The only reason you view communism and free market capitalism as idealistic dreams is because of incessant government propaganda, half-truths, so-called "common logic," and outright lies being poured into your brain.

A perfect example of using empty words with no meaning while providing no evidence or arguments.

The only reason you view communism and free market capitalism as idealistic dreams is because of incessant government propaganda, half-truths, so-called "common logic," and outright lies being poured into your brain.

Depression was caused by Hoover's laissez faire, correct?

And communism isn't possible because everyone can't earn the same wage, right?

I never claimed that Mises was needed to show the errors of Marxian thought, but he was the first one to conclusively show that Marxism and Marxist-Leninism were inefficient economic systems.

Does this go for anyone who holds the belief that communism is an idealistic dream? Because I also hold the same belief, but I don't think it is due to 'outright lies being poured into [my] brain'.

See, I think communism (as Marx envisioned it) is an idealistic dream because he based his entire philosophy on the ideals of Hegel's systematic philosophy. The idea that the fluctuation between thesis and antithesis eventually has to come to an end with a perfect synthesis. Marx felt that this perfect synthesis was coming with the rise of the proletariat.

His philosophy is an idealistic dream, because any philosophy based entirely on ideals is a dream. Humanity has shown that we cannot conform fully to ideals because of our imperfections. It is the inevitable battle between Rationality and Emotion that bars us from reaching the perfection of ideals. We wear the lack of complete rationality around our neck like a prisoner shackled to to the floor. As David Hume so eloquently pointed out: Reason is a slave of the passions.

(disclaimer: I am definitely not an expert on either Marx or political philosophy.)

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. Criticism of communism, and absolute rejection of communism, should not have been a terribly difficult path to go down prior to Mises. I think history shows that Communism was opposed prior to Mises publishing.

I respect Mises and his school of thought; anarcho-capitalism is not entirely unknown to me. However, he is the school man running numbers and marking arguments. No matter how much we may enjoy the notion of absolute, laissez-faire capitalism, the notion is an ideal and unrealistic. We might go so far as to accept the economic premises of these schoolmen, as we often do, and I think we should. However, broad generalizations about failed systems is useless - both hyper capitalism and communism ultimately fail. Don't all systems? This is because conditions change. Instead, we should look at whatever value and wisdom might be in our vast array of failed systems. If we seem to find ourselves going to the capitalist book, great, whatever works. In time, we will trend elsewhere.

Ah, I get it - you can see through the veil of lies, but not poor ole me. Maybe, but that has nothing to do with why I view communism and free market capitalism as idealistic dreams. My logic has a lot in common with many, but few overall. People are quick to set up extremes. Try the middle.

I don't think Hoover's policies so much caused the depression as they did nothing to help the situation. But then again, Hoover wasn't the laissez fairre guy laissez faire guys sometimes want others to mistakenly think he was.

If you mean that greed will ultimately be a factor in the fail of any attempt at communism, yes. But that's true for everything.

I'd be thrilled if you could find an experimental or a theoretical example of "hypercapitalism" failing.

Sorry about that, I was a bit pissed off when I wrote that due to several outside reasons. Actually, I'm pretty much pissed off all the time, but that's beyond the scope of the topic.

In any case, how is the "middle" any better than true capitalism? Hasn't "the middle" led us into the multiple recessions we've experienced since the foundation... of, well... the modern nation state? In other words, haven't the top-down monetary expansions, taxes, regulations, and tariffs been the originator of many of mankind's disasters?

Actually, anti-laissez faire propagandists have blamed Hoover's "laissez faire policies" on the Great Depression.

The actual causes were government inspired, not the fault of the market. Monetary expansion reached epic proportions in the 1920s, and both Mises and Hayek actually predicted the Great Depression. What made the depression an actual depression (in the modern sense of the word) were Hoover's increased taxes, regulations, and the huge tariffs he imposed right after the stock market crash.

Actually, I was parodying the myth that communists believe in equal wages for everyone.

Chile and Argentina.

Makes me sad, too. I like Milton Friedman. Too bad about those fascist states.

It's cool.

The "middle" is always preferable - extremes always fail.

I'm not so sure pragmatic economic policy has led us into multiple recessions. I'm not so sure nations states make pragmatic economic policy - at least not very often.

As for the originator of man's disasters, this is greed.

But many of the things you name have also been harmful. But then again, irresponsible application of free market economics also leads to disaster.

The most significant government economic intervention to date - the later part of Hoover's term in office. Remember, extremes do not work.

Friedman isn't the best example of a free market economist.

But didn't the authoritarian regime of Chile fall due to massive deregulation of the market (following Hayek's hypothesis that markets and gov't tyranny cannot exist side-by-side)?

Care to explain the recurring business cycles caused by the belief in the "middle" in regards to market vs. government?

"Pragmatic economic policy" is another example of the need for government to be perfect. Laissez faire capitalism takes into account the fact that humans make mistakes. If an individual business makes a mistake, it goes out of business, which is a good thing since it allows for resources such as capital and labor to be reallocated appropriately.

On the other hand, when the government fails, it does so on a massive scale causing harm to everyone forced under the rule of that government.

Ayn Rand disagrees.

Yet you fail to provide examples...

I don't believe that mentioning the failure of socialism is a good example of laissez faire capitalism failing.

Why, because he made allowances for government operated parks? Honestly, you may not be much of a fan, you may prefer other classical liberal economists, but Friedman is one the best known and most respected among that company.

Right, massive deregulation. And sure, tyranny was no small factor. But the bottom line is that these examples are the only ones we have. Otherwise, capitalism has never been tried. I don't mind that position except that capitalism is about the economy. The economic policies employed by these regimes were blatant laissez faire with total disregard for pragmatic concerns - and for their inability to examine particular circumstances, and dogmatic application of capitalism, the economies collapsed.

Sure. We refuse to look for a middle path and instead chase extremes and special interests which cause our economy untold woe.

Good. Rand was a fool, a bigot and probably non-literate (not illiterate, mind you, but non-literate).

No. Chile and Argentina - irresponsible applications of free market economics. They may have had tyrannical governments, but much of this tyranny is expressed in their irresponsible application of free market economics. Had the leaders been responsible, I think Friedman's advice would have been ultimately helpful to those economies.

You're right, and if I had suggested otherwise you would have made a useful point with this statement.

Instead, I'm agreeing with you about the Hoover administration. Of course, Hoover's earlier laissez faire policies did not work either, now did they? And while Hoover was employing laissez faire policies, the Great Depression was still predicted by economists. No wonder. Extremes fail.

Actually, Friedman believed that the existence of a central bank was desirable and that wealth redistribution schemes are good. He also fell for the common Keynesian fallacy that consumption is what drives the economy, he called for more monetary expansion during economic downturns, and he believed that trust-busting was good.

I respect him as a great monetarist and mostly libertarian economist and thinker, but his beliefs are far from what true libertarians from the Misesian tradition believe.

Actually, the Chilean and Argentinian economies never collapsed due to laissez faire capitalism. You'd really have to provide evidence for that one.

I don't think you understand that the "middle path" you're speaking about necessarily implies Keynesian economic thinking which has already been tried and shown to be impractical.

Calling a philosopher a fool and a bigot isn't a very mature thing to do (although I've probably done the same).

What about Adam Smith? Ricardo? Menger? Mises? Bastiat? Hayek? Those are only a handful of economists who understood the use of self interest and how it drove the economy to create a net-benefit for everyone.

Monetarism isn't necessarily perfect nor is it a good example of laissez faire capitalism. For example, Bernanke is widely considered a monetarist but he has essentially been the cause of the mess we are in now (due to the monetarist belief that we need radical monetary expansion to prevent possible recessions).

Also, calling an economy with a large amount of government intervention similar to the US laissez faire is unfair.

But I will play with you on this one:

WOW. You're still following the old policy that the Great Depression was the fault of laissez faire economics?

Though he also called for the end to the Federal Reserve. And his negative income tax scheme was vastly different than.

His differences with the 'purer' sorts the more traditional libertarian thinking were pragmatic, compromises rooted in the realization that the world is not a purely free market place, and that treating the world as such is silly.

Sure, there were a few differences - central banking, for example. But even his central banking policy is rooted in fundamentally libertarian thought. Same is true of his position on trust busting - they shouldn't exist anyway, so let's get rid of them.

You can disagree if you like, I'm not going to debate basics of modern history with you. The debate you hope to have here is one that only fantatic libertarians take up, the rest of the world isn't emotionally attached to the extent that we have to be dishonest with ourselves.

You'll come around eventually. The facts are all there, you can do the research. I'm sure one day you will.

Aha! You have to remember that I don't trust governments enough to handle anything at all, much less the economy. But if we are going to have governments run things, well...

Calling Rand a philosopher isn't a very mature thing to do.

She thought homosexuality was "immoral and disgusting" - from some speech she gave in the mid '70's, look it up if you like. That's bigotry.

Right, it is a little unfair. As I've said the examples are not perfect, but they are the closest available. If we cannot even look to these examples, we have nothing to consider.

It's like communism. True communism has never been applied, but we can look at the attempts to find many errors in the general theory of communism.

But I will not oblige you. If you disagree with me, that's cool. And I'll respect your opinion on the matter, but I'm not going to engage the topic for reasons explained above.

WOW! You need to slow down when you read what I write.

Just in case you missed the other posts, I'm agreeing with you about the Hoover administration. The Depression was the result of horrible government regulation, ect.

Hoover began his administration with laissez faire styled policy, but soon moved towards excessive government control, trying franticly to fix what he could not change and, as a result, prolonged the misery of the depression.

Actually, if you have read Friedman's works, you can see that he was a supporter of a central banking system with fiat currencies and opposed the gold standard on the basis that it is "impractical" (without giving any explanation as to why).

And his support of wealth redistribution schemes like the guaranteed income and serious trust-busting was solely due to his upbringing in the Chicago School which has always held some odd views on the subject.

Only because one economist views something as pragmatic doesn't mean that it is. You want to know who to thank the current mess for? Well, you can start looking at Friedman's monetarist buddies like Bernanke and Greenspan.

Because government monopolies on currency are fundamentally libertarian and destroying competitive businesses that provide valuable products only because they are so competitive is also a fundamentally libertarian ideal.

Since when are government enforced monopolies, a fiat currency, lots of red tape, and high tariffs, quotas, and taxes considered libertarian?

Stop kidding yourself.

Are you talking about the research I laid out right infront of your nose that shows how the Argentinian economy was anything but libertarian while Chile's economy exploded after it implemented "shock therapy?" Right.

One day you'll come around when you do the research.

... they should handle as little as possible.

Golly, I guess the majority of the intellectual community is very immature then.

Then again she was an advocate of freedom of choice, unlike your socialist brethren who would imprison her for "hate speech."

Economics and empiricism don't mix well.

As already pointed out, Mises showed how and why "true" communism wouldn't work before "fake" communism was ever implemented. Hayek, together with Mises, showed how "fake" communism (e.g. socialism) wouldn't work either in their debates with Oskar Lange.

"I'll ignore the evidence presented to me and just state that you're ignorant and that you'll come around when you look at the REAL evidence, which I also failed to supply."

You implied that laissez faire policies were to blame for the stock market crash: Of course, Hoover's earlier laissez faire policies did not work either, now did they? And while Hoover was employing laissez faire policies, the Great Depression was still predicted by economists. No wonder. Extremes fail.

excuse me for interrupting, and I'm sure this is a stupid question...but...why do we need economics?

Interruptions and questions are always welcome

Economics comes from Greek roots meaning house and customs. While the study of economics is generally concerned with goods and services, we study these goods and service, their production, distribution, ect, because they are the preeminent concerns for a household.

Governments need economic policy because various entities (nations, businesses, ect) wage economic warfare and have for thousands of years.