I read somewhere in this forum that America was in debt by 9 trillion. And I suppose that most of that is due to the war. How much would you be able to accomplish with that money in research? Or even just going straight out and supplying America with green power, how much would that cost.

Also, in reply to krazy kaju, are you advocating the corporations and businesses when you seem to be against the government?

And yes as much as the government has too much control over taxes and such, taking an immoral advantage of it but I think they should be the ones in the power of the market, sort of. I guess I'm not very informed on this but I don't like the free market system much. It seems like a system where the businesses have too much control over wealth.

I agree with you that we need to get the hell out of Iraq.

But the way to go about it, monetarily, isn't to spend more elsewhere, but to cut spending and taxes.



Yup.



The businesses only have power over wealth in-so-far as they're beneficial to the community. If a particular business provides a valuable product, more people will buy it, giving that business a greater portion of the market share (and control of wealth). But if that business is out-competed (is that a word?) by another business, they lose market share.

The free market system ensures maximum efficiency in the economy. The only exception I could make were if man-made global warming were actually a problem, in which case a carbon tax (not that "cap-and-trade "crap) would be needed to cause proper price-mechanisms to exist in the market.

So you think a bureaucrat can more accurately determine the value of oil products than the market?

Gas prices are nothing but a product of large monetary expansion, low supply, and high demand. Basic economics. If prices were held artificially low, you would have shortages a la the 70s all over again.

In other words, marginal utility is awesome.

You sound like a good candidate for an anarchist.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to conflict with your statement that: I do not expect any government to be trustwrothy, trust worthy enough to make pragmatic economic decisions.

Actually, you are.

Your original statement to which I replied was: That's the idea, as I follow it. But the question is how well will consumers and workers be protected. Chasing ideals does not put food on the table.

In here, you're essentially stating that the government has a right to take away our money to provide "protection." In other words, the government knows our own interests better than we do.

For example, a consumer cannot buy from trustworthy businesses or apply to consumer-protection groups to protect him/herself from fraud. In short, the government knows better how much of your money it should allocate for protecting you than you do.

Again, let me restate your original statement (for your utility of course): And you're expecting comparative advantage to be an economic cure all. As for my economic world viewpoint - I've made no such claim. My view point is that we should be pragmatic, however radical I might be.

As already stated, no government can really have a "pragmatic" economic policy. Governments, just like individual persons, are bound to fail. If an individual screws up, s/he screws things up for him/herself and possibly a few others. If a government screws up, it potentially screws **** up for billions of people.

What has been viewed as "government pragmatism" has lead to levels of inflation, unemployment, and all-around misery that would not exist in a pure free market.

Your statement was that not all regulations and taxes are harmful. I showed you examples of how the most commonly used taxes distort the price system and contribute to modern day problems.

I'm not putting words in your mouth as much as parodying the idea that taxes aren't harmful.

Yes, Ricardo assumed that capital was immobile. So what? The same principles apply. I believe Ricardo used an example of England and Portugal trading textiles and some kind of farming products (I think wine or something, I don't remember though). The idea was that England was better at producing textiles while Portugal was better at producing wine or whatever. Hence, the Portugese textile industry went under while the English wine industry went under. In turn, England specialized in textiles while Portugal specialized in wine and both nations benefited from cheaper, higher quality products.

The same applies to mobile capital, but instead of businesses going under and hence leaving people unemployed, businesses move and hence leave people unemployed. For example, in Ricardo's example the Portugese textile industry most likely went bankrupt, leaving a lot of workers without a job temporarily. In the modern market, a textile firm might move from Portugal to England causing frictional unemployment. Same difference.

The point was that you are implying that jobs in your house, block, city, state, region, nation, continent, etc. are more important somehow than jobs in somebody else's house, block, city, state, region, nation, continent, etc.

That amounts to some kind of xenophobia or racism. Essentially you're saying that ensuring constant employment of someone who lives closer to you or is more similar to you is more valuable than letting someone who lives further away or across some kind of imaginary boundary get that job (and do it more efficiently).

So then the burden of proof falls on you.

Provide one example of regulation that was better than what a pure free market could provide.

Bail outs and government control of the money supply are considered deregulation?

Economic policy shouldn't change with "current circumstances."

First of all, there is no perfect government which could perfectly manage the economy based on the circumstance it was currently in.

I think you need to learn a bit more about the ICC and other regulatory commissions as well as the monetary history of the United States.

As for Standard Oil - see this.

Really? It's great to see that you're advocating pragmatic economic policy, because I am too! And the most pragmatic economic policy is no economic policy.

The housing booms and busts are all created by the Fed, as I already mentioned. Please reread the post.

Don't expect me to take you seriously unless you provide detailed examples. What specifically did the government "deregulate?" How did the markets respond? Could the market response be considered a market failure or a market correction?

On a side note, empiricism in economics isn't the smartest thing ever due to several overlying factors that are usually overlooked.

If food wasn't labeled there means that there wasn't a great demand by consumers for transparency of products. It also means that there probably were some kind of government intervention (probably by restricting tort laws) allowing businesses to be unaccountable to individuals for incorrectly labeled food products.

And again, the Pure Food and Drug Act didn't do anything that the free market wouldn't do if there was a demand for something similar.

Just to drive the point home, the Pure Food and Drug Act was simply another act essentially stating that the government knows better what it should do with your money than you do.

Careful now. The current market, yes. The "market", ideally, no. Oil prices are also influenced by OPEC and the ability of corporations to artificially raise the price of oil. Basic economics, just of the sort that economists denounce.

I'm not sure bureaucrat really captures the nature of the job, but yes, I think some degree of regulation (and I use that term losely, lose enough to include aggressive public protest) would be useful. Of course, I'm not an economist and could very well be wrong - if my suggestion is not pragmatic, it should be discarded.

The heart of our disagreement, I think, is that you see capitalism (vaguely) as necessarily pragmatic and I disagree. While I am extremely sympathetic to capitalism, the vast array of possible economic and social conditions suggest that we should not restrict ourselves to any idealic pursuits in economic policy and instead be open and sensitive to whatever conditions arise - and be willing to move against our ideals when those conditions call for us to compromise.

Government doesn't have the right to do anything at all. However, if we are going to allow the government to handle economic policy in the first place then the government must be allowed to react to the economic environment.

The government is necessarily better at quantify values than the market place, but sometimes, in some cases, the government might be better. And in those cases, if we are going to have the government handle economic policy, the government should quantify those values.

But a pure free market, the sort that would eradicate the economic woes you currently blame government pragmatism for, is impossible in a global economy without all nations applying pure free market economics.

All persons are not bound to ultimate failure, though they do make mistakes. But the propensity for human mistakes is nothing that free market economics can avoid. Instead of governments messing up things for millions, corporations, wealthy individuals, the new concentrations of power will have the potential to mess things up for vast numbers.

Well crafted governments are much easier to restrain than corporations and wealthy individuals which exist in a pure free market economy.

Then you missed my point. Here it is again:
"Taxes and regulations can do as you say (or at least influence - property tax isn't the only factor in urban sprawl), but they do not necessarily do more harm than good."

Check the word 'necessarily'. I agreed that you are generally right, but not always. Taxes can and often are harmful, but sometimes they are more helpful than not. It comes down to circumstance. Of course, as long as our fundamental disagreement remains, I do not expect you to agree that pragmatic concerns sometimes trump idealistic rhetoric on how to handle the economy.

In the case of Ricardo, he didn't merely think capital was immobile, his arguments for comparative advantage were premised in the fact that capital was, to a large extent, immobile.

The problem of a global market is that we have to deal with all nations, and all of the world's capital at once, instead of simply that of England and Portugal.

Like it or not, there are protectionist nations, there are nations willing to use all sorts of dirty tricks to promote their own economic advantage.

Maybe you can help me with this one. If comparative advantage works in today's global market, how do we end up with cheaper, lower qualty products instead of cheaper, higher quality products?

As I see it, protectionism is a huge part of the problem - simple merchantilism on the part of all parties involved. Pushing for a world in which all nations adopt pure free trade is clearly a pipe dream. So, when we set economic policy for whatever nation we live in, we must accept that other nations will have different policies, crafted for their own advantage with the intention of disadvantaging our nation.

But what happens when we interject China and large corporation X? China will produce wine and textiles, of lower quality, but at much lower prices than either England or France. Meanwhile, corporation X will sell the cheaper, lower quality goods at prices the English and French cannot match. X also has vast marketing resources, able to advertise the Chinese goods, which seems to make up for low quality in the eyes of consumers.

The result, that I foresee, is that the English and French go out of business, unable to keep up with the super low prices offered by X and the cheaper Chinese products.

These sorts of arguments may work well on paper when you attempt to extrapolate from economic ideals into morality, but when confronted with a halfway decent human being these arguments amount to ad hominem attacks.

I'm saying that we cannot always change the cast of those living far away. I'm saying that governments tend to exert influence over a certain area and not beyond that area - and we are talking about governments. I'm saying that if we are going to talk about what some government should do, we cannot expect that government to solve the whole world's problems. Instead, we should expect that government to make pragmatic and responsible economic decisions for the people that government represents. Did I say the government should abuse the rest of the world for the sake of the people said government represents? No, I didn't.

A pure free market is impossible.

Right, because that's the only event that took place. The government did not repeal lending regulations or anythng like that, right? Come on now.

If at time A, action X is best, and then at time B, action Y is best, I suggest at time A we take X action and at time B we take Y action.

Doing otherwise is just plain dumb.

Absolutely. And again, this is beside the point. No corporation is perfect, no human being is perfect. No one is perfect. If you don't like my shirt because the shirt is red, and then suggest I try a different red shirt, I'm going to give you a funny look. I'm giving you that same funny look right now.

And again, a pure free market is idealistic and impossible. Such a thing would require all nations to adopt pure free market economics. Chasing ideals does not work.

Standard Oil is an extreme case. As with governments, size does not determine the scope of corruption, only the mass of corruption.

I don't know - if China's economic policy is to ship artificially cheap products to the US with the goal of destroying a particular sector of the US economy, the US better damn well make an economic policy - otherwise, that industry is going under.

So? The Fed exists, and we still need some economic policy. At the time, the deregulation was bad policy. Maybe had we done away with the Fed, but we haven't.

Then don't take me seriously. Lord knows it makes no difference to me.

Cute. Except that empiricism is all we have.

Enough of a demand for politicians to change the law, but not enough for the 'market' to hanlde the problem?

These chartlatans didn't want to be honest and up front because doing so would destroy their industry. Mislabeling occured, but more often than not, ingrediants were simply not listed.

You can go on all day about how a pure free market would have solved the problem, but a pure free market is impossible.

You're pulling nails out of the board, brother.

The PFDA didn't tell consumers how to spend their money, it directed companies to properly label their products.

I for one think the government was wise to allow the people to know what exactly we are spending our money on, and wise to usurp the corporate interests who suffered because of the increased information available to the public.

What about corporate media. Media advocates for the businesses in that the citizens are sometimes blindly taken in by 'it all'. Example - the 911 disaster. (Although it is of importance only if you believe it to be faked by the government).
911 helped businesses that Bush had ties to, not to mention Cheney.
And the businesses play no moral role at all. Not that it is their job within a capitalistic system I just feel that wealth creates greed and then selfishness which opposes morality as a negative emotion. With the businesses in control of wealth, and therefore weal b/c of free market there has to be an opposition (should be the government) regulating the morality 'distribution' for lack of a better word. But I suppose that the government (seen in the USA) advocates collecting wealth and dispersing it so as to collect it back singularily (the higher leveled leaders).
Does it help that bureaucracy is the current state of the government?:confused:

Wealth does not create greed. Self interest (which to the leftist is "greed") is and was present in all rational humans from time immemorial.

And your example of 9/11 is only really another example of government failing. It was simply the government misinforming the public via the media that it heavily regulates.