deflation in response to a more efficient market is definitely a good thing, just because the government shamans and witch doctors tell you otherwise, it does not make it so.
However the deflation we see today is tied to the credit bubble, that has burst, but the dollars are being printed, so nominally you see prices going up, but in real terms, the value of real money (gold) goes up in USD faster, than value of other commodities and products, thus there is deflation, because bad money is displacing good, (Gresham's law).
Borrowing money is very risk in a deflationary economy, which impedes investment and growth
- as it should be. Money is supposed to be savings, which is the measure of work done to save that money. This forces those, who lend to be more diligent, and you can't say that the government has pushed forward the agenda of diligence with its easy money an laws, designed to get people to spend borrowed money.
Deflation also makes credit in significant amounts -- e.g. to buy a house -- basically unavailable to ordinary people.
- however in 19 century deflationary environment, more and more products and services were created, while prices were dropping and dollar gained value by x2, the increase in production was such, that houses and other goods became cheap enough for people to buy with savings and without having to borrow. Being able to buy products is a function of the useful productive work, not a function of being able to get into unsurmountable amounts of debt.
Granted that ordinary people badly abuse credit in our world today, but deflation is a cure worse than the disease.
- how is deflation in real terms worse than the disease? Deflation is contraction of monetary supply, which results in lowering prices for everything - goods and labor, but how is it bad for people to see prices going down rather than climbing?
Who had a better economy: a person in 19 century, who saw more and more products enter the market as he was part of the production cycle, and because he was producing, his purchasing power increased, as the money appreciated. Or is it a person in 20th century, who sees more and more products made in other places (like China) entering the market at prices held artificially low by government manipulating the currency?
One is the path to economic stability and growth, and the other is the path to economic destruction and ruin. Deflation was not the path to destruction - inflation is.
Literate and educated populace is not a function of government, it's the function of a market, which requires literate and educated populace, so now, that the market in USA does not require literate and educated populace (because nobody wants to hire in US), then any amount of government money in it, will only do one thing: push kids into debt without giving them the ability to ever use their education in real life.
In real life, the government has destroyed the attractiveness of a US worker.
hhmmmm, just how useful is this story without pics? We need to see and judge his crimes ourselves, and the only way to pass an impartial judgment is by closely examining all of the evidence.
Hospitals and colleges are both examples of market failure.
- more nonsense.
Where you see market failure, I see market, that was producing success until government got into the game with its money and debt and promises of free this and free that. The failure became the government money in it, which immediately provided incentives to push prices up. By the way, free market taking advantage of the government money is not a failure, it's a perfect reaction to this insane action by the government.
If people actually had to pay for doctor's themselves, you'd quickly see more $30/visit clinics spring up (buy them in bulk to get a discount to $20!).
- what's your point? In the free market you have enough choice to go here or there, but beyond that, health-care is just a good like any other, and it's your choice to drop money on it if you want to even if it maybe excessive. Still, if doctor visits were all on the order of $10 (and they used to be on the order of $5/visit, before government intervention), then you would have most people being able to afford doctor visits, and the market providing $20 discounts.... why are you complaining?
Likewise, how many people pay for their college education? Most just borrow against their future earnings and pay whatever their college wants to charge. $80k, $100k, $120k, what's the difference?
- huge difference. People need to appreciate what they are spending before they are jumping into debt. Without government money, the prices would be very low, especially given the new technologies, that allow professors to do real economies of scale.
However if you still needed a loan, you definitely could get it privately, but you wouldn't get one, if your creditor didn't see your choice of major as a good investment opportunity, because creditors would expect a return, and in that case very few people would be taking college majors in say sociology, and more people would be doing hard stuff: engineering and medicine, etc.
So where you see 'failure of the market', I see failure of the government with its money in there, which creates artificial demand just for a degree, any degree, because you are told: everybody gets a degree, so you must have one even to land any job (and you know, in situation with all the government provided loans, everybody DOES get a degree in whatever useless bullshit). So how do you figure it's a market failure, when it's a clear case of failure of government by the virtue of its involvement?
For anything the freeish market has been able to work its magic on, our purchasing power is much higher in the 2000s than ever before.
- of-course. So in electronics, computers, lasic eye surgery the prices are falling even in nominal terms, that's how fast they are falling in real terms.
The real question is then: why the hell would you be against repeating the same success in health care/insurance and education?
You can't have private business doing research in nuclear, because of how closed down the entire field is by the government in the first place. How do you do research, if anything you end up with may immediately be seized and classified and you can be thrown to jail even for possession of the necessary materials?
No no, the problem here is government intervention into an entire industry in a such a way, that it prevents any meaningful private research in it.
There always have been droughts and floods and tornadoes and volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis and everything, even nuclear disasters happened. All of those things are counted into the price of the commodities much before they even happen.
I put together this list and you will see, if you look at it, that it's not just food, but other items - iron ore, rubber, cotton, etc. Sure, there are some foods, like wheat, that had some other problems in terms of delivery to the contract, but if you look at the price hike in wheat, you'll see it is much lower than many other foods, that have gone in price quicker, and wheat is what Russian gov't prevented from hitting the market last and this years.
All of the resources of a country are owned by all of it's citizens equally
- reaaaally? You gotta show me the land that you own, which is equal to all the land everybody else own, and also, do you get the oil, that is your cut, in tankers, or do you just virtually own it, and some authority holds it for you in a large shared container?
Control of some of those resources is privatised under conditions applied by those citizens. Don't want to adhere to those conditions, then privatised control of parts of the countries resources will be taken from you.
- nope, that's not how it works. AT&T was laying cable, then they probably got together with some politicians, and they got a large discount on the property taxes, and they also got the government to give them the right of way, probably imminent domain clauses were applied, etc. The company was at some point declared a 'national resource'. But the company didn't start as such, it was a private business, and only the corruption of the government that made it into a monopoly.
So if the government corruption makes you a monopoly, what you have is captive audience and no competition, but in fact, it does not at all mean that the 'citizens' own your resources 'equally'. No such thing, because it's all about the corruption in the government, and it is done for profit of certain people in companies/government, but it's not done for your benefit, so there are no laws that state or enforce what you are implying there.
Wake up to yourself, all of a countries citizens provide the means by which those resources are protected, become available for use, are distributed and rewards provided for serving those resources.
- which resources would that be? Why would you give preference to any one company running phone lines and cable over any other company? Why would you undermine your own economy this way, which clearly brings higher prices, lowers competition and choice, lowers economic activity, destroys investment opportunities, destroys jobs, distorts the money market and kills the economy?
It makes no sense, so when you say:
If you can't work with the rest of human society, due to genetic defects like psychopathy and narcissism, it is you that needs to be isolated from privatised control of parts of a countries resources and not a requirement that the majority of citizens need to adjust to your insane demands.
- I throw right back at you this: if you can't understand that competition is better for the general economy, it's better for production, lower prices, innovation and invention, more capital investment, jobs, etc., if you can't understand it, then you have a disease, I don't think it's necessarily genetic, but it's there, and you may want to seek treatment.
Those requirements the set limits upon how citizens use their own bodies (you can not run up to random individuals and scream in their face or cover their mouths to prevent them from speaking)
- that's not a limit on YOUR body, that's a limit on you applying force to ANOTHER body, but it's not purview of government, by the way, this is criminal law, and laws are different from location to location. It's actually unnecessary having a government in order to have a working justice system, as justice system only functions as long as there is trust in it, and a government system without trust is broken. Do I trust government with the justice system? No. I don't trust it with the justice system anymore than I trust it with the economy.
also apply to the tools and by extension major works of infrastructure (you have no right to substitute your content for theirs or to censor their content).
- What does it mean: "I have no right"?
What does that mean at all, if the rights are a construct related to the interaction between the individual and the collective - the citizen an
If the U.S. Congress could fix their debt problem they would have already
- well, of-course. If they had a 'magic wand', they give everything to everybody, right? They cannot fix the problem, because fixing this problem creates a problem for them, which they do not see as a problem.
To fix the problem the SS and Medicare and all Wars must be stopped and military needs to be cut by 99%. Government departments need to shut down and regulations of businesses must be stopped. The Fed must be stopped, abolished from printing money, the only law that must be upheld is that government must live within its means and not rely on debt at all, regardless of their promises.
So that will start solving the problem of debt in a hurry, but it won't fix everything. To fix the economy, it must be made competitive, so the business regulations must be abolished, and that's half of the problem. The other half is taxing income - this must be abolished too.
At this point not only the government will not be on board, but most regular/. readers won't. Of-course that's because they don't understand the economics anymore than Bernanke or Geithner does.
USA has defaulted already, by the way, many times. The huge default was Nixon's gold shock - that was a default, don't pretend it wasn't. The promise was that the Fed will exchange your dollars for gold at their 1 ounce to 35USD exchange rate, well, they defaulted. They won't do it. After that every new printed USD was a default.
Once US defaults, USD is destroyed, US will go through a major transformation. Will it become dictatorial and will it become the former USSR? Will it let the economy fix itself and will it abolish the big government? I don't know, but my feeling is that it will do everything wrong at every step, so I expect the worst - USSR type government and USSR type economy.
Chernobyl: it was the USSR. meaningless to generalize.
- oh, no, it's a much more valid example, because the pretense was that the government war socialistic/communist, whatever, you know - pro poor people, pro labor, right?
So if that kind of government has no problems (and they really did not have problems) killing people, be it by sending them to gulags, be it placing them into mental hospitals, just shooting them or not causing nuclear disasters, then you can't expect anything from governments that are not as 'pro-poor/labor/socialism/communism', what can you expect from a dictator or from the 2 party nonsense, which is controlling more and more of the economy and 'justice' in USA?
If you are not going to need that money in the short term, if you are young, it's better to own gold/silver coins (but not the fucking gold line, or whatever, you gotta get bullion and never pay over 5% above the spot price, which you can see on kitco.com).
You have to choose how you want to play this out, one possibility is that you want to stay mobile, after all, why stay in a dying economy when there are other economies out there, that are going to boom even more, once they are off the US dollar and bonds. In that case owning metals is good - you don't have much money, so you can easily carry that on you in gold coins.
If you do not want to leave and want to ride it out, then maybe it makes sense (if you have space anywhere), to buy things you'd have to buy later on anyway, things that do not go bad necessarily, but things that will go up in price. Some alcohol, some clothes that are high on cotton, some toiletries. Buying food/fuel for later is very difficult for city residents, they don't have any space. Honestly, owning a weapon and some ammo is useful, but don't go crazy, there are more useful things than that. However if you eat meat/fish, maybe owning some hunting/fishing equipment is not a bad idea at all.
So how many people can afford themselves a daily hospital stay with their daily pay?
How many people can afford even their daily tuition with their daily pay? (there must be more of these, than ones who can afford daily hospital, but still?)
How many people today can afford ONE bread winner in a family of a stay at home wife and 2-3 kids?
How many people can do the above mentioned things without debt?
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What your point is that today we have a seemingly large amount of choice in cheap inconsequential things, but that's just burning the political and financial capital gained by US since it stopped being an agrarian country and started manufacturing and production, and earned its living.
Food is appreciating in price at the pace of 15-25% a year around the world, but US still sees much lower price hikes if any in food. But this is where the devalued currency will strike with force, once the US bonds are no longer bought by anybody, but the banks, who get the money off the printing presses.
History has plainly shown that companies and individuals are selfish pricks who will without a second thought let thousands die for their own profit and convenience.
- if anything, history shows that governments are selfish prick, who will without a second thought let millions die for their own desire of power.
I mean Chernobyl was not a private operation, did you know that?
As to RTGs not being disposed of safely - that's what I am trying to explain. If businesses were not stopped from working on nuclear power, they could have the full cycle worked out, just like we do not throw away our car batteries or oil from cars under the bridge, this does not have to be a problem either.
Based on the previous topics on this site, I know how this works, and it does not work favorably for my types of opinions, so if the majority do agree, they must be a silent majority.
The easy way to display that Federal reserve provided a much worse economic climate, than private banks before it did, even though some of them did do fractional reserve even with gold (sure, why not, fractional gold reserve is the same thing), is that in 19 century the value of US dollar rose by a factor of 2, but since 1913 the value of dollar fell by over 99%, and I left a comment here with numbers in it, displaying just how much purchasing power USD lost since 2003 alone.
But not only did the dollar lose value since the Fed was created, but the prices went up significantly for everything for the people, and think about this fact: prior to 1965 people in USA paid for their doctors out of pocket, insurance was extremely cheap (order of 10 dollars/person per year) but it was insurance with a large deductible of maybe 500USD, but if you need really expensive treatments, you were covered. How many people can afford out of pocket doctor care today?
How about education? How many people can afford their own education today? Well, back before 1979 dep't of education, and before SS and Medicare took more money from people for general taxes, people used to pay for their own education, especially before all the government loans caused tuition fees to spike out of control.
Even based on health and education affordability, USA was doing better before the Fed and before various taxes (income / SS/Medicare) and before all the departments and government loans.
there will be no such thing as 'zero-carbon economy', and here is the clue for you: there won't be 'zero-carbon economy' much longer, if governments are involved.
Unless you didn't notice, the governments are pushing the carbon economy. Selling oil is easy - you get somebody else to do the hard work, and find the supplies and get the oil out of the ground, and then there is (are) government politicians standing with their hands out, demanding their cut.
With actual free market and without governments creating very specific climate (I don't mean this as a pun), which prefers development of oil and gas and coal, there will be no economic solutions that are preferable to carbon solutions. Competition, such as real private research into cheaper nuclear is destroyed.
Do you guys really believe that the nuclear power must be so expensive and so difficult as it is today? Seriously?:) The nuclear power is stalled in every possible way, so that there is a huge gravy train of oil and gas tankers and coal barges, all of which can be easily shipped and the easy money can be made.
-- As to your assertion that mid-century zero-carbon economy is required - I do not know that it is required, but if we rely on government to achieve something, we are fucked.
Regulation != owning The government is free to regulate anything that happens on their property.
- that's fine, I disagree that government should own any assets, but that's fine, it can do whatever on its property.
Even if you buy a house, you still have to abide by regulations set forth by the government.
- bylaws are not your federal government telling you stuff.
We all follow laws, it's time that the telecoms did too.
- again, if you think that the phone lines/cables are government property, then that's one thing, (from my POV then the assets should be immediately seized and liquidated), but if a business buys an asset, even if the asset is bought from a government, then the asset is no longer in government's possession.
Realize what you are saying: if you a car manufacturer, do you still own the car after somebody buys it? Does private property still mean anything in USA, or is it just an empty sound?
The whole idea of inflation is that the value of currencies changes, making comparisons of prices at different points in time difficult.
- that's just a broken point of reference. The easy point of reference is a monetary metal, if you look at prices in gold/silver, you'd see falling prices, but in fiat you see prices that are rising.
I put together a small exhibition for a similar topic a few days ago, here we go:
sugar Dec 2003: 20.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 36.97 cents/pound, price up by over 81% Beef Dec 2003: 105.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 193.00 cents/pound, price up by over 83% Barley Dec 2003: 100.77 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 208.70 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 107% Rice Dec 2003: 197.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 500.57 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 154% Cocoa Beans Dec 2003: 1,646.58 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 3,113.52 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 89% Tea Dec 2003: 205.22 cents/KG, Apr 2011: 325.33 cents/KG, price up by over 58% Rubber Dec 2003: 57.31cents/pound, Apr 2011: 265.49cents/pound, price up by over 363% Corn Dec 2003: 111.98 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 318.45 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 184% Bananas Dec 2003: 371.43 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 1,013.47 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 172% Propane Dec 2003: 0.63 USD/Gallon, Apr 2011: 1.45 USD/Gallon, price up by over 130% Wheat Dec 2003: 165.57 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 336.30 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 103% Oranges Dec 2003: 583.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 881.00 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 51% Salmon Dec 2003: 3.12 USD/Kg, Apr 2011: 7.86 USD/Kg, price up by over 151% Chicken Dec 2003: 68.98 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 86.42 cents/pound, price up by over 25% Pork Dec 2003: 48.68 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 92.06 cents/pound, price up by over 89% Silver Dec 2003: 565.33 cents/Troy ounce, Apr 2011: 4,279.79 cents/Troy ounce, price up by over 657% Alluminum Dec 2003: 1,557.78 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 2,667.44 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 71% Uranium Dec 2003: 13.35 USD/pound, Apr 2011: 57.84 USD/pound, price up by over 333% Iron Ore Dec 2003: 13.82 cents/dry Metric Ton, Apr 2011L: 179.26 cents/dry Metric Ton, price up by over 1197% (yeah, almost 1200%) Gasoli
Correction: no business would touch nuclear energy the way governments do it.
What you don't see is more research of private businesses into the nuclear energy, and this stopped just after they came up with the atomic bomb, as before the nuclear weapons became reality, private businesses dealt with nuclear materials plainly and without government standing over their shoulders with a machine gun.
I know some people who actually own their own RTGs near St. Petersburg, they just own them, maybe it's illegal (likely), but they use them privately. Why can't everybody have one, exactly (if businesses competed and came up with good private offerings, rather than just people stealing the stuff?)
I don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying that if the lines are sold to private bidders by government, then the government still owns them? Is this your opinion for any asset or for phone lines only? And what happened to the property rights then, if you can't buy something and own it after you pay for it? Are you OK, is air too hot maybe wherever you are there?
. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.'
- well that's plenty of nonsense.
Prices today are pushed up by artificial demand, created by the inflated currencies of the world. US Fed is printing like a maniac, buying up its own debt and is giving the US dollars to all the banks (and likely central banks) around the world, so that they would also buy US debt - this is an attempt to trick the bond market into believing there is an actual demand for US bonds, but all of this is designed to prolong the day of reckoning - when the US bonds are no longer bought and US dollar plunges ahead of all currencies and US is in hyper inflation, because Fed will likely buy out all the debt and default that way, rather than let the market restructure US debt and rebuild the economy.
The prices for food and energy around the world are going up as US is creating inflation around the world, but for now US is still shielding itself from the ultimate catastrophe - currency crisis, but who knows how much longer it can do this? Of-course the oil production will continue declining, as OPEC cannot actually bring more and more production on line, even though it pretends to say that it can, but it can't.
Cartels do not work, because the members have only incentives to cheat. They agree on quotas, and then they produce as much as they can, since they see high prices (even though in reality, the oil and gas are lowest price ever in history if counted in gold.)
As to the population size - the only problem with population size today, is that the governments of the world are distorting the free market and not letting the businesses provide everything the growing populations need in real competitive market. There are a small number of largest companies, that work with government to make sure they keep their monopolies, but of-course monopolies have about as much incentive to maximize their efficiency and compete on price/quality, as any government, which means zilch.
Do not lose the sight of what is really going on: globally the world's central banks are engaged in destruction of currencies in order to maintain the US currency high relative to their own, since there is likely political and personal profit in it for them. This is causing the massive inflation and then prices rise around the world, only so that they stay relatively stable in USA. Do not be fooled by the so called economists, that the government calls 'main stream' and who work for the governments - they are no different than the shamans and witch doctors of yesteryear, who also worked for their kings.
As to the global warming, etc. - how about getting government hands off the energy policy of the world, allowing the businesses to compete on best ways to provide energy, be it nuclear or whatever it is? And how about getting rid of the subsidies to the auto-industries via government sponsored infrastructure, which create the energy policy that we are observing around the world today, complete with wars and pollution?
I am sure this opinion will be highly popular on this site.
By the way, here is an easy way for me to prevent you from any further mis-characterization of what Schiff was saying, because he has his radio program here, and he often repeats the same thing, but if you for example download the one form the 8th of June, 2011, and listen from minute 11 for 1 minute, you'll hear him say:
I understood exactly what was causing the problem, and I was pointing directly at Fed's policy
.
See, he does not say; fucking banks took advantage of the obvious incentives provided by the government, he does not go there, the way you want to characterize it.
He is very specific, he says he saw the crash coming because he understood that the Fed's policy is going to cause it, that's all.
You can obviously continue pretending that that is not what he is saying, but you can't deny the guy's own words, unless Bernanke is your relative (sorry for the insult).
businesses must not be subsidized by governments and governments must not own assets.
If your argument is that the lines are government property still, then they should be seized by the government, and then sold on the market, liquidated, and whoever buys the networks, owns them. From there on, there must be no government money in any businesses, I don't know why this is so controversial now.
DARPA took ideas from existing POTS, which already was using packet switching, then it took existing computer networks, which didn't use packet switching, and applied the packet switching and created TCP/IP.
That was the contribution - the protocol.
Now, AT&T was certainly declared a "national resource", it was given all sorts of monopoly powers by the federal government, so that was totally wrong.
However you are arguing about your ISP, not the protocol and not even the AT&T specific lines, so when you look at the fact that most of the Internet (99% of it probably) is private networks, then you can try and ask your question again.
No, no point repeating yourself. you would be as wrong every time!
- your disagreement does not imply incorrectness, likely it is has a correlative effect that things you disagree with are in fact correct.
Anyway, do you really believe the things you write?
- why would I write things I do not personally believe in?
The vast majority of people that work most their lives have far, far less extreme views of the world than you seem to have.
- majority of people also vote for bread and circuses economic destruction every time, your point is?
Did you come up with them by yourself?
- for myself, yes. I am not the first one to understand it either.
Question to you: what do you care?
Another point: I find talking to an AC on/. to be a waste of time. I just had a long plane flight, third in 30 days, if you want another response, you'll log into your account.
Slashdot Mirror
deflation in response to a more efficient market is definitely a good thing, just because the government shamans and witch doctors tell you otherwise, it does not make it so.
However the deflation we see today is tied to the credit bubble, that has burst, but the dollars are being printed, so nominally you see prices going up, but in real terms, the value of real money (gold) goes up in USD faster, than value of other commodities and products, thus there is deflation, because bad money is displacing good, (Gresham's law).
Borrowing money is very risk in a deflationary economy, which impedes investment and growth
- as it should be. Money is supposed to be savings, which is the measure of work done to save that money. This forces those, who lend to be more diligent, and you can't say that the government has pushed forward the agenda of diligence with its easy money an laws, designed to get people to spend borrowed money.
Deflation also makes credit in significant amounts -- e.g. to buy a house -- basically unavailable to ordinary people.
- however in 19 century deflationary environment, more and more products and services were created, while prices were dropping and dollar gained value by x2, the increase in production was such, that houses and other goods became cheap enough for people to buy with savings and without having to borrow. Being able to buy products is a function of the useful productive work, not a function of being able to get into unsurmountable amounts of debt.
Granted that ordinary people badly abuse credit in our world today, but deflation is a cure worse than the disease.
- how is deflation in real terms worse than the disease? Deflation is contraction of monetary supply, which results in lowering prices for everything - goods and labor, but how is it bad for people to see prices going down rather than climbing?
Who had a better economy: a person in 19 century, who saw more and more products enter the market as he was part of the production cycle, and because he was producing, his purchasing power increased, as the money appreciated. Or is it a person in 20th century, who sees more and more products made in other places (like China) entering the market at prices held artificially low by government manipulating the currency?
One is the path to economic stability and growth, and the other is the path to economic destruction and ruin. Deflation was not the path to destruction - inflation is.
Literate and educated populace is not a function of government, it's the function of a market, which requires literate and educated populace, so now, that the market in USA does not require literate and educated populace (because nobody wants to hire in US), then any amount of government money in it, will only do one thing: push kids into debt without giving them the ability to ever use their education in real life.
In real life, the government has destroyed the attractiveness of a US worker.
hhmmmm, just how useful is this story without pics? We need to see and judge his crimes ourselves, and the only way to pass an impartial judgment is by closely examining all of the evidence.
Hospitals and colleges are both examples of market failure.
- more nonsense.
Where you see market failure, I see market, that was producing success until government got into the game with its money and debt and promises of free this and free that. The failure became the government money in it, which immediately provided incentives to push prices up. By the way, free market taking advantage of the government money is not a failure, it's a perfect reaction to this insane action by the government.
If people actually had to pay for doctor's themselves, you'd quickly see more $30/visit clinics spring up (buy them in bulk to get a discount to $20!).
- what's your point? In the free market you have enough choice to go here or there, but beyond that, health-care is just a good like any other, and it's your choice to drop money on it if you want to even if it maybe excessive. Still, if doctor visits were all on the order of $10 (and they used to be on the order of $5/visit, before government intervention), then you would have most people being able to afford doctor visits, and the market providing $20 discounts.... why are you complaining?
Likewise, how many people pay for their college education? Most just borrow against their future earnings and pay whatever their college wants to charge. $80k, $100k, $120k, what's the difference?
- huge difference. People need to appreciate what they are spending before they are jumping into debt. Without government money, the prices would be very low, especially given the new technologies, that allow professors to do real economies of scale.
However if you still needed a loan, you definitely could get it privately, but you wouldn't get one, if your creditor didn't see your choice of major as a good investment opportunity, because creditors would expect a return, and in that case very few people would be taking college majors in say sociology, and more people would be doing hard stuff: engineering and medicine, etc.
So where you see 'failure of the market', I see failure of the government with its money in there, which creates artificial demand just for a degree, any degree, because you are told: everybody gets a degree, so you must have one even to land any job (and you know, in situation with all the government provided loans, everybody DOES get a degree in whatever useless bullshit). So how do you figure it's a market failure, when it's a clear case of failure of government by the virtue of its involvement?
For anything the freeish market has been able to work its magic on, our purchasing power is much higher in the 2000s than ever before.
- of-course. So in electronics, computers, lasic eye surgery the prices are falling even in nominal terms, that's how fast they are falling in real terms.
The real question is then: why the hell would you be against repeating the same success in health care/insurance and education?
You can't have private business doing research in nuclear, because of how closed down the entire field is by the government in the first place. How do you do research, if anything you end up with may immediately be seized and classified and you can be thrown to jail even for possession of the necessary materials?
No no, the problem here is government intervention into an entire industry in a such a way, that it prevents any meaningful private research in it.
There always have been droughts and floods and tornadoes and volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis and everything, even nuclear disasters happened. All of those things are counted into the price of the commodities much before they even happen.
I put together this list and you will see, if you look at it, that it's not just food, but other items - iron ore, rubber, cotton, etc. Sure, there are some foods, like wheat, that had some other problems in terms of delivery to the contract, but if you look at the price hike in wheat, you'll see it is much lower than many other foods, that have gone in price quicker, and wheat is what Russian gov't prevented from hitting the market last and this years.
All of the resources of a country are owned by all of it's citizens equally
- reaaaally? You gotta show me the land that you own, which is equal to all the land everybody else own, and also, do you get the oil, that is your cut, in tankers, or do you just virtually own it, and some authority holds it for you in a large shared container?
Control of some of those resources is privatised under conditions applied by those citizens. Don't want to adhere to those conditions, then privatised control of parts of the countries resources will be taken from you.
- nope, that's not how it works. AT&T was laying cable, then they probably got together with some politicians, and they got a large discount on the property taxes, and they also got the government to give them the right of way, probably imminent domain clauses were applied, etc. The company was at some point declared a 'national resource'. But the company didn't start as such, it was a private business, and only the corruption of the government that made it into a monopoly.
So if the government corruption makes you a monopoly, what you have is captive audience and no competition, but in fact, it does not at all mean that the 'citizens' own your resources 'equally'. No such thing, because it's all about the corruption in the government, and it is done for profit of certain people in companies/government, but it's not done for your benefit, so there are no laws that state or enforce what you are implying there.
Wake up to yourself, all of a countries citizens provide the means by which those resources are protected, become available for use, are distributed and rewards provided for serving those resources.
- which resources would that be? Why would you give preference to any one company running phone lines and cable over any other company? Why would you undermine your own economy this way, which clearly brings higher prices, lowers competition and choice, lowers economic activity, destroys investment opportunities, destroys jobs, distorts the money market and kills the economy?
It makes no sense, so when you say:
If you can't work with the rest of human society, due to genetic defects like psychopathy and narcissism, it is you that needs to be isolated from privatised control of parts of a countries resources and not a requirement that the majority of citizens need to adjust to your insane demands.
- I throw right back at you this: if you can't understand that competition is better for the general economy, it's better for production, lower prices, innovation and invention, more capital investment, jobs, etc., if you can't understand it, then you have a disease, I don't think it's necessarily genetic, but it's there, and you may want to seek treatment.
Those requirements the set limits upon how citizens use their own bodies (you can not run up to random individuals and scream in their face or cover their mouths to prevent them from speaking)
- that's not a limit on YOUR body, that's a limit on you applying force to ANOTHER body, but it's not purview of government, by the way, this is criminal law, and laws are different from location to location. It's actually unnecessary having a government in order to have a working justice system, as justice system only functions as long as there is trust in it, and a government system without trust is broken. Do I trust government with the justice system? No. I don't trust it with the justice system anymore than I trust it with the economy.
also apply to the tools and by extension major works of infrastructure (you have no right to substitute your content for theirs or to censor their content).
- What does it mean: "I have no right"?
What does that mean at all, if the rights are a construct related to the interaction between the individual and the collective - the citizen an
If the U.S. Congress could fix their debt problem they would have already
- well, of-course. If they had a 'magic wand', they give everything to everybody, right? They cannot fix the problem, because fixing this problem creates a problem for them, which they do not see as a problem.
To fix the problem the SS and Medicare and all Wars must be stopped and military needs to be cut by 99%. Government departments need to shut down and regulations of businesses must be stopped. The Fed must be stopped, abolished from printing money, the only law that must be upheld is that government must live within its means and not rely on debt at all, regardless of their promises.
So that will start solving the problem of debt in a hurry, but it won't fix everything. To fix the economy, it must be made competitive, so the business regulations must be abolished, and that's half of the problem. The other half is taxing income - this must be abolished too.
At this point not only the government will not be on board, but most regular /. readers won't. Of-course that's because they don't understand the economics anymore than Bernanke or Geithner does.
USA has defaulted already, by the way, many times. The huge default was Nixon's gold shock - that was a default, don't pretend it wasn't. The promise was that the Fed will exchange your dollars for gold at their 1 ounce to 35USD exchange rate, well, they defaulted. They won't do it. After that every new printed USD was a default.
Once US defaults, USD is destroyed, US will go through a major transformation. Will it become dictatorial and will it become the former USSR? Will it let the economy fix itself and will it abolish the big government? I don't know, but my feeling is that it will do everything wrong at every step, so I expect the worst - USSR type government and USSR type economy.
Chernobyl: it was the USSR. meaningless to generalize.
- oh, no, it's a much more valid example, because the pretense was that the government war socialistic/communist, whatever, you know - pro poor people, pro labor, right?
So if that kind of government has no problems (and they really did not have problems) killing people, be it by sending them to gulags, be it placing them into mental hospitals, just shooting them or not causing nuclear disasters, then you can't expect anything from governments that are not as 'pro-poor/labor/socialism/communism', what can you expect from a dictator or from the 2 party nonsense, which is controlling more and more of the economy and 'justice' in USA?
If you are not going to need that money in the short term, if you are young, it's better to own gold/silver coins (but not the fucking gold line, or whatever, you gotta get bullion and never pay over 5% above the spot price, which you can see on kitco.com).
You have to choose how you want to play this out, one possibility is that you want to stay mobile, after all, why stay in a dying economy when there are other economies out there, that are going to boom even more, once they are off the US dollar and bonds. In that case owning metals is good - you don't have much money, so you can easily carry that on you in gold coins.
If you do not want to leave and want to ride it out, then maybe it makes sense (if you have space anywhere), to buy things you'd have to buy later on anyway, things that do not go bad necessarily, but things that will go up in price. Some alcohol, some clothes that are high on cotton, some toiletries. Buying food/fuel for later is very difficult for city residents, they don't have any space. Honestly, owning a weapon and some ammo is useful, but don't go crazy, there are more useful things than that. However if you eat meat/fish, maybe owning some hunting/fishing equipment is not a bad idea at all.
So how many people can afford themselves a daily hospital stay with their daily pay?
How many people can afford even their daily tuition with their daily pay? (there must be more of these, than ones who can afford daily hospital, but still?)
How many people today can afford ONE bread winner in a family of a stay at home wife and 2-3 kids?
How many people can do the above mentioned things without debt?
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What your point is that today we have a seemingly large amount of choice in cheap inconsequential things, but that's just burning the political and financial capital gained by US since it stopped being an agrarian country and started manufacturing and production, and earned its living.
Food is appreciating in price at the pace of 15-25% a year around the world, but US still sees much lower price hikes if any in food. But this is where the devalued currency will strike with force, once the US bonds are no longer bought by anybody, but the banks, who get the money off the printing presses.
New York Harbor Conventional Gasoline Regular Spot Price FOB, US$ per gallon
History has plainly shown that companies and individuals are selfish pricks who will without a second thought let thousands die for their own profit and convenience.
- if anything, history shows that governments are selfish prick, who will without a second thought let millions die for their own desire of power.
I mean Chernobyl was not a private operation, did you know that?
As to RTGs not being disposed of safely - that's what I am trying to explain. If businesses were not stopped from working on nuclear power, they could have the full cycle worked out, just like we do not throw away our car batteries or oil from cars under the bridge, this does not have to be a problem either.
Based on the previous topics on this site, I know how this works, and it does not work favorably for my types of opinions, so if the majority do agree, they must be a silent majority.
you are wrong.
The easy way to display that Federal reserve provided a much worse economic climate, than private banks before it did, even though some of them did do fractional reserve even with gold (sure, why not, fractional gold reserve is the same thing), is that in 19 century the value of US dollar rose by a factor of 2, but since 1913 the value of dollar fell by over 99%, and I left a comment here with numbers in it, displaying just how much purchasing power USD lost since 2003 alone.
But not only did the dollar lose value since the Fed was created, but the prices went up significantly for everything for the people, and think about this fact: prior to 1965 people in USA paid for their doctors out of pocket, insurance was extremely cheap (order of 10 dollars/person per year) but it was insurance with a large deductible of maybe 500USD, but if you need really expensive treatments, you were covered. How many people can afford out of pocket doctor care today?
How about education? How many people can afford their own education today? Well, back before 1979 dep't of education, and before SS and Medicare took more money from people for general taxes, people used to pay for their own education, especially before all the government loans caused tuition fees to spike out of control.
Even based on health and education affordability, USA was doing better before the Fed and before various taxes (income / SS /Medicare) and before all the departments and government loans.
there will be no such thing as 'zero-carbon economy', and here is the clue for you: there won't be 'zero-carbon economy' much longer, if governments are involved.
Unless you didn't notice, the governments are pushing the carbon economy. Selling oil is easy - you get somebody else to do the hard work, and find the supplies and get the oil out of the ground, and then there is (are) government politicians standing with their hands out, demanding their cut.
With actual free market and without governments creating very specific climate (I don't mean this as a pun), which prefers development of oil and gas and coal, there will be no economic solutions that are preferable to carbon solutions. Competition, such as real private research into cheaper nuclear is destroyed.
Do you guys really believe that the nuclear power must be so expensive and so difficult as it is today? Seriously? :) The nuclear power is stalled in every possible way, so that there is a huge gravy train of oil and gas tankers and coal barges, all of which can be easily shipped and the easy money can be made.
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As to your assertion that mid-century zero-carbon economy is required - I do not know that it is required, but if we rely on government to achieve something, we are fucked.
Regulation != owning The government is free to regulate anything that happens on their property.
- that's fine, I disagree that government should own any assets, but that's fine, it can do whatever on its property.
Even if you buy a house, you still have to abide by regulations set forth by the government.
- bylaws are not your federal government telling you stuff.
We all follow laws, it's time that the telecoms did too.
- again, if you think that the phone lines/cables are government property, then that's one thing, (from my POV then the assets should be immediately seized and liquidated), but if a business buys an asset, even if the asset is bought from a government, then the asset is no longer in government's possession.
Realize what you are saying: if you a car manufacturer, do you still own the car after somebody buys it? Does private property still mean anything in USA, or is it just an empty sound?
The whole idea of inflation is that the value of currencies changes, making comparisons of prices at different points in time difficult.
- that's just a broken point of reference. The easy point of reference is a monetary metal, if you look at prices in gold/silver, you'd see falling prices, but in fiat you see prices that are rising.
I put together a small exhibition for a similar topic a few days ago, here we go:
sugar Dec 2003: 20.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 36.97 cents/pound, price up by over 81%
Beef Dec 2003: 105.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 193.00 cents/pound, price up by over 83%
Barley Dec 2003: 100.77 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 208.70 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 107%
Rice Dec 2003: 197.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 500.57 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 154%
Cocoa Beans Dec 2003: 1,646.58 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 3,113.52 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 89%
Tea Dec 2003: 205.22 cents/KG, Apr 2011: 325.33 cents/KG, price up by over 58%
Rubber Dec 2003: 57.31cents/pound, Apr 2011: 265.49cents/pound, price up by over 363%
Corn Dec 2003: 111.98 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 318.45 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 184%
Bananas Dec 2003: 371.43 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 1,013.47 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 172%
Propane Dec 2003: 0.63 USD/Gallon, Apr 2011: 1.45 USD/Gallon, price up by over 130%
Wheat Dec 2003: 165.57 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 336.30 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 103%
Oranges Dec 2003: 583.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 881.00 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 51%
Salmon Dec 2003: 3.12 USD/Kg, Apr 2011: 7.86 USD/Kg, price up by over 151%
Chicken Dec 2003: 68.98 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 86.42 cents/pound, price up by over 25%
Pork Dec 2003: 48.68 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 92.06 cents/pound, price up by over 89%
Silver Dec 2003: 565.33 cents/Troy ounce, Apr 2011: 4,279.79 cents/Troy ounce, price up by over 657%
Alluminum Dec 2003: 1,557.78 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 2,667.44 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 71%
Uranium Dec 2003: 13.35 USD/pound, Apr 2011: 57.84 USD/pound, price up by over 333%
Iron Ore Dec 2003: 13.82 cents/dry Metric Ton, Apr 2011L: 179.26 cents/dry Metric Ton, price up by over 1197% (yeah, almost 1200%)
Gasoli
Correction: no business would touch nuclear energy the way governments do it.
What you don't see is more research of private businesses into the nuclear energy, and this stopped just after they came up with the atomic bomb, as before the nuclear weapons became reality, private businesses dealt with nuclear materials plainly and without government standing over their shoulders with a machine gun.
I know some people who actually own their own RTGs near St. Petersburg, they just own them, maybe it's illegal (likely), but they use them privately. Why can't everybody have one, exactly (if businesses competed and came up with good private offerings, rather than just people stealing the stuff?)
I don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying that if the lines are sold to private bidders by government, then the government still owns them? Is this your opinion for any asset or for phone lines only? And what happened to the property rights then, if you can't buy something and own it after you pay for it? Are you OK, is air too hot maybe wherever you are there?
. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.'
- well that's plenty of nonsense.
Prices today are pushed up by artificial demand, created by the inflated currencies of the world. US Fed is printing like a maniac, buying up its own debt and is giving the US dollars to all the banks (and likely central banks) around the world, so that they would also buy US debt - this is an attempt to trick the bond market into believing there is an actual demand for US bonds, but all of this is designed to prolong the day of reckoning - when the US bonds are no longer bought and US dollar plunges ahead of all currencies and US is in hyper inflation, because Fed will likely buy out all the debt and default that way, rather than let the market restructure US debt and rebuild the economy.
The prices for food and energy around the world are going up as US is creating inflation around the world, but for now US is still shielding itself from the ultimate catastrophe - currency crisis, but who knows how much longer it can do this? Of-course the oil production will continue declining, as OPEC cannot actually bring more and more production on line, even though it pretends to say that it can, but it can't.
Cartels do not work, because the members have only incentives to cheat. They agree on quotas, and then they produce as much as they can, since they see high prices (even though in reality, the oil and gas are lowest price ever in history if counted in gold.)
As to the population size - the only problem with population size today, is that the governments of the world are distorting the free market and not letting the businesses provide everything the growing populations need in real competitive market. There are a small number of largest companies, that work with government to make sure they keep their monopolies, but of-course monopolies have about as much incentive to maximize their efficiency and compete on price/quality, as any government, which means zilch.
Do not lose the sight of what is really going on: globally the world's central banks are engaged in destruction of currencies in order to maintain the US currency high relative to their own, since there is likely political and personal profit in it for them. This is causing the massive inflation and then prices rise around the world, only so that they stay relatively stable in USA. Do not be fooled by the so called economists, that the government calls 'main stream' and who work for the governments - they are no different than the shamans and witch doctors of yesteryear, who also worked for their kings.
As to the global warming, etc. - how about getting government hands off the energy policy of the world, allowing the businesses to compete on best ways to provide energy, be it nuclear or whatever it is? And how about getting rid of the subsidies to the auto-industries via government sponsored infrastructure, which create the energy policy that we are observing around the world today, complete with wars and pollution?
I am sure this opinion will be highly popular on this site.
Good night.
By the way, here is an easy way for me to prevent you from any further mis-characterization of what Schiff was saying, because he has his radio program here, and he often repeats the same thing, but if you for example download the one form the 8th of June, 2011, and listen from minute 11 for 1 minute, you'll hear him say:
I understood exactly what was causing the problem, and I was pointing directly at Fed's policy
.
See, he does not say; fucking banks took advantage of the obvious incentives provided by the government, he does not go there, the way you want to characterize it.
He is very specific, he says he saw the crash coming because he understood that the Fed's policy is going to cause it, that's all.
You can obviously continue pretending that that is not what he is saying, but you can't deny the guy's own words, unless Bernanke is your relative (sorry for the insult).
businesses must not be subsidized by governments and governments must not own assets.
If your argument is that the lines are government property still, then they should be seized by the government, and then sold on the market, liquidated, and whoever buys the networks, owns them. From there on, there must be no government money in any businesses, I don't know why this is so controversial now.
you are under the wrong impression.
DARPA took ideas from existing POTS, which already was using packet switching, then it took existing computer networks, which didn't use packet switching, and applied the packet switching and created TCP/IP.
That was the contribution - the protocol.
Now, AT&T was certainly declared a "national resource", it was given all sorts of monopoly powers by the federal government, so that was totally wrong.
However you are arguing about your ISP, not the protocol and not even the AT&T specific lines, so when you look at the fact that most of the Internet (99% of it probably) is private networks, then you can try and ask your question again.
No, no point repeating yourself. you would be as wrong every time!
- your disagreement does not imply incorrectness, likely it is has a correlative effect that things you disagree with are in fact correct.
Anyway, do you really believe the things you write?
- why would I write things I do not personally believe in?
The vast majority of people that work most their lives have far, far less extreme views of the world than you seem to have.
- majority of people also vote for bread and circuses economic destruction every time, your point is?
Did you come up with them by yourself?
- for myself, yes. I am not the first one to understand it either.
Question to you: what do you care?
Another point: I find talking to an AC on /. to be a waste of time. I just had a long plane flight, third in 30 days, if you want another response, you'll log into your account.