"You're arguing with someone who was supporting you now."
Sorry, but no, we are disagreeing.
These laws were not antitrust laws. There were lots of auto manufacturers in the United States at the time these regulations passed; it was not monopoly, or oligopoly, or anything even close.
These regulations were nothing more than "I want a share of the pie." Not the same thing.
"I read the discussion and didn't see it, and then I skimmed it again for wikipedia links. So no, you didn't, but feel free to quote it to me if it's that important."
I'm not obligated to hold your hand. I just went and looked again, and it's still there. It's sad that you can't find it, but that's rather your problem.
As for whether it is important: it largely disproves your original assertion. If you think that's important, then fine. But I'm not trying to be a hardass about it. If you don't want to look it up, that's fine too. But then you rather lose credibility re: the rest of your argument.
"We're talking about this regulation... This regulation obviously haven't made them unprofitable or else there would be zero car dealerships in the United States."
First, I clearly stated that I was referring to the effects of this regulation AND similar regulations in other states across the U.S. Then you say we're talking about THIS regulation... then you say if it was bad there would be no dealerships across the whole U.S.
You argue in circles.
"One of your points was that regulations on manufacturer-run dealerships were a direct cause of fewer major American car manufacturers existing now than existed thirty years ago."
Well, first off, it was 50+ years ago, not 30. Second, while there is a correlation, I admitted that there may be no cause-effect relationship. But I have reason to believe there is.
"In fact, your restatement of your point here is that manufacturers are so unprofitable due to not opening car dealerships that they're losing market share to foreign manufacturers who are beholden to the exact same restrictions regarding car dealerships."
That is a rather gross mis-statement of what I actually wrote. What I wrote was that market forces -- NOT "free" market forces, but rather government intervention in the market -- over time, caused the auto manufacturers to become less profitable, thus some went out of business and others have been struggling. I made no mention of CURRENT auto dealerships vs. auto manufacturers, in fact the evidence I pointed to stops at 1998.
But whether the current situation is the same is irrelevant to my argument; it was about changes caused by the regulations in question, which were not made yesterday. In fact similar legislation has been in force in my own state at least since I was a child.
"Just how many of the major American car manufacturers do you think no longer exist because of franchise laws?"
That question was already answered in that link you have been having so much trouble finding, and repeated in another comment I made here to someone else.
"Simply cutting taxes will rob the government of a meaningful way to bring down debt..."
Then let it go broke, like it did in 1934 and 1971. I don't give a damn. Frankly, it's about time that it did, and got a swift kick in the reality.
"In the current situation a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts are probably the only rational solution."
I disagree that increasing taxes during a recession is "rational". That's Keynesian talk. It has never worked. Overspending got use here. Only underspending will get us out.
Even Adam Smith, who pretty much defined the concept of a free-market "system", disagreed with you. Try reading his book.
Even 230+ years ago, Smith wrote that a free market could lead to monopolies, and so a reasonable body of antitrust laws would be required to keep everybody playing within the rules.
"Absolutely free" markets, with no antitrust, is not a recent idea but it is a destructive one. Such a market would either fail or become fascism in short order.
"You're complaining that unspecified regulations make the market too free?"
Uh... how do you figure? Regulating business (I don't care if the regulation says "You can't stand in the window with your thumb up your nose," does not make business more free. Freedom are regulation are contradictions.
"What nonsense. I searched through your comment history looking for the Wikipedia link you mentioned and couldn't find it. I did notice you talking about how Obama's birth certificate is faked."
Well, you didn't look very hard, because I just did a search on this same page for "Jane Q. Public" and found it in about 5 seconds. It's there.
As far as the birth certificate is concerned: I did not claim that his actual, original birth certificate is fake. But then, nobody has seen that one. However, the one the White House originally posted on the Internet (and since taken down) was definitely a fake.
Note that I also have not claimed that Obama was directly involved in the forgery. But one must ask: why would the White House post a fake? And why would they then take it down if it were NOT a fake? If I were up-front and honest, I'd leave it there so that experts could prove that it was genuine.
Sadly, the experts who actually were consulted on the matter (and not by the White House, which obviously wants no such examination) did in fact say that it could not be genuine.
Do with that what you will. I did not say Obama was born in a foreign land. What I did say was the the White House posted a fake document on its web page. Which they have since removed. Because it's fake. If it were not, they would have had no rational motive to remove it.
Yes, I did. Apparently you aren't reading the whole thread. Look back for the link I posted. It's there.
"The auto industry has undergone drastic changes over the last six decades and suffered greatly for a huge number of different reasons, but monopolizing dealerships in MA and NY is not one of them!"
It isn't just NY and MA, it's all over the U.S. And, at least as much to the point: many of those changes came about BECAUSE of regulation.
"The finances involved on the dealership level are so tiny compared to the economic weight of automobile manufacturers that it's kind of a joke to suggest that lack of manufacturer-owned dealers is why any of them have gone out of business. After all, they can still run their own dealerships!"
You should sit down and examine the logic of the things you are posting. Pencil and paper might be helpful.
It doesn't matter very much if manufacturers can still own their own dealerships, if regulations have made it unprofitable. If you are selling only Ford, and the guy down the street is selling Ford AND Chevrolet (just a fictitious example), where do you think most people are going to go first? I'll tell you where I'd go... to the one with more choices.
"And it's not like they have to compete unfairly against foreign-based auto manufacturers in this regard -- the franchising laws apply just as much to Toyota or whoever as they do Ford."
You have missed the point entirely. WHOOSH! My point has not been about the profitability of dealerships, it was about the profitability of manufacturers!
"This attorney general is essentially pandering to a popular cause."
Well... given that, (shifting gears here), it's still a bad thing because pandering to "The Cause of the Day" is the worst kind of politics, and the source of much of our recent loss of freedom... regardless of the actual motive of the panderers.
I know there is a good historical quote about this but I did not find it after a short look. I will have to hunt it up for my collection.
"You think there would be more automobile manufacturers if they could monopolize dealerships... ?"
There WERE more automobile manufacturers when they could monopolize dealerships, as I have already shown you. Feel free to ignore the facts all you like. I can't prove cause-and-effect in this case, but I think the evidence pretty solidly points that way. "Correlation does not imply causation" does not mean that correlation never means causality... it often does. It just means that one should be cautious about it.
As for your second paragraph: point taken, but "corporate buddies" could have meant GM and friends, or owners of car dealerships (themselves often large corporations, though not AS big). I felt he was implying dealerships, not manufacturers.
"Raising taxes can most certainly raise revenues. Don't confuse your political ideology with actual economics."
Whose revenues? That is the relevant question here. And for that matter, whose economics? Warning: if you start spouting Keynes at me, I'm going to laugh at you.
"Bush raised the deficit and grew government during growth years. Obama lowered spending each year he was in office and shrank government during a recession."
Haha! Talk about Confirmation Bias.
The FACT that Bush left us with that deficit means that they were NOT "growth years". Though they might have been, if it hadn't been for him!
Administrative policies do (sadly, and in many ways unjustifiably) have an effect on the economy. If you are denying that, then you should not be discussing economics at all, because you don't live in the same world as the rest of us do.
Precisely. Since they passed such regulations in the U.S. (see my Wikipedia link above), the number of MAJOR native manufacturers has gone from 14 to 9 (if you count CMC as one, which you probably should).
Not only that, in the last year listed, 1998, not one of them sold a million cars. Foreign competition is largely responsible. And it would not be possible without restrictive regulations.
People need to think before they start spouting this "Oh my god, let's kill the monopoly" B.S. And maybe look at some actual numbers. Because not only was there not a monopoly in the U.S. at the time, there are fewer manufacturers now than then! And they have been less profitable.
To clarify a little bit: look how many "800-lb. gorillas" (i.e., MAJOR U.S. manufacturers) there were pre-regulation (say, 1960) than post-regulation (say, 1998). And even that needs a bit of interpretation because Buick, Cadillac, GMC, and Chevrolet are all really General Motors.
"It'd be nice if you could spend a moment to actually consider why it might be before complaining, since your argument about political quid pro quo with corporations is actually working against itself here."
It'd be nice if you stopped to examine your own economic preconceptions before chastising someone else.
What if the manufacturers owned their own dealerships? Yes, they'd be 800-lb. gorillas. But there would be A LOT of them, because it's profitable to be an 800-lb. gorilla. And lots of 800-lb. gorillas in the business means healthy competition.
What has regulation gotten us? Foreign competitors outselling native makes. Manufacturers going out of business (or getting bailed out). Because it was no longer profitable to be that 800-lb. gorilla.
They weren't maintaining it anyway. And an application for storing documents is trivial these days. If it's done halfway right, you would also not need much in training to use it. Sit down, log in, look up.
"... without even naming those other people, aside from "expert" Joe Arpaio."
Joe Arpaio also did not do the analysis. He arranged a team of investigators, who then consulted experts.
The information is mostly public domain, if you just look for it. For example, completely aside from the graphics evidence, there is this, the fact that the numbers on the birth records are out of sequence. And the fact that Hawaiian official will not allow others who were born near the same time access to their own records, even though it is required by law.
It goes on. It's just just a few flakes who think they know a little about Photoshop. There is actually quite a bit of very strong evidence of fakery.
Having said that: I know of no proof that Obama himself was necessarily behind any of it.
As mentioned above, I used Wikipedia's formula and a rough guesstimate of the radius (which might have been off). But they give the example of Gliese, which is 5 x Earth mass and has a surface gravity of about 2.2 times Earth. So I doubt very much that 7 x Earth mass, at the same density, would be less than 2 x Earth gravity.
Slashdot Mirror
"You're arguing with someone who was supporting you now."
Sorry, but no, we are disagreeing.
These laws were not antitrust laws. There were lots of auto manufacturers in the United States at the time these regulations passed; it was not monopoly, or oligopoly, or anything even close.
These regulations were nothing more than "I want a share of the pie." Not the same thing.
"I read the discussion and didn't see it, and then I skimmed it again for wikipedia links. So no, you didn't, but feel free to quote it to me if it's that important."
I'm not obligated to hold your hand. I just went and looked again, and it's still there. It's sad that you can't find it, but that's rather your problem.
As for whether it is important: it largely disproves your original assertion. If you think that's important, then fine. But I'm not trying to be a hardass about it. If you don't want to look it up, that's fine too. But then you rather lose credibility re: the rest of your argument.
"We're talking about this regulation... This regulation obviously haven't made them unprofitable or else there would be zero car dealerships in the United States."
First, I clearly stated that I was referring to the effects of this regulation AND similar regulations in other states across the U.S. Then you say we're talking about THIS regulation... then you say if it was bad there would be no dealerships across the whole U.S.
You argue in circles.
"One of your points was that regulations on manufacturer-run dealerships were a direct cause of fewer major American car manufacturers existing now than existed thirty years ago."
Well, first off, it was 50+ years ago, not 30. Second, while there is a correlation, I admitted that there may be no cause-effect relationship. But I have reason to believe there is.
"In fact, your restatement of your point here is that manufacturers are so unprofitable due to not opening car dealerships that they're losing market share to foreign manufacturers who are beholden to the exact same restrictions regarding car dealerships."
That is a rather gross mis-statement of what I actually wrote. What I wrote was that market forces -- NOT "free" market forces, but rather government intervention in the market -- over time, caused the auto manufacturers to become less profitable, thus some went out of business and others have been struggling. I made no mention of CURRENT auto dealerships vs. auto manufacturers, in fact the evidence I pointed to stops at 1998.
But whether the current situation is the same is irrelevant to my argument; it was about changes caused by the regulations in question, which were not made yesterday. In fact similar legislation has been in force in my own state at least since I was a child.
"Just how many of the major American car manufacturers do you think no longer exist because of franchise laws?"
That question was already answered in that link you have been having so much trouble finding, and repeated in another comment I made here to someone else.
"Simply cutting taxes will rob the government of a meaningful way to bring down debt..."
Then let it go broke, like it did in 1934 and 1971. I don't give a damn. Frankly, it's about time that it did, and got a swift kick in the reality.
"In the current situation a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts are probably the only rational solution."
I disagree that increasing taxes during a recession is "rational". That's Keynesian talk. It has never worked. Overspending got use here. Only underspending will get us out.
"Monopolies don't exist in a free market system."
Even Adam Smith, who pretty much defined the concept of a free-market "system", disagreed with you. Try reading his book.
Even 230+ years ago, Smith wrote that a free market could lead to monopolies, and so a reasonable body of antitrust laws would be required to keep everybody playing within the rules.
"Absolutely free" markets, with no antitrust, is not a recent idea but it is a destructive one. Such a market would either fail or become fascism in short order.
"the cars designed in Japan (but manufactured here) were cheaper and better made than the American designed ones..."
You forget your history. Originally, there WERE no Japanese cars designed overseas and manufactured here. They were imported.
You are arguing backwards, man.
Correction: "Freedom AND regulation are contradictions."
The dealership regulation was not an antitrust issue. It was an "I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine" issue for local and State politicians.
"You're complaining that unspecified regulations make the market too free?"
Uh... how do you figure? Regulating business (I don't care if the regulation says "You can't stand in the window with your thumb up your nose," does not make business more free. Freedom are regulation are contradictions.
"What nonsense. I searched through your comment history looking for the Wikipedia link you mentioned and couldn't find it. I did notice you talking about how Obama's birth certificate is faked."
Well, you didn't look very hard, because I just did a search on this same page for "Jane Q. Public" and found it in about 5 seconds. It's there.
As far as the birth certificate is concerned: I did not claim that his actual, original birth certificate is fake. But then, nobody has seen that one. However, the one the White House originally posted on the Internet (and since taken down) was definitely a fake.
Note that I also have not claimed that Obama was directly involved in the forgery. But one must ask: why would the White House post a fake? And why would they then take it down if it were NOT a fake? If I were up-front and honest, I'd leave it there so that experts could prove that it was genuine.
Sadly, the experts who actually were consulted on the matter (and not by the White House, which obviously wants no such examination) did in fact say that it could not be genuine.
Do with that what you will. I did not say Obama was born in a foreign land. What I did say was the the White House posted a fake document on its web page. Which they have since removed. Because it's fake. If it were not, they would have had no rational motive to remove it.
"You never showed me that."
Yes, I did. Apparently you aren't reading the whole thread. Look back for the link I posted. It's there.
"The auto industry has undergone drastic changes over the last six decades and suffered greatly for a huge number of different reasons, but monopolizing dealerships in MA and NY is not one of them!"
It isn't just NY and MA, it's all over the U.S. And, at least as much to the point: many of those changes came about BECAUSE of regulation.
"The finances involved on the dealership level are so tiny compared to the economic weight of automobile manufacturers that it's kind of a joke to suggest that lack of manufacturer-owned dealers is why any of them have gone out of business. After all, they can still run their own dealerships!"
You should sit down and examine the logic of the things you are posting. Pencil and paper might be helpful.
It doesn't matter very much if manufacturers can still own their own dealerships, if regulations have made it unprofitable. If you are selling only Ford, and the guy down the street is selling Ford AND Chevrolet (just a fictitious example), where do you think most people are going to go first? I'll tell you where I'd go... to the one with more choices.
"And it's not like they have to compete unfairly against foreign-based auto manufacturers in this regard -- the franchising laws apply just as much to Toyota or whoever as they do Ford."
You have missed the point entirely. WHOOSH! My point has not been about the profitability of dealerships, it was about the profitability of manufacturers!
"This attorney general is essentially pandering to a popular cause."
Well... given that, (shifting gears here), it's still a bad thing because pandering to "The Cause of the Day" is the worst kind of politics, and the source of much of our recent loss of freedom... regardless of the actual motive of the panderers.
I know there is a good historical quote about this but I did not find it after a short look. I will have to hunt it up for my collection.
"You think there would be more automobile manufacturers if they could monopolize dealerships... ?"
There WERE more automobile manufacturers when they could monopolize dealerships, as I have already shown you. Feel free to ignore the facts all you like. I can't prove cause-and-effect in this case, but I think the evidence pretty solidly points that way. "Correlation does not imply causation" does not mean that correlation never means causality... it often does. It just means that one should be cautious about it.
As for your second paragraph: point taken, but "corporate buddies" could have meant GM and friends, or owners of car dealerships (themselves often large corporations, though not AS big). I felt he was implying dealerships, not manufacturers.
I did not remember where I had seen that line, but I had definitely seen it before. So I looked it up and was reminded.
:o)
Obviously he valued companionship ("Now the world has gone to bed...") yet he got no solace from it. Poor Marvin.
"Cut back on spending and increase incoming revenue."
But GP has a valid point because the Obama administration has not done these things.
"Raising taxes can most certainly raise revenues. Don't confuse your political ideology with actual economics."
Whose revenues? That is the relevant question here. And for that matter, whose economics? Warning: if you start spouting Keynes at me, I'm going to laugh at you.
Having said that, I do agree that Obama made it significantly worse.
"Bush raised the deficit and grew government during growth years. Obama lowered spending each year he was in office and shrank government during a recession."
Haha! Talk about Confirmation Bias.
The FACT that Bush left us with that deficit means that they were NOT "growth years". Though they might have been, if it hadn't been for him!
Administrative policies do (sadly, and in many ways unjustifiably) have an effect on the economy. If you are denying that, then you should not be discussing economics at all, because you don't live in the same world as the rest of us do.
Precisely. Since they passed such regulations in the U.S. (see my Wikipedia link above), the number of MAJOR native manufacturers has gone from 14 to 9 (if you count CMC as one, which you probably should).
Not only that, in the last year listed, 1998, not one of them sold a million cars. Foreign competition is largely responsible. And it would not be possible without restrictive regulations.
People need to think before they start spouting this "Oh my god, let's kill the monopoly" B.S. And maybe look at some actual numbers. Because not only was there not a monopoly in the U.S. at the time, there are fewer manufacturers now than then! And they have been less profitable.
To clarify a little bit: look how many "800-lb. gorillas" (i.e., MAJOR U.S. manufacturers) there were pre-regulation (say, 1960) than post-regulation (say, 1998). And even that needs a bit of interpretation because Buick, Cadillac, GMC, and Chevrolet are all really General Motors.
"It'd be nice if you could spend a moment to actually consider why it might be before complaining, since your argument about political quid pro quo with corporations is actually working against itself here."
It'd be nice if you stopped to examine your own economic preconceptions before chastising someone else.
What if the manufacturers owned their own dealerships? Yes, they'd be 800-lb. gorillas. But there would be A LOT of them, because it's profitable to be an 800-lb. gorilla. And lots of 800-lb. gorillas in the business means healthy competition.
What has regulation gotten us? Foreign competitors outselling native makes. Manufacturers going out of business (or getting bailed out). Because it was no longer profitable to be that 800-lb. gorilla.
You think that's better? Give me a break.
They weren't maintaining it anyway. And an application for storing documents is trivial these days. If it's done halfway right, you would also not need much in training to use it. Sit down, log in, look up.
Correction: "It's NOT just a few flakes." Typographical error. But have fun with it if you want.
"... without even naming those other people, aside from "expert" Joe Arpaio."
Joe Arpaio also did not do the analysis. He arranged a team of investigators, who then consulted experts.
The information is mostly public domain, if you just look for it. For example, completely aside from the graphics evidence, there is this, the fact that the numbers on the birth records are out of sequence. And the fact that Hawaiian official will not allow others who were born near the same time access to their own records, even though it is required by law.
It goes on. It's just just a few flakes who think they know a little about Photoshop. There is actually quite a bit of very strong evidence of fakery.
Having said that: I know of no proof that Obama himself was necessarily behind any of it.
I didn't say Monckton did any analysis. He's just presenting what other people found.
Haha I was thinking something similar. They're after price gougers in the aftermath of a natural disaster, but the everyday gougers walk free.
Some nanny state.
As mentioned above, I used Wikipedia's formula and a rough guesstimate of the radius (which might have been off). But they give the example of Gliese, which is 5 x Earth mass and has a surface gravity of about 2.2 times Earth. So I doubt very much that 7 x Earth mass, at the same density, would be less than 2 x Earth gravity.
I used the formula from Wikipedia. I'll stick with that, thanks very much.