If you look to Adam Smith, the grandfather of free market capitalism, and read The Wealth of Nations, he was not at all against regulation of markets. He was opposed to regulation _in favour of particular organizations or companies_, as this distorted the competition of the free market.
But what he overlooked is that *any* regulation you write is going to favor particular organizations of companies- the ones you favor over the ones you are trying to protect people from.
The role the state has in a free market is to ensure that competition is prevalent so we get the most efficient production of wealth possible.
The only way to do that is to have NO regulation at all- at which point the system breaks down.
And it's only a free market that can regulate itself when anyone is able to compete against entrenched interests. It's the _market_ that is intrinsically self-regulating, not the market players. The market players will do anything they can to prevent the freedom of the market, as competition is inherently bad for profits.
Yes, and since government is all about entrenched interests (at least until people like me replace the "machinery of government" with actual machines), any interference in the freedom of the market through regulation is bound to be bought and paid for by *somebody who wants to protect their profits*. Consumer safety is also inherently bad for products, as is customer education.
Of course, there are a whole lot of far-right capitalists who love to abuse the concept and pretend it means 'anything goes corporatism' for obvious reasons, and they get away with pretending that such predatory market control is 'free' far too often.
And they can- for obvious reasons. Capitalism allows the concentration of wealth, and the birth of any corrupt governmental system is concentrated wealth (to pay for the corruption).
To go even further, a free market is not even incompatible with wealth redistribution systems or mutual insurance system (taxes, socialized health insurances, etc), as long as competition is maintained in the providing side (anyone qualified can offer health care and collect payment from the social system, etc).
Except, of course, in the fact that this doesn't maintain competition, but in fact restricts it to "qualified providers". A true unregulated free market allows anybody who wants to, to practice- buyer beware.
It's too bad that much of political economy is still stuck in the cold-war era, and while it's not too hard to understand the personal self interests keeping it there, it prevents a more balanced and efficient approach to economic issues, rather than the planned-state-economy vs. monopolistic-corporate-economy we get now, where neither actually offers an optimum approach for maximizing the wealth in the economy.
True enough- but that's what we get for two systems based on chaos theory governments.
I doubt, however, that there are good ways to set up state-sponsored entertainment.
My favorite set of television networks in the world are in fact the largest producer of English language state-sponsored entertainment in the world: BBC in England, CBC in Canada, PBS in the United States. Of these, I believe the BBC has the best funding model- licensing of TV sets. I fear any sort of state-mandated entertainment would be as bland, inoffensive, and unoriginal as possible, not to mention carry no criticism of the government in charge.
And oddly enough, BBC news, CBC & BBC comedy, and even PBS news are all world-renowned for criticism of government and society at large. And CBC drama during the watershed hours of 9pm-6am becomes downright pornographic.
Legislation, if used properly, helps maintain a free market system.
It can- but for any true free market capitalist, all legislation is regulation and therefore an illegitimate interference in the market.
I'm on exactly the opposite side, but I see their point- without the Legislation I believe the free market would collapse under the weight of such fraud.
Through legislation, atrocities such as monopolies, (in a non-public utility is to what I am referring,) can be prevented.
Yes, but such atrocities are a part and parcel of the free market system. Once you introduce legislation, the market becomes less free.
So legislation and free market can go together very well. I think you confused regulation with highly regulated. In most cases, highly regulated industries, etc. do not make for a free market.
No, I wasn't getting it confused. ANY regulation at all, makes for less than 100% free market. The whole concept of the free market is for the MARKET to be self regulating, not government. The fact that this is not a realistic expectation does not change the fact that if you regulate, you no longer have a free market, but rather a centrally regulated market. Regardless of how "light" or "heavy" that regulation is.
As far as subsidizing the buses. Yes I realize that all public transportation gets subsidies of some kind from the government. However, why does that subsidy have to be from the government, most especially the federal? Why can a town be in charge of its roads. Depending on the size, wealth, etc of the town it can determine how to pay for roads. In a rich suburban area each block can directly pay for its road. Poorer areas can look to those that own the storefronts to help subsidize costs. Most neighborhoods could not afford this, but they would be fine with dirt, gravel, or cobblestone, all of which require less maintenance and would force people like me to slow down when driving through neighborhoods.
Mainly because the cost of maintaining even a gravel road is such that the grand majority of US towns would end up with impassable mud roads 9 months out of every year, or with incredibly dangerous rock based cliffside roadcuts, like Bolivia & Peru for the mountains, or for the plains states, Russia's Lena Freeway. That's what locally affordable roads look like.
I'm not necessarily for private roads, public roads allow commerce, so its necessary for market economics until the transporter gets invented. I'm also for fairer subsidy. We can make vehicle registration costs about 10-100x the price since there generally based on weight under the idea that you have to pay proportionally to your wear on the road (at leas in NYC where it will cost you about $40 for a car currently.) I'm also ok with a luxury/sin tax, where car owners subsidize people that take the bus. I believe this happens in NYC right now, I have to pay $9 to cross the Verizano bridge and its only $2 to take the subway or a bus. Capital expenses can be paid for via sale of bonds as they are now.
I work for Oregon Department of Transportation. We're trying to make this sort of thing more fair, by switching everybody to a GPS based weight/mile fee system instead of the current, which is fuel taxes. But there's a huge outcry against it- if for no other reason than what do you do at the borders of the state?
The problem with subsidies is they lead to undesirable behavior. Generally its agreed that more people should take public transportation and we should travel less. Well the best way to achieve that is to make people pay the full cost of doing so. Then tell big business "if you want your people to be able to go to work, introduce telecommuting or pay there tolls."
Big business will probably respond by forcing all workers to live in the building where they work....
What you don't seem to get is the power of trade. For instance, lets say that I have great open farmland for corn, and my 'neighbor' 50 miles away has great marshy farmland for rice, and another 'neighbor' of ours 50 miles away from each of us has a great orchard for apples. Which is optimal:
1. I live without rice or apples.
2. I plant a bunch of apple trees in a field, create a marsh for rice, wait 20 years, and then I produce all 3 myself.
3. Trade with my neighbors so all of us have corn, rice, and apples.
3 is only optimal until you can achieve 2. Once you can achieve 2, 3 becomes useless to you; worse than useless, it destroys a potential productive channel for you to diversify your investment. Specialization is a great thing for building infrastructure; but once the infrastructure is built, diversification is what keeps us safe.
#3 is by far the best choice for me (assuming I actually like rice and apples, of course). Thanks to economies of scale, if I specialize in corn I can produce about 3x as much total goods as if I didn't specialize. (i.e. instead of producing 100 bushels of corn, 100 bushels of rice, and 100 bushels of apples, I can produce 900 bushels of corn). This means that I can sell 800 of my bushels to a trader, buy 100 bushels of rice and 100 bushels of apples, and still have ~400 bushels worth of profit (the trader will get his own cut, of course). Plus, I'm overproducing enough food that other people can work in industry or services instead of farming, producing things for me to spend my profit on.
Thus destroying their way of life and forcing them into work they would not otherwise choose. Great thing if you like being a slaveholder. Horrible thing if you value freedom.
I hope you see how #3 is much better than #2. The advantages to specialization apply to almost all goods, foodstuffs, and services, and allow everyone involved to live a wealthier life. (Capital in the form of specialized machinery and training results in the greater economies of scale. If you don't have tractors, combines, threshers, etc., then generalization is almost as good as specialization. We're not in the middle ages any more, though.)
And that was perhaps a mistake. Specialization may allow you to live the good life in good years- but in a bad corn year, you have *NOTHING* instead of *something* that the generalist has. Thus creating the boom-bust business cycle.
I like the theory that individuals (collectively) are more important than the 'community' in which they reside. If a town becomes a ghost town, deserted and empty, but every individual in the town has moved elsewhere, becoming wealthier and happier in the process, I consider that a huge improvement.
I don't. But that might be because I've had relatives that happened to- who ended up among the last residents in a ghost town.
Just because someone lives next to me doesn't make them more valuable as a person than someone living far away. I especially don't need to support inferior products just because the merchant lives nearby. Do I need to buy pot from my neighbor because he's local?
It's better than buying it from the Mexican drug cartel who shot the park ranger to get it to you.
Do I need to attend the 4th-grade orchestra performance instead of buying Yo-Yo Ma?
If you value children as the future of your community, yes. But since you don't value community, why would you give a shit about the future of that community? Instead, cut the funding for the 4-th grade orchestra, thus cutting your own taxes to buy Yo-Yo-Ma CDs, and spend the money to put some of those kids in jail when they grow up because they didn't have any creative outlets in their life.
Should I only browse websites maintained by people in my home town?
No, but you should support and participate on such websites- I do on five such including my Beaverton Neighborhood Action Committee.
Well I'm all for more people taking the bus. I'd love to be able to take public transportation from my house in queens to my job in Bohemia, NY (~50 miles). However, Suffolk public transportation sucks. I know because I've done it in the past.
Then let me clarify- even the bus requires SIGNIFICANT governmental subsidy. ALL forms of mechanical transportation, ground, air, water and rail, require very large injections of government cash from time to time. NONE of them are viable from a for-profit free market model. This includes everything from the city bus system on up. But I've got to ask, just because life on the East Coast is so incredibly different from life on the west coast- what the heck are you doing living in NYC if your job is in Bohemia?
So would you consider posting to Slashdot productive?
No, I don't. It doesn't create a product, so it's not productive.
Also, how do we get computers across the country. Even if we start making CPUs in the US I think it would be most cost effective to concentrate production in one or two places.
Why? Why not create a machine that can melt and build silicon chips at a molecular level, and have that all over the country, with downloadable designs?
I'm actually interested in hearing about this. How much of that is security related, and how much income was generated by the September 11th security fee in 2006?
Actually, security is about the same in both industries- you don't think we allow unscreened passengers onto Amtrak after the incident in Spain, do you? But I think it's interesting that you think airline subsidies come out of the September 11th security fee, instead of the Federal Transportation budget (which is where Amtrak, Highway funds, and airline subsidies all come from).
Compare that with the amount spent on security in 2006 for Amtrak versus whatever security fees they have. Also, Amtrak runs its own police force. Do the airlines pay for their marshals?
Well, the model is different, but I'd suspect the airlines do pay for their own marshals through their taxes.
Personally I would be all for removing all subsidies from Air and Rail transportation.
Would you also agree to removing the subsidies from auto and truck transportation as well in that case?
Since Amtrak is a quasi governmental private corporation, logistically this could be done. If this means that air travel becomes ridiculously expensive and rail travel gets cheaper
Actually, nowhere in the world is any form of transportation able to survive without some form of subsidy. Both air and rail travel would become ridiculously expensive- and the full price tolls on the roads would end automobile travel for all but the richest.5% of Americans.
How about making lunch for the steel workers? If I'm working a 16 hour shift and I'm single (been there done that although doing security and not producing "real value") I'd much buy my lunch than make it the night before. It makes economical sense to pay someone to do my laundry and cook my food if it means I can do a 12 or 16 hour shift instead of 8. Also, how exactly does a local McDonalds destroy local producers, other than other local restaurants. In my neighborhood there are plenty of local resturants, from McDonalds to $100+ a plate restaurants.
Actually, you'll find that all of your restaurants are actually Sysco Food Service Outlets if it's anything like the Portland Metro Area- they're only allowed about a 2% profit from that.
That's an interesting statistic. That would mean the government spent 8 Trillion on our highways alone, which is probably what you are referring to. The rest of our road system doesn't cost nearly as much. You can pave a road pretty cheaply.
$8 Trillion in 2007 dollars, more like $1.5 trillion in the 1950s. But you'd be surprised how much the cost of asphalt has gone up recently. Don't forget that like gasoline, asphalt is an oil-based product.
Further evidence that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. It's cheaper and more efficient to build computers in one city and ship them to another than it is to create a computer manufacturing plant in every city.
It's cheaper, yes, but it's actually less efficient if your purpose is to provide jobs and a local economy.
(Consider that it costs billions to build a state-of-the-art plant and paltry millions to ship everything from it).
Yes, until you add in the pollution cost of all of that shipping.
Interestingly, the same applies to almost any product, including food. Obviously you never took any economics classes, which makes sense given your nickname.
Yep, and the ignorance of the billions of dollars of environmental damage done by shipping every year fits most economist theories I know- since economics is a religion anyway.
This is another case of not knowing what you're talking about. Sure, a global economy sometimes destroys local producers, and sometimes enables them to help more people. But it's certainly not negative value. If I can make and ship you a computer for cheaper than you next-door neighbor can, you could argue that I'm destroying his business. But how am I producing negative value?
By stealing the local consumers of local businesses. What it really comes down to is how you measure value and what having an economy is all about. If you think having an economy is about the individual, then you are quite correct. But if having an economy is about providing value for the community, then it's much easier to break it down into small local community units that do not trade.
You're better off, the trucker who brought you the computer is better off, and I'm better off. Your neighbor who produces computers hasn't even lost anything, since you were under no obligation to buy his products in the first place,
And that's where your theory breaks down- in the value of the COMMUNITY, I do have an obligation to buy his products in the first place, else the community and local economy fall apart.
and he still has the inferior computer you could have purchased from him. (You might argue that the trucker's damage to the environment hurts more than the money you have saved, but consider that he would probably be driving near your city/town/village/hut anyway, so you're only a few blocks out of his way. You could donate a single dollar that you saved to the Arbor foundation and have a net positive impact).
Actually, to have net positive impact, you'd have to donate the full profits to the Arbor foundation. But that still doesn't help the local community, though it may well help global warming.....
If the activity is unproductive, it's probably better if the government doesn't do it at all. I certainly don't consider doctors or teachers to be unproductive myself, and while I consider most entertainers to be worthless, I place great value in others. Fortunately I'm only required to support those entertainers I actually enjoy, since I'm not living in a socialist state. Ditto with designers and advertisers- every once in a while one of them will create something I value, and these are the ones that I actually support. The government is already the biggest employer of service workers in the U.S. anyway, if I remember correctly. You're not advocating the elimination of service jobs, just changing how they are paid for.
Correct. I'm not advocating the elimination of service jobs- they are valuable, but not in the same way production of goods is. The free market is extremely good at producing goods. The free market is extremely bad at services. Doctors get hampered by a need to produce a profit for the insurance companies, teachers get hampered by a need to please the parents who are paying the tuition, entertainers get hampered by needing to produce a return on the investment and end up pandering to the lowest common denominator, etc. Government excels at funding things that would not get funded by the free market.
What is wealth without health or entertainment?
The free market exists to produce goods, not health or entertainment. Let the free market do what it's good at, and government do what it's good at.
Certainly having food and a roof over your head is important, but wealth for its own sake has little value. I work in industry myself (it's nice being able to see something concrete happen from your labor) but after a day of coding (with some Slashdot thrown in) I would rather go home and be entertained for a few hours than accumulate more wealth by working overtime. Even Marxists like you spend time trolling on Slashdot, a service, created by web designers and paid for by advertisers. Clearly this has value to you, even though it doesn't produce any wealth.
Yes, so what? My point is more that services are best paid for through taxes and available to all, where goods are better produced by the free market. That way we're guaranteed access to the services as citizens, and the providers of services are freed from the need to produce something other than the service.
Are you saying that salesmen aren't up for global competition?
Worse than that- NO American is up for global competition. Our standard of living is about 40x what it should be for us to be able to compete on a global level. EVERY other nation, even other "first world nations" have an absolute trade advantage over us in every sector.
Certainly there are Indian telemarketers, but real salesmen still make far more than I do. (This goes for Businessmen of all sorts). Ditto for Authors, Producers, Editors, Screenwriters, Designers, and any sort of 'intellectual property' based job. As a programmer I could also be replaced by anyone with a computer, and yet I make far more than minimum wage. It's only the unskilled jobs that make minimum wage in this country.
All of them will be replaced with outsourcing to countries where a decent standard of living costs far BELOW our minimum wage, eventually.
You may want to re-think your position. Other than Slashdot, how many services do you use each day? How many merchants do you do business with? What value do you place on the Internet, the components of which were made in industry, but which is maintained by, sold by, and filled with content by people in the service industry? None of these create wealth, but all of them create value. My guess is that your only idea of service jobs are the McJobs, which is just as ignorant as assuming everyone in agriculture drives a tractor or everyone in industry works an assembly line.
On this, you're quite correct as well, until this di
I stopped having that problem when I invested in Beyond TV and stopped watching shows live, but rather on my palmtop on the way to work. I imagine people with TIVO have the same solution.
As such, I'm hard-pressed to find something intrinsically wrong (for the workers) with the typical job moving from the one set to the other. Perhaps you can explain whether there's some sort of important quality or attribute in the individual that's exercised by working agriculture and factories and not by interaction with mankind?
It's more that the creation becomes unbalanced. If we become a nation primarily of consumers, with little or no productive capability, that makes us very dependent upon foreign nations. We can't have an economy made up entirely of people trading pizza slices.
Perhaps people could voluntarily take up gardening in their free time instead?
That is most certainly an option as well- one that has great economic value locally.
Better than that- I want the government running railroads! Actually, the government might not drive the truck, but they spent over $2 million/mile to give that truck a road to run on....
And getting the corn from the farm to NYC is not productive?
For two reasons- one is that it's usually more efficient to put the people where the food is rather than trucking it hundreds of miles, and the other questioning whether ANYTHING goes on in NYC that is actually productive instead of just an overhead drain on society. No, trucking does not create a new product- and shipping in this day and age, except for a few rare earth metals, is just a waste of resources.
There not doing such a great job with Amtrak.
Actually, when you consider the difference between the subsidy for Amtrak and the subsidy for the Airlines ($13 Billion vs $130 Billion in 2006) I think they're doing a wonderful job with Amtrak and that we'd be better off trading the subsidies around. The main problem with Amtrak is that they don't own their own trackage, except for one line on the Eastern Seaboard, which means that passenger trains have to play 2nd fiddle to freight trains. But given the age, this is as it should be.
Put aside the lawyers for a minute, all of these people provide real value.
Moving goods and bits of paper around is negative value that destroys local producers.
Our entertainers, doctors and teachers all count as 'service' jobs. So are the graphic artists who design our toys and the advertisers who sell them to us. So are the truckers that bring us our food, the McMinions that cook it for us, and the lawyers that sue for us when we eat too much of it.
None of which actually CREATE goods- they just mess up the market with unproductive activities that are better done by government.
Just because someone's in a 'service' job doesn't mean they aren't useful, valued, and improve the human condition.
Yes, but they don't create wealth.
It also certainly doesn't mean they make minimum wage. (Sure, the McMinions will make minimum wage, but it's not like the assembly line workers or grunt farmers are doing any better for themselves).
Ok, I'll give you that one. They only make minimum wage if the service is unskilled, or if it hasn't been opened to global competition yet.
Would WW2 have been lost (apart from a few million more casualties in the invasion of Japan) had the nuclear scientists of the day simply gone on strike, working at burger joints, riveting aircraft together, or casting bullets and turning shell casings on lathes, and passing on the really interesting jobs until after the war was over?
Quite possibly, Japan would have absorbed the nuclear scientists of the day instead of the United States- because if the American Nuclear Scientists had gone on strike in that fashion, NOBODY would have been left to argue for the Manhattan Project. OTOH, that might just mean that our other workable WMD of the day, the Bat Bomb, would have succeeded in burning down all the wooden pagodas during the invasion....
No, you've missed the transition. It now takes such a small portion of human output to feed, clothe, and house said humans that entire industries have been created from scatch to "enhance" our lives. Don't think of it as so many useless things we consume, but that it takes so little effort to provide the basic necessities.
I'd believe that if the majority of the human species wasn't struggling to survive. But I suppose, that's more of a resource allocation problem than a resource production problem is what this number is telling us.
Over the course of human history, it has been the same tale of minimum wages - those at the top of the money ladder consume and provide jobs for those at the bottom. Many view this situation as unfair. Without passing that kind of judgement - for or against - I say the the overall process is similar, but that a smaller and smaller portion of the consumed goods are truly necessities.
Thus leading to a potential labor surplus. But I say- we could all be much more wealthy if we'd all produce *more* than we need, so that we have storehouses available for the inevitable lean times.
If you want my opinion, and most people don't, I'd say there are close to 5.5B too many people in the world. And no, I don't have a discrete reason for said overpopulation valuse, nor a workable plan to get to that number...but thanks for asking anyway.
Well, that would be one way to produce such a surplus. But actually using those extra 5.5Billion to say, fix the inevitable problems that come with overpopulation, might be a better answer.
Not necessarily. You can always put a green roof on the building. You can also use corner offices for greenhouses. Especially Southwest and Southeast corners.
What really disturbs me though is that we've gone from a race of creators, creating goods with agriculture or manufacturing, to a world wide economy of McJobs that pay minimum wage and create NOTHING.
All the MADD BS distracts from the actual dangerous drunks - you know, the ones with multiple DUIs for.15 and no license. Toss them in jail and be done with it.
In Oregon, we no longer have the jail space to hold them. Between Measure 11, which mandated minimum sentences for truly violent premeditated crimes, and Measure 5, the beginning of the Tax Revolt (with lots of child measures in the 15 years since) jail bed space is at a premium in just about any urban area.
And there's the real point to me. This is why I NEVER drink from anyplace more than an elevator ride away from bed. Hotel bars are your friend, as is homemade beer at home.
On the contrary, insist on the breathalyzer and contest the results if you fail. If you fail the blood test, you're screwed.
You should check out some of the links- in California for example, you can't challenge the results of the breathalyzer unless you've *also* insisted on the blood test.....I didn't realize the state of DUI laws was quite that bad.
It's even worse than that. The A/D converter is hooked up to a chamber, which at one time held a known amount of air. An infrared light source is at one end of the chamber, a photovoltaic cell at the other. The A/D converter reads the photovoltaic, they multiply it by the magic 2100 number (which is truly a magic number- it's based on an average and can really range from 1300 to 3000) and spit out the answer.
This is why it's always vitally important to get a true blood test, and to preserve a sample for your attorney.
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If you look to Adam Smith, the grandfather of free market capitalism, and read The Wealth of Nations, he was not at all against regulation of markets. He was opposed to regulation _in favour of particular organizations or companies_, as this distorted the competition of the free market.
But what he overlooked is that *any* regulation you write is going to favor particular organizations of companies- the ones you favor over the ones you are trying to protect people from.
The role the state has in a free market is to ensure that competition is prevalent so we get the most efficient production of wealth possible.
The only way to do that is to have NO regulation at all- at which point the system breaks down.
And it's only a free market that can regulate itself when anyone is able to compete against entrenched interests. It's the _market_ that is intrinsically self-regulating, not the market players. The market players will do anything they can to prevent the freedom of the market, as competition is inherently bad for profits.
Yes, and since government is all about entrenched interests (at least until people like me replace the "machinery of government" with actual machines), any interference in the freedom of the market through regulation is bound to be bought and paid for by *somebody who wants to protect their profits*. Consumer safety is also inherently bad for products, as is customer education.
Of course, there are a whole lot of far-right capitalists who love to abuse the concept and pretend it means 'anything goes corporatism' for obvious reasons, and they get away with pretending that such predatory market control is 'free' far too often.
And they can- for obvious reasons. Capitalism allows the concentration of wealth, and the birth of any corrupt governmental system is concentrated wealth (to pay for the corruption).
To go even further, a free market is not even incompatible with wealth redistribution systems or mutual insurance system (taxes, socialized health insurances, etc), as long as competition is maintained in the providing side (anyone qualified can offer health care and collect payment from the social system, etc).
Except, of course, in the fact that this doesn't maintain competition, but in fact restricts it to "qualified providers". A true unregulated free market allows anybody who wants to, to practice- buyer beware.
It's too bad that much of political economy is still stuck in the cold-war era, and while it's not too hard to understand the personal self interests keeping it there, it prevents a more balanced and efficient approach to economic issues, rather than the planned-state-economy vs. monopolistic-corporate-economy we get now, where neither actually offers an optimum approach for maximizing the wealth in the economy.
True enough- but that's what we get for two systems based on chaos theory governments.
I doubt, however, that there are good ways to set up state-sponsored entertainment.
My favorite set of television networks in the world are in fact the largest producer of English language state-sponsored entertainment in the world: BBC in England, CBC in Canada, PBS in the United States. Of these, I believe the BBC has the best funding model- licensing of TV sets. I fear any sort of state-mandated entertainment would be as bland, inoffensive, and unoriginal as possible, not to mention carry no criticism of the government in charge.
And oddly enough, BBC news, CBC & BBC comedy, and even PBS news are all world-renowned for criticism of government and society at large. And CBC drama during the watershed hours of 9pm-6am becomes downright pornographic.
Legislation, if used properly, helps maintain a free market system.
It can- but for any true free market capitalist, all legislation is regulation and therefore an illegitimate interference in the market.
I'm on exactly the opposite side, but I see their point- without the Legislation I believe the free market would collapse under the weight of such fraud.
Through legislation, atrocities such as monopolies, (in a non-public utility is to what I am referring,) can be prevented.
Yes, but such atrocities are a part and parcel of the free market system. Once you introduce legislation, the market becomes less free.
So legislation and free market can go together very well. I think you confused regulation with highly regulated. In most cases, highly regulated industries, etc. do not make for a free market.
No, I wasn't getting it confused. ANY regulation at all, makes for less than 100% free market. The whole concept of the free market is for the MARKET to be self regulating, not government. The fact that this is not a realistic expectation does not change the fact that if you regulate, you no longer have a free market, but rather a centrally regulated market. Regardless of how "light" or "heavy" that regulation is.
As far as subsidizing the buses. Yes I realize that all public transportation gets subsidies of some kind from the government. However, why does that subsidy have to be from the government, most especially the federal? Why can a town be in charge of its roads. Depending on the size, wealth, etc of the town it can determine how to pay for roads. In a rich suburban area each block can directly pay for its road. Poorer areas can look to those that own the storefronts to help subsidize costs. Most neighborhoods could not afford this, but they would be fine with dirt, gravel, or cobblestone, all of which require less maintenance and would force people like me to slow down when driving through neighborhoods.
Mainly because the cost of maintaining even a gravel road is such that the grand majority of US towns would end up with impassable mud roads 9 months out of every year, or with incredibly dangerous rock based cliffside roadcuts, like Bolivia & Peru for the mountains, or for the plains states, Russia's Lena Freeway. That's what locally affordable roads look like.
I'm not necessarily for private roads, public roads allow commerce, so its necessary for market economics until the transporter gets invented. I'm also for fairer subsidy. We can make vehicle registration costs about 10-100x the price since there generally based on weight under the idea that you have to pay proportionally to your wear on the road (at leas in NYC where it will cost you about $40 for a car currently.) I'm also ok with a luxury/sin tax, where car owners subsidize people that take the bus. I believe this happens in NYC right now, I have to pay $9 to cross the Verizano bridge and its only $2 to take the subway or a bus. Capital expenses can be paid for via sale of bonds as they are now.
I work for Oregon Department of Transportation. We're trying to make this sort of thing more fair, by switching everybody to a GPS based weight/mile fee system instead of the current, which is fuel taxes. But there's a huge outcry against it- if for no other reason than what do you do at the borders of the state?
The problem with subsidies is they lead to undesirable behavior. Generally its agreed that more people should take public transportation and we should travel less. Well the best way to achieve that is to make people pay the full cost of doing so. Then tell big business "if you want your people to be able to go to work, introduce telecommuting or pay there tolls."
Big business will probably respond by forcing all workers to live in the building where they work....
What you don't seem to get is the power of trade. For instance, lets say that I have great open farmland for corn, and my 'neighbor' 50 miles away has great marshy farmland for rice, and another 'neighbor' of ours 50 miles away from each of us has a great orchard for apples. Which is optimal:
1. I live without rice or apples.
2. I plant a bunch of apple trees in a field, create a marsh for rice, wait 20 years, and then I produce all 3 myself.
3. Trade with my neighbors so all of us have corn, rice, and apples.
3 is only optimal until you can achieve 2. Once you can achieve 2, 3 becomes useless to you; worse than useless, it destroys a potential productive channel for you to diversify your investment. Specialization is a great thing for building infrastructure; but once the infrastructure is built, diversification is what keeps us safe.
#3 is by far the best choice for me (assuming I actually like rice and apples, of course). Thanks to economies of scale, if I specialize in corn I can produce about 3x as much total goods as if I didn't specialize. (i.e. instead of producing 100 bushels of corn, 100 bushels of rice, and 100 bushels of apples, I can produce 900 bushels of corn). This means that I can sell 800 of my bushels to a trader, buy 100 bushels of rice and 100 bushels of apples, and still have ~400 bushels worth of profit (the trader will get his own cut, of course). Plus, I'm overproducing enough food that other people can work in industry or services instead of farming, producing things for me to spend my profit on.
Thus destroying their way of life and forcing them into work they would not otherwise choose. Great thing if you like being a slaveholder. Horrible thing if you value freedom.
I hope you see how #3 is much better than #2. The advantages to specialization apply to almost all goods, foodstuffs, and services, and allow everyone involved to live a wealthier life. (Capital in the form of specialized machinery and training results in the greater economies of scale. If you don't have tractors, combines, threshers, etc., then generalization is almost as good as specialization. We're not in the middle ages any more, though.)
And that was perhaps a mistake. Specialization may allow you to live the good life in good years- but in a bad corn year, you have *NOTHING* instead of *something* that the generalist has. Thus creating the boom-bust business cycle.
I like the theory that individuals (collectively) are more important than the 'community' in which they reside. If a town becomes a ghost town, deserted and empty, but every individual in the town has moved elsewhere, becoming wealthier and happier in the process, I consider that a huge improvement.
I don't. But that might be because I've had relatives that happened to- who ended up among the last residents in a ghost town.
Just because someone lives next to me doesn't make them more valuable as a person than someone living far away. I especially don't need to support inferior products just because the merchant lives nearby. Do I need to buy pot from my neighbor because he's local?
It's better than buying it from the Mexican drug cartel who shot the park ranger to get it to you.
Do I need to attend the 4th-grade orchestra performance instead of buying Yo-Yo Ma?
If you value children as the future of your community, yes. But since you don't value community, why would you give a shit about the future of that community? Instead, cut the funding for the 4-th grade orchestra, thus cutting your own taxes to buy Yo-Yo-Ma CDs, and spend the money to put some of those kids in jail when they grow up because they didn't have any creative outlets in their life.
Should I only browse websites maintained by people in my home town?
No, but you should support and participate on such websites- I do on five such including my Beaverton Neighborhood Action Committee.
I suspect that you
Actually, there's a very simple capitalistic free market solution to the very problem LiIon batteries pose.
Legislate that LiIon batteries must use standardized battery format and be consumer changeable.
The highlighted words are not compatible with one another, and show a significantly degraded meaning of one or the other.
There are two well known methods to stop that fermentation. I recommend bringing the temperature of the blood down to below 36F~3C
Well I'm all for more people taking the bus. I'd love to be able to take public transportation from my house in queens to my job in Bohemia, NY (~50 miles). However, Suffolk public transportation sucks. I know because I've done it in the past.
Then let me clarify- even the bus requires SIGNIFICANT governmental subsidy. ALL forms of mechanical transportation, ground, air, water and rail, require very large injections of government cash from time to time. NONE of them are viable from a for-profit free market model. This includes everything from the city bus system on up. But I've got to ask, just because life on the East Coast is so incredibly different from life on the west coast- what the heck are you doing living in NYC if your job is in Bohemia?
So would you consider posting to Slashdot productive?
.5% of Americans.
No, I don't. It doesn't create a product, so it's not productive.
Also, how do we get computers across the country. Even if we start making CPUs in the US I think it would be most cost effective to concentrate production in one or two places.
Why? Why not create a machine that can melt and build silicon chips at a molecular level, and have that all over the country, with downloadable designs?
I'm actually interested in hearing about this. How much of that is security related, and how much income was generated by the September 11th security fee in 2006?
Actually, security is about the same in both industries- you don't think we allow unscreened passengers onto Amtrak after the incident in Spain, do you? But I think it's interesting that you think airline subsidies come out of the September 11th security fee, instead of the Federal Transportation budget (which is where Amtrak, Highway funds, and airline subsidies all come from).
Compare that with the amount spent on security in 2006 for Amtrak versus whatever security fees they have. Also, Amtrak runs its own police force. Do the airlines pay for their marshals?
Well, the model is different, but I'd suspect the airlines do pay for their own marshals through their taxes.
Personally I would be all for removing all subsidies from Air and Rail transportation.
Would you also agree to removing the subsidies from auto and truck transportation as well in that case?
Since Amtrak is a quasi governmental private corporation, logistically this could be done. If this means that air travel becomes ridiculously expensive and rail travel gets cheaper
Actually, nowhere in the world is any form of transportation able to survive without some form of subsidy. Both air and rail travel would become ridiculously expensive- and the full price tolls on the roads would end automobile travel for all but the richest
How about making lunch for the steel workers? If I'm working a 16 hour shift and I'm single (been there done that although doing security and not producing "real value") I'd much buy my lunch than make it the night before. It makes economical sense to pay someone to do my laundry and cook my food if it means I can do a 12 or 16 hour shift instead of 8. Also, how exactly does a local McDonalds destroy local producers, other than other local restaurants. In my neighborhood there are plenty of local resturants, from McDonalds to $100+ a plate restaurants.
Actually, you'll find that all of your restaurants are actually Sysco Food Service Outlets if it's anything like the Portland Metro Area- they're only allowed about a 2% profit from that.
That's an interesting statistic. That would mean the government spent 8 Trillion on our highways alone, which is probably what you are referring to. The rest of our road system doesn't cost nearly as much. You can pave a road pretty cheaply.
$8 Trillion in 2007 dollars, more like $1.5 trillion in the 1950s. But you'd be surprised how much the cost of asphalt has gone up recently. Don't forget that like gasoline, asphalt is an oil-based product.
Further evidence that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. It's cheaper and more efficient to build computers in one city and ship them to another than it is to create a computer manufacturing plant in every city.
It's cheaper, yes, but it's actually less efficient if your purpose is to provide jobs and a local economy.
(Consider that it costs billions to build a state-of-the-art plant and paltry millions to ship everything from it).
Yes, until you add in the pollution cost of all of that shipping.
Interestingly, the same applies to almost any product, including food. Obviously you never took any economics classes, which makes sense given your nickname.
Yep, and the ignorance of the billions of dollars of environmental damage done by shipping every year fits most economist theories I know- since economics is a religion anyway.
This is another case of not knowing what you're talking about. Sure, a global economy sometimes destroys local producers, and sometimes enables them to help more people. But it's certainly not negative value. If I can make and ship you a computer for cheaper than you next-door neighbor can, you could argue that I'm destroying his business. But how am I producing negative value?
By stealing the local consumers of local businesses. What it really comes down to is how you measure value and what having an economy is all about. If you think having an economy is about the individual, then you are quite correct. But if having an economy is about providing value for the community, then it's much easier to break it down into small local community units that do not trade.
You're better off, the trucker who brought you the computer is better off, and I'm better off. Your neighbor who produces computers hasn't even lost anything, since you were under no obligation to buy his products in the first place,
And that's where your theory breaks down- in the value of the COMMUNITY, I do have an obligation to buy his products in the first place, else the community and local economy fall apart.
and he still has the inferior computer you could have purchased from him. (You might argue that the trucker's damage to the environment hurts more than the money you have saved, but consider that he would probably be driving near your city/town/village/hut anyway, so you're only a few blocks out of his way. You could donate a single dollar that you saved to the Arbor foundation and have a net positive impact).
Actually, to have net positive impact, you'd have to donate the full profits to the Arbor foundation. But that still doesn't help the local community, though it may well help global warming.....
If the activity is unproductive, it's probably better if the government doesn't do it at all. I certainly don't consider doctors or teachers to be unproductive myself, and while I consider most entertainers to be worthless, I place great value in others. Fortunately I'm only required to support those entertainers I actually enjoy, since I'm not living in a socialist state. Ditto with designers and advertisers- every once in a while one of them will create something I value, and these are the ones that I actually support. The government is already the biggest employer of service workers in the U.S. anyway, if I remember correctly. You're not advocating the elimination of service jobs, just changing how they are paid for.
Correct. I'm not advocating the elimination of service jobs- they are valuable, but not in the same way production of goods is. The free market is extremely good at producing goods. The free market is extremely bad at services. Doctors get hampered by a need to produce a profit for the insurance companies, teachers get hampered by a need to please the parents who are paying the tuition, entertainers get hampered by needing to produce a return on the investment and end up pandering to the lowest common denominator, etc. Government excels at funding things that would not get funded by the free market.
What is wealth without health or entertainment?
The free market exists to produce goods, not health or entertainment. Let the free market do what it's good at, and government do what it's good at.
Certainly having food and a roof over your head is important, but wealth for its own sake has little value. I work in industry myself (it's nice being able to see something concrete happen from your labor) but after a day of coding (with some Slashdot thrown in) I would rather go home and be entertained for a few hours than accumulate more wealth by working overtime. Even Marxists like you spend time trolling on Slashdot, a service, created by web designers and paid for by advertisers. Clearly this has value to you, even though it doesn't produce any wealth.
Yes, so what? My point is more that services are best paid for through taxes and available to all, where goods are better produced by the free market. That way we're guaranteed access to the services as citizens, and the providers of services are freed from the need to produce something other than the service.
Are you saying that salesmen aren't up for global competition?
Worse than that- NO American is up for global competition. Our standard of living is about 40x what it should be for us to be able to compete on a global level. EVERY other nation, even other "first world nations" have an absolute trade advantage over us in every sector.
Certainly there are Indian telemarketers, but real salesmen still make far more than I do. (This goes for Businessmen of all sorts). Ditto for Authors, Producers, Editors, Screenwriters, Designers, and any sort of 'intellectual property' based job. As a programmer I could also be replaced by anyone with a computer, and yet I make far more than minimum wage. It's only the unskilled jobs that make minimum wage in this country.
All of them will be replaced with outsourcing to countries where a decent standard of living costs far BELOW our minimum wage, eventually.
You may want to re-think your position. Other than Slashdot, how many services do you use each day? How many merchants do you do business with? What value do you place on the Internet, the components of which were made in industry, but which is maintained by, sold by, and filled with content by people in the service industry? None of these create wealth, but all of them create value. My guess is that your only idea of service jobs are the McJobs, which is just as ignorant as assuming everyone in agriculture drives a tractor or everyone in industry works an assembly line.
On this, you're quite correct as well, until this di
Health is a LIABILITY, not an ASSET. Learn the difference.
I stopped having that problem when I invested in Beyond TV and stopped watching shows live, but rather on my palmtop on the way to work. I imagine people with TIVO have the same solution.
As such, I'm hard-pressed to find something intrinsically wrong (for the workers) with the typical job moving from the one set to the other. Perhaps you can explain whether there's some sort of important quality or attribute in the individual that's exercised by working agriculture and factories and not by interaction with mankind?
It's more that the creation becomes unbalanced. If we become a nation primarily of consumers, with little or no productive capability, that makes us very dependent upon foreign nations. We can't have an economy made up entirely of people trading pizza slices.
Perhaps people could voluntarily take up gardening in their free time instead?
That is most certainly an option as well- one that has great economic value locally.
So you want the government driving trucks?
Better than that- I want the government running railroads! Actually, the government might not drive the truck, but they spent over $2 million/mile to give that truck a road to run on....
And getting the corn from the farm to NYC is not productive?
For two reasons- one is that it's usually more efficient to put the people where the food is rather than trucking it hundreds of miles, and the other questioning whether ANYTHING goes on in NYC that is actually productive instead of just an overhead drain on society. No, trucking does not create a new product- and shipping in this day and age, except for a few rare earth metals, is just a waste of resources.
There not doing such a great job with Amtrak.
Actually, when you consider the difference between the subsidy for Amtrak and the subsidy for the Airlines ($13 Billion vs $130 Billion in 2006) I think they're doing a wonderful job with Amtrak and that we'd be better off trading the subsidies around. The main problem with Amtrak is that they don't own their own trackage, except for one line on the Eastern Seaboard, which means that passenger trains have to play 2nd fiddle to freight trains. But given the age, this is as it should be.
Put aside the lawyers for a minute, all of these people provide real value.
Moving goods and bits of paper around is negative value that destroys local producers.
Our entertainers, doctors and teachers all count as 'service' jobs. So are the graphic artists who design our toys and the advertisers who sell them to us. So are the truckers that bring us our food, the McMinions that cook it for us, and the lawyers that sue for us when we eat too much of it.
None of which actually CREATE goods- they just mess up the market with unproductive activities that are better done by government.
Just because someone's in a 'service' job doesn't mean they aren't useful, valued, and improve the human condition.
Yes, but they don't create wealth.
It also certainly doesn't mean they make minimum wage. (Sure, the McMinions will make minimum wage, but it's not like the assembly line workers or grunt farmers are doing any better for themselves).
Ok, I'll give you that one. They only make minimum wage if the service is unskilled, or if it hasn't been opened to global competition yet.
Would WW2 have been lost (apart from a few million more casualties in the invasion of Japan) had the nuclear scientists of the day simply gone on strike, working at burger joints, riveting aircraft together, or casting bullets and turning shell casings on lathes, and passing on the really interesting jobs until after the war was over?
Quite possibly, Japan would have absorbed the nuclear scientists of the day instead of the United States- because if the American Nuclear Scientists had gone on strike in that fashion, NOBODY would have been left to argue for the Manhattan Project. OTOH, that might just mean that our other workable WMD of the day, the Bat Bomb, would have succeeded in burning down all the wooden pagodas during the invasion....
No, you've missed the transition. It now takes such a small portion of human output to feed, clothe, and house said humans that entire industries have been created from scatch to "enhance" our lives. Don't think of it as so many useless things we consume, but that it takes so little effort to provide the basic necessities.
I'd believe that if the majority of the human species wasn't struggling to survive. But I suppose, that's more of a resource allocation problem than a resource production problem is what this number is telling us.
Over the course of human history, it has been the same tale of minimum wages - those at the top of the money ladder consume and provide jobs for those at the bottom. Many view this situation as unfair. Without passing that kind of judgement - for or against - I say the the overall process is similar, but that a smaller and smaller portion of the consumed goods are truly necessities.
Thus leading to a potential labor surplus. But I say- we could all be much more wealthy if we'd all produce *more* than we need, so that we have storehouses available for the inevitable lean times.
If you want my opinion, and most people don't, I'd say there are close to 5.5B too many people in the world. And no, I don't have a discrete reason for said overpopulation valuse, nor a workable plan to get to that number...but thanks for asking anyway.
Well, that would be one way to produce such a surplus. But actually using those extra 5.5Billion to say, fix the inevitable problems that come with overpopulation, might be a better answer.
Not necessarily. You can always put a green roof on the building. You can also use corner offices for greenhouses. Especially Southwest and Southeast corners.
What really disturbs me though is that we've gone from a race of creators, creating goods with agriculture or manufacturing, to a world wide economy of McJobs that pay minimum wage and create NOTHING.
It can when knowledge of that inaccurate number throws your testing device into serious doubt.
All the MADD BS distracts from the actual dangerous drunks - you know, the ones with multiple DUIs for .15 and no license. Toss them in jail and be done with it.
In Oregon, we no longer have the jail space to hold them. Between Measure 11, which mandated minimum sentences for truly violent premeditated crimes, and Measure 5, the beginning of the Tax Revolt (with lots of child measures in the 15 years since) jail bed space is at a premium in just about any urban area.
if you like to have a drink out at all
And there's the real point to me. This is why I NEVER drink from anyplace more than an elevator ride away from bed. Hotel bars are your friend, as is homemade beer at home.
On the contrary, insist on the breathalyzer and contest the results if you fail. If you fail the blood test, you're screwed.
You should check out some of the links- in California for example, you can't challenge the results of the breathalyzer unless you've *also* insisted on the blood test.....I didn't realize the state of DUI laws was quite that bad.
It's even worse than that. The A/D converter is hooked up to a chamber, which at one time held a known amount of air. An infrared light source is at one end of the chamber, a photovoltaic cell at the other. The A/D converter reads the photovoltaic, they multiply it by the magic 2100 number (which is truly a magic number- it's based on an average and can really range from 1300 to 3000) and spit out the answer.
This is why it's always vitally important to get a true blood test, and to preserve a sample for your attorney.
I've never seen a soap opera like that....Are you sure you're not thinking of anime?