That's not even remotely the case, what actually was and still is happening is that government provides telcos with various tax breaks, rights to lay cable through all properties, public and private without paying property taxes without incurring any costs associated with using public and even private property. The entire network of cables was subsidized, there were various ways the government did it after the government decided that it's going to nationalize the telco industry.
Additionally, without government intervention the patents or copyrights wouldn't have existed as a concept and this also killed plenty of competition.
Yeah, you can't show any monopoly that wasn't created with government money, there is only one that was clearly done privately: De Beers, so it's probably more than 99%.
To a consumer it does not matter whether a monopoly is natural or 'artificial', but in a market that can only sustain a single player for a particular segment most likely due to the market segment being extremely small, there is no remedy by any government that wouldn't destroy efficiency. What, the government is supposed to SUBSIDIZE every segment of the market where there is only one natural monopoly so that another inefficient company or government service can be created? That's retarded.
I think the supreme court would beg to differ on that.
- there were more than five competitors to Standard Oil, which was NOT all private money, it was working heavily with various government officials to get all sorts of preferential treatment. The reason why the government created a special antitrust act specifically to target Standard Oil was because the trust became more powerful economically speaking than the government, and the government obviously feels the need to be heavily involved in economy, otherwise how are the government officials going to continue being elected with all that special interest money. The supreme court was protecting the government officials, not the market. By the time Standard Oil was broken into pieces it did not have to be, it was pure retaliation.
Seriously? Because only IBM products shipped with Microsoft software, right? Here you reveal the logical contortions you have to go through to make your point.
- no contortions. If I get a special EXCLUSIVE deal from a highly successful company, then I am profiting from that company's success. The fact that the highly successful company was built with all sorts of government money and thus became a monopoly now is transferred to me.
Let me give you a hint: what do you think happens to the price, and quality, and cut-throat margins after the competition goes out of business?
- Microsoft is a good example of what happens: competition happens. Free Software competition over time has done the necessary work, Apple has done the work, Google has done the work, etc. That's what happens.
In your world the government would be involved in all aspects of market, completely distorting it by allocating resources away from productive segments of society. So, to your next point, when the monopoly becomes a problem for the consumer, then competition starts arising.
So let me get this straight: free markets always work because competition drives down prices, right? But when there's no competition, because it's a monopoly, the market still works, as long as the government didn't create the monopoly, right? So free markets work even when the mechanism that makes free markets work is absent, right? Hang on, I think this is all going over my head a bit.
- AFAIC it is over your Keynesian head. Competition is over your head.
How is the government created monopoly in telcos working out for you?
Government providing subsidies to phone companies, exempting them from land taxes, doing all sorts of things to give a specific company a monopoly status and let it own the landlines.
So if government creates monopolies in ISPs that way, then sure, fighting evil with evil will be necessary.
However if you open your own Telco tomorrow and buy 100 pieces of land and put 100 cell towers on that land and start selling wireless access including Internet access and you do this with your own money (well, money not taken from a government) then would you be upset if government then came to you and told you what you can and cannot do with your property? If you sell network access on infrastructure you built yourself, then it's totally your property, you can discriminate against protocols or websites or content of any kind, AS LONG AS you specify that in the contract with your customer, otherwise it's false advertisement.
No, it has never happened that a company became an absolute monopoly on its own.
You won't find an example. Even Standard Oil was not a monopoly by the time it was split. A company can be a natural monopoly, such was Standard Oil for some time because they were able to provide their product at very low prices, eventually competition formed anyway.
If IBM did not get special treatment by all kinds of governments it wouldn't have been a monopoly that it was. Microsoft became a monopoly by dealing with IBM, so by proxy Microsoft also was helped by big bad governments, yes. Eventually Microsoft started losing their monopoly as well to Free/Open source, to Apple even.
I can only think of one actual real monopoly like what you are insinuating: the De Beers diamond cartel. Their monopoly will probably exist for a while and will disappear only when the technology to produce diamonds in a lab will be able to produce enough diamonds to satisfy the jewelry market.
Oil companies, such as BP for example have enormous support from governments. BP itself, formerly the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was first given special privileges by the Shah of Iran, but when the revolution happened and the contract changed to a less favorable one, because the democratically elected government did not want to all APOC to take as much profit as before, APOC used their ties to UK and US governments and got the democratically elected government overthrown, the president killed and the regime changed, and this was done with efforts of entities like CIA.
So AFAIC 99% monopolies are created with government support. The rest are natural monopolies that either serve extremely small markets where there is no room for more than one player or the product is provided at such price and quality and cut-throat margins that competition couldn't survive. For a consumer the natural monopoly is not a problem, the real threat is a monopoly that kills competition by the hand of government money/regulation.
You have the powerful monopolies because they are colluding with the powerful government. The government has a number of roles, a small number: military for defense, justice department/cops and prisons.
That's all. Having a government that sets monetary policy, including setting of the interest rates, printing fiat currency, issuing debt, taxing income instead of taxing sales *(provided that the 'poorer' ones are able to get the taxes back by actually filing their income taxes for a sales tax refund), a government that creates monopolies and destroys competition through regulation that only helps monopolies, a government that hands out free money, hands out bailouts to the preferred corporations, government that just gives money and power and favors to corporations. Well, this creates monopolies, it does not remove them, it does not punish bad behavior, it creates moral hazard.
OTOH the case against Net Neutrality dictated by the government can only be valid if the Government did not participate in financing building of the infrastructure that is used by the Internet.
So if a government participated in any way: provided tax breaks, subsidies, even interest free loans or other money, land grabs, whatever it took to lay the cable, then the government has already CREATED monopolies in this industry, so now it has to regulate them. I am against government creating monopolies in the first place, but if it does, the the way it has to regulate with laws them must only apply to these SPECIFIC companies, not to all other companies who did not get any of these privileges.
Also if I am a wireless carrier, I bought pieces of land, installed wireless transmitters/receivers and providing access to networks in this way, and if I did this with my own money and no government involvement, well then who is the government to come to me and to dictate what kind of a contract I try to sell if it does not go against the human rights basically?
If I buy 100 locations, install 100 cell towers and provide Internet access through some phone or other device, then it is my network and all I have to do to make it a legal business to disclose the information on how I handle the Internet connection, whether I give preference to some content over another, (otherwise it's false advertising, if I don't disclose that.)
You'd think that a war mongering nation starting 2 wars in a span of months, killing and causing death and harm to hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians is MUCH WORSE than somebody releasing truthful information on the subject, but I guess that is just completely irrational logic, isn't it?
Can you explain to me why you are 'trying to like Obama'? I don't understand, is he your uncle? AFAIC he is an asshole of the same category as Bush and the rest of them, you can't become a president if you are not corrupt enough, so why are you trying so hard to like him, when he clearly is exactly like what he is supposed to be?
No. From a libertarian viewpoint, the government needs to be removed from making any decisions on economics completely.
Please, let's not start this here, as a minarchist I can only accept government for 3 things (cooking, cleaning and vaginas). Just kidding. The 3 things are: 1. Judicial system. 2. Crime punishment system. 3. Minimum necessary military force for necessary protection from foreign powers.
Lies lies lies lies lies lies lies. Don't believe a word of it, not a single one.
SEC failed to catch Bernie Madoff because the system is corrupt, they have enough people, the problem is what KIND of people they have. You can increase their manpower by a factor of a million and if they still get the kind of people they have there now, they will not end up catching any Madoffs.
Madoff case is so outrageous: Harry Markopolos is the whistle-blower who uncovered Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme 10 years before the rest of the world learned of the biggest financial crime in history.... It was exactly as I had warned the government of the United States approximately $55 billion earlier. And as I stood in the lobby of that dojo, my sense of relief was replaced by a new concern. The piles of documents I had in my possession would destroy reputations, end careers, and perhaps even bring down the entire Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the government's Wall Street watchdog -- unless, of course, the government got to those documents before I could get them published. I grabbed my kids and raced home. - go to this link, there is a video there
Don't believe the hype. It is not about not having enough people, it is the system that exists that is completely captive, the SEC needs to be disbanded for corruption.
-- But I am libertarian, I don't actually care about some people losing their money because they are stupid, I am more concerned that government is part of the corruption scheme and it is helping the thieves.
You know, I am fine with you being Keynsian, but I have to wonder about the intelligence of the moderators who gave both of your comments in this thread high marks.
If you just said this: I am Keynsian, I am for a society that always tries to help every member of itself to the detriment of everything else, I am for equal economic outcomes, I am for equality in everything, OK, I can understand that point. It's a misguided point, it doesn't stand a real life test, but I can understand it.
BUT saying that Keynesian is RATIONAL?
Here what is not rational: trying to stop a natural business cycle of boom/bust from going through one of its phases, namely through bust, and doing it by allocating resources in a way, that PREVENTS the bust from being resolved and prevents the next boom from starting.
There is nothing rational in the theory, that during a time, where money itself starts losing ground, where jobs start disappearing, the government must step into the role of a major consumer and promote more consumption through debt and printing of money with no production behind it. How is it rational to take resources away from the cycle clearing itself out, taking resources away from the private sector so that the public sector can create all kinds of non-productive jobs?
Even when the government itself thinks that those jobs are productive, it is wrong. They are no more productive than a war related job: filling clips and then emptying clips, making bombs and exploding them, creating airplanes so that they can be shot down, making ships so they can be sunk. If that does not seem rational, then how can it seem that taking time of millions of people and occupying them in some similar pointless activities, so they can still get that tiny part of the dole is rational?
Most humans don't want to live on a dole, they want to live BETTER than the rest, and that is a reason why communism does not work.
People want to live better than the neighbors, so they'll do anything to live better. In a communist society they will try to get into positions of power and to command and to participate in corruption, however it is exactly the same as it happens in a BROKEN capitalist society that lost its way, that does not produce anything of value anymore.
Government creating stupid employment positions does NOT help economy in the long run, it will destroy economy in the long run and while I can understand people who don't care and want that course because they prefer everybody being equal by some ideology, I do not agree that it is rational behavior or rational ideology.
Blah blah blah, many people served in WWII and other wars, good for them. Some later keep the respect earned by that and some totally abuse it and LOSE it. This Ted was one of those, who lost it by becoming a criminal in a position of power, who was corrupting the system and stealing money, thus destroying the society bit by bit, just like in a war he could have been saving it bit by bit. Quid Pro Quo and then some. Good riddance.
Ok, Ok, I see that you want to but your good nature doesn't let you, I'll do it for you: good riddance, useless man that should have been taken away on an alien spaceship through a series of universe tracks 40 years ago.
That's just pathetic and very cavalier attitude towards your privacy and security.
I run the Universe through a serial wormhole back into the past, so that all states of all atoms/photons/electrons/gravitons, EVERYTHING is restored back to the way it was exactly before.
Once the Universe passes through the wormhole, I annihilate that, so that there is no residual information left anywhere.
Oh, and I have already locked the parallel universes in a time loop that is set to happen prior to any of my browsing interests, so no way you can recover the data from statistical analysis of those puppies.
That's not even remotely true. In fact, money has been FLOODING into US Treasury securities.
- obviously, that's because the bonds and t-bills are the next bubble to burst.
Borrowing costs for the US have declined for year term investments to like a quarter of a percent, and even for long-term (30 year) bonds, the government still only has to offer 4% interest. This meants that the bond markets are not taking seriously the idea that the US government is borrowing too much money and inflation is going to come roaring back.
- what it actually means is that US refinances its debt on short term only, if it TRIED to refinance its debt long term, the interest rates would SKYROCKET, the way Apollo did when aiming for the Moon.
Nobody in their sound mind wants to finance US for long term, US knows it, so they continue the charade of re-borrowing short term, and they will do this as long as they can. This is going the be the reason for hyper-inflation, because when the refinancing stops, when t-bills/bonds holders decide to let the loans mature instead of refinancing, the US will print US Dollars to buy all of those worthless papers back, worthless, because they can only be taken back for worthless US Dollars, worthless, because once this hits, everybody will start selling and US will either have to declare bankruptcy OR it will print the USD out of existence. If you live in RL and not in some magical Unicorn filled world, you know which way the US will go.
They don't even need to stop buying new bonds, all they have to do is let them mature and ask for the money back. That would be it, done for the USD. Obama/Geithner/Bernanke will print cash to buy back the securities and that will kill the USD.
US and UN had a clear choice: continue the war in Afghanistan despite the loss of human life that is happening daily even while knowing that there is no Al-Qaeda there, continue propagating an unsustainable path of building a local system that takes a few times more money to maintain per year than the country's yearly GDP output.
There are all kinds of choices that end up killing people, seems to me that choice of releasing information in this situation is always going to have some possibility of the same outcome, but NOT releasing the information is the WRONG thing to do because it does not force the hand of those in power to rethink their choices either, and choices of those in power produce much much much more collateral damage.
I care about now and this life, I made a meaning for myself but generally there is no meaning unless and until you make it for yourself. I would care about long term more if I personally was in that long term, but I am not going to be. Even caring about the kids comes down to them personally but I don't care if kids of kids of kids make it, that's not in my life path. My reasons to continue are to try and make better life for myself and live through that process and hopefully achieve better life, but I don't care if the humanity makes it as a whole.
I don't care about this species or any others for that matter in the long term at all. Meaning only exists while I am alive, once I am not meaning stops, that's all.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not even remotely the case, what actually was and still is happening is that government provides telcos with various tax breaks, rights to lay cable through all properties, public and private without paying property taxes without incurring any costs associated with using public and even private property. The entire network of cables was subsidized, there were various ways the government did it after the government decided that it's going to nationalize the telco industry.
Additionally, without government intervention the patents or copyrights wouldn't have existed as a concept and this also killed plenty of competition.
Yeah, you can't show any monopoly that wasn't created with government money, there is only one that was clearly done privately: De Beers, so it's probably more than 99%.
To a consumer it does not matter whether a monopoly is natural or 'artificial', but in a market that can only sustain a single player for a particular segment most likely due to the market segment being extremely small, there is no remedy by any government that wouldn't destroy efficiency. What, the government is supposed to SUBSIDIZE every segment of the market where there is only one natural monopoly so that another inefficient company or government service can be created? That's retarded.
I think the supreme court would beg to differ on that.
- there were more than five competitors to Standard Oil, which was NOT all private money, it was working heavily with various government officials to get all sorts of preferential treatment. The reason why the government created a special antitrust act specifically to target Standard Oil was because the trust became more powerful economically speaking than the government, and the government obviously feels the need to be heavily involved in economy, otherwise how are the government officials going to continue being elected with all that special interest money. The supreme court was protecting the government officials, not the market. By the time Standard Oil was broken into pieces it did not have to be, it was pure retaliation.
Seriously? Because only IBM products shipped with Microsoft software, right? Here you reveal the logical contortions you have to go through to make your point.
- no contortions. If I get a special EXCLUSIVE deal from a highly successful company, then I am profiting from that company's success. The fact that the highly successful company was built with all sorts of government money and thus became a monopoly now is transferred to me.
Let me give you a hint: what do you think happens to the price, and quality, and cut-throat margins after the competition goes out of business?
- Microsoft is a good example of what happens: competition happens. Free Software competition over time has done the necessary work, Apple has done the work, Google has done the work, etc. That's what happens.
In your world the government would be involved in all aspects of market, completely distorting it by allocating resources away from productive segments of society. So, to your next point, when the monopoly becomes a problem for the consumer, then competition starts arising.
So let me get this straight: free markets always work because competition drives down prices, right? But when there's no competition, because it's a monopoly, the market still works, as long as the government didn't create the monopoly, right? So free markets work even when the mechanism that makes free markets work is absent, right? Hang on, I think this is all going over my head a bit.
- AFAIC it is over your Keynesian head. Competition is over your head.
You buy the access to the 'airways' just like anybody else for your purpose, you are paying a fair price for it.
How is the government created monopoly in telcos working out for you?
Government providing subsidies to phone companies, exempting them from land taxes, doing all sorts of things to give a specific company a monopoly status and let it own the landlines.
So if government creates monopolies in ISPs that way, then sure, fighting evil with evil will be necessary.
However if you open your own Telco tomorrow and buy 100 pieces of land and put 100 cell towers on that land and start selling wireless access including Internet access and you do this with your own money (well, money not taken from a government) then would you be upset if government then came to you and told you what you can and cannot do with your property? If you sell network access on infrastructure you built yourself, then it's totally your property, you can discriminate against protocols or websites or content of any kind, AS LONG AS you specify that in the contract with your customer, otherwise it's false advertisement.
Well then, you should see the teeth on a cucumber...
As a vegetarian I do it every day, I look that salad right into the eye and put it out of its misery.
No, it has never happened that a company became an absolute monopoly on its own.
You won't find an example. Even Standard Oil was not a monopoly by the time it was split. A company can be a natural monopoly, such was Standard Oil for some time because they were able to provide their product at very low prices, eventually competition formed anyway.
If IBM did not get special treatment by all kinds of governments it wouldn't have been a monopoly that it was. Microsoft became a monopoly by dealing with IBM, so by proxy Microsoft also was helped by big bad governments, yes. Eventually Microsoft started losing their monopoly as well to Free/Open source, to Apple even.
I can only think of one actual real monopoly like what you are insinuating: the De Beers diamond cartel. Their monopoly will probably exist for a while and will disappear only when the technology to produce diamonds in a lab will be able to produce enough diamonds to satisfy the jewelry market.
Oil companies, such as BP for example have enormous support from governments. BP itself, formerly the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was first given special privileges by the Shah of Iran, but when the revolution happened and the contract changed to a less favorable one, because the democratically elected government did not want to all APOC to take as much profit as before, APOC used their ties to UK and US governments and got the democratically elected government overthrown, the president killed and the regime changed, and this was done with efforts of entities like CIA.
So AFAIC 99% monopolies are created with government support. The rest are natural monopolies that either serve extremely small markets where there is no room for more than one player or the product is provided at such price and quality and cut-throat margins that competition couldn't survive. For a consumer the natural monopoly is not a problem, the real threat is a monopoly that kills competition by the hand of government money/regulation.
You have the powerful monopolies because they are colluding with the powerful government. The government has a number of roles, a small number: military for defense, justice department/cops and prisons.
That's all. Having a government that sets monetary policy, including setting of the interest rates, printing fiat currency, issuing debt, taxing income instead of taxing sales *(provided that the 'poorer' ones are able to get the taxes back by actually filing their income taxes for a sales tax refund), a government that creates monopolies and destroys competition through regulation that only helps monopolies, a government that hands out free money, hands out bailouts to the preferred corporations, government that just gives money and power and favors to corporations. Well, this creates monopolies, it does not remove them, it does not punish bad behavior, it creates moral hazard.
OTOH the case against Net Neutrality dictated by the government can only be valid if the Government did not participate in financing building of the infrastructure that is used by the Internet.
So if a government participated in any way: provided tax breaks, subsidies, even interest free loans or other money, land grabs, whatever it took to lay the cable, then the government has already CREATED monopolies in this industry, so now it has to regulate them. I am against government creating monopolies in the first place, but if it does, the the way it has to regulate with laws them must only apply to these SPECIFIC companies, not to all other companies who did not get any of these privileges.
Also if I am a wireless carrier, I bought pieces of land, installed wireless transmitters/receivers and providing access to networks in this way, and if I did this with my own money and no government involvement, well then who is the government to come to me and to dictate what kind of a contract I try to sell if it does not go against the human rights basically?
If I buy 100 locations, install 100 cell towers and provide Internet access through some phone or other device, then it is my network and all I have to do to make it a legal business to disclose the information on how I handle the Internet connection, whether I give preference to some content over another, (otherwise it's false advertising, if I don't disclose that.)
You'd think that a war mongering nation starting 2 wars in a span of months, killing and causing death and harm to hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians is MUCH WORSE than somebody releasing truthful information on the subject, but I guess that is just completely irrational logic, isn't it?
Can you explain to me why you are 'trying to like Obama'? I don't understand, is he your uncle? AFAIC he is an asshole of the same category as Bush and the rest of them, you can't become a president if you are not corrupt enough, so why are you trying so hard to like him, when he clearly is exactly like what he is supposed to be?
What did I miss, when did Assange become a US citizen to be prosecuted by US laws?
No. From a libertarian viewpoint, the government needs to be removed from making any decisions on economics completely.
Please, let's not start this here, as a minarchist I can only accept government for 3 things (cooking, cleaning and vaginas). Just kidding. The 3 things are: 1. Judicial system. 2. Crime punishment system. 3. Minimum necessary military force for necessary protection from foreign powers.
Any highly advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from corruption.
No, your erection is also a hoax.
Lies lies lies lies lies lies lies. Don't believe a word of it, not a single one.
SEC failed to catch Bernie Madoff because the system is corrupt, they have enough people, the problem is what KIND of people they have. You can increase their manpower by a factor of a million and if they still get the kind of people they have there now, they will not end up catching any Madoffs.
Madoff case is so outrageous: Harry Markopolos is the whistle-blower who uncovered Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme 10 years before the rest of the world learned of the biggest financial crime in history. ...
It was exactly as I had warned the government of the United States approximately $55 billion earlier. And as I stood in the lobby of that dojo, my sense of relief was replaced by a new concern. The piles of documents I had in my possession would destroy reputations, end careers, and perhaps even bring down the entire Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the government's Wall Street watchdog -- unless, of course, the government got to those documents before I could get them published. I grabbed my kids and raced home. - go to this link, there is a video there
more videos
--
Don't believe the hype. It is not about not having enough people, it is the system that exists that is completely captive, the SEC needs to be disbanded for corruption.
--
But I am libertarian, I don't actually care about some people losing their money because they are stupid, I am more concerned that government is part of the corruption scheme and it is helping the thieves.
You know, I am fine with you being Keynsian, but I have to wonder about the intelligence of the moderators who gave both of your comments in this thread high marks.
If you just said this: I am Keynsian, I am for a society that always tries to help every member of itself to the detriment of everything else, I am for equal economic outcomes, I am for equality in everything, OK, I can understand that point. It's a misguided point, it doesn't stand a real life test, but I can understand it.
BUT saying that Keynesian is RATIONAL?
Here what is not rational: trying to stop a natural business cycle of boom/bust from going through one of its phases, namely through bust, and doing it by allocating resources in a way, that PREVENTS the bust from being resolved and prevents the next boom from starting.
There is nothing rational in the theory, that during a time, where money itself starts losing ground, where jobs start disappearing, the government must step into the role of a major consumer and promote more consumption through debt and printing of money with no production behind it. How is it rational to take resources away from the cycle clearing itself out, taking resources away from the private sector so that the public sector can create all kinds of non-productive jobs?
Even when the government itself thinks that those jobs are productive, it is wrong. They are no more productive than a war related job: filling clips and then emptying clips, making bombs and exploding them, creating airplanes so that they can be shot down, making ships so they can be sunk. If that does not seem rational, then how can it seem that taking time of millions of people and occupying them in some similar pointless activities, so they can still get that tiny part of the dole is rational?
Most humans don't want to live on a dole, they want to live BETTER than the rest, and that is a reason why communism does not work.
People want to live better than the neighbors, so they'll do anything to live better. In a communist society they will try to get into positions of power and to command and to participate in corruption, however it is exactly the same as it happens in a BROKEN capitalist society that lost its way, that does not produce anything of value anymore.
Government creating stupid employment positions does NOT help economy in the long run, it will destroy economy in the long run and while I can understand people who don't care and want that course because they prefer everybody being equal by some ideology, I do not agree that it is rational behavior or rational ideology.
Blah blah blah, many people served in WWII and other wars, good for them. Some later keep the respect earned by that and some totally abuse it and LOSE it. This Ted was one of those, who lost it by becoming a criminal in a position of power, who was corrupting the system and stealing money, thus destroying the society bit by bit, just like in a war he could have been saving it bit by bit. Quid Pro Quo and then some. Good riddance.
Get the fuck out of here, Ted Stevens - a criminal in a position of power. The fewer of them, the better for the rest of society.
Ok, Ok, I see that you want to but your good nature doesn't let you, I'll do it for you: good riddance, useless man that should have been taken away on an alien spaceship through a series of universe tracks 40 years ago.
That's just pathetic and very cavalier attitude towards your privacy and security.
I run the Universe through a serial wormhole back into the past, so that all states of all atoms/photons/electrons/gravitons, EVERYTHING is restored back to the way it was exactly before.
Once the Universe passes through the wormhole, I annihilate that, so that there is no residual information left anywhere.
Oh, and I have already locked the parallel universes in a time loop that is set to happen prior to any of my browsing interests, so no way you can recover the data from statistical analysis of those puppies.
That's not even remotely true. In fact, money has been FLOODING into US Treasury securities.
- obviously, that's because the bonds and t-bills are the next bubble to burst.
Borrowing costs for the US have declined for year term investments to like a quarter of a percent, and even for long-term (30 year) bonds, the government still only has to offer 4% interest. This meants that the bond markets are not taking seriously the idea that the US government is borrowing too much money and inflation is going to come roaring back.
- what it actually means is that US refinances its debt on short term only, if it TRIED to refinance its debt long term, the interest rates would SKYROCKET, the way Apollo did when aiming for the Moon.
Nobody in their sound mind wants to finance US for long term, US knows it, so they continue the charade of re-borrowing short term, and they will do this as long as they can. This is going the be the reason for hyper-inflation, because when the refinancing stops, when t-bills/bonds holders decide to let the loans mature instead of refinancing, the US will print US Dollars to buy all of those worthless papers back, worthless, because they can only be taken back for worthless US Dollars, worthless, because once this hits, everybody will start selling and US will either have to declare bankruptcy OR it will print the USD out of existence. If you live in RL and not in some magical Unicorn filled world, you know which way the US will go.
They don't even need to stop buying new bonds, all they have to do is let them mature and ask for the money back. That would be it, done for the USD. Obama/Geithner/Bernanke will print cash to buy back the securities and that will kill the USD.
US and UN had a clear choice: continue the war in Afghanistan despite the loss of human life that is happening daily even while knowing that there is no Al-Qaeda there, continue propagating an unsustainable path of building a local system that takes a few times more money to maintain per year than the country's yearly GDP output.
There are all kinds of choices that end up killing people, seems to me that choice of releasing information in this situation is always going to have some possibility of the same outcome, but NOT releasing the information is the WRONG thing to do because it does not force the hand of those in power to rethink their choices either, and choices of those in power produce much much much more collateral damage.
I care about now and this life, I made a meaning for myself but generally there is no meaning unless and until you make it for yourself. I would care about long term more if I personally was in that long term, but I am not going to be. Even caring about the kids comes down to them personally but I don't care if kids of kids of kids make it, that's not in my life path. My reasons to continue are to try and make better life for myself and live through that process and hopefully achieve better life, but I don't care if the humanity makes it as a whole.
I don't care about this species or any others for that matter in the long term at all. Meaning only exists while I am alive, once I am not meaning stops, that's all.
Ok, so if you care, why?