- he is in prison, because he value his life and lives of his relatives. He is not in prison because government put him there, he is in prison, because that's his deal - he goes to jail forever, and his relatives don't get murdered (maybe) and he doesn't (maybe.)
But really, Madoff is small potatoes, compared to the scams US federal government is running with SS and Medicare and all the borrowing and printing. Nobody goes to jail because government is part of business - that was my point. You can't have people going to jail, who are government.
All of your complains are exactly what I am talking about - get the government out of insuring businesses, out of insuring people, out of insuring liability, be it personal liability for running a financial pyramid or be it liability cap at 10 million for an oil drilling incident.
Regulations must not exist. Government must not be in business at all, all regulations will always be turned around and used to promote monopolies, while destroying competition, and that's not what the market needs, but it is what politicians want.
The main 3 reasons for any business not to stay in USA are:
1. Inflation by government printing. 2. Income/corporate/payroll taxes, as well as the mess of medical taxes. 3. Business regulations.
The cost of labor is really on a distant fourth if it even enters the real equation, the real problem is always the government, and if government is not involved, the cost of labor will adjust to the market conditions, so it's really not that important.
Business regulations kill far more potential jobs in US than cost of labor, and taxes kill the most jobs.
As to Chinese and their tariffs - they have high tariffs, but those tariffs are applied to raw materials and energy. Who, from the West is importing to China? Well, Germany is, and China has a trade DEFICIT with Germany, not a surplus, as it has with USA, so clearly, if Germany can have a trade surplus with China, importing various tools and machines, etc., then it cannot be used as an excuse by US that it cannot deal with China on equal footing.
No no, it's not about tariffs from the Chinese - that's a misconception brought to you by the same government, that tells you that the way government measures CPI is a true indicator of inflation and that the official employment numbers are real and that GDP is an indicator of real economic growth - it's all nonsense.
The reason China has a trade surplus with USA, and USA has a 50 billion USD/month deficit with China, is the same reason USA has a large deficit even with Canada - and you can't say that Canadians are actively preventing USA from doing business, USA is Canada's main partner, they wouldn't dare.
The reason USA has this problem is because US government has declared a war on US economy and US dollar by growing the government to over 10% of the working force, by growing government expenses and obligations without any ability and plan to pay any of it out, because all of their plans are based on ridiculous assumptions about the economy, all of those assumptions are wrong. The reason is the insane income/corporate/payroll taxes, the involvement of US government in economy in terms of subsidies to large monopolies, destruction of competition in the market, destruction of currency by printing, destruction of real credit rating of the USA (not the garbage they tell you on TV - real credit worthiness of US private sector is in real trouble), destruction of the labor force through all the labor laws, that make US labor totally unattractive for any sane businessman.
I would not hire a US worker, the regulations, taxes, punishment for hiring them are outrageous, so I can't imagine why anybody sane would either.
As to China having all those IOUs in their Treasury - they'll shake it off, they'll be fine, they have the real wealth - production capacity, they have real economy - product oriented economy, which makes stuff. They'll shake it off, let their currency rise, and that will be the end of this age of US running on foreign credit and foreign manufacturing subsidy.
The only real problem from the US standpoint is that we've gotten used to this arrangement.
- no, that's not the real problem.
The real problem is that there is no capital investment in USA, it moved to China and other places, and this means that for USA to be able to restart manufacturing, it either will have to rebuild all the tools it will need by hand, if the trade is fully blocked, or it will have to sell a lot of energy and other mined resources to Chinese and others, in order to get the tools, machines, finished products necessary to restart manufacturing and production.
However there is another problem - over the last couple of generations, USA was losing not only savings and manufacturing base, but also knowledge and trade skills necessary to run production facilities. This also will have to be rebuilt or re-bought, repatriated somehow, things don't just appear out of thing air without capital and knowledge.
But my question was not directed at you, reread my comment. My question was a rhetorical one, directed at the people of China - What gives, people of China? Why do you want to give up you kidneys to own stupid iPads, when you are the ones manufacturing them? All you have to do is send a real message to your government (or better yet, take it down), so that the Chinese currency is no longer manufactured and US/EU inflation is no longer pushed into Asia.
As for you, you should be asking exactly the same thing of your government, as the reason that China is manufacturing everything today, is that your government is destroying your currency, while not allowing business to restart in the US due to business regulations and taxes. You should be asking your government: WTF? Why are you destroying incentives of businesses to even exist in the country, never mind hiring people here?
It's also Russian, though it easily might have come into the language from other language, that's certainly a possibility, OK, but why call this tech a 'coin'?
So, what's up with the name of the system, "moneta", is it what I think it is (a Russian word for 'coin'), or is there something else at play here? I am a bit confused, because in the article, (which I am sorry to admit I read), it mentioned a bunch of names, but none that were Russian sounding.
This is just a sign of the time - Chinese are the ones producing the damned things, and they are the ones having to sell their kidneys to own one. I am really wondering how much more will it take their people, before they rise against their government and stop their government from printing their own currency into oblivion, just so the foreigners can enjoy fruits of Chinese labor so cheaply, while the Chinese standard of living is stagnating, because their own money does not buy the products, they themselves create.
They are the manufacturer of the world, they are paying for the inflation of the world with more production and they immediately feel the inflation (expansion of money) as rising prices, so last year they had 15-25% price increases for food. How much more of this will they allow their government to perpetrate upon them? They need to cut it, call it a day and stop subsidizing Dollars and Euros, etc., and let their own people enjoy their own work in their own appreciating currency.
I hope you liked the recent 2% drop in the price of gold and the resulting 2% reduction in your purchasing power
- I hope you don't find your 76% reduction of purchasing power since 2003 too destructive for your life's decisions.
but do you realize that the idea you are promoting here and elsewhere, the return to the gold standard would mean to force everyone else to use gold as money? Do you also realize that returning to the gold standard would be equivalent to theft of unparalleled proportion?
- nonsense. The theft of unimaginable proportions is the inflation, that the governments of the world are perpetrating upon their entire populations.
That means that if you today force everyone to accept gold as a 'store of value' and use gold to do that, then all future value that is produced (in excess to dwindling gold production) is forcibly redistributed to current owners of gold...
- gold prices counted in US dollars will be going up and up.
Gold can even drop in price in USD and/or other currencies, as it does once in a while, because prices are unstable, but you believe for some reason, that the coupon value on the greenback in your wallet stays within the same purchasing parameters, simply because the NUMBER on the dollar bill stays the same. Well, it's a silly notion, one that is costing you over 10% loss of purchasing power year to year.
A well managed monetary base grows proportionally with the combined value of the economy.
- as gold sees its value increase, more business comes to gold mining and other ways of production, but that's irrelevant to the point.
The entire supply could be constrained by the metal that is already above the ground, and it still would be a healthy economy, as opposed to the inflation, that the government is pushing upon everybody.
You don't actually have to own gold, to benefit from the gold monetary base, as the inflation would immediately be replaced with deflation of the supply of money and the result will be increased economic activity, due to lowering prices for all materials, assets, equities and labor. The cheaper things are, the more of them anybody can afford, the more competition there is, due to the increased affordability of materials and labor, the more production there is and the wealth of the society goes up, not down. You are in an imaginary inflationary trap, that the government indoctrinated you into, but they are not making you any favors, as they are trying to inflate their debt away, they are making your life less and less affordable, so when the currency is destroyed, you'll have no purchasing power at all (as if the 76% reduction in it since 2003 is any good for you).
frequent bank crashes and panics where depositors lost all their "hard money", recessions, periods of high unemployment and periods of deflation.
- wrong. The bank runs, etc., they were equally spread out throughout the 19 century, they were contained to specific banks, not to the entire banking institution, they had to do with banks, that were unscrupulous, promising large gains in place of risk aversion, so they were playing the unsustainable fractional reserve game, which eventually destroyed them.
But that's just healthy market - some banks must go out of business, so that their lessons are learned by the depositors, and they don't put their gold into banks that behave that way, and also so that banks have enough private insurance, covering them, so that the companies that do certifications, can look at their finances and at their insurance levels to put out certificate statements, for the customers to be able to compare those, against other banks.
If we introduced the gold standard, "hard money", "sound money" today it would become a hidden tax on civilization: paid to those who already own gold. In other words, it's a hidden tax
There's pretty much no such thing as apprenticeships anymore - the free market decided it was cheaper to employ a worker that someone else trained than to train them up yourself
- as all government money, this subsidy of public education does misplace free market and incentives that are sustainable with the kind that only can exist while there are subsidies.
I somehow doubt there'd be a dramatic reduction in the cost of education either... education providers seem to charge as much as the market can bear.
- this is a false demand, created by the loans provided by government.
That's because taxes have been around in one form or another since the days of Ancient Egypt, for over 5,000 years.
- taxes were collected of sales most of the time over those years, not on people's work.
Its job is to build infrastructure where private companies are not interested in building anything because there's no immediate profit to be made.
- if there is no profit there, then it's a clear indication that the market is not interested in it, and any money allocated to it will be destructive to the economy.
Infrastructure which is necessary to attract investments and trade into poor regions in the first place. Private infrastructure can only reinforce economic advantages which already exist. Unlike government funded public infrastructure, it doesn't create new opportunities, it merely follows existing ones.
- nonsense. People have been building infrastructure before any governments ever existed and they continue to do so today just as well, and government infrastructure is never self-sufficient because it relies on expensive support from subsidies and not from the actual market demand.
Of-course, just like bail outs and stimulus packages from government do increase economic activity in the short run, while they are applied, same with government built infrastructure - it definitely invites more business, however, that's because anything that's 'free' (but really free), invites people. The moment the subsidies stop, this activity also stops. You'll see this with all those unmaintainable highways, which eventually will come into disarray, as they are not actually profitable and are totally subsidized. The government did destroy profitable private businesses - rail, air, to subsidize the roads, and I explained that that did in the comment I linked to. Cheers
I am definitely not trying to impress you with my Marxism indoctrination, but if you understand what it is, then it is somewhat surprising that you don't see the income taxes, (which started as income taxes on the rich first) as the natural extension of those very ideas.
As to the public infrastructure - if you look at the link, which I attached, you'll see all the arguments there, how it actually is destructive from the beginning to the end - killing profitable businesses, destroying possibility of other profitable businesses, creating unfair competition (in case of roads - subsidizing car companies and destroying opportunities for public transit companies), creating an unmaintainable life style, causing insane amounts of pollution, creating unsustainable energy policy, etc.etc., all because government precisely does NOT have to make it profitable, but can just spend without any regard to any market signals, that would have been sent to any private enterprise, all because money is not a question for government, but money is expression of work, so work of people is not a question for government, who can abuse it, even if it absolutely is against what the market is requiring.
Yeah, because having a country that is more and more attractive to businessmen and their investment capital is going to turn that country into a poor place, I know, beautiful.
Oh, and again, you and your government, except for reinstating slavery in Haiti last century, there was also a little matter of dozens of undeclared wars: Columbia, Dominican, Panama, Honduras, Cuba, Nicaragua, China, Laos, Congo, Libya, Chad, Persian Gulf, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Iran, Mexico, Bosnia, Kuwait, Somalia, Macedonia, Yemen, Afghanistan.... did I forget a lot? Well, let's see how much longer the Chinese are willing to pay for this nonsense.
Haiti was a slave colony, you should really figure this shit out - they used to be profitable, then the government of US of A came there, stationed there, caused all sorts of civil unrest, reinvented slavery. That's just PART of their problem - the US government (same problem as for Mexico and other South American nations BTW)
So go fuck yourself with your government, which only knows how to take a working thing and break it. Now your entrepreneurs - they are more than welcome here. Your government - well, let's say they are not as popular.
and i'm glad you are lowering taxes in lucerne. good for you. but you're not arguing against raising taxes, you are arguing against the very notion of the need to contribute to society to maintain it
- absolutely. We have an entire canton of people who are mostly against all income taxes, so I guess good for us then.
In other words, you're using the word "Marxism" as a catch-all term for anything you disagree with. Poor Karl, he must be spinning in his grave now.
- I was indoctrinated in the ways of Marxism long before you were born, which was very unfortunate for me back in the USSR. Marxism is about control of means of production by the 'labor', however in the modern society this means exactly: corporate taxes. Too bad for that very labor, that they are voting for it, as this was quickly extended to their own work as well, thus income taxes for all, but of-course in USA 50% of population doesn't even qualify to pay income taxes, while 25% and counting are on food stamps and the unemployment is somewhere in high twenties. This of-course is part of the result of this Marxist agenda, which does fuck all to improve the economy, but does move capital savings out of the country, because government regulations and taxes do end up costing a pretty penny, then the government grows more, wants to do more and starts printing like a drunk sailor drinks, and this totally negates any value staying in US denominated assets for capital savings.
Except when it's not. Henry Ford and many others like him have taught us a very important lesson over a century ago: If you want to sell on a consumer market, you have to pay your employees enough so they can afford your own products. Otherwise there will be noone to sell to. I guess that US is on the way to learn this lesson again the hard way.
- Except during the times of Henry Ford there was no government controlling every single thing in his production lines, he didn't have to pay income taxes, at least not before 1913 and government wasn't destroying the very value of his investment capital also until that same year.
Now, if one person is spinning in his grave, it's Ford, for you using him as an example, because he was a businessman, an entrepreneur, which is today the scapegoat for government propaganda machine.
Actually, no. Governments can enable a lot of jobs by building and maintaining important infrastructure. Profit is not always a good measure of usefulness.
- wrong. Profit is almost always the only good measure of usefulness of a product/service to the market, and it's definitely the only real measure of success of a business, and thus a good compass for the future direction of the investment and work. But I already left a comment on that topic a while ago, I don't want to repeat it.
yes, and the rich society that purchases your software is rich because it is maintained. you wish to derive income from the richness of society, but give back nothing to maintain its richness
- nonsense. My software increases productivity of retailer and shipping companies, this in turn allows these companies to compete better with other companies, reducing their costs, and in current environment this gives them the advantage of being able to compete on price, which in turn benefits the end consumer.
Beside that, my software allows the suppliers to be in control of what they are ordering and how much, some of the suppliers are also manufacturers. The manufacturers get this data and then use it to adjust the production capacity and the type of goods that are produced (this is mostly China and some European manufacturers), this allows them to be more precise, more effective, save costs, create less waste and use less energy. All parties also gain from reduced storage requirements.
This is a complex world that is created by entrepreneurs, not by government. We see government as pretty much an evil thing, that is trying to destruct from our goals and trying to prevent us from working as efficiently as we can. The entire manufacturing/supply/retail chain is very price sensitive, especially in current economic conditions and my software is helping many people to get exactly what they need, the shelves are filled with products they actually are interested in buying, rather than with stuff they don't need and the prices are much more optimal, catering to the current market conditions.
This is my contribution, I do not owe anything else to anybody.
The more a society is concerned wirth social welfare: denmark on one end, haiti on another, the richer that society is, and the happier people are. it's pretty obvious, moron
- socialist states are turning less socialist every day, I know what I speak of, as some of my clients are dealing with that - reduced taxed, reduced business regulations, because even more socialist states can't survive by government decree, and Haiti's problem is not lack of government, it's lack of investment exactly due to government corruption.
not that you care. you're clearly a selfish shortsighted asshole. we're not robbing you, asshole, we're asking you to give back to that which gives you the money you covet, but apparently don't really understand.
- production, asswipe, it's all about production. Money is only a store of value, which I store in gold, because in reality I don't trust any government with a printing press. Money is just an expression of my work.
Work, asswipe, it's all about work. It has nothing to do with government, it has everything to do with production capacity. Do we have poor people here? Yes. Do we take care of them? Yes. Do we need government to do that for us? No.
but you won't do anything to maintain that richness. you're the thief. you take, and you give nothing back. it is required that you do. and we will make you. without that compulsion, civilization would cease to exist because, unfortunately, most people are as blind and greedy as you, and they'd happily suckle at the cow and not feed it, until it is drained dry
- work, asswipe, only work matters. The wealth is production capacity, the money is only a store of value, which allows me to save my contribution and use it when I see fit without relying on any fucking retard, like you, robbing work of others to give me something I never deserved.
so, we must compulse you to contribute. and we will. because we like civilization. and unlike you, we're smart enough to see what is required to maintain civilization
- no no, here is where you fail. Not only are we collectively lowering taxes in Lucerne, we are pushing the other cantons to do the same due to competition and businesses, that come here exactly because of the lowering taxes
hey, dumb ass, I just went outside, asked my neighbors - they are going to vote for the next income/corporate tax cut in 2012. 50% cut. We can't wait till 2014, the canton is going to vote to reduce the income taxes... to 0.
Whoever I speak with - everybody is on the same page - the fed can go take a hike and the locality better do with what we pay in sales, and the society is getting richer, not poorer, the unemployment is 3%, the Frank is going up against all currencies all the time.
Oh, and I AM making money in my bedroom - working on my software and selling it from my bedroom, so zum Wohl, asshole, zum Wohl.
The very concept that work must be taxed by the government in the first place - income and corporate and payroll taxes, that's already Marxism.
However you are also incorrect. RMS was referring to the competitive advantage a company gets by moving from a country with more regulations, to a country with fewer regulations, that's his complaint - that companies cause the governments of countries to reduce their regulations, so that those companies would move their business there.
He is complaining that this is a BAD thing, because it drives wages down, and I am saying: he is a Marxist one more time, as his concern is labor without understanding the economics at all, that all costs need to go down due to competition, including labor costs, and if the costs go down due to competition of companies with each other and not due to companies getting favors from government, who protects their monopoly, then this is a net positive gain for the economy and the market.
The market sees cheaper products and services and the country with fewer regulations gets more business and jobs created and generally more jobs means a wealthier economy.
No government in the world can do what these companies do - create actual real jobs and improve the economy and raise the standard of living of people, who now have those jobs and push prices down for consumer goods. Governments can only destroys this movement - reduce economic activity via taxes and regulations, push prices up due to less competition.
This little piece of history, no matter how valid, was now starting to affect *other people* who were completely innocent. While I don't believe in censorship, I do believe in the validity of the "statute of limitations" concept so I decided on a compromise.
- pffft, what a softie:) You should CRASH HIM to hell. Think about it - what if he has kids? Now his genes will be passed on, and that's clearly a problem. You should nuke them all from the orbit - that's the only way to be sure.
I am very clear on the issues, here is where I always stood and will continue: I am not going to be part of a 'society', which forces me to be 'charitable' through government enforcement.
Everything else is irrelevant, the children, then outcomes, anything. If you think you own my work and the way I use the outcome of my work, you can go to hell.
So that's the first and a very separate issue from the second one, which you are bringing up: some sort of a guarantee that kids must have an equal start in life.
It's a nice thought, good luck with that. It has never worked that way, it will never work that way. If you think that your average kid from an average family is going to have the same sort of a start, as somebody, who made a point in his/her life to build a large amount of capital and also was able to do so, the you are delusional.
Now then the question becomes: must it be so?
Must it be so that the society allows every child to start from equal footing? Yes, the society must work towards that goal.
Now the final question: given my take (and many people with a similar take) on the government intrusion into our lives, what should be the mechanism to ensure that kids do have some form of education that they could then use in their lives, to achieve a desirable economic outcome for themselves? My answer remains, stays the same, does not change at all: get government money out of the system and allow the system to have competition that would cater to all markets, obviously with price discrimination.
I will not presume to know ANYTHING about your past, so I'll speak in general, when I'll say that people used to buy their own education before government made a point of destroying it with government subsidies and loans and regulations and protections - people could buy it, just like they could pay for their health care out of pocket, because it was cheap, and they had very cheap insurance with high deductibles and enough coverage to take care of catastrophic health issues in their lives.
That's my answer to your question and to any further question: the answer stays the same.
Well sure, if by 'eating the poor kids' you mean my proposal of having the market forces directing them to various apprenticeships and whatever levels of education they could pay for, though this would require dramatic reduction in the costs, which are not coming as long as government money is in education, then it's sort of a modest proposal, but I go much further than proposing to sell the kids for richer people's culinary adventures, I think they can actually add to the wealth of the society in much more ways than just being served on a platter - they can in fact become productive members of society and provide products and services the market wishes to buy from them.
Obviously this cannot happen until the government is removed from making various economic and fiscal decisions, that make it impossible for anybody even to hire people out of school for less than minimum wage, though the country is filled with the unemployed, collecting whatever temporary benefits the government of China is still providing the US welfare recipients with.
you sound like the product of the upper middle class or rich of a highly unequal societ
- yes, if you count an ex-USSR immigrant to Israel and then the Americas, who spent 16 years working his way up the food chain so that later, he could then move his business out of that decadent socialist society to a freer place to be marie antoinette, then I say: let them dwell on their own misfortune, as they keep voting for the bread and circuses and let them be cleansed in the fire of economic disaster, brought upon them by those very choices for the welfare state, that they made, so that maybe, just maybe, if they survive the collapse, they will come out on the other end as winners, who rebuild their society and stop asking the world for more favors.
Slashdot Mirror
No, no, you keep it coming, this is highly amusing. I am not going to interrupt you, I am just here for the ride - enjoying the display of insanity.
Madoff is in prison
- he is in prison, because he value his life and lives of his relatives. He is not in prison because government put him there, he is in prison, because that's his deal - he goes to jail forever, and his relatives don't get murdered (maybe) and he doesn't (maybe.)
But really, Madoff is small potatoes, compared to the scams US federal government is running with SS and Medicare and all the borrowing and printing. Nobody goes to jail because government is part of business - that was my point. You can't have people going to jail, who are government.
All of your complains are exactly what I am talking about - get the government out of insuring businesses, out of insuring people, out of insuring liability, be it personal liability for running a financial pyramid or be it liability cap at 10 million for an oil drilling incident.
Regulations must not exist. Government must not be in business at all, all regulations will always be turned around and used to promote monopolies, while destroying competition, and that's not what the market needs, but it is what politicians want.
Wake up.
Why is that a surprise, my first language is Russian, not Italian.
The main 3 reasons for any business not to stay in USA are:
1. Inflation by government printing.
2. Income/corporate/payroll taxes, as well as the mess of medical taxes.
3. Business regulations.
The cost of labor is really on a distant fourth if it even enters the real equation, the real problem is always the government, and if government is not involved, the cost of labor will adjust to the market conditions, so it's really not that important.
Business regulations kill far more potential jobs in US than cost of labor, and taxes kill the most jobs.
As to Chinese and their tariffs - they have high tariffs, but those tariffs are applied to raw materials and energy. Who, from the West is importing to China? Well, Germany is, and China has a trade DEFICIT with Germany, not a surplus, as it has with USA, so clearly, if Germany can have a trade surplus with China, importing various tools and machines, etc., then it cannot be used as an excuse by US that it cannot deal with China on equal footing.
No no, it's not about tariffs from the Chinese - that's a misconception brought to you by the same government, that tells you that the way government measures CPI is a true indicator of inflation and that the official employment numbers are real and that GDP is an indicator of real economic growth - it's all nonsense.
The reason China has a trade surplus with USA, and USA has a 50 billion USD/month deficit with China, is the same reason USA has a large deficit even with Canada - and you can't say that Canadians are actively preventing USA from doing business, USA is Canada's main partner, they wouldn't dare.
The reason USA has this problem is because US government has declared a war on US economy and US dollar by growing the government to over 10% of the working force, by growing government expenses and obligations without any ability and plan to pay any of it out, because all of their plans are based on ridiculous assumptions about the economy, all of those assumptions are wrong. The reason is the insane income/corporate/payroll taxes, the involvement of US government in economy in terms of subsidies to large monopolies, destruction of competition in the market, destruction of currency by printing, destruction of real credit rating of the USA (not the garbage they tell you on TV - real credit worthiness of US private sector is in real trouble), destruction of the labor force through all the labor laws, that make US labor totally unattractive for any sane businessman.
I would not hire a US worker, the regulations, taxes, punishment for hiring them are outrageous, so I can't imagine why anybody sane would either.
As to China having all those IOUs in their Treasury - they'll shake it off, they'll be fine, they have the real wealth - production capacity, they have real economy - product oriented economy, which makes stuff. They'll shake it off, let their currency rise, and that will be the end of this age of US running on foreign credit and foreign manufacturing subsidy.
The only real problem from the US standpoint is that we've gotten used to this arrangement.
- no, that's not the real problem.
The real problem is that there is no capital investment in USA, it moved to China and other places, and this means that for USA to be able to restart manufacturing, it either will have to rebuild all the tools it will need by hand, if the trade is fully blocked, or it will have to sell a lot of energy and other mined resources to Chinese and others, in order to get the tools, machines, finished products necessary to restart manufacturing and production.
However there is another problem - over the last couple of generations, USA was losing not only savings and manufacturing base, but also knowledge and trade skills necessary to run production facilities. This also will have to be rebuilt or re-bought, repatriated somehow, things don't just appear out of thing air without capital and knowledge.
But my question was not directed at you, reread my comment. My question was a rhetorical one, directed at the people of China - What gives, people of China? Why do you want to give up you kidneys to own stupid iPads, when you are the ones manufacturing them? All you have to do is send a real message to your government (or better yet, take it down), so that the Chinese currency is no longer manufactured and US/EU inflation is no longer pushed into Asia.
As for you, you should be asking exactly the same thing of your government, as the reason that China is manufacturing everything today, is that your government is destroying your currency, while not allowing business to restart in the US due to business regulations and taxes. You should be asking your government: WTF? Why are you destroying incentives of businesses to even exist in the country, never mind hiring people here?
OK, that makes more sense than this Coin
It's also Russian, though it easily might have come into the language from other language, that's certainly a possibility, OK, but why call this tech a 'coin'?
So, what's up with the name of the system, "moneta", is it what I think it is (a Russian word for 'coin'), or is there something else at play here? I am a bit confused, because in the article, (which I am sorry to admit I read), it mentioned a bunch of names, but none that were Russian sounding.
This is just a sign of the time - Chinese are the ones producing the damned things, and they are the ones having to sell their kidneys to own one. I am really wondering how much more will it take their people, before they rise against their government and stop their government from printing their own currency into oblivion, just so the foreigners can enjoy fruits of Chinese labor so cheaply, while the Chinese standard of living is stagnating, because their own money does not buy the products, they themselves create.
They are the manufacturer of the world, they are paying for the inflation of the world with more production and they immediately feel the inflation (expansion of money) as rising prices, so last year they had 15-25% price increases for food. How much more of this will they allow their government to perpetrate upon them? They need to cut it, call it a day and stop subsidizing Dollars and Euros, etc., and let their own people enjoy their own work in their own appreciating currency.
I hope you liked the recent 2% drop in the price of gold and the resulting 2% reduction in your purchasing power
- I hope you don't find your 76% reduction of purchasing power since 2003 too destructive for your life's decisions.
but do you realize that the idea you are promoting here and elsewhere, the return to the gold standard would mean to force everyone else to use gold as money? Do you also realize that returning to the gold standard would be equivalent to theft of unparalleled proportion?
- nonsense. The theft of unimaginable proportions is the inflation, that the governments of the world are perpetrating upon their entire populations.
That means that if you today force everyone to accept gold as a 'store of value' and use gold to do that, then all future value that is produced (in excess to dwindling gold production) is forcibly redistributed to current owners of gold ...
- gold prices counted in US dollars will be going up and up.
Gold can even drop in price in USD and/or other currencies, as it does once in a while, because prices are unstable, but you believe for some reason, that the coupon value on the greenback in your wallet stays within the same purchasing parameters, simply because the NUMBER on the dollar bill stays the same. Well, it's a silly notion, one that is costing you over 10% loss of purchasing power year to year.
A well managed monetary base grows proportionally with the combined value of the economy.
- as gold sees its value increase, more business comes to gold mining and other ways of production, but that's irrelevant to the point.
The entire supply could be constrained by the metal that is already above the ground, and it still would be a healthy economy, as opposed to the inflation, that the government is pushing upon everybody.
You don't actually have to own gold, to benefit from the gold monetary base, as the inflation would immediately be replaced with deflation of the supply of money and the result will be increased economic activity, due to lowering prices for all materials, assets, equities and labor. The cheaper things are, the more of them anybody can afford, the more competition there is, due to the increased affordability of materials and labor, the more production there is and the wealth of the society goes up, not down. You are in an imaginary inflationary trap, that the government indoctrinated you into, but they are not making you any favors, as they are trying to inflate their debt away, they are making your life less and less affordable, so when the currency is destroyed, you'll have no purchasing power at all (as if the 76% reduction in it since 2003 is any good for you).
frequent bank crashes and panics where depositors lost all their "hard money", recessions, periods of high unemployment and periods of deflation.
- wrong. The bank runs, etc., they were equally spread out throughout the 19 century, they were contained to specific banks, not to the entire banking institution, they had to do with banks, that were unscrupulous, promising large gains in place of risk aversion, so they were playing the unsustainable fractional reserve game, which eventually destroyed them.
But that's just healthy market - some banks must go out of business, so that their lessons are learned by the depositors, and they don't put their gold into banks that behave that way, and also so that banks have enough private insurance, covering them, so that the companies that do certifications, can look at their finances and at their insurance levels to put out certificate statements, for the customers to be able to compare those, against other banks.
If we introduced the gold standard, "hard money", "sound money" today it would become a hidden tax on civilization: paid to those who already own gold. In other words, it's a hidden tax
There's pretty much no such thing as apprenticeships anymore - the free market decided it was cheaper to employ a worker that someone else trained than to train them up yourself
- as all government money, this subsidy of public education does misplace free market and incentives that are sustainable with the kind that only can exist while there are subsidies.
I somehow doubt there'd be a dramatic reduction in the cost of education either... education providers seem to charge as much as the market can bear.
- this is a false demand, created by the loans provided by government.
The students are used as collateral in this money transfer from government to the universities, we have discussed it a bit earlier on this site.
That's because taxes have been around in one form or another since the days of Ancient Egypt, for over 5,000 years.
- taxes were collected of sales most of the time over those years, not on people's work.
Its job is to build infrastructure where private companies are not interested in building anything because there's no immediate profit to be made.
- if there is no profit there, then it's a clear indication that the market is not interested in it, and any money allocated to it will be destructive to the economy.
Infrastructure which is necessary to attract investments and trade into poor regions in the first place. Private infrastructure can only reinforce economic advantages which already exist. Unlike government funded public infrastructure, it doesn't create new opportunities, it merely follows existing ones.
- nonsense. People have been building infrastructure before any governments ever existed and they continue to do so today just as well, and government infrastructure is never self-sufficient because it relies on expensive support from subsidies and not from the actual market demand.
Of-course, just like bail outs and stimulus packages from government do increase economic activity in the short run, while they are applied, same with government built infrastructure - it definitely invites more business, however, that's because anything that's 'free' (but really free), invites people. The moment the subsidies stop, this activity also stops. You'll see this with all those unmaintainable highways, which eventually will come into disarray, as they are not actually profitable and are totally subsidized. The government did destroy profitable private businesses - rail, air, to subsidize the roads, and I explained that that did in the comment I linked to. Cheers
I am definitely not trying to impress you with my Marxism indoctrination, but if you understand what it is, then it is somewhat surprising that you don't see the income taxes, (which started as income taxes on the rich first) as the natural extension of those very ideas.
As to the public infrastructure - if you look at the link, which I attached, you'll see all the arguments there, how it actually is destructive from the beginning to the end - killing profitable businesses, destroying possibility of other profitable businesses, creating unfair competition (in case of roads - subsidizing car companies and destroying opportunities for public transit companies), creating an unmaintainable life style, causing insane amounts of pollution, creating unsustainable energy policy, etc.etc., all because government precisely does NOT have to make it profitable, but can just spend without any regard to any market signals, that would have been sent to any private enterprise, all because money is not a question for government, but money is expression of work, so work of people is not a question for government, who can abuse it, even if it absolutely is against what the market is requiring.
Yeah, because having a country that is more and more attractive to businessmen and their investment capital is going to turn that country into a poor place, I know, beautiful.
Oh, and again, you and your government, except for reinstating slavery in Haiti last century, there was also a little matter of dozens of undeclared wars: Columbia, Dominican, Panama, Honduras, Cuba, Nicaragua, China, Laos, Congo, Libya, Chad, Persian Gulf, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Iran, Mexico, Bosnia, Kuwait, Somalia, Macedonia, Yemen, Afghanistan.... did I forget a lot? Well, let's see how much longer the Chinese are willing to pay for this nonsense.
Hey, genius, the infrastructure is also supposed to be profitable, otherwise, if it's built with subsidies, it's unsustainable and will eventually disintegrate, like will observe in USA, where infrastructure will disintegrate, because it was built with taxes and not for a real market purpose.
Haiti was a slave colony, you should really figure this shit out - they used to be profitable, then the government of US of A came there, stationed there, caused all sorts of civil unrest, reinvented slavery. That's just PART of their problem - the US government (same problem as for Mexico and other South American nations BTW)
So go fuck yourself with your government, which only knows how to take a working thing and break it. Now your entrepreneurs - they are more than welcome here. Your government - well, let's say they are not as popular.
and i'm glad you are lowering taxes in lucerne. good for you. but you're not arguing against raising taxes, you are arguing against the very notion of the need to contribute to society to maintain it
- absolutely. We have an entire canton of people who are mostly against all income taxes, so I guess good for us then.
In other words, you're using the word "Marxism" as a catch-all term for anything you disagree with. Poor Karl, he must be spinning in his grave now.
- I was indoctrinated in the ways of Marxism long before you were born, which was very unfortunate for me back in the USSR. Marxism is about control of means of production by the 'labor', however in the modern society this means exactly: corporate taxes. Too bad for that very labor, that they are voting for it, as this was quickly extended to their own work as well, thus income taxes for all, but of-course in USA 50% of population doesn't even qualify to pay income taxes, while 25% and counting are on food stamps and the unemployment is somewhere in high twenties. This of-course is part of the result of this Marxist agenda, which does fuck all to improve the economy, but does move capital savings out of the country, because government regulations and taxes do end up costing a pretty penny, then the government grows more, wants to do more and starts printing like a drunk sailor drinks, and this totally negates any value staying in US denominated assets for capital savings.
Except when it's not. Henry Ford and many others like him have taught us a very important lesson over a century ago: If you want to sell on a consumer market, you have to pay your employees enough so they can afford your own products. Otherwise there will be noone to sell to. I guess that US is on the way to learn this lesson again the hard way.
- Except during the times of Henry Ford there was no government controlling every single thing in his production lines, he didn't have to pay income taxes, at least not before 1913 and government wasn't destroying the very value of his investment capital also until that same year.
Now, if one person is spinning in his grave, it's Ford, for you using him as an example, because he was a businessman, an entrepreneur, which is today the scapegoat for government propaganda machine.
Actually, no. Governments can enable a lot of jobs by building and maintaining important infrastructure. Profit is not always a good measure of usefulness.
- wrong. Profit is almost always the only good measure of usefulness of a product/service to the market, and it's definitely the only real measure of success of a business, and thus a good compass for the future direction of the investment and work. But I already left a comment on that topic a while ago, I don't want to repeat it.
yes, and the rich society that purchases your software is rich because it is maintained. you wish to derive income from the richness of society, but give back nothing to maintain its richness
- nonsense. My software increases productivity of retailer and shipping companies, this in turn allows these companies to compete better with other companies, reducing their costs, and in current environment this gives them the advantage of being able to compete on price, which in turn benefits the end consumer.
Beside that, my software allows the suppliers to be in control of what they are ordering and how much, some of the suppliers are also manufacturers. The manufacturers get this data and then use it to adjust the production capacity and the type of goods that are produced (this is mostly China and some European manufacturers), this allows them to be more precise, more effective, save costs, create less waste and use less energy. All parties also gain from reduced storage requirements.
This is a complex world that is created by entrepreneurs, not by government. We see government as pretty much an evil thing, that is trying to destruct from our goals and trying to prevent us from working as efficiently as we can. The entire manufacturing/supply/retail chain is very price sensitive, especially in current economic conditions and my software is helping many people to get exactly what they need, the shelves are filled with products they actually are interested in buying, rather than with stuff they don't need and the prices are much more optimal, catering to the current market conditions.
This is my contribution, I do not owe anything else to anybody.
The more a society is concerned wirth social welfare: denmark on one end, haiti on another, the richer that society is, and the happier people are. it's pretty obvious, moron
- socialist states are turning less socialist every day, I know what I speak of, as some of my clients are dealing with that - reduced taxed, reduced business regulations, because even more socialist states can't survive by government decree, and Haiti's problem is not lack of government, it's lack of investment exactly due to government corruption.
not that you care. you're clearly a selfish shortsighted asshole. we're not robbing you, asshole, we're asking you to give back to that which gives you the money you covet, but apparently don't really understand.
- production, asswipe, it's all about production. Money is only a store of value, which I store in gold, because in reality I don't trust any government with a printing press. Money is just an expression of my work.
Work, asswipe, it's all about work. It has nothing to do with government, it has everything to do with production capacity. Do we have poor people here? Yes. Do we take care of them? Yes. Do we need government to do that for us? No.
but you won't do anything to maintain that richness. you're the thief. you take, and you give nothing back. it is required that you do. and we will make you. without that compulsion, civilization would cease to exist because, unfortunately, most people are as blind and greedy as you, and they'd happily suckle at the cow and not feed it, until it is drained dry
- work, asswipe, only work matters. The wealth is production capacity, the money is only a store of value, which allows me to save my contribution and use it when I see fit without relying on any fucking retard, like you, robbing work of others to give me something I never deserved.
so, we must compulse you to contribute. and we will. because we like civilization. and unlike you, we're smart enough to see what is required to maintain civilization
- no no, here is where you fail. Not only are we collectively lowering taxes in Lucerne, we are pushing the other cantons to do the same due to competition and businesses, that come here exactly because of the lowering taxes
hey, dumb ass, I just went outside, asked my neighbors - they are going to vote for the next income/corporate tax cut in 2012. 50% cut. We can't wait till 2014, the canton is going to vote to reduce the income taxes ... to 0.
Whoever I speak with - everybody is on the same page - the fed can go take a hike and the locality better do with what we pay in sales, and the society is getting richer, not poorer, the unemployment is 3%, the Frank is going up against all currencies all the time.
Oh, and I AM making money in my bedroom - working on my software and selling it from my bedroom, so zum Wohl, asshole, zum Wohl.
The very concept that work must be taxed by the government in the first place - income and corporate and payroll taxes, that's already Marxism.
However you are also incorrect. RMS was referring to the competitive advantage a company gets by moving from a country with more regulations, to a country with fewer regulations, that's his complaint - that companies cause the governments of countries to reduce their regulations, so that those companies would move their business there.
He is complaining that this is a BAD thing, because it drives wages down, and I am saying: he is a Marxist one more time, as his concern is labor without understanding the economics at all, that all costs need to go down due to competition, including labor costs, and if the costs go down due to competition of companies with each other and not due to companies getting favors from government, who protects their monopoly, then this is a net positive gain for the economy and the market.
The market sees cheaper products and services and the country with fewer regulations gets more business and jobs created and generally more jobs means a wealthier economy.
No government in the world can do what these companies do - create actual real jobs and improve the economy and raise the standard of living of people, who now have those jobs and push prices down for consumer goods. Governments can only destroys this movement - reduce economic activity via taxes and regulations, push prices up due to less competition.
I stopped reading there.
- that makes both of us.
This little piece of history, no matter how valid, was now starting to affect *other people* who were completely innocent. While I don't believe in censorship, I do believe in the validity of the "statute of limitations" concept so I decided on a compromise.
- pffft, what a softie :) You should CRASH HIM to hell. Think about it - what if he has kids? Now his genes will be passed on, and that's clearly a problem. You should nuke them all from the orbit - that's the only way to be sure.
I am very clear on the issues, here is where I always stood and will continue: I am not going to be part of a 'society', which forces me to be 'charitable' through government enforcement.
Everything else is irrelevant, the children, then outcomes, anything. If you think you own my work and the way I use the outcome of my work, you can go to hell.
So that's the first and a very separate issue from the second one, which you are bringing up: some sort of a guarantee that kids must have an equal start in life.
It's a nice thought, good luck with that. It has never worked that way, it will never work that way. If you think that your average kid from an average family is going to have the same sort of a start, as somebody, who made a point in his/her life to build a large amount of capital and also was able to do so, the you are delusional.
Now then the question becomes: must it be so?
Must it be so that the society allows every child to start from equal footing? Yes, the society must work towards that goal.
Now the final question: given my take (and many people with a similar take) on the government intrusion into our lives, what should be the mechanism to ensure that kids do have some form of education that they could then use in their lives, to achieve a desirable economic outcome for themselves? My answer remains, stays the same, does not change at all: get government money out of the system and allow the system to have competition that would cater to all markets, obviously with price discrimination.
I will not presume to know ANYTHING about your past, so I'll speak in general, when I'll say that people used to buy their own education before government made a point of destroying it with government subsidies and loans and regulations and protections - people could buy it, just like they could pay for their health care out of pocket, because it was cheap, and they had very cheap insurance with high deductibles and enough coverage to take care of catastrophic health issues in their lives.
That's my answer to your question and to any further question: the answer stays the same.
Well sure, if by 'eating the poor kids' you mean my proposal of having the market forces directing them to various apprenticeships and whatever levels of education they could pay for, though this would require dramatic reduction in the costs, which are not coming as long as government money is in education, then it's sort of a modest proposal, but I go much further than proposing to sell the kids for richer people's culinary adventures, I think they can actually add to the wealth of the society in much more ways than just being served on a platter - they can in fact become productive members of society and provide products and services the market wishes to buy from them.
Obviously this cannot happen until the government is removed from making various economic and fiscal decisions, that make it impossible for anybody even to hire people out of school for less than minimum wage, though the country is filled with the unemployed, collecting whatever temporary benefits the government of China is still providing the US welfare recipients with.
you sound like the product of the upper middle class or rich of a highly unequal societ
- yes, if you count an ex-USSR immigrant to Israel and then the Americas, who spent 16 years working his way up the food chain so that later, he could then move his business out of that decadent socialist society to a freer place to be marie antoinette, then I say: let them dwell on their own misfortune, as they keep voting for the bread and circuses and let them be cleansed in the fire of economic disaster, brought upon them by those very choices for the welfare state, that they made, so that maybe, just maybe, if they survive the collapse, they will come out on the other end as winners, who rebuild their society and stop asking the world for more favors.