Your economic beliefs ARE a religion, Mr. Schiff. Sell your failed free market fundamentalism somewhere else.

So... do you have any objections, arguments, can you pick something specific you disliked or should we just leave it at name calling?

Nothing he said made any sense to you about this matter? Really? Can you take off the hate-glasses for a few minutes and watch the video again? Pretty please?

Besides, this is not about free markets or Schiff, it's about the consequences of free birth control, you don't share any of those concerns?

Moving this video to renatojj's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

@dystopianfuturetoday you come in this thread, instead of listening to the very relevant arguments in the video, which is the reason I posted it, you blurt out your little hatred towards free markets and Schiff (seriously who cares?), as if this is your little kingdom and dissenting opinion is not allowed.

You don't care that women will be discriminated against when being hired? That they will be paid less?

Valid my ass.

The brand of free market bullshit that this guy pedals has fucked our entire system, led us to endless corporate war, created vast economic disparity, corrupted our politics beyond imagination, and wrought havok on the underclasses.

We should have national healthcare like the rest of the civilized world. Until we get that, I see no problem whatsoever in asking insurance companies to hand out contraceptives free of charge. Contraceptives are a lot fucking cheaper than the medical costs involved in both pregnancy and treating venereal disease, so this is a gift to the insurance industry. One wonders why they didn't think of it themselves.

Yes, I do hate this clown and his ideology that has failed time and time and time and time and time and time again. If he even once took some responsibility for his miserable career of failure, I might be more sympathetic. If he hadn't gone down to OWS to talk shit, I might be more sympathetic. I'm sick of these assholes. I think Schiff should be called out and reprimanded, and that's precisely what I did. I should remind you that my comments and downvotes are dissent as well, and that Mr. Schiff has a much bigger megaphone than my measly single downvote. Deal with it.

And why is it that I should not be permitted to dissent against Peter Schiff in your mind? Why should I not have the right to rail against this guy with my comments and downvotes? If you don't want your sacred cows charbroiled, then keep them in the fucking barn. Otherwise, you are going to have to learn to live in a world where people might disagree with you.

You're such a troll, I'm impressed.

The brand of free market he espouses disappeared way before the Fed was even established. Please keep your inner socialist in check and stop slandering free markets blaming it for every kind of problem that arises from the lack of it.

It's like we live in a dictatorship for almost a century and liberals propose a different dictatorship while blaming freedom for all our problems.

Politicians who think like you, who can't understand something as simple as the insurance business model, make a sport out of subverting it, forcing companies to provide whatever crap you think they should, with no regard to the resulting oppression, cost increases, and undesired economic consequences of their actions, like the very ones Schiff points out in this video!

You can express your hatred towards Schiff all you want, my objection is that your just dropped your ad hominem and ran away. How about at least considering his points on the stupidity of the free birth control policy?

I think Schiff's attack on the OWS was a silly stunt too, arguing with clueless socialists that the blame is not on the 1%, it's not on the people who were bailed out and currently have our money, it's on the people who took our money in the first place. The truth is that these same people also oppress most of the 1%, while benefitting an even smaller fraction of that 1% at the expense of everybody else.

Btw, I don't know how you managed to reply without me getting any e-mail notification, please don't trick your way into getting the last filthy word again, thank you.

@renatojj When has your fantastical vision of a free market ever existed?

I know you like to make a distinction between crony capitalism and a true free market, but the markets themselves don't seem to find that distinction very important. It seems that markets naturally to want to gravitate towards cronyism, violence and monopoly - which isn't surprising considering that violence, cronyism and monopoly are all good strategy in a system based on absolute competition.

Also, calling those who disagree with you trolls is weak, especially for someone who refers to himself as a harasshole.

@dystopianfuturetoday the distinction is as clear as day:

- crony capitalism is when government has a lot of power over the economy and constantly meddles with how people do business. So government becomes part of doing business, specially for big corporations, they can afford to overregulate the market and discourage smaller competitors.

- Free market is when government has very limited power over the economy, preferably not even having a central bank, so corporations don't bother associating with government, there's no power there, nothing to gain from it.

Saying free markets eventually degrade into chaos and violence is like saying, "freedom of religion will lead humanity into an era of endless holy wars".

I found it amusing when you said "a system based on absolute competition", a typically biased socialist characterization of capitalism. You won't ever find in the history of humanity a social system that fosters more cooperation than capitalism. Markets are comprised mostly of people exchanging lots of goods and services with each other, and there is nothing more cooperative than free trade. Competition is not the rule of capitalism, it's a disparity: when there are too many options, there is competition for cooperation.

P.S: I ain't fallin' for your trollin'!

@renatojj A free market is impossible, which is why one has never existed, and why you were unable to come up with any working examples. I understand the distinction, my point is that markets don't want to be truly free. Whenever there is a power vacuum, someone will fill it, which is why democracy came into being.

Let's do a little thought experiment. You support property rights, no? Do you think there should be any limits on how much property a person can own?

@dystopianfuturetoday I'd like to help you visualize what I understand a free market is or ought to be. When you say free markets are impossible, I tend to compare that to someone saying, "free speech is impossible" while holding an extreme or maybe unrealistic interpretation of what free speech ought to be as well.

Imagine when freedom of speech was first proposed, "What if we had a society where people could say whatever they want without fear of censorship or oppression?". Before we had a country where freedom of speech was in the first Ammendment of its Constitution, I'm pretty sure we didn't have freedom of speech anywhere, or mostly in any time in history. Someone could have replied, "A free speech society is impossible, which is why one has never existed, and why you were unable to come up with any working examples". Sure, because there would almost always be some asshole, usually a king, a despot or church, telling people what they could or could not say, and punishing them for it.

Now, do we enjoy absolute freedom of speech today? Not at all, and I'm fine with that. There are laws against libel, hate speech, obscenity, incitement to commit crimes, etc., which are all restrictions imposed on that very freedom.

However, all things considered, I think freedom of speech is mostly free. I don't know of anyone who advocates "restricted speech" or "highly regulated speech" as an ideal. More importantly, whenever censorship is reported or witnessed, everyone is instantly indignant and sometimes outraged, because we are all aware of how essential freedom of speech is to a free society, a freedom that should be cherished and protected.

Now let's take a look at the dynamics of free speech in society.

Just because people can say whatever they want, doesn't mean there won't be millions of people lying, deceiving each other, spreading ideologies that are COMPLETELY WRONG, etc.

Does that mean we should have laws banning ideas that are wrong? Not easy to do, because it is common sense that no one has absolute authority over truth, so such laws would hardly be fair.

Instead, we resort to letting ideas compete, letting people select for themselves what is true or not. That might doom society to eternal stupidity and ignorance or to a gradual process where truths will be preferred, and lies will tend to be exposed or ignored. Which outcome do you think is more likely? It takes time, but a free society matures with such freedoms. When abuses happen, society learns and deals with them without immediately resorting to laws and restrictions, because that would be considered censorship, and, therefore, usually unfair.

Now when it comes to economic freedom, liberals treat it as a whole different ball game, when I don't think it should be. First off, "free markets" = obscenity. They learn to understand it like you do, "absolutely free of government intervention, chaos everywhere, society is doomed", when in fact the proponents of free markets recognize that the State is necessary to enforce contracts, punish fraud and protect private property.

Liberals are mostly influenced by the socialist interpretation of capitalism as an inherently unfair system. Whenever any perceived abuse happens in an economy, they see it as resulting from an imbalance of economic power, so they rush to demand laws and regulations to forcibly correct them.

How about letting these abuses happen, and let society learn to deal with them, select them, and evolve? Just like what happens with free speech. Sure, if it's blatant fraud, theft, breach of contract, etc. the State can and should step in. Otherwise, let people come up with their own solutions. It will be a painful process, but it's better to let a free society mature by itself than oppressing it into behaving well.

Besides, if you think about it, politicians aren't any better than anyone at judging what economic practices are right or wrong. So the laws they make are usually unfair. They have the same kind of presumptuousness of someone who would claim authority over truth, and want to create laws censoring "wrong" ideas. Like keynesian economists who try to plan and steer economies because they have little theories where they claim it's smarter to use other people's money than letting people make decisions with their own money.

We would never put up with people trying to engineer society/culture through censorship. Why do we put up with that when it comes to economics?

About the thought experiment (hoping it's not a trick question), I don't see why there should be a limit on how much property a person can own, as long as the property is honestly obtained.

I don't think it's an injustice when someone owns more than others, maybe there are other factors to be considered? Forcibly redistributing property is usually more unfair than just letting society deal with any problem arising from someone having property that others want or need.

Yeah....those hate-glasses are hard to see yer eyes behind...