if the oil tap looks like it's going to run dry that this will destabilize the middle-east further
Ok, that's not much of a strech.
When the middle-east gets destabilized, generally a few things happen: 1) someone tries to attack Israel. 2) Terrorism increases globally.
Now there's a leap. Ok, when a country becomes unstable most of the time it denigrates into internal strife. Occasionally, a strong man assumes control, sometimes this results in military campaigns. On the surface it might seem like Israel would be the first target for a newly aggressive arab state, but you've got to consider that Israel is also far and away the most formidable opponent. All the attacks against Israel in the last 60 years have come from stable countries. Strong men looking to establish military dominance tend to start by going after weaker countries (like Kuwait.) On the second point there is no correlation between unstable arab regimes and terrorism. Saudi Arabia, which is bin Laden's home country is and has been remarkably stable - even if not friendly to western interests. The al Quaeda became active while Afghanistan was under repressive - but stable - rule. Maybe terrorism correlates with instability, but global terrorism doesn't. Look at N. Ireland, when it was going through the troubles the terrorism was all very targeted - the IRA didn't set off car bombs in India.
Iran, for instance, sells a lot of oil right now, it finances their country in large measure. Things are fine for Iran economically, in general, yet they still talk, weekly, about nuking Israel. And you're trying to tell us that that behavior wouldn't get worse if it looked like Iran couldn't afford to spend so much on their military anymore?
Saudi Arabia is nearly bankrupt.
Carrying debt, doesn't mean you're nearly bankrupt - bankruptcy is about not being able to meet your financial obligations. The US carries more debt than anyone, and while the value of the dollar has declined lately, the federal government isn't nearing bankruptcy.
An economy needs a middle-class.
No it doesn't. What we consider to be a healthy economy does, but if a countries major industry is exaction, you don't need a middle class. From a humanitarian standpoint, that sucks, from an economic one it works just fine. You only need a middle class if you're economy depends on selling consumer goods (as is the case in most western nations.)
if the oil-tap gets turned off that would result in, literally, trillions of dollars per year no longer flowing into the middle-east.
As you, yourself just pointed out in your previous paragraph it would result in literally trillions of fewer dollars flowing into the pockets of literally thousands of people. I obviously can't say that no a lack of oil revenue wouldn't affect the poor, but it would effect them less than you're implying.
No matter which way things go, the outlook for the middle east isn't rosy. But while you might be able to tie invasions to the price of oil, I think it's a stretch to tie ideological violence to the price of oil. All in all, a sharp decrease in petro-dollars might serve to decrease the inequality in these countries, which might serve to blunt the extremism.
The first time it snows in climes which average >20'' of snow a year you get to see all the big 4WD SUVs come out. You also get to see how people apparently have no understanding that 4WD doesn't help you brake...
If there's light snow or rain, by all means increase your following distance, but freaking sprinkles don't mean the road is unsafe above 45mph.
and you can't burn clinton without burning H. W. Bush, who you can't burn without burning Reagan, who you can't burn without burning Carter etc. etc. etc.
You're trying to have it both ways, either 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan are W's fault, or they're result of a string bad foreign policy decisions, with blame resting on everyone and starting with Truman.
You seem to be the ideologically motivated blind-eye, die hard. Clinton didn't respond to the Cole bombing because we didn't know who did it. Al Qaeda was suspected, but it wasn't clear. Here's a timeline courtesy wikipedia: * 12 October 2000: bombing * 7 November 2000: election * 20 January 2001: George W Bush assumes office * 25 January 2001, Tenet briefed the President on the Cole investigation. The written briefing repeated for top officials of the new administration what the CIA had told the Clinton White House in November. This included the "preliminary judgment" that al Qaeda was responsible, with the caveat that no evidence had yet been found that Bin Ladin himself ordered the attack... in March 2001, the CIA's briefing slides for Rice were still describing the CIA's "preliminary judgment" that a "strong circumstantial case" could be made against al Qaeda but noting that the CIA continued to lack "conclusive information on external command and control" of the attack * 9 February 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney was briefed on bin Laden's responsibility "without hedge."
You don't bomb a sovereign country on a preliminary judgment. The appropriate time to respond would have been between 25 January 2001, and 9 February 2001.
W didn't need any lessons on how to fuck things up.
Here's what I don't get: we have to look to the root cause - but we can't go back further than Clinton?
First there's two wars. You can't blame anyone but W and his "administration" for Iraq. Clinton doesn't even come into play.
Then there's Afghanistan. Blah blah, Clinton was soft on terror, he should have killed Osama after the Cole bombing, which indecently happened at the very end of the Clinton presidency - W didn't go after those responsible either. Maybe that's true. MAYBE. None of that excuses our absentee president from dismissing senior intelligence officials who flew all the way to Crawford to give Bush warnings that Osama was determined to strike the US by saying, "alright, you've covered your ass now." So Clinton didn't preemptively invade Afghanistan - ok, but Bush was asleep at the switch with real actionable intelligence.
You don't listen, because you present Greenspan and Reagan as people who aren't being blamed. They are - in spades.
Clinton couldn't have fixed jack by using the military. Clinton could have avoided some of the current problems by not signing trade agreements that promise everything and demanded nothing, by vetoing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act and similar legislation, and by not allowing Greenspan to keep his post.
I've read your other posts, and yeah Clinton isn't blameless. But you also said something about not blaming the most visible figures and getting to the root cause. The war situation could also have been avoided had George W Bush read his intelligence reports, and had Cheney and others not manufactured an al Qaeda - Iraq - WMD link out of thin air. The war situation could have been avoided if George H W Bush had intervened when it was clear that a violent and repressive Taliban was taking power. The war situation could have been avoided if Reagan and vice president George H W Bush hadn't washed their hands of Afghanistan when the Soviets pulled out. The war situation could have been avoided had the same chain of presidents not completely screwed up relations with Saudi Arabia which allowed the bin Ladens to become wealthy and then to alienate Osama while he is still enjoying popular support.
Bush may not be the root cause, but the regulation-is-always-bad-let's-cut-taxes-and-if-that-doesn't-work-start-a-war credo that he and his party trot out as the solution to every problem is. So yeah, I'm still laying it at the feet of W, because arguments about Afghanistan aside there's no denying that the decider chose to go to Iraq, and chose to let the financial institutions operate almost entirely free of regulation.
oh goober, you should listen to the people you disagree with occasionally.
Yes Greenspan is more culpable than W. Yes, I blame Clinton, HW, and more than anything Ronald Reagan (the only president before W dumb enough to take Milton Friedman seriously).
To be specific I blame Clinton twice - once for being suckered in by the globalization/deregulation buzz, and a second time for letting greenspan keep his job. But hey, without Newt playing wedge politics he might have made up for those errors by fixing healthcare a freaking decade ago - and he wouldn't have had deregulation nonsense shoved down his throat. But that's many, many times fewer than I blame Reagan, HW, and W.
As for the wars, the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the absentee Bush of 2000-2001. Who needs intelligence reports anyway - everything is just fine...
About politics and illiberal health care policies:
As the summary mentioned a lot of right wing pundits are pointing to this comparative effectiveness study funding as the end of doctors ability to offer individualized treatment. It needs to be pointed out that this is the opening salvo in the healthcare reform debate. Conservatives don't give a damn about comparative effectiveness treatment - hell they voted for it last time around, what they need is an issue on which to test their talking points. The fact that this is even an issue is the republicans serving notice to Obama and the dems that they don't intend to to let healthcare reform be passed without public debate. That is a good thing (and I'm decidedly not on the GOP side). The problem is that they don't just want a debate, they want to obstruct and peddle disinformation. Comparative effectiveness is just a technical enough phrase that the GOP thinks they can make it be whatever they want it to be. In reality they're standing against good science and good healthcare in order to dry run their obstructionist political strategies.
That's simply not true. The fed did take too loose a monetary policy, so they're not completely off the hook, but it was the banks that were handing out free money with time bombs attached - they should have known better, and more to the point we should have been paying attention and not allowed them to plant mines across our country.
The real estate wasn't overvalued by the fed in the same way dutch tulips weren't over valued by gold ingots. People are quite capable of blowing up a bubble on their own.
On the environmental front - recognizing that you're not really fighting me - (government) controls and audits are an absolute necessity for anyone who produces toxic waste.
On the current financial crisis - the root of the problem is indeed bad mortgages, but the total value of the US mortgages is somewhere around $2 trillion. Compare that to the total value of CDSs, which was at one point around $30 trillion. If the problem were confined to the mortgage business we would have already bought ourselves out. The largely unregulated financial institutions have compounded our problems many times over.
I'm not arguing that nationalizing debt is a facet of libertarianism, I'm arguing that it it it's fatal flaw. I know that libertarians don't accept this argument, but the citizenry doesn't have the patience to watch things play out. In this interconnected economy there are cascading failures that we cannot abide.
Remember when the bailout was first being pitched back in September and ashen-faced congressmen on both sides left a meeting with Hank Paulson, stepped up to the podium and said that this is something we must do? Well, apparently Paulson, a regulation-is-always-bad child of wall street, literally said that martial law could result without a bail out. Now maybe that was a bit hyperbolic, but at a minimum the credit markets would have completely seized. Meaning no loans for anyone. Businesses would be unable to make payroll, retailers couldn't acquire inventory, people would be unable to access their money. There is no libertarian solution to such a problem. Let them fail doesn't cut it. There isn't an investor in the country with access enough liquid capital to snap up failed banks at fire sale prices, make good on their obligations, and avert disaster. Wall Street was largely unregulated and it drove this country to the brink of financial ruin. The proof is in the pudding, when push comes to shove, it's better to nationalize debt than have people take to the streets.
Last thing, a big reason for the tenth amendment's inclusion was slavery. Libertarian arguments that the states should be allowed to do whatever they please because of the tenth amendment fundamentally rests on a phrase included in a document that allowed local governments to trump human rights. I'm a huge fan of the constitution, but I'm under no illusions that it's perfect - we should be able to amend it to fix these problems, but the political reality of the day is that we're not going to be able to modify the bill of rights. The exploitation of the commerce clause is far from ideal, but it does make a certain amount of sense.
You're telling me we can predict bubbles but are still powerless to mitigate their effects?
Look someone could have looked at a chart of median home prices vs. median salary, realized the price of housing was unsustainable, and put the brakes on things like liar loans and ARMs. If we had simply restricted the issuance of ARMs the entire housing bust could have been avoided.
You want to know what the next bubble to burst will be? Consumer Credit. You want to know how we could fix it today? Stop issuing new credit to people who have maxed out credit cards in excess of 25% of their adjusted gross income. There might be an immediate increase in the number of bankruptcies, and the credit providers will have to write down some losses, but it is better than having VISA go to congress in 5 years asking for a multi-billion dollar bail out. That's the trick with financial regulation, you need to step up and take the bitter medicine now so it doesn't explode in a couple of years. Call it the Volcker school of disaster avoidance.
This reply may too become unwieldy, so thanks for your patience.
I didn't quite follow your second sentence. Are you implying that libertarian ideas are what got us the companies who are "too big to fail," or are you just saying that that's the way it is and that epic failure must always be nationalized?
What I'm saying is that institutions that are "too big to fail" will naturally arise without draconian (and undesirable) controls. It's the dark side of economies of scale. When these institutions run into trouble, which they inevitably will, it is in societies interests not to let them fail - because they can literally take society down with them. Therefore, libertarianism can only exist on the boom side of the cycle, and will always yield to nationalization on the bust side. In this way, libertarian and free-market ideals serve to privatize wealth and nationalize debt. Failing the nationalization of debt the middle class evaporates almost overnight, the lower class is cast into abject poverty, and the wealthy become every wealthier off the backs of the peasants in a neo-feudal system. Just take a look at some of the chicago school experiments in latin america to see what I mean.
Alright, it's some of the more wing-nutty libertarians who propose privatization of justice, but they do exist, I'm not going to bother telling you why it's a bad idea - just know there are people who advocate private police forces that protect and serve by contract, complete with a bounty system. It's crazy I tell you.
As for the libertarianism and the environment... The problem is that one individual, and certainly one company can do orders of magnitude more damage than their life is worth. Let's say I own union carbide and I accidentally poison your village killing everyone. Oops, time to file for bankruptcy. You can even liquidate the shareholder and executives assets and throw them in prison for the rest of your life, and not even come close to being able to repair the damage to property - to say nothing of the loss of life. And even that example is localized - what do you do when a company decides it's worth the risk of being caught pumping tons of CFCs into the atmosphere because it saves them a couple cents per widget - you will never be able to repair the damage. That's why we have the superfund now. Again, libertarianism is all about privatizing profit, and nationalizing downside damage.
About the follies of the banking industry over the past 5+ years. You're wrong that no one was calling for regulation, you're wrong that no one thought 40:1 leveraging was a bad idea, and you're wrong that no one saw the impending collapse. The main stream media sure didn't tell you about it, and the (anti-regulation) government sure wasn't listening, but the dissent was there. Warren Buffet's private wealth was all in treasury bonds before the collapse - because he saw it coming. Paul Krugman warned about the property value collapse in his previous book (even if he got some of the details wrong). Bernie Madoff was investigated - the SEC just abdicated their responsibility. Financial wonks new what was going to happen in September in January Plenty of people saw this coming, and if we had actual accountants checking actual books for the last eight years, perhaps we could have softened the blow.
You're generalizing
You're right I was. The problem stands that no one should be running for president of the united states, who thinks the position is incapable of action. If libertarians and republicans want to run for congress, governor, or state assembly, more power to them, they can try to reduce executive powers from there. What we absolutely cannot afford is to have power concentrated in the executive branch that is not used for ideological reasons. In a larger sense, the problem with the libertarian, states rights agenda
Effective government regulation... Ever been hunting of fishing? Ever tried to get a CDL - or been run over by an unlicensed truck driver? Has your building ever burned down or collapsed because it wasn't up to code? Do you get better or worse gas mileage than you did in 1970? Is the air you breathe and the water you drink more or less poisonous than it was in 1970? Here's the kicker - most of that happened IN SPITE of chief executives who think less regulation is better - and wouldn't have happened without regulation.
The whole point of Keynesian economics (not socialism) is to moderate the business cycle. Boom/bust cycles are extremely damaging and we'd be better off with out them (note: this is not a goal to be achieved by all means necessary - some market volatility is both unavoidable and probably even desirable.) So yeah, boom/bust cycles are natural phenomenon in an unregulated market, but the market exists to serve us, not the other way around - so we regulate and try to shave some of the extremes off the business cycle.
I'm trying to figure out what your point is... free markets are good and Enron is an example of that? In all of your examples, with the possible exception of the tech bubble which may have been unavoidable, the public would have been better served by simple and effective regulations.
Let me clarify - I understand the argument that gold is a good choice for the basis of trade because it's somewhat rare, and can't be conjured into existence at the whim of the government. It's just that the argument is bunk. When even Milton Friedman's is more moderate than you, it's time to re-examine where you stand. Inflation may be a stealth tax, but that doesn't make it a bad thing - if the FED were even to hint that it was going to hold the amount of currency in circulation static (to curb a hypothetical inflation problem) you'd see everyone with capital go into full blown hoard mode - and the economy would grind to a halt.
Now extrapolate to gold - every time there was a hint of a problem at a mine (which are almost all inconveniently located in third world countries) and the economy would stutter. Or in other words, stability wise, the price of bread would look like the price of oil - how do you budget for that?
Intelligent libertarians are the one's that never liked Regan's social agenda and have since realized that his economic agenda was smoke and mirrors. Now they're plain old liberals (although most are still afraid to call themselves that).
MBSs in particular are backed by real tangible property. It's just slit and re-bundled so many times no one knows what anyone is buying. Having a gold standard wouldn't do a damn thing to fix derivatives. Similarly, CDSs are a form of insurance - can insurance exist under a gold standard? If so, so can CDSs.
Bubbles don't require fiat currency, one of the most famous was the dutch tulip bubble - while the Netherlands was on the gold standard. You Austrians crack me up - if only we went to gold all the worlds problems would magically go away... Never mind that the price of gold itself is volatile and linked more to psychological effects than even paper currency. If fiat currencies suddenly collapsed all the gold hoarders in the world would feel real smug for about 2 weeks, until they figured out that they can't eat the stuff, and no one is going to trade useful goods for a shiny hunk of metal.
I'm certainly not arguing for a control economy - but what we need is effective (not necessarily more, not less) government oversight. The whole idea is that if we think that e.g. the banking sector is so indispensable that it must be propped up at all costs (which it probably is) we damn well ought to be making sure they don't do objectively stupid things like leverage themselves 40:1 - and paying themselves billions for driving the company into the ground. There's little mystery why the W administration was only weakly interested in such things - they didn't think government could work.
Why people would continue to vote for candidates who's position is that the office they're running for is ineffective is beyond me.
There is a structural problem with libertarianism in that the downside risks will never justify the potential upside gains. Every single time there is a financial crisis, you hear the same refrain, "too big to fail, too big to fail," and that's how profit is privatized and debt nationalized. Maybe in a cottage industry setting where we didn't experience cascading failures we'd pay more attention to libertarian ideas (but even then you still have those pesky workers rights issues) but in the modern global economy libertarianism is hazardous to our health, wealth, and life.
Again, those still espousing those ideas are either hopelessly naive, or are positioned to end up in the top 1% with the inevitable stratifying of wealth that accompanies execution of libertarian ideas.
sorry AC, have you seen some of our Austrian school commentators around here? Does the phrase laissez faire mean anything to you? Nothing is sacred in (some) libertarian circles, from justice to environmental controls, everything can be done better privately than publicly. Hell, private soldiering is blasé now.
Besides, the ideas have done a great job of discrediting themselves over the last 6 months - I just like to poke at the hopelessly naive and the dangerous ideologues from time to time.
as much as I'm a fan of free speech, I'm not so sure we should be calling high school vice principles "public figures." I don't know the details of this particular case, but a student most certainly can harass a school official, and that is something that (IMO) should be illegal.
if I were every to support a death penalty (which I don't) it would be exclusively for war crimes, and judicial/police/political corruption.
Murderers sure suck, but they aren't rational decision makers to begin with, so the deterrent factor doesn't matter. Corrupt government officials wield the full power of the state and are truly hideous individuals.
Slashdot Mirror
So you make stuff up?
Ok, that's not much of a strech.
Now there's a leap. Ok, when a country becomes unstable most of the time it denigrates into internal strife. Occasionally, a strong man assumes control, sometimes this results in military campaigns. On the surface it might seem like Israel would be the first target for a newly aggressive arab state, but you've got to consider that Israel is also far and away the most formidable opponent. All the attacks against Israel in the last 60 years have come from stable countries. Strong men looking to establish military dominance tend to start by going after weaker countries (like Kuwait.) On the second point there is no correlation between unstable arab regimes and terrorism. Saudi Arabia, which is bin Laden's home country is and has been remarkably stable - even if not friendly to western interests. The al Quaeda became active while Afghanistan was under repressive - but stable - rule. Maybe terrorism correlates with instability, but global terrorism doesn't. Look at N. Ireland, when it was going through the troubles the terrorism was all very targeted - the IRA didn't set off car bombs in India.
Carrying debt, doesn't mean you're nearly bankrupt - bankruptcy is about not being able to meet your financial obligations. The US carries more debt than anyone, and while the value of the dollar has declined lately, the federal government isn't nearing bankruptcy.
No it doesn't. What we consider to be a healthy economy does, but if a countries major industry is exaction, you don't need a middle class. From a humanitarian standpoint, that sucks, from an economic one it works just fine. You only need a middle class if you're economy depends on selling consumer goods (as is the case in most western nations.)
As you, yourself just pointed out in your previous paragraph it would result in literally trillions of fewer dollars flowing into the pockets of literally thousands of people. I obviously can't say that no a lack of oil revenue wouldn't affect the poor, but it would effect them less than you're implying.
No matter which way things go, the outlook for the middle east isn't rosy. But while you might be able to tie invasions to the price of oil, I think it's a stretch to tie ideological violence to the price of oil. All in all, a sharp decrease in petro-dollars might serve to decrease the inequality in these countries, which might serve to blunt the extremism.
The seed is 40% oil by weight. Most of the rest of the plant is cellulose.
also 4 'o's
Let me add an amen.
The first time it snows in climes which average >20'' of snow a year you get to see all the big 4WD SUVs come out. You also get to see how people apparently have no understanding that 4WD doesn't help you brake...
If there's light snow or rain, by all means increase your following distance, but freaking sprinkles don't mean the road is unsafe above 45mph.
and you can't burn clinton without burning H. W. Bush, who you can't burn without burning Reagan, who you can't burn without burning Carter etc. etc. etc.
You're trying to have it both ways, either 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan are W's fault, or they're result of a string bad foreign policy decisions, with blame resting on everyone and starting with Truman.
You seem to be the ideologically motivated blind-eye, die hard. Clinton didn't respond to the Cole bombing because we didn't know who did it. Al Qaeda was suspected, but it wasn't clear. Here's a timeline courtesy wikipedia:
* 12 October 2000: bombing
* 7 November 2000: election
* 20 January 2001: George W Bush assumes office
* 25 January 2001, Tenet briefed the President on the Cole investigation. The written briefing repeated for top officials of the new administration what the CIA had told the Clinton White House in November. This included the "preliminary judgment" that al Qaeda was responsible, with the caveat that no evidence had yet been found that Bin Ladin himself ordered the attack... in March 2001, the CIA's briefing slides for Rice were still describing the CIA's "preliminary judgment" that a "strong circumstantial case" could be made against al Qaeda but noting that the CIA continued to lack "conclusive information on external command and control" of the attack
* 9 February 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney was briefed on bin Laden's responsibility "without hedge."
You don't bomb a sovereign country on a preliminary judgment. The appropriate time to respond would have been between 25 January 2001, and 9 February 2001.
W didn't need any lessons on how to fuck things up.
Here's what I don't get: we have to look to the root cause - but we can't go back further than Clinton?
First there's two wars. You can't blame anyone but W and his "administration" for Iraq. Clinton doesn't even come into play.
Then there's Afghanistan. Blah blah, Clinton was soft on terror, he should have killed Osama after the Cole bombing, which indecently happened at the very end of the Clinton presidency - W didn't go after those responsible either. Maybe that's true. MAYBE. None of that excuses our absentee president from dismissing senior intelligence officials who flew all the way to Crawford to give Bush warnings that Osama was determined to strike the US by saying, "alright, you've covered your ass now." So Clinton didn't preemptively invade Afghanistan - ok, but Bush was asleep at the switch with real actionable intelligence.
You don't listen, because you present Greenspan and Reagan as people who aren't being blamed. They are - in spades.
Clinton couldn't have fixed jack by using the military. Clinton could have avoided some of the current problems by not signing trade agreements that promise everything and demanded nothing, by vetoing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act and similar legislation, and by not allowing Greenspan to keep his post.
I've read your other posts, and yeah Clinton isn't blameless. But you also said something about not blaming the most visible figures and getting to the root cause. The war situation could also have been avoided had George W Bush read his intelligence reports, and had Cheney and others not manufactured an al Qaeda - Iraq - WMD link out of thin air. The war situation could have been avoided if George H W Bush had intervened when it was clear that a violent and repressive Taliban was taking power. The war situation could have been avoided if Reagan and vice president George H W Bush hadn't washed their hands of Afghanistan when the Soviets pulled out. The war situation could have been avoided had the same chain of presidents not completely screwed up relations with Saudi Arabia which allowed the bin Ladens to become wealthy and then to alienate Osama while he is still enjoying popular support.
Bush may not be the root cause, but the regulation-is-always-bad-let's-cut-taxes-and-if-that-doesn't-work-start-a-war credo that he and his party trot out as the solution to every problem is. So yeah, I'm still laying it at the feet of W, because arguments about Afghanistan aside there's no denying that the decider chose to go to Iraq, and chose to let the financial institutions operate almost entirely free of regulation.
oh goober, you should listen to the people you disagree with occasionally.
Yes Greenspan is more culpable than W. Yes, I blame Clinton, HW, and more than anything Ronald Reagan (the only president before W dumb enough to take Milton Friedman seriously).
To be specific I blame Clinton twice - once for being suckered in by the globalization/deregulation buzz, and a second time for letting greenspan keep his job. But hey, without Newt playing wedge politics he might have made up for those errors by fixing healthcare a freaking decade ago - and he wouldn't have had deregulation nonsense shoved down his throat. But that's many, many times fewer than I blame Reagan, HW, and W.
As for the wars, the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the absentee Bush of 2000-2001. Who needs intelligence reports anyway - everything is just fine...
About politics and illiberal health care policies:
As the summary mentioned a lot of right wing pundits are pointing to this comparative effectiveness study funding as the end of doctors ability to offer individualized treatment. It needs to be pointed out that this is the opening salvo in the healthcare reform debate. Conservatives don't give a damn about comparative effectiveness treatment - hell they voted for it last time around, what they need is an issue on which to test their talking points. The fact that this is even an issue is the republicans serving notice to Obama and the dems that they don't intend to to let healthcare reform be passed without public debate. That is a good thing (and I'm decidedly not on the GOP side). The problem is that they don't just want a debate, they want to obstruct and peddle disinformation. Comparative effectiveness is just a technical enough phrase that the GOP thinks they can make it be whatever they want it to be. In reality they're standing against good science and good healthcare in order to dry run their obstructionist political strategies.
Hey, doesn't Sweden have some very restrictive gun laws?
That's simply not true. The fed did take too loose a monetary policy, so they're not completely off the hook, but it was the banks that were handing out free money with time bombs attached - they should have known better, and more to the point we should have been paying attention and not allowed them to plant mines across our country.
The real estate wasn't overvalued by the fed in the same way dutch tulips weren't over valued by gold ingots. People are quite capable of blowing up a bubble on their own.
On the environmental front - recognizing that you're not really fighting me - (government) controls and audits are an absolute necessity for anyone who produces toxic waste.
On the current financial crisis - the root of the problem is indeed bad mortgages, but the total value of the US mortgages is somewhere around $2 trillion. Compare that to the total value of CDSs, which was at one point around $30 trillion. If the problem were confined to the mortgage business we would have already bought ourselves out. The largely unregulated financial institutions have compounded our problems many times over.
I'm not arguing that nationalizing debt is a facet of libertarianism, I'm arguing that it it it's fatal flaw. I know that libertarians don't accept this argument, but the citizenry doesn't have the patience to watch things play out. In this interconnected economy there are cascading failures that we cannot abide.
Remember when the bailout was first being pitched back in September and ashen-faced congressmen on both sides left a meeting with Hank Paulson, stepped up to the podium and said that this is something we must do? Well, apparently Paulson, a regulation-is-always-bad child of wall street, literally said that martial law could result without a bail out. Now maybe that was a bit hyperbolic, but at a minimum the credit markets would have completely seized. Meaning no loans for anyone. Businesses would be unable to make payroll, retailers couldn't acquire inventory, people would be unable to access their money. There is no libertarian solution to such a problem. Let them fail doesn't cut it. There isn't an investor in the country with access enough liquid capital to snap up failed banks at fire sale prices, make good on their obligations, and avert disaster. Wall Street was largely unregulated and it drove this country to the brink of financial ruin. The proof is in the pudding, when push comes to shove, it's better to nationalize debt than have people take to the streets.
Last thing, a big reason for the tenth amendment's inclusion was slavery. Libertarian arguments that the states should be allowed to do whatever they please because of the tenth amendment fundamentally rests on a phrase included in a document that allowed local governments to trump human rights. I'm a huge fan of the constitution, but I'm under no illusions that it's perfect - we should be able to amend it to fix these problems, but the political reality of the day is that we're not going to be able to modify the bill of rights. The exploitation of the commerce clause is far from ideal, but it does make a certain amount of sense.
You're telling me we can predict bubbles but are still powerless to mitigate their effects?
Look someone could have looked at a chart of median home prices vs. median salary, realized the price of housing was unsustainable, and put the brakes on things like liar loans and ARMs. If we had simply restricted the issuance of ARMs the entire housing bust could have been avoided.
You want to know what the next bubble to burst will be? Consumer Credit. You want to know how we could fix it today? Stop issuing new credit to people who have maxed out credit cards in excess of 25% of their adjusted gross income. There might be an immediate increase in the number of bankruptcies, and the credit providers will have to write down some losses, but it is better than having VISA go to congress in 5 years asking for a multi-billion dollar bail out. That's the trick with financial regulation, you need to step up and take the bitter medicine now so it doesn't explode in a couple of years. Call it the Volcker school of disaster avoidance.
This reply may too become unwieldy, so thanks for your patience.
What I'm saying is that institutions that are "too big to fail" will naturally arise without draconian (and undesirable) controls. It's the dark side of economies of scale. When these institutions run into trouble, which they inevitably will, it is in societies interests not to let them fail - because they can literally take society down with them. Therefore, libertarianism can only exist on the boom side of the cycle, and will always yield to nationalization on the bust side. In this way, libertarian and free-market ideals serve to privatize wealth and nationalize debt. Failing the nationalization of debt the middle class evaporates almost overnight, the lower class is cast into abject poverty, and the wealthy become every wealthier off the backs of the peasants in a neo-feudal system. Just take a look at some of the chicago school experiments in latin america to see what I mean.
Alright, it's some of the more wing-nutty libertarians who propose privatization of justice, but they do exist, I'm not going to bother telling you why it's a bad idea - just know there are people who advocate private police forces that protect and serve by contract, complete with a bounty system. It's crazy I tell you.
As for the libertarianism and the environment... The problem is that one individual, and certainly one company can do orders of magnitude more damage than their life is worth. Let's say I own union carbide and I accidentally poison your village killing everyone. Oops, time to file for bankruptcy. You can even liquidate the shareholder and executives assets and throw them in prison for the rest of your life, and not even come close to being able to repair the damage to property - to say nothing of the loss of life. And even that example is localized - what do you do when a company decides it's worth the risk of being caught pumping tons of CFCs into the atmosphere because it saves them a couple cents per widget - you will never be able to repair the damage. That's why we have the superfund now. Again, libertarianism is all about privatizing profit, and nationalizing downside damage.
About the follies of the banking industry over the past 5+ years. You're wrong that no one was calling for regulation, you're wrong that no one thought 40:1 leveraging was a bad idea, and you're wrong that no one saw the impending collapse. The main stream media sure didn't tell you about it, and the (anti-regulation) government sure wasn't listening, but the dissent was there. Warren Buffet's private wealth was all in treasury bonds before the collapse - because he saw it coming. Paul Krugman warned about the property value collapse in his previous book (even if he got some of the details wrong). Bernie Madoff was investigated - the SEC just abdicated their responsibility. Financial wonks new what was going to happen in September in January Plenty of people saw this coming, and if we had actual accountants checking actual books for the last eight years, perhaps we could have softened the blow.
You're right I was. The problem stands that no one should be running for president of the united states, who thinks the position is incapable of action. If libertarians and republicans want to run for congress, governor, or state assembly, more power to them, they can try to reduce executive powers from there. What we absolutely cannot afford is to have power concentrated in the executive branch that is not used for ideological reasons. In a larger sense, the problem with the libertarian, states rights agenda
Effective government regulation... Ever been hunting of fishing? Ever tried to get a CDL - or been run over by an unlicensed truck driver? Has your building ever burned down or collapsed because it wasn't up to code? Do you get better or worse gas mileage than you did in 1970? Is the air you breathe and the water you drink more or less poisonous than it was in 1970? Here's the kicker - most of that happened IN SPITE of chief executives who think less regulation is better - and wouldn't have happened without regulation.
The whole point of Keynesian economics (not socialism) is to moderate the business cycle. Boom/bust cycles are extremely damaging and we'd be better off with out them (note: this is not a goal to be achieved by all means necessary - some market volatility is both unavoidable and probably even desirable.) So yeah, boom/bust cycles are natural phenomenon in an unregulated market, but the market exists to serve us, not the other way around - so we regulate and try to shave some of the extremes off the business cycle.
I'm trying to figure out what your point is... free markets are good and Enron is an example of that? In all of your examples, with the possible exception of the tech bubble which may have been unavoidable, the public would have been better served by simple and effective regulations.
whew got a little carried away there...
Let me clarify - I understand the argument that gold is a good choice for the basis of trade because it's somewhat rare, and can't be conjured into existence at the whim of the government. It's just that the argument is bunk. When even Milton Friedman's is more moderate than you, it's time to re-examine where you stand. Inflation may be a stealth tax, but that doesn't make it a bad thing - if the FED were even to hint that it was going to hold the amount of currency in circulation static (to curb a hypothetical inflation problem) you'd see everyone with capital go into full blown hoard mode - and the economy would grind to a halt.
Now extrapolate to gold - every time there was a hint of a problem at a mine (which are almost all inconveniently located in third world countries) and the economy would stutter. Or in other words, stability wise, the price of bread would look like the price of oil - how do you budget for that?
Intelligent libertarians are the one's that never liked Regan's social agenda and have since realized that his economic agenda was smoke and mirrors. Now they're plain old liberals (although most are still afraid to call themselves that).
bullshit.
MBSs in particular are backed by real tangible property. It's just slit and re-bundled so many times no one knows what anyone is buying. Having a gold standard wouldn't do a damn thing to fix derivatives. Similarly, CDSs are a form of insurance - can insurance exist under a gold standard? If so, so can CDSs.
Bubbles don't require fiat currency, one of the most famous was the dutch tulip bubble - while the Netherlands was on the gold standard. You Austrians crack me up - if only we went to gold all the worlds problems would magically go away... Never mind that the price of gold itself is volatile and linked more to psychological effects than even paper currency. If fiat currencies suddenly collapsed all the gold hoarders in the world would feel real smug for about 2 weeks, until they figured out that they can't eat the stuff, and no one is going to trade useful goods for a shiny hunk of metal.
the ones that called government "interferences" like regulating CDSs and MBSs abhorrent obstructions to delicate market signals.
I'm certainly not arguing for a control economy - but what we need is effective (not necessarily more, not less) government oversight. The whole idea is that if we think that e.g. the banking sector is so indispensable that it must be propped up at all costs (which it probably is) we damn well ought to be making sure they don't do objectively stupid things like leverage themselves 40:1 - and paying themselves billions for driving the company into the ground. There's little mystery why the W administration was only weakly interested in such things - they didn't think government could work.
Why people would continue to vote for candidates who's position is that the office they're running for is ineffective is beyond me.
There is a structural problem with libertarianism in that the downside risks will never justify the potential upside gains. Every single time there is a financial crisis, you hear the same refrain, "too big to fail, too big to fail," and that's how profit is privatized and debt nationalized. Maybe in a cottage industry setting where we didn't experience cascading failures we'd pay more attention to libertarian ideas (but even then you still have those pesky workers rights issues) but in the modern global economy libertarianism is hazardous to our health, wealth, and life.
Again, those still espousing those ideas are either hopelessly naive, or are positioned to end up in the top 1% with the inevitable stratifying of wealth that accompanies execution of libertarian ideas.
sorry AC, have you seen some of our Austrian school commentators around here? Does the phrase laissez faire mean anything to you? Nothing is sacred in (some) libertarian circles, from justice to environmental controls, everything can be done better privately than publicly. Hell, private soldiering is blasé now.
Besides, the ideas have done a great job of discrediting themselves over the last 6 months - I just like to poke at the hopelessly naive and the dangerous ideologues from time to time.
as much as I'm a fan of free speech, I'm not so sure we should be calling high school vice principles "public figures." I don't know the details of this particular case, but a student most certainly can harass a school official, and that is something that (IMO) should be illegal.
if I were every to support a death penalty (which I don't) it would be exclusively for war crimes, and judicial/police/political corruption.
Murderers sure suck, but they aren't rational decision makers to begin with, so the deterrent factor doesn't matter. Corrupt government officials wield the full power of the state and are truly hideous individuals.