Actually, I think you are the one confusing Austrian economics use of "rational action" with something completely different; "wise action". In Human Action, Mises only claims that people act in the way they believe will best satisfy their preferences. Preferences might be short sighted (leisure) or even self-destructive (drugs), but they are still, for the most part, rational choices. The portion of capital that is spent, saved, or invested by people who are rationally weighing options and consciously making a choice far, far, exceeds that of the irrational actors (i.e. drug addicts, Miley Cyrus fans, etc.). So much so, the latter is almost irrelevant.
Also, Austrian economics is a theory of economics, not sociology. Granted, the two are related, but it’s a stretch to expect it to provide normative value in something as far afield as criminal justice.
How would regulation that mandates fuses in power-plugs harm you, a mere consumer?
Stupid regulation is costly when you consider it in the aggregate. A few cents for mandated fused plugs, a few cents for shutters, a few more for stress reliefs; times hundreds of millions of devices sold / year adds up. The real problem here isn't adding one new little rule requiring the use of fused plugs though, it's the thousands upon thousands of little rules that cruft up the inventive process over time that really hurt. Each little straw added to that proverbial camel's back makes it just a little harder for good products to get into the market. The steadily increasing likelihood of a non-compliance fine or lawsuit makes investors and entrepreneurs less willing to try new ideas and start new businesses too. Eventually all the small, agile, innovative companies get squashed and only the behemoths survive, to the detriment of all of us consumers. Look at any established and "well" regulated industry for anecdotal evidence of this (automobiles, railroads, drugs, telephone, etc., etc., etc.). Now compare those to largely "unregulated" industries (software, elective medicine(Lasic), literature, computers, electronics).
Or is this somekind of "I have god given right to use plugs without fuses!"-thingy? Seriously, what's the harm in having fuses in power-plugs, and what would be the harm in government mandating it?
It's simple, fused plugs and shutters offer little real protection from electrical shock. On the other hand, GFCI and AFCI interrupts are very good at preventing shocks, even when someone is bound and determined to get themselves a Darwin award. These are required for all "wet" areas here and you can even install them, as I have, at the central breaker panel to cover the whole house.
Doesn't government already mandate what kind of powerplugs and electrical system you have? Why aren't you complaining about that, and insisting on more options?
Most of those requirements are covered by the National Electric Code, which is _largely_ the product of electricians and safety engineers (UL Labs for example). Crap like fused plugs is the products of politicians and trial lawyers. I'll stick with advice from the prior group, thank you.
>>However, if exceptional care is not taken then these storage and management costs can escalate until a substantial amount of the stored value is spent ensuring the continued survival of the commodity which stores that value.
The fed charges interest on money they create out of thin air. Since 1955, this interest has averaged around 5%, but it has been as high as 16.39% in 1981. Every dollar in circulation is a perpetual stream of profit to the cartel of banks making up the federal reserve system, for doing absolutely nothing. In contrast, bailment companies provide secure, and insured, storage of commodities and charge a fee around 1% of value for major customers. Why would anyone not prefer the latter?
>>...I am sympathetic to the gold standard I am not yet prepared to back a return to the gold standard for two (2) primary reason: First, it is impossible to know for sure who has already horded gold and where and in how much quantity. Thus, at least for the short term, it would open us up to outside meddling in our economy and money supply by alternatively hoarding or dumping of gold supplies until an equilibrium was reached. Second, there is not enough physical gold in existence to back every transaction which occurs in our global economy with a meaningful quantity of gold.
Granted, but you are arguing against a straw man. Most hard money advocates don't propose a return to a gold backed dollar, at least not right away. The first step would be to decriminalize the use of alternate currencies backed by commodities. You'd immediately see gold notes, silver notes, and a host of other currencies with all the benefits of a dollar, but without the fed tax. Over a period of years, decades maybe, demand for fed notes would wither as they continued to inflate the greenback into oblivion. At first, it would be painful to have to constantly check conversion rates, but this would pass soon enough. I'm sure technology would fill that void as your cell phone could provide real time market data anywhere. The price of an item would, one day, be shown as g-Au, g-Pt, g-Ag for grams of gold, platinum, or silver for example.
The worldwide supply of elements useful for representing wealth is surprisingly predictable. The point here is: hoarding doesn't work; it usually hurts the hoarder most. Consider too, no one has succeeded at "cornering the market" on a commodity used as currency. There are very powerful economic equilibrium forces that make it impractical.
>>...the government exercises a great deal of control, by virtue of their monopoly on hard power (i.e. military might), over the money supply so any solution to the fiat money problems or even commodity money must involve the government at some level, unless one is advocating anarchy which I reject as unworkable.
I absolutely agree. To my reckoning, anarchists are actually more delusional than communists. At least communists can honestly say there has never been a real life test of communist theory (per Engels, Marx, etal). Anarchists, on the other hand, have lots of historical examples of what happens to people that don't organize enough government to at least provide a common defense. They get killed, pillaged, and conquered.
I liked where you were going, but your logic jumped the rails on the last sentence.
>>However, the basic system as it exists today in the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world, including debt, is very necessary for our modern economy to function and you would be hard pressed to find many people who would prefer to go back to the standards of living that were commonplace a few hundred years in the past before substantial economic growth and modern finance made our modern world possible.
I hear this a lot, and yet there is not ONE SINGLE SHRED of evidence that a fractional reserve currency facilitates economic growth better than hard currency (I.E. gold notes, silver notes, wheat notes, or, even better, amalgam notes that combine many commodities). You still get portability, fungibility, and divisibility with the added benefit of stability. The current federal reserve system wasn't established in the U.S. until 1913 and then it proceeded to immediately cause the first nation wide boom/bust cycle in the 1920's and 30's. The economy in the U.S. actually grew faster the century before we adopted fiat money.
It's a mistake to attribute quality of life and growth of technology over the last century to any positive influence of the government or it's bastard step-child, the federal reserve. The explosive growth of the industrial and information ages occurred here mostly because we had lots of space, vast resources, little regulation, a literate population, and, last but defintely not least, freedom for one to succeed or fail on their own merits. Combine all that with advances in financial instruments (stocks, options, hedge funds, etal.) and even government incompetence couldn't screw it up.
Eliminate the FED:
What's so special about a cartel of banks with a monopoly to print money? Couldn't the US Treasury do this just as well, without the extra percent or two of profit the reserve banks put in their pocket? We would still have a fiat currency, just without secret manipulations that cause bubbles and credit crunches. Seems like a pretty reasonable solution to me.
Gold/Commodity backed currency:
First, Ron isn't proposing we replace our fait currency or even that we tie it to gold like we did before 1971. All he wants is to allow hard money as an alternative currency. The key difference here is this; if I buy gold today for $100 and the dollar inflates 10% tomorrow my gold is now worth $110. Therefore, I would owe taxes on $10 because holding gold is considered an investment. This is the only thing preventing people from using gold certificates as currency today.
It would even be reasonable to negotiate your salary in whatever currency you prefer. Can you imagine having your paycheck deposited as x grams of gold? That alone would improve dollar stability as people would constantly be moving money back and forth; $75 for the water bill, 2.6gg (gold grams) for the car payment, etc.
Ron Paul is not being misleading and your assertion that his ideas would "tank the global economy" is completely bogus. I suggest you take your own advice and talk to an economist who has actually looked into Ron's positions and is not just reacting to media characterizations of him. I know a few myself and they are unanimously positive on Ron Paul's economic policies.
You are correct that a fungible monetary supply is a major concern, but it is not the only one. Only slightly less important is the charging of interest on all FED produced currencies. You may think you _own_ that dollar bill in your pocket, but actually it has just been lent to you (indirectly) by the reserve banks. In the chain of possession between you and the source, someone is paying the FED interest for the use of that dollar and has increased the cost of their goods accordingly. Consider how taxes always wind up getting paid by the consumer, no matter where they are levied. If an imported car is taxed at the port (a tariff), at the dealer (corporate tax), or at the sale (sales tax) the cost of those taxes is added to the purchase price.
This is not true of gold or other commodity-based currencies though. There isn't a _built-in_ debasement of any hard currency.
Also, you're point about being "dependent on belief in how much gold is behind the doller" is wrong as well. Public auditing has worked just fine for hundreds of years and I see no reason why it would fail today.
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Actually, I think you are the one confusing Austrian economics use of "rational action" with something completely different; "wise action". In Human Action, Mises only claims that people act in the way they believe will best satisfy their preferences. Preferences might be short sighted (leisure) or even self-destructive (drugs), but they are still, for the most part, rational choices. The portion of capital that is spent, saved, or invested by people who are rationally weighing options and consciously making a choice far, far, exceeds that of the irrational actors (i.e. drug addicts, Miley Cyrus fans, etc.). So much so, the latter is almost irrelevant.
Also, Austrian economics is a theory of economics, not sociology. Granted, the two are related, but it’s a stretch to expect it to provide normative value in something as far afield as criminal justice.
How would regulation that mandates fuses in power-plugs harm you, a mere consumer?
Stupid regulation is costly when you consider it in the aggregate. A few cents for mandated fused plugs, a few cents for shutters, a few more for stress reliefs; times hundreds of millions of devices sold / year adds up. The real problem here isn't adding one new little rule requiring the use of fused plugs though, it's the thousands upon thousands of little rules that cruft up the inventive process over time that really hurt. Each little straw added to that proverbial camel's back makes it just a little harder for good products to get into the market. The steadily increasing likelihood of a non-compliance fine or lawsuit makes investors and entrepreneurs less willing to try new ideas and start new businesses too. Eventually all the small, agile, innovative companies get squashed and only the behemoths survive, to the detriment of all of us consumers. Look at any established and "well" regulated industry for anecdotal evidence of this (automobiles, railroads, drugs, telephone, etc., etc., etc.). Now compare those to largely "unregulated" industries (software, elective medicine(Lasic), literature, computers, electronics).
Or is this somekind of "I have god given right to use plugs without fuses!"-thingy? Seriously, what's the harm in having fuses in power-plugs, and what would be the harm in government mandating it?
It's simple, fused plugs and shutters offer little real protection from electrical shock. On the other hand, GFCI and AFCI interrupts are very good at preventing shocks, even when someone is bound and determined to get themselves a Darwin award. These are required for all "wet" areas here and you can even install them, as I have, at the central breaker panel to cover the whole house.
Doesn't government already mandate what kind of powerplugs and electrical system you have? Why aren't you complaining about that, and insisting on more options?
Most of those requirements are covered by the National Electric Code, which is _largely_ the product of electricians and safety engineers (UL Labs for example). Crap like fused plugs is the products of politicians and trial lawyers. I'll stick with advice from the prior group, thank you.
>>However, if exceptional care is not taken then these storage and management costs can escalate until a substantial amount of the stored value is spent ensuring the continued survival of the commodity which stores that value.
...the government exercises a great deal of control, by virtue of their monopoly on hard power (i.e. military might), over the money supply so any solution to the fiat money problems or even commodity money must involve the government at some level, unless one is advocating anarchy which I reject as unworkable.
The fed charges interest on money they create out of thin air. Since 1955, this interest has averaged around 5%, but it has been as high as 16.39% in 1981. Every dollar in circulation is a perpetual stream of profit to the cartel of banks making up the federal reserve system, for doing absolutely nothing. In contrast, bailment companies provide secure, and insured, storage of commodities and charge a fee around 1% of value for major customers. Why would anyone not prefer the latter?
>>...I am sympathetic to the gold standard I am not yet prepared to back a return to the gold standard for two (2) primary reason: First, it is impossible to know for sure who has already horded gold and where and in how much quantity. Thus, at least for the short term, it would open us up to outside meddling in our economy and money supply by alternatively hoarding or dumping of gold supplies until an equilibrium was reached. Second, there is not enough physical gold in existence to back every transaction which occurs in our global economy with a meaningful quantity of gold.
Granted, but you are arguing against a straw man. Most hard money advocates don't propose a return to a gold backed dollar, at least not right away. The first step would be to decriminalize the use of alternate currencies backed by commodities. You'd immediately see gold notes, silver notes, and a host of other currencies with all the benefits of a dollar, but without the fed tax. Over a period of years, decades maybe, demand for fed notes would wither as they continued to inflate the greenback into oblivion. At first, it would be painful to have to constantly check conversion rates, but this would pass soon enough. I'm sure technology would fill that void as your cell phone could provide real time market data anywhere. The price of an item would, one day, be shown as g-Au, g-Pt, g-Ag for grams of gold, platinum, or silver for example.
The worldwide supply of elements useful for representing wealth is surprisingly predictable. The point here is: hoarding doesn't work; it usually hurts the hoarder most. Consider too, no one has succeeded at "cornering the market" on a commodity used as currency. There are very powerful economic equilibrium forces that make it impractical.
>>
I absolutely agree. To my reckoning, anarchists are actually more delusional than communists. At least communists can honestly say there has never been a real life test of communist theory (per Engels, Marx, etal). Anarchists, on the other hand, have lots of historical examples of what happens to people that don't organize enough government to at least provide a common defense. They get killed, pillaged, and conquered.
I liked where you were going, but your logic jumped the rails on the last sentence.
>>However, the basic system as it exists today in the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world, including debt, is very necessary for our modern economy to function and you would be hard pressed to find many people who would prefer to go back to the standards of living that were commonplace a few hundred years in the past before substantial economic growth and modern finance made our modern world possible.
I hear this a lot, and yet there is not ONE SINGLE SHRED of evidence that a fractional reserve currency facilitates economic growth better than hard currency (I.E. gold notes, silver notes, wheat notes, or, even better, amalgam notes that combine many commodities). You still get portability, fungibility, and divisibility with the added benefit of stability. The current federal reserve system wasn't established in the U.S. until 1913 and then it proceeded to immediately cause the first nation wide boom/bust cycle in the 1920's and 30's. The economy in the U.S. actually grew faster the century before we adopted fiat money.
It's a mistake to attribute quality of life and growth of technology over the last century to any positive influence of the government or it's bastard step-child, the federal reserve. The explosive growth of the industrial and information ages occurred here mostly because we had lots of space, vast resources, little regulation, a literate population, and, last but defintely not least, freedom for one to succeed or fail on their own merits. Combine all that with advances in financial instruments (stocks, options, hedge funds, etal.) and even government incompetence couldn't screw it up.
OK, let's look at these individually...
Eliminate the FED: What's so special about a cartel of banks with a monopoly to print money? Couldn't the US Treasury do this just as well, without the extra percent or two of profit the reserve banks put in their pocket? We would still have a fiat currency, just without secret manipulations that cause bubbles and credit crunches. Seems like a pretty reasonable solution to me.
Gold/Commodity backed currency: First, Ron isn't proposing we replace our fait currency or even that we tie it to gold like we did before 1971. All he wants is to allow hard money as an alternative currency. The key difference here is this; if I buy gold today for $100 and the dollar inflates 10% tomorrow my gold is now worth $110. Therefore, I would owe taxes on $10 because holding gold is considered an investment. This is the only thing preventing people from using gold certificates as currency today.
It would even be reasonable to negotiate your salary in whatever currency you prefer. Can you imagine having your paycheck deposited as x grams of gold? That alone would improve dollar stability as people would constantly be moving money back and forth; $75 for the water bill, 2.6gg (gold grams) for the car payment, etc.
Ron Paul is not being misleading and your assertion that his ideas would "tank the global economy" is completely bogus. I suggest you take your own advice and talk to an economist who has actually looked into Ron's positions and is not just reacting to media characterizations of him. I know a few myself and they are unanimously positive on Ron Paul's economic policies.
You are correct that a fungible monetary supply is a major concern, but it is not the only one. Only slightly less important is the charging of interest on all FED produced currencies. You may think you _own_ that dollar bill in your pocket, but actually it has just been lent to you (indirectly) by the reserve banks. In the chain of possession between you and the source, someone is paying the FED interest for the use of that dollar and has increased the cost of their goods accordingly. Consider how taxes always wind up getting paid by the consumer, no matter where they are levied. If an imported car is taxed at the port (a tariff), at the dealer (corporate tax), or at the sale (sales tax) the cost of those taxes is added to the purchase price.
This is not true of gold or other commodity-based currencies though. There isn't a _built-in_ debasement of any hard currency.
Also, you're point about being "dependent on belief in how much gold is behind the doller" is wrong as well. Public auditing has worked just fine for hundreds of years and I see no reason why it would fail today.