Since you bring it up, though, let's look at a few of your points:
Right, like the time that the highest court in the country, that had been stacked by the previous right wing governments, decided the election against the popular vote.
This is a bizarre complaint, given Germany's utterly intransparent and baroque system of holding elections. The system is so bad that the German constitutional court declared it undemocratic: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/...
Where districts are constantly gerrymandered to engineer the desired voting results.
I still prefer that over the German system of simply giving half the parliamentary seats directly to parties to do with as they see fit. You're welcome to disagree.
Voter roles are getting purged and the identification requirements made ever more difficult to ensure only the right people get to vote.
Voting identification requirements in the US are still a lot weaker than in Germany, so I frankly don't get on what basis you think that this is a problem.
A recent impartial study concluded that the system is not democratic but constitutes an oligarchy, and a former president concurred that this is indeed the case.
Compared to what? Certainly not Germany, a country that is run by a small elite of the wealthy, old aristocrats, and intellectuals. They are so good at indoctrinating you that you don't even notice it how much they have you by the balls, and you are so disconnected from your history that you don't even recognize how old a lot of these power structures are.
What speech laws did Weimar Germany have? In practice, at least, virtually anything was permitted, from the revolutionary far-left to the revolutionary far-right, and everything in between.
No, freedom of speech existed in theory. In practice, it didn't exist. Among many other things, courts in the Weimar Republic didn't include press freedom in freedom of speech, and they ended up banning hundreds of newspapers.
Then as now, any speech that could potentially disturb the public peace can be punished with multi-year prison sentences. Insulting others is also a crime, with extra penalties for insulting certain government officials. Truth is sometimes a defense against criminal prosecution, but not always, and the arbiter of whether speech is true or not is the German government.
Hitler didn't even have to change the laws regarding speech; he could run his totalitarian regime and impose the restrictions on free speech under existing German law.
Germany to this day doesn't have free speech, but the situation in the Weimar Republic was even more dire than it is today.
From long time and first hand experience, I can assure you: Germans "like" these restrictions: if you suggest that they are wrong and counterproductive, most Germans will strongly disagree and tell you how wonderful and democratic they are. (Then, usually some anti-American tu quoque will follow.)
What do the Facebook Community standards have to do with the fact that Germany has strong restrictions on free speech, or that the German government is haunting an American company in order to get its restrictive speech laws implemented?
The government of the Weimar Republic intervened massively in the press, banning hundreds of newspapers.
You have to be pretty ignorant about German history to believe that the Weimar Republic actually had anything resembling free speech.
Of course, the Weimar Constitution paid lip service to free speech, but so does the modern German Grundgesetz, and both are so full of legal loopholes that they aren't even fit for wiping your ass with them.
No, the reason the Nazis rose to power was precisely because the Germans after World War I had enough free speech to allow clowns like Hitler to convince the public they could save the republic from ruin. Hitler was a democratically elected leader.
Hitler was democratically elected, but it was limits on free speech that made that possible. The German government banned a lot of speech by socialists and communists, the people who would have been the primary opposition and political counterbalance to the Nazis. In addition, limits on free speech allowed utter idiots to remain in government and remain above criticism (including von Hindenburg and Kaas, who should have been ridiculed and skewered by the press), and it was the incompetence of these politicians that allowed Hitler to come to power. Banning political speech simply does not work in averting totalitarianism; the only thing that works is more free speech.
All of these comments about why the law exists are off base. Germany is fully aware that there are still Nazis within its borders. These Nazis are quite simply evil. They are incredibly dangerous, but it would be politically untenable to lock them all up, so instead measures are taken to prevent them from spreading their ideas or gaining power.
There are Nazis and right wing extremists in every country. What distinguishes Germany is that they got into power in 1933. And they didn't get into power because Germany had too much free speech, they got into power because Germany culture is steeped in the worship of authority.
The irony about your diatribe is that it's people like you who are going to bring about the next totalitarian state.
The German people take their civil rights very seriously
I think you missed the implication: if Germany wants to grow up and become a free and democratic nation, it needs to get rid of these remnants from its dark past.
Do you think that hate speech should not be removed from FB? Interesting.
I think it should be up to FB what content they allow and don't allow on their site. It shouldn't be up to the government of a country that has time and again failed at democracy and that still idolizes authoritarianism.
They modified the law against "incitement of the people" from 1871 in 1959 to include holocaust denial explicitly.
Yes, and as we all know, Germany has been peaceful and democratic since 1871, thanks to its restrictions on free speech and civil liberties! Oh, wait...
The reason Germany has these laws is as a form of oppression. After WW2, the Allies wanted Germany to join their side against the USSR, but they needed to make sure the Nazis didn't rise again. This oppressive speech law, and others, were the way that was accomplished. It is a clear attempt to oppress the country's freedom of self-determination.
It was quite reasonable for the victors of WWII to impose temporary restrictions on free speech, given Germany's history. And in the short term, those restrictions were effective. Such restrictions weren't particularly burdensome either, since Germans never had enjoyed free speech rights before. The post-WWII restrictions by the allies were still liberal by historical German standards.
Today, Germany is largely its own master. It could easily abolish these restrictions on free speech if it wanted to. They are retained because Germans like such restrictions, not because anybody is forcing them to.
There is no evidence that FB is "unwilling to comply". They haven't responded yet, and there are no legal charges or indictments. Maas wanted press coverage and appeal to German nationalism, and you have fallen for it.
Personally, I wish Facebook and other Internet companies actually had the balls to close their German operations and tell these proto-fascists to get lost.
It still is an effective monopoly in the OS on the desktop
What you are saying is just that they have a high market share in a niche market. And it bothers you because the market isn't giving you what you want at the price you want. Well, tough cookies; when 90% of people choose a product you don't like and get the benefit of economies of scale, that's not a monopoly. (And I should say, I think Windows is awful.)
See, a lot of economic legislation is about politically powerful minorities trying to impose their preferences on a market and a country that makes different choices. People like fast greasy food, big cars, big houses, Microsoft Windows, sexist video games, mail order books. Wealthy people and intellectuals don't like those things, they are annoyed that the market is giving people what they want while not catering to their refined tastes, so they lobby and get legislation passed.
The history I am familiar with has Standard Oil being pretty much the only oil refinery company within the US, able to set prices at will.
Even monopolies can't set prices at will, so what you are saying isn't even self-consistent.
In any case, you can start by reading the Wikipedia article for some background information, including the monopoly/no-monopoly views, then do more reading, like
Bush came into office in 2001, his policies would take at least a year to have any effect.
We were discussing your claim that liberalized trade leads to job losses, yet throughout 40 years of trade liberalization, the US has gained large numbers of jobs. What happened after 2001 is a red herring.
Most people use their funds to live off of. Only the top 10% or so do anything else meaningful with it.
We were discussing your claim that trade imbalances are bad. I'm pointing out that foreigners are buying stuff for it, namely shares in US businesses. Your (erroneous) beliefs about which Americans own shares is a red hering.
The US is prodigiously wealthy primarily because of large oil and other natural resources, and the fact that we didn't get bombed to the stone age in WWII and got to supply lots of exports to Europe, Asia, and Africa in the late 40s and early 50s.
That is true for many other countries that aren't wealthy. What makes the US different is our reliance on (relatively) free markets and free trade. And as the US is getting more regulated and more protectionist, our fortunes are declining.
While some European and Japanese firms have created factories here to build automobiles mostly, what other factories, specifically by China, have been built in the US?
They do it all the time. They do it by investing in US businesses through the stock market, so that the US can do whatever it is doing best with that money. And those investments show up as a "trade deficit".
instead of something to dismiss out of hand as a very silly use of a flawed analogy.
Rei made the "very silly use of a flawed analogy" (paraphrasing: "rape should be treated like robbery") to make a point. I was pointing out to him why it was flawed.
My position is simple and doesn't require any analogy: nobody should be convicted on the word of an accuser alone; there needs to be independent evidence of the crime. Applied to rape, that means saying after two people get together "I didn't consent to sex" or "I said 'no'" should not be sufficient to find someone guilty, and neither should be hearsay (e.g., "she seemed distraught afterwards").
How about we discuss the subject at hand
How about you actually bother to read a thread before responding?
Regardless, I won't consider justice "blind" until "she consented to the sex" is treated by the same legal standard as a robbery defendant's claim "he consented to give me the money" - as an affirmative defense / defense theory.
Well, it should be! For example, if you E-mail me and ask for $10 to help you out and I agree to give you that money when me meet, you wouldn't get convicted of robbery even if someone sees me giving you that money; the presumption would be that it was voluntary. Neither would you be convicted of robbery if we had dinner together and two months later I claim that you took $10 out of my wallet against my will. Yet, for some reason, if you replace the $10 with "sex", you seem to think that someone should get convicted simply because I claim that you took my money against my will, with no corroborating evidence.
The standard for robbery is pretty clearly that there need to be witnesses to coercion and/or that there needs to be physical evidence showing that you coerced me and harmed me. And you're absolutely right: that should be the standard for rape as well.
I generally cannot use things purchased with wealth to purchase things
That's what most reasonable people do: they use money to buy something productive, like a share in a company. That's wealth, not money. And it's also where the so-called "trade imbalance" comes from: it's simply incorrect accounting. Necessarily, people who we buy from get something in return, and it's not generally money.
Having a factory, on the other hand, can definitely be a wealth generator. And we're shipping quite a few of those overseas.
And we have even more of them here, thanks in part to foreigners that invest in them here. That's why the US is so prodigiously wealthy. And outsourcing drudge labor like iPhone assembly or lawn ornament fabrication to China is good for the US: it makes us better off.
Microsoft was the de facto desktop operating system from at least 97 through about 2010.
Yes. And notice how it is not anymore? It took care of itself.
Yes, you could buy a mac in there which almost no one did, or if you had particular masochistic streak
In different words, throughout that entire time, Windows was merely dominant, but it wasn't even a monopoly.
Standard Oil was broken up by the government
Standard Oil was a supplier of fuel for a few pampered rich people who could afford a car back then, and even there, it wasn't a monopoly, it merely had a large market share in a tiny and (then) unimportant luxury market segment. By 1910, the market was growing, their share was declining. The high Standard Oil market share would have disappeared in a few years without any government intervention at all. Government intervention was politically motivated and pointless.
It has certainly siphoned jobs out of the US, which it is now admitted it was designed to do [...] gain, are you serious? What job areas has it increased? Truck drivers?
You're equivocating, confusing "moving [some] jobs out of the US" with "reducing the total number of jobs available in the US". In fact, trade liberalization moves low end, low paying jobs out of the US and it increases the total number of jobs available in the US.
And that's exactly what the statistics show: between 1960 and 2002, the US labor participation rate steadily increased, meaning that not only did we get job gains from a growing population, we got job gains on top of that too, and by "job gains", I am referring to jobs filled by American workers. At the same time, the share of untrained labor, assembly line work, and similar jobs decreased in the US. Both are good things.
(Since 2001, labor participation rate has been decreasing, largely due to idiotic economic policies by Bush and Obama)
I don't consider state sponsored monopolies as a valid point. They're propped up by other than economic forces.
Those are the only stable monopolies that exist, because economic forces by themselves don't support stable monopolies.
Regarding pure free market monopolies: Standard Oil, Microsoft (virtual monopoly), Intel (virtual monopoly),
Microsoft and Intel never were dominant OS or CPU suppliers, they just supplied much of the desktop equipment. Even there, they were merely dominant, with alternatives always available. And even that dominance pretty much ended on its own after about a decade. Standard Oil is pretty much the same. None of the examples you give are examples of actual, stable monopolies; they are mostly examples of companies that achieved temporary success in a rapidly expanding market before competitors have had the time to move in. And the myth that they were monopolies was mostly created by competitors, or a small percentage of coddled wealthy folks who dislike not having choices in everything from luxury transportation to caviar.
That is self reported, by people with jobs. [...] I think the people in Syria for one, might disagree.
So, you are seriously taking the position that the world is economically worse off than it was 100 years ago? That free markets and free trade have made life worse for the vast majority of people on this planet? That's the economic equivalent of believing in the flat earth.
Thanks to numerous studies and facts, I can conclude that free trade has moved jobs out of the country, lowered wages,
It has done that when you look at specific job categories. But that is what free trade is supposed to do. That doesn't mean it's bad for people or the economy.
and has had a relatively pronounced and severe negative impact on our trade imbalances as wealth flows out of the country.
Actually, our trade imbalances mean that wealth flows into the country, because "wealth" isn't "money", it's an abundance of resources and material possessions. You keep confusing "wealth" and "money".
Note that my statements are regarding the latter half of the 1700s.
Yes, the statement "When the original capitalism and free markets were thought out, the known monopolies were so small as to be laughable" refers to that period and it is completely and utterly false.
Previous to 1800, the only monopolies were state sponsored, supported, and sometimes enforced monopolies
And that is still the case today. You postulate the existence of mythical stable "free market capitalism based monopolies", but those simply don't exist. Free markets sometimes produce short term unstable monopolies (lasting a few years, maybe a decade), but that's it. There may or may not be a few "natural monopolies" (economists still debate that). Large, stable monopolies are the result of, and require, government action. Adam Smith already talks about this at length.
More than 50% of the world's population lives of less than an equivalent $3 US a day. That's not wealthy by anyone's standards.
Well, no, that's not true. Median family incomes is about $9300, and median per capita income is about $2900, worldwide, nearly three times what you claim. That's nominally nearly three times what you claim, and even more in terms of PPP.
In any case, whatever it is, it is a whole lot wealthier than people used to be.
"Wealth" is a subjective measure, it can be created, destroyed, and altered just by comparison.
You're playing meaningless semantic games. If you don't understand what the word "wealthier" means in this context, then we can simply put it this way: the world is much better off today than it used to be, across countries and income groups. There is less hunger, less violence, less homelessness, greater literacy, higher life expectancy, etc.
A bald assertion
No, not a "bald assertion". The idea that free trade "drains jobs and money" flies in the face of both established economic theory and long term data. The economic theory isn't even hard to understand: if you erect trade barriers, goods get more expensive so the money people have available is worth less. And, in fact, the cost that the trade barrier imposes on Americans is always higher (often a lot higher) than any increased demand in the US. In addition, politically, if the US erects trade barriers against imports, other nations will erect trade barriers against US imports in retaliation, and our export trade will also suffer. Historically, trade barriers have caused everything from recessions and depressions to outright war.
Apparently, you just don't know what you are saying:
When the original capitalism and free markets were thought out, the known monopolies were so small as to be laughable
Nonsense. Read Adam Smith.
Again, I disagree. Smith was a philosopher and economist. A brief skim indicate his papers were theories on the economy, and his impressions of how things worked. Show me what "vast monopolies" and "barriers to entry" that existed prior to 1790 in the US, when he died.
Who says its confusing? It's a fact you cannot predict the future, which most practitioners assert they can.
Most economists are not trying to "predict the future". They are more like physicians, in that they tell you what is likely to produce better outcomes and what is likely to produce worse outcomes. Mainstream economics is pretty clear that free trade and free markets generally provide better outcomes for everybody.
Economics apparently has failed to provide the path to global enrichment everyone says they want.
Are you blind? The world is enormously wealthy by historical standards, and it is largely due to the defeat of central planning and the adoption of free market economics and free trade.
The current free trade policies are a similar process, draining jobs and money out of the US, and it will continue for the foreseeable future. If congress had balls, they'd slap a general tax on all transactions, including at the border, to make up for the lost revenue but that's yet another conversation.
Who isn't aware of the East India Company? That still didn't stop someone from making chairs, saddles, bridles, wheels, carts, tools, clothes, etc, right here in the US, or the colonies as it were at the time.
You were implying that Adam Smith's writings aren't relevant to today because he didn't see "vast monopolies" and "barriers to entry". I disproved that point: the monopolies of his day, and the barriers to entry, were higher. And, in fact, at the time, people could not simply make "chairs, saddles, bridles, wheels, carts, tools, clothes" either because there were strong barriers to entry.
I hold that there was very very little of either at that time for the US.
And you would be right. How is that relevant to Adam Smith's understanding of economic issues? Adam Smith was Scottish, not American.
Economics is still pseudo science at best precisely because (irrational) human behavior is a major component. You can only model it probabilistically.
So, according to those criteria, quantum mechanics, psychology, neuroscience, and much of modern engineering is also pseudo-science?
Otherwise we'd have a proven theory, and the current state of disagreement over economic policy and which theory to follow is enough proof of the state of economics today.
There is actually much less disagreement about economics than you think. And the fact that people like you find it utterly confusing is no more a sign of a failure of economics than people seeing faces and pyramids on Mars is a sign of a failure of astronomy.
Slashdot Mirror
Your "tu quoque" is pretty much irrelevant.
Since you bring it up, though, let's look at a few of your points:
This is a bizarre complaint, given Germany's utterly intransparent and baroque system of holding elections. The system is so bad that the German constitutional court declared it undemocratic: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/...
I still prefer that over the German system of simply giving half the parliamentary seats directly to parties to do with as they see fit. You're welcome to disagree.
Voting identification requirements in the US are still a lot weaker than in Germany, so I frankly don't get on what basis you think that this is a problem.
Compared to what? Certainly not Germany, a country that is run by a small elite of the wealthy, old aristocrats, and intellectuals. They are so good at indoctrinating you that you don't even notice it how much they have you by the balls, and you are so disconnected from your history that you don't even recognize how old a lot of these power structures are.
If Germany wants to be a democratic nation, it needs to stop criminalizing speech that the German state doesn't approve of. Is that so hard to grasp?
No, freedom of speech existed in theory. In practice, it didn't exist. Among many other things, courts in the Weimar Republic didn't include press freedom in freedom of speech, and they ended up banning hundreds of newspapers.
Then as now, any speech that could potentially disturb the public peace can be punished with multi-year prison sentences. Insulting others is also a crime, with extra penalties for insulting certain government officials. Truth is sometimes a defense against criminal prosecution, but not always, and the arbiter of whether speech is true or not is the German government.
Hitler didn't even have to change the laws regarding speech; he could run his totalitarian regime and impose the restrictions on free speech under existing German law.
Germany to this day doesn't have free speech, but the situation in the Weimar Republic was even more dire than it is today.
From long time and first hand experience, I can assure you: Germans "like" these restrictions: if you suggest that they are wrong and counterproductive, most Germans will strongly disagree and tell you how wonderful and democratic they are. (Then, usually some anti-American tu quoque will follow.)
What do the Facebook Community standards have to do with the fact that Germany has strong restrictions on free speech, or that the German government is haunting an American company in order to get its restrictive speech laws implemented?
Do you even think before you post?
Indeed, it isn't: http://pressefreiheit-wissen.d...
The government of the Weimar Republic intervened massively in the press, banning hundreds of newspapers.
You have to be pretty ignorant about German history to believe that the Weimar Republic actually had anything resembling free speech.
Of course, the Weimar Constitution paid lip service to free speech, but so does the modern German Grundgesetz, and both are so full of legal loopholes that they aren't even fit for wiping your ass with them.
Hitler was democratically elected, but it was limits on free speech that made that possible. The German government banned a lot of speech by socialists and communists, the people who would have been the primary opposition and political counterbalance to the Nazis. In addition, limits on free speech allowed utter idiots to remain in government and remain above criticism (including von Hindenburg and Kaas, who should have been ridiculed and skewered by the press), and it was the incompetence of these politicians that allowed Hitler to come to power. Banning political speech simply does not work in averting totalitarianism; the only thing that works is more free speech.
There are Nazis and right wing extremists in every country. What distinguishes Germany is that they got into power in 1933. And they didn't get into power because Germany had too much free speech, they got into power because Germany culture is steeped in the worship of authority.
The irony about your diatribe is that it's people like you who are going to bring about the next totalitarian state.
Sure, the few that they have left.
I think you missed the implication: if Germany wants to grow up and become a free and democratic nation, it needs to get rid of these remnants from its dark past.
I think it should be up to FB what content they allow and don't allow on their site. It shouldn't be up to the government of a country that has time and again failed at democracy and that still idolizes authoritarianism.
Yes, and as we all know, Germany has been peaceful and democratic since 1871, thanks to its restrictions on free speech and civil liberties! Oh, wait...
It was quite reasonable for the victors of WWII to impose temporary restrictions on free speech, given Germany's history. And in the short term, those restrictions were effective. Such restrictions weren't particularly burdensome either, since Germans never had enjoyed free speech rights before. The post-WWII restrictions by the allies were still liberal by historical German standards.
Today, Germany is largely its own master. It could easily abolish these restrictions on free speech if it wanted to. They are retained because Germans like such restrictions, not because anybody is forcing them to.
There is no evidence that FB is "unwilling to comply". They haven't responded yet, and there are no legal charges or indictments. Maas wanted press coverage and appeal to German nationalism, and you have fallen for it.
Personally, I wish Facebook and other Internet companies actually had the balls to close their German operations and tell these proto-fascists to get lost.
True: Germany has limited freedom of speech for centuries. It didn't prevent the Nazi rise to power, and it arguably contributed to it.
Perhaps it's time for Germany to actually change its "interpretation of freedom of speech" instead of clinging on to what hasn't worked historically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's geeks having fun, and launching a suborbital rocket as a private non-profit doing this for fun is quite an achievement.
What you are saying is just that they have a high market share in a niche market. And it bothers you because the market isn't giving you what you want at the price you want. Well, tough cookies; when 90% of people choose a product you don't like and get the benefit of economies of scale, that's not a monopoly. (And I should say, I think Windows is awful.)
See, a lot of economic legislation is about politically powerful minorities trying to impose their preferences on a market and a country that makes different choices. People like fast greasy food, big cars, big houses, Microsoft Windows, sexist video games, mail order books. Wealthy people and intellectuals don't like those things, they are annoyed that the market is giving people what they want while not catering to their refined tastes, so they lobby and get legislation passed.
Even monopolies can't set prices at will, so what you are saying isn't even self-consistent.
In any case, you can start by reading the Wikipedia article for some background information, including the monopoly/no-monopoly views, then do more reading, like
https://mises.org/library/100-...
We were discussing your claim that liberalized trade leads to job losses, yet throughout 40 years of trade liberalization, the US has gained large numbers of jobs. What happened after 2001 is a red herring.
We were discussing your claim that trade imbalances are bad. I'm pointing out that foreigners are buying stuff for it, namely shares in US businesses. Your (erroneous) beliefs about which Americans own shares is a red hering.
That is true for many other countries that aren't wealthy. What makes the US different is our reliance on (relatively) free markets and free trade. And as the US is getting more regulated and more protectionist, our fortunes are declining.
http://www.heritage.org/index/...
They do it all the time. They do it by investing in US businesses through the stock market, so that the US can do whatever it is doing best with that money. And those investments show up as a "trade deficit".
Rei made the "very silly use of a flawed analogy" (paraphrasing: "rape should be treated like robbery") to make a point. I was pointing out to him why it was flawed.
My position is simple and doesn't require any analogy: nobody should be convicted on the word of an accuser alone; there needs to be independent evidence of the crime. Applied to rape, that means saying after two people get together "I didn't consent to sex" or "I said 'no'" should not be sufficient to find someone guilty, and neither should be hearsay (e.g., "she seemed distraught afterwards").
How about you actually bother to read a thread before responding?
Your analysis is bogus. I'm not going to explain it again. Re-read my original message and think about it.
Well, it should be! For example, if you E-mail me and ask for $10 to help you out and I agree to give you that money when me meet, you wouldn't get convicted of robbery even if someone sees me giving you that money; the presumption would be that it was voluntary. Neither would you be convicted of robbery if we had dinner together and two months later I claim that you took $10 out of my wallet against my will. Yet, for some reason, if you replace the $10 with "sex", you seem to think that someone should get convicted simply because I claim that you took my money against my will, with no corroborating evidence.
The standard for robbery is pretty clearly that there need to be witnesses to coercion and/or that there needs to be physical evidence showing that you coerced me and harmed me. And you're absolutely right: that should be the standard for rape as well.
That's what most reasonable people do: they use money to buy something productive, like a share in a company. That's wealth, not money. And it's also where the so-called "trade imbalance" comes from: it's simply incorrect accounting. Necessarily, people who we buy from get something in return, and it's not generally money.
And we have even more of them here, thanks in part to foreigners that invest in them here. That's why the US is so prodigiously wealthy. And outsourcing drudge labor like iPhone assembly or lawn ornament fabrication to China is good for the US: it makes us better off.
Yes. And notice how it is not anymore? It took care of itself.
In different words, throughout that entire time, Windows was merely dominant, but it wasn't even a monopoly.
Standard Oil was a supplier of fuel for a few pampered rich people who could afford a car back then, and even there, it wasn't a monopoly, it merely had a large market share in a tiny and (then) unimportant luxury market segment. By 1910, the market was growing, their share was declining. The high Standard Oil market share would have disappeared in a few years without any government intervention at all. Government intervention was politically motivated and pointless.
You're equivocating, confusing "moving [some] jobs out of the US" with "reducing the total number of jobs available in the US". In fact, trade liberalization moves low end, low paying jobs out of the US and it increases the total number of jobs available in the US.
And that's exactly what the statistics show: between 1960 and 2002, the US labor participation rate steadily increased, meaning that not only did we get job gains from a growing population, we got job gains on top of that too, and by "job gains", I am referring to jobs filled by American workers. At the same time, the share of untrained labor, assembly line work, and similar jobs decreased in the US. Both are good things.
(Since 2001, labor participation rate has been decreasing, largely due to idiotic economic policies by Bush and Obama)
Those are the only stable monopolies that exist, because economic forces by themselves don't support stable monopolies.
Microsoft and Intel never were dominant OS or CPU suppliers, they just supplied much of the desktop equipment. Even there, they were merely dominant, with alternatives always available. And even that dominance pretty much ended on its own after about a decade. Standard Oil is pretty much the same. None of the examples you give are examples of actual, stable monopolies; they are mostly examples of companies that achieved temporary success in a rapidly expanding market before competitors have had the time to move in. And the myth that they were monopolies was mostly created by competitors, or a small percentage of coddled wealthy folks who dislike not having choices in everything from luxury transportation to caviar.
So, you are seriously taking the position that the world is economically worse off than it was 100 years ago? That free markets and free trade have made life worse for the vast majority of people on this planet? That's the economic equivalent of believing in the flat earth.
It has done that when you look at specific job categories. But that is what free trade is supposed to do. That doesn't mean it's bad for people or the economy.
Actually, our trade imbalances mean that wealth flows into the country, because "wealth" isn't "money", it's an abundance of resources and material possessions. You keep confusing "wealth" and "money".
Yes, the statement "When the original capitalism and free markets were thought out, the known monopolies were so small as to be laughable" refers to that period and it is completely and utterly false.
And that is still the case today. You postulate the existence of mythical stable "free market capitalism based monopolies", but those simply don't exist. Free markets sometimes produce short term unstable monopolies (lasting a few years, maybe a decade), but that's it. There may or may not be a few "natural monopolies" (economists still debate that). Large, stable monopolies are the result of, and require, government action. Adam Smith already talks about this at length.
Well, no, that's not true. Median family incomes is about $9300, and median per capita income is about $2900, worldwide, nearly three times what you claim. That's nominally nearly three times what you claim, and even more in terms of PPP.
In any case, whatever it is, it is a whole lot wealthier than people used to be.
You're playing meaningless semantic games. If you don't understand what the word "wealthier" means in this context, then we can simply put it this way: the world is much better off today than it used to be, across countries and income groups. There is less hunger, less violence, less homelessness, greater literacy, higher life expectancy, etc.
No, not a "bald assertion". The idea that free trade "drains jobs and money" flies in the face of both established economic theory and long term data. The economic theory isn't even hard to understand: if you erect trade barriers, goods get more expensive so the money people have available is worth less. And, in fact, the cost that the trade barrier imposes on Americans is always higher (often a lot higher) than any increased demand in the US. In addition, politically, if the US erects trade barriers against imports, other nations will erect trade barriers against US imports in retaliation, and our export trade will also suffer. Historically, trade barriers have caused everything from recessions and depressions to outright war.
Apparently, you just don't know what you are saying:
Most economists are not trying to "predict the future". They are more like physicians, in that they tell you what is likely to produce better outcomes and what is likely to produce worse outcomes. Mainstream economics is pretty clear that free trade and free markets generally provide better outcomes for everybody.
Are you blind? The world is enormously wealthy by historical standards, and it is largely due to the defeat of central planning and the adoption of free market economics and free trade.
Your degree of economic illiteracy is stunning.
You were implying that Adam Smith's writings aren't relevant to today because he didn't see "vast monopolies" and "barriers to entry". I disproved that point: the monopolies of his day, and the barriers to entry, were higher. And, in fact, at the time, people could not simply make "chairs, saddles, bridles, wheels, carts, tools, clothes" either because there were strong barriers to entry.
And you would be right. How is that relevant to Adam Smith's understanding of economic issues? Adam Smith was Scottish, not American.
So, according to those criteria, quantum mechanics, psychology, neuroscience, and much of modern engineering is also pseudo-science?
There is actually much less disagreement about economics than you think. And the fact that people like you find it utterly confusing is no more a sign of a failure of economics than people seeing faces and pyramids on Mars is a sign of a failure of astronomy.