should be too big to fall, it is very anti-capitalism.
In a true capitalist society, no company would be "too _anything_ to fail". If a company fails, their investors, debtors, customers, counterparties, etc would take their losses - just like they'd take their profits.
In your current system, the companies aren't "too big to fail" - they're "too politically connected to fail".
Nobody has laid any lines or upgraded shit around here in years because it might hurt the short term stock price if they actually spent a dime.
To give an example - Fedex and UPS spent hundreds of millions of dollars to place orders for A380s in 2006 (the jet was not even fully designed yet) - just to save money 10-15 years from now. It is nor private business, but politicians who have an incentive to focus on the short term at the expense of the long term - the recent 'stimulus' plan is one illustration of that; the $50 trillion or so of US govt debt is a sadder example.
Uninformed opinions like yours are typically expressed by people who've never run a business in their lives - I'm curious about your business experience.
When you make an investment with an uncertain outcome, it is gambling - which is to say, all investment is gambling. I have nothing against companies who bought/sold CDSs, CDOs, MBSs, etc - it was their money and they had the right to do whatever they wanted with it.
The problem I have is that when their bets went wrong - one of the bets being that AIG was a good counterparty - they should eat the losses. They sure as hell were not going to give you a share of the profits - why should you protect them from their losses?
Gambling is ok - as long as you can take the losses.
It is funny how people focus on the $165 million, but not on the $173 BILLION that was essentially paid to AIG's gambling clients. And one of those, Goldman, has a lot of their people in the treasury - Henry Paulson being one example.
I think the problem is that all big numbers pretty much look alike to most people & it is easy to create mass outrage at something people understand (bonuses to AIG execs) than something that people don't get (payments to AIG's counterparties).
Cheap labor always kills the industrial base of countries with expensive labor.
By that logic, robots, machines & computers will also do the same.
Cheap labour results in an increase in productivity just like robots/machines/computers do - you get a widget manufactured for cheaper & you have the time to do other things.
You misunderstand the motivation behind legislation. Read the 'bootlegger and the baptist' when you get a chance.
Also, there is a difference between how a law emerges and how legislation emerges - the first is like evolution, people try different things and some order emerges; the second is like 'Intelligent Design'.
If I truly believe that that restaurant is dirty, is it defamation?
I think not. How would anyone know what my standards for cleanliness are and whether I truly believed what I said (or typed in this case)?
Maybe my standards are really high and I saw a piece of paper on the floor and concluded that the restaurant is dirty. Or maybe I wanted to destroy the business and am using the piece of paper as an excuse.
With one sentence, he managed to save the floral industry in his town... at the expense of all the other industries where that money would've instead been spent.
If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is.
-- from The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
And it is this idiot's theories that are being implemented now.
This is especially so when your claim to saving was "saving the WORLD 80 billion). Are those displaced not also in the WORLD?
Every job has an opportunity cost - instead of programming, I could be doing something else.
The fact I'm programming and not doing, say auto-repair, is because, with my skills/experience/etc, this is where I'm most productive. Now, if amazon comes up with a Kindle that does programming for $1, then I should be doing auto repair.
If your argument is correct, you should be seeing a lot of telephone operators and accountants 'displaced' because of PBXs and Quickbooks - unless you are Robert Reich, you'll agree that PBXs and Quickbooks have increased the wealth of society.
Btw, the fallacy you're committing is called the 'Zero Sum fallacy' - look it up sometime.
how will it feel to hear corporations saying the same about computer people?
Is there any reason why someone should make more here for the same work than someone in Asia? Do you apply the same logic toward automation and the resulting cost savings?
Whether by computers or by cheap labour in China, reducing the cost of production generates wealth. If you want all the jobs to stay in the US - automotive, coffee plantations, shoe manufacturing, fruit picking, etc - how would you have time to create new technologies?
Every job has a cost - the opportunity cost. Reduce that cost and you increase wealth.
If you accidentally overpay someone, you shouldn't ask for the money? I'd argue that if you know you've been overpaid, keeping the extra money is bad morals.
Judge any President by how many bucks are in your pocket,
Economic policies have long lag times. It has taken 6 years to the results of Greenspan's low interest rate regime. Similarly, Volcker's policies were very unpopular when they were implemented, but they paid off 3-4 years later.
You judge a president by whether he has the balls to not push the cost on to future generations and make politically unpopular decisions. A good president would say "we've spent way more than what we have, so let's take the pain for the next 4-5 years and make sure our children are not burdened".
Are there any brick and mortar stores in WI that let you come in and pay to download things to your USB drive using a connection at the cash register or something?
Maybe not a USB drive, but there are plenty of businesses that sell data on a CD or DVD drive. Those business do have to pay taxes.
is that laying off people worsens the already worsening economy
You're confusing employment with productive work.
Creating jobs is easy - the govt. can arrange to have half the unemployed to dig holes and the other half to fill it back.
But that is not work that results in wealth. Similarly, the govt. keeping people employed just for the sake of it only makes things worse.
A recession is the market telling us that a lot of resources were mis-allocated. The correct thing to do is to let the businesses go bankrupt and let the people be laid off - eventually, the people and the resources will be allocated properly. Keeping the people employed just for the sake of employment only ties up resources in the wrong places.
Thanks for these very important updates on how we should be manipulated! I was kind of feeling like I was thinking a bit too much on own, but finally I get some more ads to dull the senses and reinforce that conformity!
So you're weak enough to be 'manipulated' by TV ads? Is it safe for you to be browsing the web?
$100,000 for the best grades.
$50,000 for the second.
$25,000 for the third position.
$10,000 for ten more students.
etc.
We do not have that system in India. Instead, we have a simple system where the parents make sure the kids learn.
And if the parents do not like the schools, unlike America, they can change schools without any hassle.
Corporate america is creating a legal regime and prosecution system outside the law.
Huh. I thought they were just taking them to court.
And as far as I know, the govt. runs the court system - you know, the ones where you have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars to play.
Do you really subscribe to the theory that we should just kick back and relax, and that everything will work itself out?
No. The theory is "we've had similar problems in the past - horse manure in streets, running out of whale oil, feeding more than 5 billion people, etc - and individuals and companies put in massive efforts to solve the problems. We will do so this time as well."
The other half is recognizing that for every real crisis, there were several imagined ones. Look up "Simon Ehrlich bet" when you get a chance.
Slashdot Mirror
should be too big to fall, it is very anti-capitalism.
In a true capitalist society, no company would be "too _anything_ to fail". If a company fails, their investors, debtors, customers, counterparties, etc would take their losses - just like they'd take their profits.
In your current system, the companies aren't "too big to fail" - they're "too politically connected to fail".
Nobody has laid any lines or upgraded shit around here in years because it might hurt the short term stock price if they actually spent a dime.
To give an example - Fedex and UPS spent hundreds of millions of dollars to place orders for A380s in 2006 (the jet was not even fully designed yet) - just to save money 10-15 years from now. It is nor private business, but politicians who have an incentive to focus on the short term at the expense of the long term - the recent 'stimulus' plan is one illustration of that; the $50 trillion or so of US govt debt is a sadder example.
Uninformed opinions like yours are typically expressed by people who've never run a business in their lives - I'm curious about your business experience.
AIG's counterparties were hardly gambling.
When you make an investment with an uncertain outcome, it is gambling - which is to say, all investment is gambling. I have nothing against companies who bought/sold CDSs, CDOs, MBSs, etc - it was their money and they had the right to do whatever they wanted with it.
The problem I have is that when their bets went wrong - one of the bets being that AIG was a good counterparty - they should eat the losses. They sure as hell were not going to give you a share of the profits - why should you protect them from their losses?
Gambling is ok - as long as you can take the losses.
It is funny how people focus on the $165 million, but not on the $173 BILLION that was essentially paid to AIG's gambling clients. And one of those, Goldman, has a lot of their people in the treasury - Henry Paulson being one example.
I think the problem is that all big numbers pretty much look alike to most people & it is easy to create mass outrage at something people understand (bonuses to AIG execs) than something that people don't get (payments to AIG's counterparties).
Cheap labor always kills the industrial base of countries with expensive labor.
By that logic, robots, machines & computers will also do the same.
Cheap labour results in an increase in productivity just like robots/machines/computers do - you get a widget manufactured for cheaper & you have the time to do other things.
You misunderstand the motivation behind legislation. Read the 'bootlegger and the baptist' when you get a chance.
Also, there is a difference between how a law emerges and how legislation emerges - the first is like evolution, people try different things and some order emerges; the second is like 'Intelligent Design'.
If I truly believe that that restaurant is dirty, is it defamation?
I think not. How would anyone know what my standards for cleanliness are and whether I truly believed what I said (or typed in this case)?
Maybe my standards are really high and I saw a piece of paper on the floor and concluded that the restaurant is dirty. Or maybe I wanted to destroy the business and am using the piece of paper as an excuse.
And the fact that few corporations pay any US Federal Income tax at all ...
Huh? Where do you get your 'facts' from?
There's the banks, giving million dollar bonuses to the people who are running them into the ground.
And there's the US govt. that gives billions to those same banks.
With one sentence, he managed to save the floral industry in his town... at the expense of all the other industries where that money would've instead been spent.
Here is some Keynsian wisdom:
And it is this idiot's theories that are being implemented now.
This is especially so when your claim to saving was "saving the WORLD 80 billion). Are those displaced not also in the WORLD?
Every job has an opportunity cost - instead of programming, I could be doing something else.
The fact I'm programming and not doing, say auto-repair, is because, with my skills/experience/etc, this is where I'm most productive. Now, if amazon comes up with a Kindle that does programming for $1, then I should be doing auto repair.
If your argument is correct, you should be seeing a lot of telephone operators and accountants 'displaced' because of PBXs and Quickbooks - unless you are Robert Reich, you'll agree that PBXs and Quickbooks have increased the wealth of society.
Btw, the fallacy you're committing is called the 'Zero Sum fallacy' - look it up sometime.
how will it feel to hear corporations saying the same about computer people?
Is there any reason why someone should make more here for the same work than someone in Asia? Do you apply the same logic toward automation and the resulting cost savings?
Whether by computers or by cheap labour in China, reducing the cost of production generates wealth. If you want all the jobs to stay in the US - automotive, coffee plantations, shoe manufacturing, fruit picking, etc - how would you have time to create new technologies?
Every job has a cost - the opportunity cost. Reduce that cost and you increase wealth.
It might be bad PR, but why is it bad morals?
If you accidentally overpay someone, you shouldn't ask for the money? I'd argue that if you know you've been overpaid, keeping the extra money is bad morals.
Judge any President by how many bucks are in your pocket,
Economic policies have long lag times. It has taken 6 years to the results of Greenspan's low interest rate regime. Similarly, Volcker's policies were very unpopular when they were implemented, but they paid off 3-4 years later.
You judge a president by whether he has the balls to not push the cost on to future generations and make politically unpopular decisions. A good president would say "we've spent way more than what we have, so let's take the pain for the next 4-5 years and make sure our children are not burdened".
Don't hold your breath to see someone like that.
Are there any brick and mortar stores in WI that let you come in and pay to download things to your USB drive using a connection at the cash register or something?
Maybe not a USB drive, but there are plenty of businesses that sell data on a CD or DVD drive. Those business do have to pay taxes.
is that laying off people worsens the already worsening economy
You're confusing employment with productive work.
Creating jobs is easy - the govt. can arrange to have half the unemployed to dig holes and the other half to fill it back.
But that is not work that results in wealth. Similarly, the govt. keeping people employed just for the sake of it only makes things worse.
A recession is the market telling us that a lot of resources were mis-allocated. The correct thing to do is to let the businesses go bankrupt and let the people be laid off - eventually, the people and the resources will be allocated properly. Keeping the people employed just for the sake of employment only ties up resources in the wrong places.
and 25 cent an hour labor from funny-looking little dark people.
Nice that this kind of shit gets modded up on slashdot - guess when times are tough, people's true 'colors' show.
Get a life you filthy f*ck.
Hopefully, this bill will pass and Obama will shut the f__ up about 'OMG we are all going to DIE!!'.
Paulson started this because Goldman was about to go down and Obama and other continue this bs.
Thanks for these very important updates on how we should be manipulated! I was kind of feeling like I was thinking a bit too much on own, but finally I get some more ads to dull the senses and reinforce that conformity!
So you're weak enough to be 'manipulated' by TV ads? Is it safe for you to be browsing the web?
We do not have that system in India. Instead, we have a simple system where the parents make sure the kids learn.
And if the parents do not like the schools, unlike America, they can change schools without any hassle.
Corporate america is creating a legal regime and prosecution system outside the law.
Huh. I thought they were just taking them to court.
And as far as I know, the govt. runs the court system - you know, the ones where you have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars to play.
There's a woman in my office who is convinced that ghosts are going to end the world in 2012.
Do you want to listen to her fears and get a massive govt. operation going to stop the ghosts?
We seem to be doing better than any time in the history of mankind.
nywhere near a decent job of providing food for all mankind. Some 50,000 people die each day from starvation
How many died of starvation in the 1500s and 1600s?
Do you really subscribe to the theory that we should just kick back and relax, and that everything will work itself out?
No. The theory is "we've had similar problems in the past - horse manure in streets, running out of whale oil, feeding more than 5 billion people, etc - and individuals and companies put in massive efforts to solve the problems. We will do so this time as well."
The other half is recognizing that for every real crisis, there were several imagined ones. Look up "Simon Ehrlich bet" when you get a chance.