made it more difficult for people of color, residents of rural areas, and for those of limited means generally to obtain medical care in any form. The Flexner report recommended the closure of several African American medical schools, including the Leonard Medical Center, the oldest four-year medical school in the country for African-Americans.

-Flexner Report: American medicine becomes a less diverse profession

I don't know that there is a single politician in Washington who really groks the health care clusterfuck. 100 Years of Medical Robbery is required reading, as is the followup, Real Medical Freedom.

Today's health care systems sucks because an artificial monopoly has been given to a certain kind of "healer". End the monopoly, and things will improve.

To get back on-topic, the Pentagon surely has something better than rockets in their toolchest... I'd bet they have a SSTO spaceplane buried in the western deserts somewhere. :)

The Flexner Report is the reason why "modern medicine" costs so much. To quote the article:

One of the consequences of Flexner's advocacy of university-based medical education was that medical education became much more expensive, putting such education out of reach of all but upper class white males. The small "proprietary" schools Flexner condemned, which were contended to be have been based in generations-old folk traditions rather than relatively recent western science, did admit African-Americans, women, and students of limited financial means. These students usually could not afford six to eight years of university education, and were often simply denied admission to medical schools affiliated with universities. At the same time, the Report tended to delegitimize existing women doctors and doctors of color. While many such doctors continued to practice, usually within underserviced clienteles, they did so under proscribed circumstances and for less pay. In general, the standardization of medical education advocated in the Report led to the domination of American medicine by well-off white males. It also made it more difficult for people of color, residents of rural areas, and for those of limited means generally to obtain medical care in any form. The Flexner report recommended the closure of several African American medical schools, including the Leonard Medical Center, the oldest four-year medical school in the country for African-Americans.

-Flexner Report: American medicine becomes a less diverse profession

I don't know that there is a single politician in Washington who really groks the health care clusterfuck. 100 Years of Medical Robbery is required reading, as is the followup, Real Medical Freedom.

Today's health care systems sucks because an artificial monopoly has been given to a certain kind of "healer". End the monopoly, and things will improve.

To get back on-topic, the Pentagon surely has something better than rockets in their toolchest... I'd bet they have a SSTO spaceplane buried in the western deserts somewhere. :)

http://mises.org/

The Chicago School is only slightly better than the bare Keynesians.

Both schools are based on the deeply flawed idea that human action can be represented accurately in a mathematical model, along with a few other deeply flawed ideas.

You're claiming I have utilized a "widget fallacy" (please provide a link because your explanation is useless to me), but have not described a true flaw in the logic, you are simply mad at a placeholder for real world goods in the logic. Maybe you ought to give me an example of a "widget" (or "widgets") that would show the flaw in the logic.

Just because something is backed by law does not mean it is granted by law.

"Are public lawyers slaves? Are soldiers slaves? How about road contractors? In essence, I think your argument is fundamentally flawed."

These people may not be slaves but their income was forcibly removed from the hands of someone(taxpayers). In essence they are funded by second-hand slavery.

"Here is the most fundamental misunderstanding of economics..."

The things that you listed are only barely provided adequately by government, and each and every one of them has been provided by private institutions at some point in history. Most of them right here in the U.S.

As for the 18th century comment, consider reading some Hans Hermann Hoppe, or Murray Rothbard.

A strawman fallacy means that I oversimplified your argument. I didn't, I simply pointed out that you are practicing a fallacy, and by responding the way you did (pointing out "truer Scotsmen") you confirmed my point.

"Oh, I'm sure other economics professors would be interested..."

Classic appeal to authority.

"That would imply, dare I say it, that there should be some non-monetary inputs in a given society..."

I never said otherwise.

Ah, another guy who's fallen for the proganda. Copyright is not a real "property" law. In fact, it is the opposite - copyright is actively incompatible with property law, as shown by Stephan Kinsella. They just call it "intellectual property" to manipulate you, doofus. The stronger imaginary property laws get, the more property rights under the law are weakened. That's why libertarians, not renknowned for their communist leanings, oppose copyright and patent law. At least the ones who've thought about it and not fallen for the propaganda.

http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

Lastly, there is NOTHING wrong with a biased search engine as long as the people using it understand the bias. Business, environmental, left wing, right wing, socialist, communist, capitalist and what-ever-ists might like to have a search engine that gives them results according to their political views.

Exactly. And it should be the FTC that regulates it, not the FCC. FDR created the FCC to censor political speech under the guise of allocating limited spectrum. Since the Internet is not restricted by limited spectrum, the facade has been thrown off and the FCC is only about censorship in relation to the Internet.

As I've argued before here, bias is good, as long it is disclosed. It was the Progressive Era that ushered in "neutrality", as if there could ever be such a thing, which has only allowed biased views to masquerade as unbiased views.

What is Google's bias? For starters, they should more prominently disclose their association with the federal government. I still remember Google censoring my AdWords in 2002 for "anti-GOP views" (at a time when Bush was leading the U.S. into a an unjust war).

If the content is fantastic, there will be large scale contributors.

http://mises.org/ has no advertising that I've noticed. They have some million-dollar contributors.

I have a newsletter site that is free, with no ads, and I have some contributors that offer me a few hundred a year. I don't even openly ask for it (there's a link to contributing that just says "Contribute."). If the content is good, the money will still come in.

"And the government provided version is expensive"

Compared to what.

"All studies have shown that average cost per pupil for public schools is twice that of private schools." [further links to study]

Also, the ability to fire someone in theory is not the same as in practice. How much documentation is required to prove someone is a poor or less effective teacher? Is that due cause? It is not as if the teacher tried to kill somebody. By far, you are the dumbest poster I have encountered today..

Robber Barons? You, sir, slander the good name of brilliant men like Jay Gould and Daniel Drew. How dare you!

Yeah, I'm sure it was the unions that brought that about, and had nothing to do with the rising productivity brought about by those evil child employing capitalists.

Certainly, the capitalists must have built some sort of device that forced perfectly happy and well fed rural laborers and their well educated children to leave their rural squalor without offering a demonstrably better life, including such aspects as not forcing their children into prostitution or starvation. Because, you know, people can just point a finger at a hunk of metal, and a vast factory will spring up without any need for sacrifice or thought, mere muscular action is all it takes. If it weren't for those evil capitalists, we'd all be living in paradise right now, just like we were before they poked their heads into the loomhouses of feudal England.

Unions have done nothing that basic economics and group preference wouldn't have brought about on their own. The only real benefit of unions is that they make it more difficult for employers to break the law in their dealings with their employees (though they make it far more likely that employees will break the law when dealing with their employers, so the social gain is a wash in most cases). In the end, when you have strong unions, you have an unsustainable system that feeds on increased regulation and tax revenue (think United Autoworkers and the auto bailout).

what the fuck are you talking about? I explained to you how the federal reserve, fractional reserve banking, and the treasury department's shenanigans have created an inherently unstable financial system. your response:

"you are a fundamentalist!"

not exactly intelligent if you ask me. go read a fucking book man. I would recommend What Has Government Done to Our Money? Then .

Socialism can work well

For a good explanation of why this is false, and only tends to look true for constrained or limited versions of "socialism", please read "The Road to Serfdom", by FA Hayek.

Here's the short version, in comic strip form:

http://mises.org/books/TRTS/

Hayek wrote his book _prior_ to WW2.

Hayek's main insight was that central economic planning was the key inflection point that lead to absolute totalitarianism. The scandanavian countries tend to shy away from central planned economies and as such seem to have escaped the inevitable descent towards totalitarianism required to implement "the plan".

Problematically for most socialist nations is that they elevate the rights of society to a higher position than the rights of man, but tend to not enumerate either or work to constrain the power of the governors. The US was designed to avoid just such these problems, but we have had generations of reprehensible tyrants in elected [and appointed] office who have been blatantly destroying and ignoring these limitations.

Luckily the US has largely retained the fundamental individual right that most other nations who suppress individuals take away first: the right of a heavily armed citizenry. I desperately hope we in the US will fix our problems without resorting to that most basic of all individual freedoms, but I'm not very optimistic.

Taxation is Theft. Pure and simple.

http://mises.org/etexts/taxrob.asp

I'll leave the statists here to justify their servitude.

Voluntary exchange is a nasty myth. When someone is starving, they will 'voluntarily' trade whatever they have for food. When someone has no shelter, they will do things they do not want to do in order to get shelter.

What a charge. I refuse to apologize for the system that has fed more people than any other country in history. I am sorry if we can't live in a happy utopia where there is no suffering, but fact is voluntary exchange maximizes prosperity, even if it cannot entirely eliminate "starving." Your argument is strictly an emotional one and not an objective one:

When government's only function is protection of property, then it's only real function is protecting the haves from the have-nots. Is that how you see government, as protecting the rich from the poor?

Except there is no evidence this happens either: the United States has this thing called Economic Mobility. According to a US treasury study, "ore than half of taxpayers (56 percent by one measure and 55 by another measure) moved to a different income quintile between 1996 and 2005." This isn't new, this is why we were flooded with immigrants during the Industrial revolution: even corporatist conditions were better than the heavily class-based society in other countries. Protecting "haves" from "have-nots" does, however, happen when you have a government heavily funded by special interests and corporations. That is not capitalism however, that is corporatism. You are condemning corporatism, and rightly so.

As for the depression, you cite a theory not held by most people, including most economists. FDR's policies fixed the depression, without him, it would have lasted much, much longer. That is why, in graphs of GDP, you can see things start to get better as soon as his policies were implemented. When the Republicans convinced him that the economy had been fixed, and he needed to stop his policies, the economy tanked again (1937-1938). When he started his policies back up again, things got better. And don't even try the "It was the war!" argument. It's ridiculous. If government spending on a war could fix the economy, then government spending on useful infrastructure can too.

Nice way to marginalize my argument, just claim that it isn't a popular theory, and then ignore the facts of the argument. Which economists said it was correct? The ones then who didn't see the Great Depression coming, the ones saying stocks have reached a "permanent plateau"? The ones today who couldn't explain how or even see the financial system would collapse? Never mind that it is one of the oldest theories, only practiced by such people as, oh, Adam Smith, Friedrich von Hayek (a Nobel winner at that), the founding fathers, and numerous modern people. Are you really trying to say that Hoover and FDR fixed the depression by, often unconstitutionally, imposing price controls, wage controls, so that you could not employ employees at the low cost, and then those unemployed people could not buy goods at the low price they wanted? Nice way to keep the depression going, mandate by law that people could not exchange goods. Take note, Hoover and FDR were both guilty of this (Hoover just felt constrained by the Constitution, FDR didn't care, he would sign an executive order without approval from Congress making gold illegal, or one sending Japanese-Americans to interment camps).
Of course GDP goes up when the government spends money, by definition! That doesn't mean the economy is actually getting better, that doesn't mean our lives have become better or that more human wants have been satisfied, or more people have jobs, and is biased towards increasing prices, when in fact decreasing prices are what we want (decreasing prices that, for instance, feeds more people). I absolutely agree with your assessment of World War 2 for that reason.

By the way, here is your answer (or at least one answer) to how prosperity/freedom and property rights work together and an intuitive explanation that I rather like (to a certain extent).

Voluntary exchange is a nasty myth. When someone is starving, they will 'voluntarily' trade whatever they have for food. When someone has no shelter, they will do things they do not want to do in order to get shelter.

What a charge. I refuse to apologize for the system that has fed more people than any other country in history. I am sorry if we can't live in a happy utopia where there is no suffering, but fact is voluntary exchange maximizes prosperity, even if it cannot entirely eliminate "starving." Your argument is strictly an emotional one and not an objective one:

When government's only function is protection of property, then it's only real function is protecting the haves from the have-nots. Is that how you see government, as protecting the rich from the poor?

Except there is no evidence this happens either: the United States has this thing called Economic Mobility. According to a US treasury study, "ore than half of taxpayers (56 percent by one measure and 55 by another measure) moved to a different income quintile between 1996 and 2005." This isn't new, this is why we were flooded with immigrants during the Industrial revolution: even corporatist conditions were better than the heavily class-based society in other countries. Protecting "haves" from "have-nots" does, however, happen when you have a government heavily funded by special interests and corporations. That is not capitalism however, that is corporatism. You are condemning corporatism, and rightly so.

As for the depression, you cite a theory not held by most people, including most economists. FDR's policies fixed the depression, without him, it would have lasted much, much longer. That is why, in graphs of GDP, you can see things start to get better as soon as his policies were implemented. When the Republicans convinced him that the economy had been fixed, and he needed to stop his policies, the economy tanked again (1937-1938). When he started his policies back up again, things got better. And don't even try the "It was the war!" argument. It's ridiculous. If government spending on a war could fix the economy, then government spending on useful infrastructure can too.

Nice way to marginalize my argument, just claim that it isn't a popular theory, and then ignore the facts of the argument. Which economists said it was correct? The ones then who didn't see the Great Depression coming, the ones saying stocks have reached a "permanent plateau"? The ones today who couldn't explain how or even see the financial system would collapse? Never mind that it is one of the oldest theories, only practiced by such people as, oh, Adam Smith, Friedrich von Hayek (a Nobel winner at that), the founding fathers, and numerous modern people. Are you really trying to say that Hoover and FDR fixed the depression by, often unconstitutionally, imposing price controls, wage controls, so that you could not employ employees at the low cost, and then those unemployed people could not buy goods at the low price they wanted? Nice way to keep the depression going, mandate by law that people could not exchange goods. Take note, Hoover and FDR were both guilty of this (Hoover just felt constrained by the Constitution, FDR didn't care, he would sign an executive order without approval from Congress making gold illegal, or one sending Japanese-Americans to interment camps).
Of course GDP goes up when the government spends money, by definition! That doesn't mean the economy is actually getting better, that doesn't mean our lives have become better or that more human wants have been satisfied, or more people have jobs, and is biased towards increasing prices, when in fact decreasing prices are what we want (decreasing prices that, for instance, feeds more people). I absolutely agree with your assessment of World War 2 for that reason.

By the way, here is your answer (or at least one answer) to how prosperity/freedom and property rights work together and an intuitive explanation that I rather like (to a certain extent).

You've both also lost the object or service you traded away. It's still a zero sum game in terms of the resources. Pretending it's not is exactly why the economic system is so damn broken.

No, that person lost $150 and got an hour of labor that he values more, likewise you rented an hour of your labor in return for $150 that you value more. Because you both subjectively have different value scales, you both profited. While the physical atoms may not have changed, that isn't what humans value: we value particular uses of them. Not all sets of atoms are equal to us, and not everyone values the same set of matter equally (or labor, or any good). This is one of the most influential articles I have ever read, demonstrating this point: http://mises.org/story/3015

I can link to highly partisan articles too! http://mises.org/story/3448

Just because GDP changed doesn't say anything. Government spending is included in GDP, regardless of the fact it does not create prosperity. I concede the point that when government dramatically increases spending, changes the price of gold, and price fixes goods, GDP will go up, and when you send millions off to war and into government jobs, unemployment will go down.

In additional to Daskalakis' thesis that finding the Nash equilibrium for an economic system is a PPAD-complete problem, neoclassical economists have yet to acknowledge the other elephant in the room: the fact that economic systems are chaotic, which makes it impossible to build long-term models that in any way correspond to reality.

In fact, we can trivially prove that economic systems are chaotic, because weather greater affects economic systems (e.g., a drought that affects farmland productivity), and weather systems are famously chaotic.

There is an object lesson here. In 1948, U.S. secretary of state George C. Marshall infamously summarized the attitudes of scientists and other learned men when he asserted:

"The conquest of all infectious diseases is imminent." - U.S. secretary of state George C. Marshall, 1948

If there ever was a statement that scientists wished they could take back, it would probably be Marshall's. Because microbes have spent the last 60 years humiliating us for our hubris.

Unfortunately, only the Austrian economists have figured out that this statement is every bit as laughable and contemptible as Marshall's:

"An economy can be successfully planned." - neoclassical economics

Somewhere, Ludwig von Mises is still hoping that the rest of us will get it, too...

Why not go to the fountain of sputum itself?

Here's a link to a place you can buy some hard copy if you want it.

And here's another source for you: Carl Menger and the Origins of Austrian Economics, by Max Alter. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1990. Pp. viii, 256. $74.00. ISBN 0-8133-0945-X.

It's apparent you're unaware of what a Free Market is. Educate yourself. http://mises.org/

FDR's Thought Police: Still Alive, Still Censoring.

This 'we, as a society' are the people of the United States who decided in the early 1900s to enact anti-trust laws, after seeing what lack of competition did to OUR (not their) economy.

The irony is that that of the "monopolies" that drove this policy, Standard Oil and American Tobacco, neither of the accused firms monopolized or "restrained" trade; on the contrary, both firms expanded outputs enormously, innovated continuously, and generally lowered prices for consumers. Many other anti-trust cases have also been against companies that dramatically lowered consumer prices, such as Alcoa. More info.

Do you know why Japan never invaded the United States? Simple, because EVERYONE was armed. They could never put down resistance in such a population. Switzerland maintained its neutrality by the same feature. Armed citizens can't be oppressed by any external force.

Somalia is not an anarchy, but rather it is a series of small despotic states. It also is not an armed society. You GREATLY underestimate the power of the rifle. Mere rifles become deadly precision in the hands of a population of marksmen.

Your ideology is disturbing, it reeks of Orwellian "Freedom is Slavery" doublespeak. You think that a system based on non-aggression and freedom leads directly to slavery and oppression, so you propose instituting slavery and oppression to stop our society from falling into slavery and oppression. This is madness of the type that our Orwellian overlords have wanted to instill their subjects with from the beginning.

The fact is that we came quite close to the Randian ideal in this country in the 1800's. "Liberals" seized onto the progress created by the industries that blossomed under the freedoms they detested, claiming that their guns had somehow made the people's lives better. If you have a speck of intellectual honesty, read this,and tell me that the industrial revolution, or the freedoms that spawned it, were a bad thing.

Actually, you have a false impression of history. Prior to those businesses "treating people like shit", they were starving to death in the countryside, or serving sadistic feudal lords. People went to work for those "evil capitalists" because it promised a better life. And the fact is that we all live better now because of it.

Places like the Congo and Rural China still have people being "exploited" because they don't yet produce enough material goods to give their workers a better quality of life, or their governments purposefully oppress their people by stealing their money and killing them, in the case of Congo, and artificially depressing the value of their currency, in the case of China (through printing of money, which is another form of theft).

For a more detailed explination, you might read this chapter of Human Action by Ludwig von Mises.

> If you really believe that the government will falter to such a degree

I suggest reading a little thing called "History." _EVERY_ government fails eventually; It is not a matter of IF, but WHEN.

> remove your funds from your bank

I never suggested for or against any action. Just merely pointing out that greed, aka, getting something for nothing via Interest is the cause of the problem. When you are able to loan out 99% of your assets, and not receive them back, that it is already too late of a problem. That's why Usury is banned in other monetary systems. Once you have a non zero-sum game, you have (hyper) Inflation _by_ definition.

> If you're talking about the dollar being backed by the gold standard, this is just as big of an illusion of security as current paper currency is.

I don't think you understand what fiat currency is. I would suggest reading "What Has Government Done to Our Money?" http://mises.org/money.asp

Physical backed currency made it harder to get something for nothing, but at the abstract level you are correct. Putting stock in physical items was a reminder of this; much more so then easy duplicatable paper. But the problem will become moot as humans learn to exist without money. The collapse of the various systems are just natural consequences of getting weaned off the tit of fiat money.

Um, well, the "Austrian School of Economics" has its origins with St. Thomas Aquinas in Spain, and doesn't really have anything to do with Austria and its government or politics.

This is interesting?

California energy was NEVER deregulated. Never. Ever. Not once. Not a part of it, not a sliver of it, not the entire market.

What happened was MORE regulation.

Here are some links to the flip-side of what the government-run TV channel said in the link provided above:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/paul12.html
http://mises.org/story/872

The truth: Enron was a monopoly, and monopolies are almost always created by State regulation and preferential treatment. The market was never deregulated, instead it was a State-corporate creation that sounded like "privatization" or "deregulation" just as much as "free speech" can still include stifling laws preventing speech.

To me, it sounded like you were saying morality needed to be legislated...so I asked you if that's what you meant.

There's no need to reiterate your question. I know what you asked. If you'd asked, "does the earth orbit the sun?" I would have responded in the same way, discussing the bizarreness of the question, rather than pointlessly delivering a literal answer.

Then you went all crazy left-wing on me and started bible bashing and Ayn Rand bashing. WTF does *any* of that have to do with my question?

They have to do with the insane ideology that's behind your earth-and-sun question.

The idea that the existence of regulation is the cause of the current crisis is like saying that AIDS is caused by the existence of doctors.

Nice analogy. But completely wrong. Try reading something on the topic.

Thanks. I'm slowly managing to tease it out of you. I provoked you into giving a link to a right-wing think-tank. As I said, your views are so loopy that you must have picked them up wholesale from some such source.

The linked article is not even about regulation. It's about the too-big-to-fail doctrine.

(I can understand how you'd feel that an individual can't think for themselves if you graduated from government schools).

This is the second jibe against education. I ignored the first, but it's really starting to look like you're one of those freaks one hears about whose parents pulled them out of school in order to teach them that the world was made by Jehovah in six days. I've been reading a lot about them recently. Scarily ignorant people. It would be best to tone down your attacks on education, lest people think you are one of those.

I also previously mentioned talk radio, as I have heard it is another central source of gun-toting, gummint-hating, black-lynching wackiness. I don't actually know where you personally got it; perhaps you masturbate nightly over Ayn Rand and Ann Coulter. It's just that the odds of any given individual deciding that a crisis involving banks lending when they shouldn't was caused by the existence of recently-removed lending restrictions, are slim. It's more likely to be a lie that has been spread as truth from a central repository. In the same way, the story of Noah was a lie/tale that was put in a book and spread as truth.

If you can understand this concept in relation to Noah, you should be able to understand it in relation to what we are discussing (even if you think there is no lie). If you think that the Bible is true, however, then there is no hope at all.

Again, I can barely imagine someone actually coming up with such a thing, in the same way that I can barely imagine someone coming up with the story of Noah and believing it. It's the sort of idea people only receive as part of belonging to a cult. I'm suspecting the cult of Ayn Rand here.

To me, it sounded like you were saying morality needed to be legislated...so I asked you if that's what you meant. Then you went all crazy left-wing on me and started bible bashing and Ayn Rand bashing. WTF does *any* of that have to do with my question?

Well, no, obviously not. Which is understandable, given that you're just using the tactic of "I'll repeat back my opponent's disparaging remark, changing a couple of words"

That's ok--since you flat-out didn't refute my argument, but rather are trying to antagonize and pick a fight by bashing on various groups' personal beliefs.

The idea that the existence of regulation is the cause of the current crisis is like saying that AIDS is caused by the existence of doctors.

Nice analogy. But completely wrong. Try reading something on the topic.

It's just so crazy that you must have obtained it from some repository of craziness — the odds of any given individual coming up with it himself are just way too slim.

More crazy. Instead of providing examples or proof that my statement is wrong, you imply that I must have gotten the idea from a 'repository of craziness' and that a single individual couldn't come up with that idea. (I can understand how you'd feel that an individual can't think for themselves if you graduated from government schools). But in your previous post you say I must have received the idea fro 'talk radio'.

Aren't those shows one person broadcasting over the radio? I.E. an individual? You sir are an idiot.

Because amateur radio bands are narrow and would be quickly swamped by commercial traffic. If you want to piss somebody off by using their frequencies I suggest you co-opt analog TV channels.

Ah, there's the riddle, er problem. Originally the airwaves, with court approval, were homesteaded. In any given area people could set up transmitters and broadcast on an unused frequency. In short courts were assigning homesteader's rights to those who first broadcast on a frequency. If someone else came along and started broadcasting which interfered with the first broadcaster then they could be forced to stop the interference. Big companies came along and didn't like the competition and so were successful in lobbying the government to require broadcasters to be licensed.

So radio frequencies were taken away from homesteading broadcasters and given to large businesses.

Falcon

This has long been suspected, and there's a connection to Somali piracy. The mysterious blogger "TokyoTom" has an excellent summary of the research indicating that European companies were using the lack of a government in Somali to dump toxic waste illegally near the coast of Somali, which really wreaked havoc after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, which washed a lot of the crap onshore and caused mass illness.

There were always suspicious that this illegal dumping was a money source for the Mafia, although even legit businesses seem to have no problem with it. I don't defend Somali pirates, but people forget that it originated from fishers trying to get illegal dumpers to leave the area, then to try to get compensation for what the dumpers did. This doesn't justify piracy, but it does give lie to the notion that they lack a legitimate grievance and are simply out for money, and it helps to explain why they enjoy such support from Somalians.

I'm surprised the Mafia didn't screw up so bad sooner.

This is making a pretty huge assumption about human behavior that most scientific studies of human behavior, in any field, don't bear out.

You may be the one making an assumption here. "Working for their own betterment" leaves much open to interpretation, which is precisely why mathematical models of human behavior fail. What I perceive to be my own betterment may be diametrically opposed to what some other person views as being to their advantage. Essentially different people can be driven by entirely different motivations, and no model can account for that. Some people might see donating their money/time/belongings to a charity to be in their best interests, while another group of people might not. One person might see it in their best interest to save every dime they don't absolutely have to spend, while another might constantly be looking for ways to make an extra dollar by placing their extra income in high-risk investments, while a third person might seek the gratification of immediate consumption.

When I said people work for their own betterment, it was not to imply that everyone works towards the same goals, but rather they work towards the goals they desire. Austrian economics deals with this fact, while Keynesianism does not. I highly recommend going to The Ludwig von Mises Institute, as they have made freely available some of the most influential works pertaining to Austrian economics, including Mise's Human Action and Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State.

I think that's the FTCs jack-of-all-trades card, not the FCC.

I disagree the feds have the authority, but I agree if it does it should be as part of the FTC. Fact is is before the Federal Radio Commission, the predecessor of the FCC, US courts were acknowledging and upholding homesteading rights to the first person who broadcast on a set frequency in a given location. Of course big businesses such as RCA, now NBC, didn't like the competition so they lobbied government to create a new government bureaucracy and license the airwaves. One of the commissioners on the FRC was Dr. Orestes H. Caldwell, who "designed the lighting system that gave the Rainbow Room at the top of the RCA building (now known as the GE building) its name."

The creation of the FRC and FCC as well as licensing the airwaves was all about concentrating money and power.

Falcon

The FCC was created to enforce communications law, with the most important goal of restricting the RF spectrum because if it was a free-for-all environment, too many people would be transmitting on the same part of the spectrum at the same time and nothing would work.

This is BS! Before the FCC was even created courts were already ruling that the first person broadcasting on a certain frequency had the right to that frequency. It's called homesteading the airwaves.

Falcon

As the other person wrote, the problem is that Government figures for inflation are based on diddled statistics. For example, they regularly leave certain items out of the "basket" of goods they use to measure inflation, on various thin "justifications", in order to manipulate the outcome. Not conspiracy theory, just fact.

This article, while a few years old, explains some of the methodology behind the "official" Consumer Price Index.

What's worse, is that the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the agency that calculates Consumer Price Index) does those calculations is utterly bizarre. For example, we know that when times get tough, people tighten their belts. Say you are used to buying extra-lean ground beef for $3.00 a pound. Last year, prices went up and now you can only afford the regular ground beef (with three times as much fat), for the same $3.00. According to the BLS, there is no price increase because you can still buy an "acceptable substitute" for $3.00 a pound. (No, I am not joking, that is one of the ways they adjust their figures.)

There are so many other "adjustments" they make, I could not begin to list them here, and they almost invariably are "adjusted" in ways that make inflation appear to be lower than it actually is.

This link describes some of the other ways in which CPI figures are distorted by government. And even that is hardly comprehensive description.

And it should be noted that Moore's Law does not apply to celery or gasoline, or for that matter most other things. My grocery bill, based on the basic foods *I* buy, went up by probably about 50% last year. That's a pretty big jump. Gasoline was up, and so many other things. My costs went WAY up (as well as costs to most, if not all, people with whom I have discussed this). And yet, the the government's figures for inflation in the year 2008 comes to approximately 3.8%.

And that's BULLSHIT, even if you factor in the drops in housing prices.

Some people don't think so. It is argued that the Federal Reserve central banking system is at fault for the boom/bust cycle due to artificial expansion of credit. That secretive, pseudo-governmental institution couldn't be further from the free market, which is presumably what you meant by "capitalism".

Actually, free market economies abhor a monopoly...

is as always government interference:

http://mises.org/story/1662

I'm not going to claim that none of the non-government market participants contributed to 1929. However, the unprecedented influence of the Federal Reserve in the financial sector, together with various other official acts of government, are frequently overlooked. Somehow people have gotten the impression that we had a nearly-free market prior to 1929, and that the government intervened only after things got bad. This simply isn't the case; market intervention started well before 1929, was a major contributor to the crash, and furthermore was one of the primary differences between the Great Depression and the economic aftermath of similar market crashes which proceeded it. For a much more thorough analysis of the events surrounding the crash of 1929 and the Depression itself see America's Great Depression by Morray Rothbard.

But to at least provide one quick counter example to the GP: Anyone remember why the FDIC was founded? Bank runs. They happen when the government doesn't intervene in the banking system.

On the contrary, bank runs happen--are inevitable, really--when banks fail to maintain sufficient reserves to meet their on-demand obligations. Banks have always sought to get away with minimal reserves for their own profit, but the Federal Reserve took significant steps to encourage this irresponsible behavior starting well before 1929 as part of its goal to inflate the money supply.

Save the money for nuclear plants. http://mises.org/story/3536

Thanks! I just used some abstract rules in my efficiency, and cut my heating bills by 27%!

That would be your fault for over paying in the first place.

Your quoted costs are from The Heritage Foundation. Frankly, I trust the CBO numbers to be closer to reality. To get where the Heritage Foundation wants you to go, the permits have to auction at around $50/ton, and the money has to simply disappear from the economy.

You can listen to lies on blind faith all you want, just don't expect anyone else to seriously consider your opinion. The CBO pretty much backs my conclusion that it will decrease the standard of living for many people by attempting to assert an offset in the cost per household by the inflation it causes and thereby automagically reducing the tax burden.

I don't know where you got the $50/ton number the heritage foundation supposedly uses. I just checked and they seem to be getting the the $1,870 by factoring the hit to the GDP that the CBO admits they ignored. Perhaps you should read both for yourself instead of blindly trusting someone who is obviously out to screw you. That, or you could show me how this $50/ton number comes into play.

he $1300 figure comes from the Britain Taxpayer Alliance. Since their numbers are exactly the sort an anti-tax group could use as the basis of a splashy, self-promoting report, I refuse to accept the figure without outside verification. They have an agenda, The Heritage Foundation has an agenda. The CBO at least has a mission of non-partisanship.

You mean like your $50/ton figure that doesn't seem to fit where you want it too? You have the ability to refuse to accept anything but it's you that will be ignorant, not everyone else.

Finally, since you've said you're not against caps in general, how would you construct a cap so that it caused no undue hardship to anybody? What is your path to reducing emissions by 80% by 2050, and why is it superior to what is now before Congress?

First of all, I don't think I would need a hard cap in the first place. All we need is a target number and a process to outline a transition in which power companies have to move over to renewable or relatively carbon neutral production capabilities by requiring them to plan all new expansions after 10 years in either of the two, estimating an useful life on existing production facilities, then require them to stick to that number and replace the facilities with one of the newer availible alternative models. This could take somewhere between 20 to 80 years to get all electric generation on something more friendly to the environment. It would also cause the transition to be gradual over this time and allows for improvements in designs and efficiencies that limit the impact of inflation. The other thing is to increase the cafe standards for new cars 20-50 years out to be either carbon neutral or completely renewable. This again allows for a graceful transition where the increases are in line with inflation without harming the economy. Finally, I would employ government funded research to assist in finding the technology making this possible and instead of the current model of licensing a patent, I would offer it free to any company/person based in America and paying taxes in America under the condition of them having a compulsory licensing policy in which any improvements they make are to be shared for a small fee with other American people or companies and allow them to license to foreign companies based on however they see fit.

Finally, once the electricity is all neutral and friendly, we should offer one time gas-electric conversions for HVAC and water heaters for all private citizens at their convenience and allow companies to use a portion of

The USPS gives absolutely terrible service, for a variety of reasons. They can't stay afloat without constant rate increases. They're the only reason I get so much junk mail at my house which I'm trying to sell. They stay afloat only because they have a forced monopoly on first class letters. They even make us place the mailbox at an inconvenient location, (convenient for them) way down at the end of the driveway. If UPS or FEDEX was allowed to deliver first class mail, the USPS wouldn't stand a chance.

Medicare and medicaid are hardly known for being models of efficiency. And just look at the terrible treatment given to military vets at their special health centers. I'm not arguing to keep things as they are, which I agree would be foolish. I want the government to get out of the health care business COMPLETELY. For a couple of good starting points of why things are so screwed up:

http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1547

and follow up:

http://mises.org/story/1588

These two only barely scratch the surface though.

The USPS gives absolutely terrible service, for a variety of reasons. They can't stay afloat without constant rate increases. They're the only reason I get so much junk mail at my house which I'm trying to sell. They stay afloat only because they have a forced monopoly on first class letters. They even make us place the mailbox at an inconvenient location, (convenient for them) way down at the end of the driveway. If UPS or FEDEX was allowed to deliver first class mail, the USPS wouldn't stand a chance.

Medicare and medicaid are hardly known for being models of efficiency. And just look at the terrible treatment given to military vets at their special health centers. I'm not arguing to keep things as they are, which I agree would be foolish. I want the government to get out of the health care business COMPLETELY. For a couple of good starting points of why things are so screwed up:

http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1547

and follow up:

http://mises.org/story/1588

These two only barely scratch the surface though.