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Reason On How and Why 38 Studios Went Bust
cathyreisenwitz writes "The 2012 bankruptcy of Rhode Island-based video-game developer 38 Studios isn't just a sad tale of a start-up tech company falling victim to the vagaries of a rough economy. It is a completely predictable story of crony capitalism, featuring star-struck legislators and the hubris of a larger-than-life athlete completely unprepared to compete in business." Reason makes no bones about its view of this kind of public-private "partnership."
Having a name that causes headlines to be interpreted incorrectly doesn't help.
Neither the article nor the summary says anything that could even be remotely interpreted as an attack on capitalism. And you know it.
Strawman arguments are lies.
I fail to see how 38 studio are victims to a rough economy. They asked for money and VC didn't give it to them because they didn't have experienced management. Then they found money elsewhere and in the end, ran out of money and failed to deliver a product. If they had actually delivered a product that was expected to sustain their operational expenses, and if that product had failed to sell due to a rough economy, then I would agree with the comment in the summary.
Never heard of Reason.com, huh? Click the link through and tell me what the site's tagline is, then apologize for the knee-jerk. You can't miss it, it's right there under the logo.
Reason, a libertarian magazine, is probably the most pro-capitalism publication currently available. The article is about how taxpayer-funded loans are almost always a bad idea. Schilling was unable to find private sector investors - which usually means that the business model is not very good. Crony capitalism is not capitalism, it's a corruption that wastes a whole boatload of our tax money.
Short story: Leave investing to investors and stop risking taxpayer money on ventures that will most likely not succeed.
Come on, son.
Neither the article nor the summary says anything that could even be remotely interpreted as an attack on capitalism. And you know it.
Strawman arguments are lies.
Not to mention that this entire deal had nothing to do with capitalism. Government guarantees a giant loan to a business driven by nepotism, greed and lies in an erratic industry headed by a former sports star with no management experience whatsoever? How is that capitalism?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
amal whatever was nothing special. and then they spent all that money on a MMO when they are now free to play and a dime a dozen
should have looked at the mobile dev houses. these guys have much lower development and distribution costs. and with in app purchasing they are generating steady revenue for months or years after a game's release. unlike the consoles where you sell it the first week or two and then sales drop to almost nothing
Just curious.
I see the Gov't Making another stupid decision and legislators not reading something they passed (Some didn't realize that the package was ONLY for 38 studios). Happens all the time.
But Crony Capitalism? Don't see it.
Crony capitalism is not capitalism
Crony capitalism is what actually happens when you implement captialism in the real world. Capitalism is the theory, cronyism is the practice.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This article only discusses some of the investment money and where it came from. Nothing about technical or software issues, or anything about what the company was actually doing or what went wrong. That would have been the only part of interest to me. Also don't bother going to the second page of the story to read one final sentence. I swear that's done on purpose for more ad exposure or more page hits.
On a side note, entering HTML tags with the stock iPad keyboard is a major pain.
Better known as 318230.
Yeah. Just don't be shocked at how many librarians and pro-capitalists won't blink an eye when public funds benefit them or their interests.
Their definition of "Crony capitalism" will start to get awful flexible.
This magazine (Reason) is clearly against public-private partnerships, if anything seeing them as even worse than regular purely-government projects, due to the increased potential for this kind of cronyist corruption (but still inferior, in their view, to purely private-sector endeavors). A lot of free-market conservatives see them as an improvement on purely-government projects, though: public-private partnerships are often promoted as a way to bring efficiencies of the private sector into infrastructure and development (e.g. a pubic-private partnership to build a toll road), rather than having the "big government" do it all.
Are those two different camps of the economic right? Perhaps "libertarians" versus "pro-business conservatives" or something along those lines?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Mention of spending 4-5 million per month, but beyond that little in detail. What was this money being spent on? Who walked away with what. A lot of talk about how they got a loan from RI but that has nothing to do with them going bust.
....librarians?
True to a point, but you still miss the big picture. It takes money to make money. Investors invest with the hope of getting a return on their investment. Since investors are investing their money, and not an endless resource like tax money they tend to be choosy about what they invest in preferring something as close to a sure bet as you can get. They tend to talk, stick together, and protect themselves from unscrupulous bastards looking to relieve them of what they have. They like to invest in things that are going to succeed and not leave them in poverty. Wouldn't you???
What we're talking about here is government guarantees to start a business that doesn't a high likelyhood of success funded by taxpayer funding. They don't care whether the business succeeds or not because it's not their money. They can just keep raising taxes and it doesn't matter how much they waste.
Crony Capitalism is when you use the state to get unfair private advantage. It's not like a builder who gets the state to "smooth things out" when building something for public purposes (ex. police station, highway, etc.). There are times when the government needs to help facilitate the work of private parties. This was not one of them. It was the government doing something with a marginal public purpose (the nebulous "it'll create more jobs" excuse).
Put another way, this is precisely the same sort of crap we saw Bush and Obama do with the banking sector (using public funds to secure private losses that were not incurred due to a public purpose). In either case, the government stepped in to do what the market should have done in an otherwise private transaction with minimal to no public purpose.
I love how the small government Republicans refuse to pay for a sick child, but have no problems with crony capitalism and bailouts.
A constitutional amendment (state and federal as appropriate depending on where the scandal occurs) allowing Qui Tam lawsuits against elected officials whose allocations a reasonable person would say are for private benefit. Let the legislators and governor be personally liable for these costs and suddenly you'll see the entire body militantly opposed to bailouts, "investments," etc.
Heck, it already has precedent in a way at the federal level. If a member of the civil service knowingly tasks a contractor to perform duties outside of their contract, the federal government requires the entire fee from the contractor to be paid by the government employee.
If it wasn't for Skyrim, that game would have sold a lot more. The game they made was very good, but skyrim was better
Mr. Bloody Sock was a fantastic athlete but a complete meathead. Anyone who invests in any pro athlete's business plan has a financial death wish. You can count the number of really successful jocks-turned CEOs on a digit-challenged hand. (I'm not counting those who get rich off permanent endorsement deals)
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Make the Risk Public, Make the Reward Private.
Also, never make a movie with your own money.
Some government investments do pay off, though. Like the bank bailouts.
What a well reasoned argument. You sir, should be a teacher.
tReason.com would never post anything that goes against the idea that the free market is perfect and always corrects itself, in spite of an avalanche of evidence to the contrary.
They're sort of like Ann Coulter, but replace the name calling with a smug sense of self-superiority.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Crony capitalism is different than capitalism. Crony capitalism means a company gets special favors from the government that give it an advantage over their competition. Crony capitalism is why, despite a 35% corporate tax rate, some corporations (like Whirlpool) paid no or negative taxes last year. Arguably one of the best things Reagan did was to simplify the tax code to get rid of a lot of crony capitalism (to be fair the idea was being heavily promoted by a democrat before being picked up by Reagan).
In general, crony capitalism==bad. Capitalism==good. This is something agreed on by both parties: both sides hate the crony capitalism of the other side, but tolerate it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You heard the man. Reason sucks, so why on earth would he use it?
...despite the tornado of complete cluelessness these people swirled around in, they all thought of it as investment, and the were all going to get filthy stinking rich.
Not to mention the people that hold the guarantee on that 75 million dollar loan, who have already made 25 million.
How is that capitalism?
Because Shilling was a Republican, of course. That makes him a champion of free market capitalism and all that (until *he* needs a handout from Uncle Sam, of course).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Crony capitalism is not capitalism
Crony capitalism is what actually happens when you implement captialism in the real world. Capitalism is the theory, cronyism is the practice.
In which real world?
It may have its problems, but capitalism is the best system ever devised for creating wealth and a higher standard of living for a population. Depart from it at your own risk.
Tax payer money was wasted by loaning it to a business nobody else would touch. When you depart from Capitalism, you reap the reward of inefficiency.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Government + Capitalism = "Crony Capitalism" AKA "Corporate Captialism"
From WIkipeida:
Corporate capitalism is a free or mixed-market economy characterized by the dominance of hierarchical, bureaucratic corporations, which are legally required to pursue profit. State-monopoly capitalism was originally a Marxist concept referring to a form of corporate capitalism in which state policy is utilized to benefit and promote the interests of dominant or established corporations by shielding them from competitive pressures or by providing them with subsidies
==============
Lets remove the government part of the equation.
Looks like baseball player Kurt Schilling (who apparently was very good at baseball) decided to start a video game studio, who knows why.
He tried to raise $50million from private investors, but they didn't think he could make money.
He went to the governor to get some money, but the governor didn't think he could make money.
A new, naive governor was elected in Rhode Island, and desperate to improve the economy of the state, he approved some $75million in loan guarantees.
They hired some people, built the game Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning, and did a surprising number of things right considering a baseball player was the founder.
It turns out that in making a modern game, one of the hardest things is getting good developers in the right places, and the game turned out to be buggy. Very buggy. And they didn't have a good level designer, so the levels were kind of boring. These things combined to sink the game.
So, the company failed. And taxpayers now have to pay back the loans.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
One is the idea of traditional government tasks being outsourced to private companies. The other is the government backing loans for things the government doesn't do or need.
If a free market forced people (and/or companies) to do certain things, it wouldn't be free would it?
Well, yes, in the sense that crony capitalism is what happens when various people try to "fix" capitalism by "protecting jobs" or "attracting business" or whatever, and politicians (both on the left and the right) have delusions of grandeur of being able to do this.
The solution, however, is not to get rid of capitalism, but to get rid of attempts to tinker with it. Let businesses fail and don't have the government "invest" in companies, period.
I mean, what alternative did you have in mind? If you don't like markets deciding where to put money and resources, and giving the responsibility to government leads to cronyism, who is left to make those decisions?
And the folks running Solyndra et al were committed Democrats. Selectively portraying only (R) as being greedy evil capitalists is disingenuous at best. BOTH The (D) and (R) parties are corrupt beyond repair. Government should not be making loan guarantees for businesses, period.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Wrong.
The regulation we applied to capitalism made higher standard of living for a population.
You might want to actually read up on capitalists.
"Tax payer money was wasted by loaning it to a business nobody else would touch."
while true with studio 38, usually that isn't true.
In fact, a lot of case it as helped. but success in government isn't really reported. You know why? it's not unusual.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Most modern democracies have a fairly standard set of parties (roughly from left to right): communists, social democrats, "classical" liberals, Christian democrats, and nationalists. In the US, Democrats comprise the left end of the spectrum, Republicans the right end of the spectrum, and classical liberals sit uncomfortably in the middle without their own party. Except for "classical" liberals, everybody else believes in big government and government intervention.
Probably what confuses you is that Republicans say that they favor free markets when in practice they don't. (Of course, Democrats also say they stand for a lot of things that, in practice, they don't stand for.)
There is no "disagreement on the right" because "libertarians" and "classical liberals" aren't actually part of "the right". Republicans and Democrats are similar in their level of intervention in the market. The only people who would like less intervention are actual liberals, but both Republicans and Democrats are ganging up on them, trying to give them a bad name (and succeeding). Liberalism has been successfully marginalized in both the US and Europe for the time being.
Free minds and free markets? The latter, we've not experienced in our lifetimes. The former is the sign of a terrorist.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Wrong, capitalism is the most efficient system ever devised for creating wealth not the best system ever devised for creating wealth. Best is a qualitative term and can not be measured subjectively.
Just hire some nerds to clickety clackety on keyboards and voila--you've got your 5 star video game.
This is way everybody does it and does it so well.
expandfairuse.org
Not to mention that this entire deal had nothing to do with capitalism. Government guarantees a giant loan to a business driven by nepotism, greed and lies in an erratic industry headed by a former sports star with no management experience whatsoever? How is that capitalism?
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production.
When the VCs took a look at Schilling's plan said it sucked balls, that was capitalism in action.
When the RI governor went to lick Schilling's schlong and suck his balls, that was definitely NOT capitalism.
Crony capitalism is not capitalism
Crony capitalism is what actually happens when you implement captialism in the real world. Capitalism is the theory, cronyism is the practice.
Can you think of one -ism where that is not so? I can't. Cronyism is a disease all forms of economics and government seem to be vulnerable to.
Wrong.
The regulation we applied to capitalism made higher standard of living for a population.
You might want to actually read up on capitalists.
"Tax payer money was wasted by loaning it to a business nobody else would touch." while true with studio 38, usually that isn't true. In fact, a lot of case it as helped. but success in government isn't really reported. You know why? it's not unusual.
I think the argument is more one of "should government be investing in not-for-public-use private entities?" rather than one of regulation. Regulation is setting boundaries for capitalism to live within - it's generally a good thing. Government investment in the private sector, however, is something that needs to be monitored. It makes sense when investing in private companies to the end of the public good (military spending, roads, "utilities"), but that's about it.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
You are correct, this isn't capitalism, it's crony capitalism, which is what the summary identifies it as.
Well done missing out the key word ("crony") and writing your own strawman.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
capitalism is the best system ever devised for creating wealth
I can agree with this part of your sentence
and a higher standard of living for a population
But not so much this part. Think mid-19th century industrial revolution, where people worked long hours, with no benefits, no labor restrictions (rampant child labor), no concern for safety, etc. Unrestrained capitalism isn't so great for the workers. It leads to sweatshop conditions we see in other countries.
name a regulation applied to capitalism that made things better. I will prove you wrong in every case.
Rural electrification.
I hate to use a No True Scottsman argument, but that's not True Capitalism. That's why they use the term "crony capitalism".
Capitalism derives from the right to own and use property, and the right of free association with others. Nothing more is needed.
Insofar as people whine to government for money (or regulation, often to harm competitors) and so on, it is not One True Capitalism.
These things involve using force to get an economic advantage, rather than producing a product that free people choose to buy, which is the glistening city on the hill everybody imagines.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
name a regulation applied to capitalism that made things better. I will prove you wrong in every case.
Child labor laws.
Crony capitalism is not capitalism
Crony capitalism is what actually happens when you implement captialism in the real world. Capitalism is the theory, cronyism is the practice.
Crony capitalism is what you get when government gets too big for its pants and big enough to get involved with things that are not the proper role of government. Crony capitalism requires an out of control government and it cannot exist without it.
Government is and always has been the problem and at best a necessary evil that must be constantly kept in check.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
To use your words: wrong.
First, people talk a lot about this, in particular in economics. The question is: what is the multiplier on government spending? Is it negative, less than 1, or greater than 1? Nobody has a conclusive answer to this, and it depends a great deal on what the money is spent on. Even very simplistic econometric or Keynsian-style estimates often come out less than 1, but those don't even count opportunity costs and other hidden costs of government spending. Nevertheless, government keeps spending large amounts of money in areas that clearly have a multiplier of less than 1.
Success of government spending/investment may not be unusual, but its failure is also very common, and may predominate.
Aye, a horrible system, but the best we have. Under certain conditions it works great.
And that condition is a free market. One with rational informed agents.
But guess what late-stage capitalism looks like? Feudalism. Someone starts to WIN. They own their turf and dictate what happens there. When there's just one guy in a market who bought out everyone else, that's a monopoly. The market is no longer free. It's owned. Sometimes bigger fish try to invade and take over their markets, and everything gets ugly. Now, since monopolies have been an obvious problem, they don't do that anymore. A group decides they're going to kinda-sorta compete and pay lip service the free market because otherwise uncle Sherman whips out his trust busting hammer. But if any of them get rich enough and/or powerful enough you're looking at regulatory capture.
But hey, where there's competition, low barrier to entry, a lack of natural monopolies, and moderately sane customers... yeah capitalism is great.
For everything else, there's regulation. To varying degrees.
From the article:
Each loan guarantee must be approved by the Rhode Island legislature, and when the votes were cast in 2010, only one lawmaker voted against it. Rep. Bob Watson (R-Greenwich) noted "a lot of red flags" in a "very risky" deal that was "too fast, too loose, and frankly, a scandal waiting to happen." Watson added "more often than not, politicians are very poor when it comes to making business decisions." [emphasis added]
Many times with very bad unintended consiquences. The great depression comes to mind. The ression of 2007 being another.
Only in the bizzaro opposite-world your mind occupies.
name a regulation applied to capitalism that made things better. I will prove you wrong in every case.
The two ACs above came up with perfect examples, but I'll throw one more in that you are sure to disagree with...
The Glass-Steagall Act.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I think the article is a bit too simplistic and doesn't really address the danger to a private business doing business with government and also the idiocy of structuring this as a loan rather than as a investment. Given the company had no income and not enough collateral it should have never been structured as a loan. Whether you are an individual, a bank or the state of Rhode Island, you shouldn't be giving out loans to people or businesses that clearly don't yet have the means to pay you back. 38 Studios certainly shouldn't have accepted the loan in hindsight, but that is not a public policy discussion, but one on the individual merits of the situation.
If you take away the part that using the government as a bank is a bad idea because of politics and corruption and the fact that the government can't effectively police itself, then you still had a bad loan to begin with. And as a practical matter, the "crony" part of crony capitalism only works when your side is in office, so with a change of parties the cash stopped coming and worse the new democratic party governor publicly attacked the company just as it was looking for a new round of funding.
As for whether the business was sound... Most start-ups don't get the investments they need to get to profitability. It is done purposefully by VCs who don't want to risk all their money and also they want to be able to exercise more control over the company as it nears profitability yet still needs additional capital. It gives them leverage. It was perfectly reasonable that 38 Studios was not profitable and needed more money to get to a release of their next game. What was stupid was getting a loan instead of investment money on such a high risk venture. Investments can be watered down by issuing additional equity which is pretty common, while loans can't be watered down unless they are renegotiated or through bankruptcy protection in which case you are pretty much done.
It would be too easy to say that governments shouldn't make investments, but the reality now is that we are in a strange hybrid socialist system now where capital is drained out of the free markets through over taxation and then new money is cycled in through the Federal Reserve and government spending.
Most of the time the government is funneling new money in through no interest loans to banks which are then supposed to loan out the money at higher rates and in this way the difference in interest is retained by the banks presumably to be reinvested and therefore become part of the free market economy again. However, in recent years those dollar flows are way out of whack.
Not to say there isn't a lot of private capital out there, certainly in this case a few hundred million to fund a game startup isn't unreasonable to raise on the private equity markets, but it isn't quite the same as the power of governments at all levels to move money around. So, as long as governments are playing such a central all encompassing role in the economy then they are increasingly going to be turned to for capital. Not where I think we should be, but it does appear this is the direction we are heading. To simply say now that governments can't make investments in companies would be to knock over the apple cart in the free market, too disruptive to just do all at once.
But we do need to move in the direction of lower corporate taxes and allowing deductions for all forms of investments so we can reinvigorate capital in our free market economy and stop taking quite as much out to funnel through government hands.
DRM. I don't buy games with any DRM, period. Yeah, yeah, Steam is the "cool" and "acceptable" DRM - Well, no thanks. I nipped off and bought The Witcher II instead.
Michael Moore the embodiment of the 1% who gain from capitalism?
Government guarantees a giant loan to a business driven by nepotism
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Did you leave out the sarcasm tag or something?
Is the article presenting non-biased facts or creating a story that satisfies a thirst for liberal activism?
name a regulation applied to capitalism that made things better. I will prove you wrong in every case.
Child labor laws.
Clean air and water act (Whine about it, then look at Bejing - if you can see it).
And on and on -Q-Hack, hopefully you were trolling and didn't mean it. Otherwise we're going to have to stuff you in a sealed box with a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" for company.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And one of the proposals for projects for 2013 was a video game/console. I mentioned that the half dozen of us there could probably have down with 38 Studios couldn't and it wouldn't have cost the state taxpayers $125 Million.
Capitalism is generally viewed as an owner or investor introducing CAPITAL to produce a product or service, generally called a business. The investor can be the government or a private entity. This is a rather perfect example of capitalism. In fact it is still a form of mixed market "free capitalism" most of the modern world commences in. The issue was the business plan wasn't sound. It made no difference where the money came from.
This is an instance of /.'s poor understanding of economics clouding their ability to understand the lesson and trying to make it a case study on government investment.
Crony capitalism is what actually happens when you implement captialism in the real world. Capitalism is the theory, cronyism is the practice.
Crony capitalism is what happens when socialists gain government power over a capitalist economy.
Private ownership has zero to do with government investment in this situation. It is the act of direct ownership that those worda apply to. If the government guarantees a loan it isn't involved in the ownership of the business and once again is still acting in a capitalist way. The government can act as a bank or investor if they so desire and still remain capitalist because they weren't taking ownership or using the investment to enhance the life of the workers. It was using the public welfare clause of the modern state, for good or bad is up for debate.
PS: Solyndra got their loans under Pres Bush and a republican house. Stop using that argument because you should know it is false by now. Also Solyndra was a victim of a bad market swing more so due to the economic downturn where 38 studios died due to poor management.
Don't say sweatshop! The Libertarians have Youtube videos for everything, including one where a libertarian lectures us dirty statists on how wonderful it is to have the opportunity to work in a sweatshop.
No, that is not a free market at all. That's an extremely well-regulated market. Think of the term "free" as anarchistic in that anything goes barring violence and perhaps that as well. Free markets can't exist because people will go one of two ways, cheat to raise their own profits as an individual or use a trust-like syndicate to protect their interests against consumers. The race to the bottom in prices almost never occurs because the boom-bust cycle eventually plays out to a few huge players who inevitably dominate the market. It happened in trains, steel, the agricultural world, and even consumer electronics.
Regulations when used correctly create a more competitive playing field. There are those who argue the opposite but they base ir on unbending human greed which is a bad argumentative stance as it is a volatile subjective ideal.
The EPA has helped the smog levels in a lot of cities. They saved the bald eagle. And while I still wouldn't drink it straight, the Cuyahoga river isn't going to be set on fire again any time soon.
They emptied the available pool of state subsidy - job done.
Both of those cases are due to under-regulation. In fact the three biggest banking issues in the US were all due to under-regulation or deregulation. In each case safe investors like S&Ls/consumer banks that work on a simple investment-lending principle were able to use money that was normally reserved for covering shorts in their accounts on a given day to invest directly in the stock market.
By deregulating them we allowed low-risk institutions to become high-risk institutions without telling anyone. In fact if we hadn't deregulated S&Ls in the 1980s under Reagan and then regular banks in the 2000s under Bush we wouldn't have this global meltdown because the average everyday home owner wouldn't have been drowned by the banks trying to save themselves from bad investments they made through their investment arms. In effect we're dealing with Wall Street's problem because the government allowed them access to Main Steet's money without anybody telling main street.
Last I read the multiplier effect on government spending was 7. It is perhaps lower now due to the economic downturn but through the last 50 years of US history it hovered between 5 and 7. So why don't you get your economists out who aren't absolute free marketers who can offer real proof and I'll get mine.
Reason can be a non-proper noun and not everyone (such as myself) knows that there is a website called "Reason.com".
This title and summary was very confusing to me until I clicked the link.
Yeaaaahhhhhh, no.
The definition of cronyism is rewarding your allies or dependents with benefits they did not earn or deserve. Usually crony capitalism is used as a buzzword to attack government since 2009 due to the relationship Barack Obama has with Chicago and the imagined relationship he has/had with the supposed Chicago political machine.
Now in this case we're looking at a government that barring some hidden kickback that directly rewarded a government official as just a bad loan. It cannot be "crony capitalism" without directly rewarding the crony of the giver.
Once again, I refer back to cronyism. You need to receive a direct benefit from the reward you're giving. The negative tax rate for some large corporations is more a reflection of poor tax codes and 20 years of pro-business legislators at the federal level.
This whole argument smacks of no true scotsman because they cannot accept anything but their ideologically pure point of view.
I think the summation is that Reason being a politically drive ideologue magazine they have a skewed point of view that cannot be trusted to be objective. Especially since they seem to want to take the failure on the state level and apply it broadly to all levels of government.
I think it's important to note that Schilling has always come out (publicly at least) against public money. He's a classic anti-big-government, pro-free market guy.
"Schilling spent no small amount of time in his career preaching the Republican mantra of smaller government and personal responsibility. He did this fresh off the historic Red Sox World Series win when he backed George W. Bush in the 2004 campaign. He did it on the stump on behalf of John McCain in 2008.
He did it for Scott Brown in January 2010, when he wrote in his blog, “He’s for smaller government,’’ and lauding Brown’s opposition to “creating a new government insurance program.’’
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/05/18/late-inning-curve-ball/ANKpzy1g9rtaDboIciP56K/story.html
I like this part:
"Apparently smaller government, in Schilling’s world, applies to other people, maybe city kids stuck in underperforming schools or disabled adults looking for help back and forth to medical appointments. But for a former six-time Major League Baseball All-Star pitcher whose business venture can create jobs (!), bask in the greatness, people, and open the public vault."
I'm not against capitalism, but his hypocrisy is mind blowing.
Capitalism is easy. You don't even have to make a product to get rich.
Lets face it, a large number of start-ups offer a good idea and nothing more. The owners get millions from capital investors to simply "try" and develop an idea. When that idea fails they shrug their shoulders and blame everyone else. Then they ensure their "parachute" fund of a few million is secured nicely in some offshore bank account and move to Belize and retire, maybe even kill a few neighbors or something.
Hey, Shawn Fanning got rich creating companies that do nothing so why shouldn't anyone else.
Capitalism is easy, you just have to have no morals or respect for other people to work it properly.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Except most of the reasons that companies pay zero taxes aren't "special." They are available to their competitors. They are also able to take advantage of them. Just like the fact I can earn money tax free in an IRA or 401K isn't cronyism. Everyone can. How does it provide me an additional advantage?
"Solyndra got their loans under Pres Bush and a republican house."
Bullshit. The program that Solyndra got there money was started under Bush in 2005 but the credit committee voted against the loans on Jan 9 2009, before Obama took office. The Obama admin reversed this and granted the loans.
This is what the parent poster is talking about, the picture isn't being missed. In theory, capitalism utilizes self-interested parties to direct scarce economic resources towards their most productive uses.
However, in practice, self-interested parties use any means available to get ahead, and that means if they can pull in government money to back their risky investment instead of having to get others to front their money, they'll do it.
In reality, economics, politics, and society are inseparably inter-linked. Changes to any one of these factors means changes in the others. Capitalism is useful as an economic theory for debate, but the undesirable side effects that pure capitalism has in practice means that society gets pissed off by the fallout, and invokes politics to restrain unbridled capitalism's effects. Pure free market capitalism isn't really used anywhere in the world because reality naturally invokes society and politics to bring the system to find an equilibrium, thus we find ourselves with the many different implementations in different countries and markets.
Excess government waste also pisses off society, and politics gets used to cut back on the policies that led to such waste. It's not a foolproof system, but you can be sure that the current local government officials are not in a hurry to fund another 38 studios given the recent backlash. They will abstain for the time being until public outcry dies down a bit.
TL;DR, parent poster is indeed getting the big picture, capitalism naturally manifests as crony capitalism in the real world. They're inseparable.
Come on, have a look on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_multiplier
Values given are between about 0.25 and 2. Even those are almost certainly overestimates, given that they fail to account for opportunity costs.
A value of 7 is ridiculous. How would that even be possible, given that US government spending is 40% of GDP?
And why would the multiplier be lower during a downturn?
the difference being that 38 studios was running head first into an already highly competitive industry, whereas solyndra were in a pretty scarce league. then china invested an incredibly higher amount into the same tech. high school champs versus a team of in-his-prime michael jordans. better to just give up, which they did.
You should really take your own advice.
Solyndra is a pretty tired example, anyway.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
The only thing I get out of your post is, "it's far more complicated than just blaming Obama", which I don't think was your intent.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Crony capitalism is not capitalism
Crony capitalism is what actually happens when you implement captialism in the real world. Capitalism is the theory, cronyism is the practice.
In the same way that socialism is the theory, and communism is what happens when you implement it.
I could go on with other ideologies, but I'm trying very hard not the get a Godwin point here, so I'll end this way: Maybe we're all fallible so the people at the top will always end up being greedy and corrupt. But then there's no good way of "governing", and for the moment capitalism has given more people a chance than any other before so I'll keep that for now thanks.
(One hint of a solution, make sure every political office term comes with no pay to show your commitment, and with a year in prison at the end, you know, just in case ;-)
This whole argument smacks of no true scotsman because they cannot accept anything but their ideologically pure point of view.
Who exactly is 'they?' What argument are you talking about exactly here?
You clearly don't understand how tax law gets written. No law ever says, "this tax applies specifically to Walmart." But just as assuredly, companies do lobby, and do get tax breaks written especially for them. Or loan guarantees.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well, free minds terrify politicians of all stripes, not to mention bureaucrats :-)
Infuriate left and right
Wrong.
The regulation we applied to capitalism made higher standard of living for a population.
You might want to actually read up on capitalists.
"Tax payer money was wasted by loaning it to a business nobody else would touch." while true with studio 38, usually that isn't true. In fact, a lot of case it as helped. but success in government isn't really reported. You know why? it's not unusual.
All things in moderation I suppose.
In a framework of fair rules (Fair being about equally treated, not equal outcome) , Capitalism is the best route to the creation of wealth for the betterment of all. But it works best with the minimum of rules, and is most effective at generating wealth when taxes are as low as possible. Government doesn't work that way. Ever heard about the $500 toilet seat or $1,000 hammer?
Government has no business being IN business or partnered with for profit businesses in any way for any reason except to buy stuff it needs to do its job. Further, to keep taxes low and encourage more wealth development, government should be as small as possible.
But, as I said, Capitalism is the best system we have and government should stay out of it when possible.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"Nobody was twisting Countrywide's arm from making loans and crappy CDOs"
Countrywide is a perfect example of why your argument is wrong ..... not only were they, like so many bankers, "encouraged" to make bad loans to groups of people certain politicians demanded get loans ..... but they got into the whole crony capitalist game whole-hog! Countrywide setup a program for "Friends of Angelo" [CEO Angelo Mozilo] who got favorable financial deals including Democrat Senator Chris Dodd (chairman of the Senate Banking Committee) and Democrat Senator Kent Conrad (chairman of the Senate Budget Committee) and Democrat Jim Johnson (chairman of Fannie Mae, and head of Obama's vice presidential search team) and Democrat Franklin Raines (another chairman of Fannie Mae) etc.
See any pattern? hmmmmm?
Government puts heavy regulatory burdens and financially stupid demands upon a business .... the business caves-in and then decides to fully-engage in the corruption by paying-off the overseeing politicians (which gets the politicians in-bed with the business executives so that they'll all go down together if either side lets the other go down). Note: any politician is corruptible, but this scandal was loaded with Democrats because the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate in the time leading up to and including the 2008 melt-down AND because Democrats have always treated Fannie Mae and Goldman Sachs as places where they park their mid-level people during years when they are not in the white house .... for Example, Democrat Congressman Barney Frank (chairman of the House Financial Services Committee had a boyfriend over at Fannie Mae
Wrong, capitalism is the most efficient system ever devised for creating wealth not the best system ever devised for creating wealth. Best is a qualitative term and can not be measured subjectively.
I'll agree that you have a point that capitalism is efficient, but in my view that makes it the best, so I don't think I'm "wrong" as you claim.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
A specious claim; there are no sources to back your claim. Regulations exist to (a) so the people in charge get their cut, and (b) fix the problems caused by previous regulations while maintaining (a).
A real free market would not cause the problems that governments purport to solve. Read up on AT&T's history for an example. There were hundreds of independent phone operators around the country, all getting along in spite of having different hardware standards and different protocols. All their differences were the usual sort to be expected from a new technology, and were being worked out peaceably with interface equipment, gradual standardization, and direct company-to-company agreements.
AT&T did it differently. They bullied smaller operators, isolated them, refused to cooperate, and it was a race between world domination and lawsuits. When the lawsuits appeared to be winning, AT&T begged the government to rescue them, using the excuse that they were too big to fail, too important, and needed to be regulated as a national public utility.
Occupational licensing began during the late 1800s as a way for existing providers to keep newcomers out. Do you know that licenses to cut hair or do nails generally require 500-2000 hours of schooling, while EMT requires less than 100? That's probably because anybody can actually learn to cut hair or do nails so quickly that there would be no barrier to entry if it weren't for the ridiculous artificial entry requirements.
Almost everywhere, taxis are regulated to a fair-thee-well, where the guiding goal is keeping taxi companies happy by keeping the number low. I could understand requiring taxi drivers to have decent training, a good driving record, and specific levels of insurance, but that should be the end of it. Anyone who could meet those requirements should be able to slap a magnetic sign on their car and give rides, at whatever price they and the passengers could agree on. The new smart phone apps which call taxis shouldn't have to jump thru hoops and go out of their ay to not look like taxis. Once again regulations to freeze the status quo for the benefit of a few have made life worse for most everybody.
Both these and countless other cases are classic examples of how not to help the poor. These are tremendous opportunities for poor people; cut hair on a door step or in a living room to earn a few books, and open a shop once you get busy enough -- but not if you have to go to school full time for a year first. Pick up a few rides on your way home from work when the commute hour needs it most, or on weekends when airport traffic could use the help -- but only if you pay a fortune (one million dollars in NYC) for the permit of an existing taxi driver.
That's what cronyism is. To call it capitalism or laissez-faire is ignorance so pathetic as to be comedy gold.
Infuriate left and right
The regulations that allowed Unions, prohibited child labor, and mandated work place safety are not in question here.
The unnecessary financial involvement of government in a for profit enterprise is however the problem. Government is horrible at acting like a business because there is no natural force to improve efficiency or foster innovation. A business will go bankrupt if it is not able to be efficient enough so there is ample motive and outside forces that lead to innovation in efficiency. Businesses that can't keep up, go away.
What happens when the government can not keep up? Can we say Greece?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
In fact, a lot of case it as helped. but success in government isn't really reported. You know why? it's not unusual.
Citation needed.
Please don't confuse regulations with government provided service. Reual electrification was nothing more that the government paying for the rural communities to have electricity. It was not a regulation of private business.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
I will actually give this one to you, but understand that this was a regulation across the entire population and not against a specific industry.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
they seem to want to take the failure on the state level and apply it broadly to all levels of government.
Easy to do. For evidence of this, look at the Solyndra boondoggle. Half a billion dollars of taxpayer money.
The Clean air and water act was a knee jerk reaction to a problem that could have easily been solved with just the court system. It continues to cause many business to hire teams of lawyers just to insure they meet the letter of the law. It does very little to actually prevent pollution and cost tax payers and businesses far too much.
It is one thing to require businesses to not pollute beyond a certain level. It is a completely different thing to dictate how they will accomplish that process.
Also, using Beijing as anecdotal evidence is a bit of a straw man. They do not and never have had a capitalist society.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Solyndra was not only in an industry with a lot of competition, solar cells is an industry considerably older, more stable, and better understood than video games. FWIW, one of the reasons Solyndra failed is inferior technology (according to Rogers of Cypress Semiconductor).
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The Glass-Steagal Act... really.
I offter this for your viewing pleasure, as Yaron Brook explains it far better than I ever could.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
That's mis using, as in abusing. And properly speaking, it's not a clause, it's a preface.
The paragraph in a Constitution that uses "public welfare" is always a statement of purpose (this is why we're doing this), not a carte blanche to do any old damn thing, as it is deliberately misunderstood to be.
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The EPA is by and large the biggest hindrance to becoming a successful starting business. They have been responsible for far more legislation than any other government agency. You can give credit to the EPA for many good things, but the unintended consequences now outweigh the good.
Again, as I stated above, It's one thing to require businesses not to pollute beyond a given level. It is a completely different matter when they regulate how to accomplish that goal.
Ask yourself this. What EPA regulation will you break by opening a lemonade stand in your front yard? If you don't know, then you don't understand just how bad the over regulation has become.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
The failing is in politicians. For about 40 years after the founding and sporadically for the next 100 years, officeholders knew not to mix business and politics. It's their job and they take an oath of office to act properly. Businessmen are also wrong to go to government for money, but at least they are operating within their role to make their business successful.
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I have blamed the mainstream media for this, but I suspect the public education system should get some credit for this as well. All you have stated above is not even half of the story. But it is the story that is most told the most often. There are many good books out there that explain the real issues behind the various crashes in the economy over the years. In every case, if the government had stayed out of the market, it would have corrected itself through price variations. Leave the risk to the businesses and out of the governments hands.
In every case, the government perceived a problem and tried to fix it, thereby making things worse in the long run. Blaming the S&L failures on deregulation, ignores the fact that they were forced into making risky loans by the government. All in the name of helping the poor. A good intention to be sure, but again the unintended consequence came back to haunt them.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Yeaaaahhhhhh, no.
The definition of cronyism is rewarding your allies or dependents with benefits they did not earn or deserve. Usually crony capitalism is used as a buzzword to attack government since 2009 due to the relationship Barack Obama has with Chicago and the imagined relationship he has/had with the supposed Chicago political machine.
Now in this case we're looking at a government that barring some hidden kickback that directly rewarded a government official as just a bad loan. It cannot be "crony capitalism" without directly rewarding the crony of the giver.
Whereas strictly speaking cronyism can occur outside of government influence Crony Capitalism pretty much requires it. It was also around long before the current administration. Hell, the wikipedia article on it alone goes back to 2005 and I doubt the history of the term starts there.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Child (factory) labor came about when children who would have starved to death on family farms were able to produce greater value by being employed in a factory. Child labor was, and remains, a good thing for anyone who doesn't want dead children. As society became richer and could afford some idle children*, union pressure to prevent cheap competition and other political forces came forth with largely bogus arguments against child labor. By this time large numbers of people were isolated from deep poverty, didn't understand the economics involved, and thus had no problem supporting (anti-) child labor laws. So child labor was banned in visible places, and those affected either: 1 lived poorer lives 2 died 3 moved where their labor was still legal 4 relied on charity 5 (more recently) lived off government money.
So are child labor laws not a problem now, since we're in a rich country that can afford hordes of idle youth?
Where do you think violent inner-city gangs come from? What is the cause of 40% black youth unemployment, and where do they put the energy that would otherwise go into a job?
*Note that "society became richer and could afford some idle children" is collectivist language, but you probably understand what I mean. I'm not going to spend several hours explaining the issue in proper detail.
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I think it's important to note that Schilling has always come out (publicly at least) against public money. He's a classic anti-big-government, pro-free market guy.
"Schilling spent no small amount of time in his career preaching the Republican mantra of smaller government and personal responsibility. He did this fresh off the historic Red Sox World Series win when he backed George W. Bush in the 2004 campaign. He did it on the stump on behalf of John McCain in 2008.
He did it for Scott Brown in January 2010, when he wrote in his blog, "He's for smaller government," and lauding Brown's opposition to "creating a new government insurance program."
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/05/18/late-inning-curve-ball/ANKpzy1g9rtaDboIciP56K/story.html
It's too bad the parent is AC and hasn't been modded up. I was going to post basically the same thing. Schilling has come out publicly against "big government" and against public money being spent on private companies.
Yet when Rhode Island comes along and offers him some money to move there, what does he do? Try and start a bidding war with Massachusetts to see who will give his company more money to move/stay.
The hypocrisy in Schilling's "small government" rhetoric while, at the same time, taking a $73 million loan from Rhode Island is just mind boggling.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Clean air and water laws are, first of all, attempts to protect one's property, that is, a portion of the air around us and such water that is on or under one's real estate.
Secondly, these restrictions apply to all, not just businesses. Houses not on sewers need code-legal septic tanks and leach fields. If I put in a new fireplace or wood stove (SURPRISE!) it has to include a catalytic converter in some places.
What many call restrictions or regulations on capitalism, if they are proper, are actually legal formulations of and recognition of the property rights on which capitalism is based.
Of course, those who choose to demonize capitalism seldom attack the roots on which it stands with full clarity (You don't have any right to own clothes or anything else.) Instead, capitalism is misrepresented in outrageous straw-man fashion.
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Glass-Steagall limited banks' ability to diversify their investments. Consequently, they became more vulnerable to crashes in a particular industry. Housing industry first bubbles and then goes sour, and banks forced by the government to make risky loans and not diversify out of housing loans die. Also, they have to hire a phalanx of lawyers to tell them if they're operating within the law, instead of just following good business practices.
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Yours is probably adjusted for inflation.
Aye, not capitalism, but entirely congruent with it.
These things involve using force to get an economic advantage, rather than producing a product that free people choose to buy
You describe markets there, not capitalism..
Capitalism is not 'an economic system' but an occurrence that may happen in particular sorts of economic environments. Furthermore, capitalism was never 'devised'.
They do not and never have had a capitalist society.
You appear to be suffering from delusion.
The Clean air and water act was a knee jerk reaction to a problem that could have easily been solved with just the court system.
If that is so, why was the problem not solved with just the court system? You claim it's so easy. Why didn't it happen? Why did the Cuyahoga fucking catch on fire because it was so polluted if the courts are so powerful at fixing pollution? Why is it that the courts couldn't even fix it then, and we had to resort to legislation making it illegal to pollute?
You need to start actually thinking about these issues instead of mindlessly repeating standard libertarian talking points about how courts and contracts can solve everything. Besides the fact that we have plenty of empirical evidence that no, courts & contracts can't solve all ills, you clearly haven't spent even a second of time thinking about the problem seriously. For example, no court can provide proper redress for the cancer someone got because they happened to live in an area where the groundwater got contaminated by a corporation. There are harms where there is no UNDO button, so it's best to prevent them from happening in the first place. Another problem: it's a bit difficult to sue and win if you're a poor individual and the party which harmed you is a megacorporation.
It is right and proper for the state to stand up for the rights of society and individuals against corporate interests.
The most ironic thing about libertarian thinking? Your desire to "free" the market by removing regulation would, if put into practice, achieve exactly the opposite result. Without government intervention, there wouldn't be any free markets. Adam Smith (you know, that guy who did the pioneering work on capitalist economic theory a few hundred years ago at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution) observed that private interests inevitably seek to distort free markets. The only solution he could see was government intervention to preserve fair access and accurate information, and nobody seems to have come up with something better since.
(FYI, since you probably know nothing about the economic theory behind the "invisible hand" idea, here is a brief summary. Smith noticed that markets only do good things for society as a whole under certain conditions. Those conditions include things like "anyone can enter the market", "there are many sellers of a good", "the goods sold by those sellers are fungible", "both buyers and sellers have accurate information about the quality of the goods and market conditions", "the creators of a good bear all the costs of creating it", and on and on. The more you break those properties, the less effective the "invisible hand" is at achieving the holy grail of ideal allocation of society's resources to maximize everyone's happiness. However, private interests often want to break those properties, because it will permit them to make more money, at the expense of other people or society as a whole.)
It's a shame that the self-styled champions of capitalism are so very ignorant of its history as an idea, and how it actually works in practice.
If Solyndra was a pure boondoggle, what is fusion research? Hint: a lot more than $0.5B has been poured down that rathole over the years.
(For the record, I think we probably should be doing fusion research with public money even though there's been essentially no return to date.)
p.s. You probably believe a lot of falsehoods about Solyndra. The government didn't give them money up front, they gave a loan guarantee. There was a real and possibly innovative product (cylindrical solar cells), it just ended up an also-ran due to unforseen circumstances (primarily: Chinese suppliers started selling conventional planar cells lot cheaper than Solyndra's business model had predicted, and Solyndra's product was too expensive to compete). It was one of many alt-energy loan guarantees, it just ended up being a political football because it failed at a time when Republicans were casting about looking for a big scandal to blame on Obama.
Selectively portraying only (R) ...
shut the fuck up.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
It was no less silly than the rest of the comment.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
In your view abusing, in others it is an extension of the state's power. As well I used the clause as more so a turn of phrase but the supreme court agrees with me, it is a clause. Public welfare is always the job of the state.
For the record I agree giving loans to 38 studios was less than public welfare as their end product was not going to benefit the public in general like a scientific advancement. The employment gains were small for the dollars expended. They would have been better spent on employment initatives.
I'm really bored and don't particuarly care to fight with you over this as I teach a class on this. You're either a liar or an idiot. You live in an alternative reality where you consume libertarian literature that has not been peer-reviewed or accurately adjudicated. In other words: You're full of shit.
The US government isn't spending 40% of the GDP. The numbers you're quoting our specific acts by individiual policies. There is a general baseline that the article doesn't cover but is neither here nor there at this point.
The government can act as a bank or investor if they so desire and still remain capitalist because they weren't taking ownership or using the investment to enhance the life of the workers.
Fuck you. When government underwrites a private venture, it is no longer capitalist. If shit hits the fan and the government has taken responsibility of cleaning up the shit, you think the government is still clean?
So the government puts a gun to your head, says "Pay up motherfucker". You give it your money, and it goes out "investing" on whatever the fuck it wants. And the taxpayers are supposed to acquiesce to that? Take it lying down?
I would rather keep my money rather than having morons spending it. And if they want to, they can always setup a fund for others to VOLUNTARILY donate money.
In fact, a lot of case it as helped. but success in government isn't really reported. You know why? it's not unusual.
Do yourself a favor and work in the public sector for a year. Come back and then tell us how "successful" the government is.
I worked there for 3 years and it is one big shithole where taxpayer money get sucked in. I was liberal until I worked in the public sector.
Usually crony capitalism is used as a buzzword to attack government since 2009 due to the relationship Barack Obama has with Chicago and the imagined relationship he has/had with the supposed Chicago political machine.
Pull your head out of your partisan ass. This is not about Obama and did not start in 2009.
Go back and read Reason's archives. You will find them talking about it even in the Bush years.
Politicians are not better than us. They are FALLIBLE and CORRUPTIBLE. That applies to both Democrats and Republicans, and definitely to Obama as well. You give them money and power, and what else do you expect?
I think the summation is that Reason being a politically drive ideologue magazine they have a skewed point of view that cannot be trusted to be objective.
Yeah right. And Newsweek and Mother Jones aren't.
Oh please. Workshop labor was a major improvement over working even longer hours (child labor included of course) with no benefits, no labor restrictions, no concern for safety etc. in the fields as most of these people used to do. How else do you think child mortality went down so fast in this period, average lifespan grew, and the number of schools went up at the same time ? These people were trading truly horrid and stagnant conditions, for bad conditions that at least let their child have an improved future (which they got generation after generation).
So why do we now have so many vivid depictions of industrial revolution's labor conditions, but so little of the much worse conditions of peasants at that time ? Because the latter were hidden away in the country and left there to toil, suffer and die, while the factory workers were just down the street to the people writing those books and newspapers carrying those depictions.
Also, at that time, the ones who worried most and actually did something about those poor work conditions were not the governement, but employers. It's not the state that first installed childcare facilities, hospitals, schools and started mutual insurance funds for covering healthcare costs and retirement pensions, it was the "industry captains" of the time hand in hand with the Church.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I'm still waiting on that one to actually happen.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
These things involve using force to get an economic advantage, rather than producing a product that free people choose to buy, which is the glistening city on the hill everybody imagines.
You seem to have misspelled "imaginary" as "glistening".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If it was any form of socialism (using the word properly rather than just as a right wing meaningless insult) then the risks and rewards would be shared out equally.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In general, crony capitalism==bad. Capitalism==good. This is something agreed on by both parties
That is why non-Americans always smile at the pretend debates between Republicans and Democrats. They're both conservative, right wing, pro-business parties by world standards.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In the same way that socialism is the theory, and communism is what happens when you implement it.
No, it's communism that is the theory and socialism that happens when you partly implement it under non-ideal circumstances.
Something like Chinese or Soviet "communism" are just poorly worked out socialist societies which never progressed due to the inherently totalitarian and conservative make up of the societies in which they were created.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yes it is. OECD lists US government spending as around 40% of GDP:
http://tinyurl.com/ad6r4nw
So does Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending
I pointed you to an article on fiscal multipliers; it provides both general ranges across all policies and specific values. If you want a nice discussion of aggregate impact of fiscal multipliers, look here:
http://www.voxeu.org/article/determining-size-fiscal-multiplier
Note that even in the best of cases, that rises only to about 1.6.
Here is a good discussion in the context of US policy:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123258618204604599.html
You've provided no data to support your ludicrously implausible claims. I think it's clear you don't really know what you're talking about.
No, I don't know what EPA regulation I'd break with a lemonade stand. But unless you point it out, I'm going to guess none.
If you CAN'T point out the exact line of regulation and link to a source I can verify (You know a real one, not some talking head blog), then you're just making shit up and fear-mongering. Because you FEEL like the EPA is over-regulating and you've heard other people bitch about the EPA and lemonade stands.
And you know what? There probably ARE a lot of bad little things that the EPA is simply a dick about. Things like an overly picky method of... hell if I know, straining poop or something, which was enacted entirely because dickass company X was being squirrely and the EPA brought out the hammer to fix it. Things like that need to be fixed. But to say that the EPA is a net negative? That we should simply get rid of it? Naw dude. No, I'd prefer to be able to breath in my city.
A system has to be absolutely horrific before tearing it down is a better idea than fixing it.
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Not sure what country you're from, but most likely that's how the major parties are in your country as well, you just haven't realized it yet.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The Clean air and water act was a knee jerk reaction to a problem that could have easily been solved with just the court system. It continues to cause many business to hire teams of lawyers just to insure they meet the letter of the law. It does very little to actually prevent pollution and cost tax payers and businesses far too much.
It is one thing to require businesses to not pollute beyond a certain level. It is a completely different thing to dictate how they will accomplish that process.
Also, using Beijing as anecdotal evidence is a bit of a straw man. They do not and never have had a capitalist society.
Here's a few million anecdotes: when I was a kid living in Los Angeles, smog really sucked. Many days a year we had Smog Alerts. Now it's fairly rare to get an Alert. It took decades to get to the point of constant smog, and, apparently, due to the "knee-jerk", it's taken decades to get us where we are now (it's not an easy solution).
So some regulations are good. I think we agree on that. A lot of regulations, though, are created when private businesses find ways to game the system (of course, some regs come to us via corruption or incompetence). I guess I'd rather have businesses have to retain an "army of lawyers" to deal with their pollution, vs. having to have private citizens or local govt have to hire an army of lawyers to deal with each polluter individually, on a case-by-case basis.
I think that I and a few million Angelenos prefer the knee-jerk. It is working, I don't believe that the court system would have worked as well or as comprehensively.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
+1
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Well, I like sitting around and waiting for other people to do stuff for me as well as the next guy, but I figured, just this once, to do something, so here you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Historical_monopolies
Aristotle talks about it in his "Politics" (turns out someone had cornered the market on olive presses).
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
The 2003-2008 housing bubble formed after Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999. There were no housing bubbles while Glass-Steagall was in place.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
If you need a youtube videos to explain it, then you don't really understand it.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
The Ayn fucking Rand institute?
If I were a dictator I'd have all you objectivists lined up and shot.
Seriously.
You are all a stain on humanity.
And every single example in the list is etiher a legal monopoly granted by fiat by the state, or backed by stringent regulation that stiffly increases the cost to entry in their market.
Think.
Maybe we deserve this world ?