What a clusterfuck

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Thursday, July 25th, 2013 9:16am PDT - promote requested by eric3579.

We must RISE UP and EAT THE RICH.

Free market at its finest.

I don't think Goldman Sachs represents a free market. They're This is a bi-product of crony capitalism.

Some times I wonder what humans could achieve without government corruption.

Seems we waste a lot of money on corruption when research asks for so very little in comparison.

The government is made up of humans, humans are corrupt, we're the problem, not the institution.

It really depends on how we both define 'free' I guess. A totally free market is what we seem to have now, with all the regulation gone and nobody going to prison for all the corruption. So I would say they won that game.

It is NOT government corruption. It is corporations working as intended ie. maximizing profit by lobbying government and paying it to do what it wants.
The problem we have now is unchecked capitalism, which will always treat people and society as mere fodder.

I reject your entire premise. Completely. First, I think "free" has a fairly universal definition. And, second, in the U.S., we definitely do not have a free market. And certainly not one "with all the regulation gone." Seriously, did you write that? I mean, we have hair weavers and eyebrow removers and florists being regulated out of business over the dumbest things, for crying out loud.

The really big banks and companies get big because of close ties with politicians.

I assume it's exactly the fact that such a "special" relationship with politicians and regulators exists that's the problem and moreover that these are exactly the sort of thing market controls are needed to prevent (even if the existing ones have largely been co-opted to serve the Plutocrats).

If you want to define "free-market"as completely free and unregulated then yes this is not a free market, however what regulation we do have is by this stage so ineffectual and corrupt that basically all the problems with a true "free-market" have already very much manifested.
That said I think I'm actually agreeing with you here, we might even say we have the worst of both worlds where the colossally rich have the market "freedom" do do what they like but can also co-opt socialist regulation to both defend themselves and aggressively suppress and exploit potential threats from the lower end of the economy.

The argument I guess is because SevenFingers is using the term "free-market" in a much more pejorative sense here than yourself. To him I'm guessing it simply means largely unopposed Plutocracy i.e. the misused existing regulation etc. is a product of an unregulated market running amok and corrupting every institution it can get its hands on.

If this is indeed the case then you only have a problem with incompatible semantics (meaning is use).
The real argument you guy's should be having is whether moving towards a Randian "true free-market" would make this situation any better or worse. Personally I can't see how this would make things anything other than worse for the vast majority of us.
In my head a true free market would basically be akin to just giving up and putting Weyland Yutani in charge, because sooner or later that's what you'd get. Atlas Shrugged made me sick to my stomach!

I propose the solution lies in replacing our existing systems of government and regulation with something both stronger and more importantly 100% transparent. In the age of the internet we could make political corruption virtually impossible and the old capitalist vs collectivist paradigm is becoming old, tired & increasingly irrelevant.

Time for a higher synthesis and a new dialectic cycle.
The thesis was anarcho-capitalism,
The antithesis was Totalitarian socialism
The synthesis is Meritocratic socio-capitalism!

(M) for the Movement
(M) for Meritocracy
(M) for Mindlessly repeated slogans!

Word.

Though I'd go a step further; it's not unchecked capitalism it's unchecked elitism manifesting via capitalism. Money itself isn't really worth anything, it's just a token one can exchange strategically for power over others.

The real problem is the unchecked "will to power" which drives Hegel's Master-slave dialectic (yes I'm retroactively mating Nietzsche to Hegel deal with it ).

Simply put, we are "thrown" into our experience of the world with no real context and so we are compelled to make our own. This means all human interactions on some level are an exercise in self validation.
Most conversations could be reduced to:
"Please validate my existence"
"Yes, you exist. Please validate my existence"
"Existence validated, please re validate my existence"
etc.

Unfortunately this isn't how it usually goes because we have an innate need to maximise our "will" but a disproportionate capacity to do so. What really happens is this:

"Please validate my existence as superior to yours"
"Yes, your "will" is superior. Please validate my existence"
"Yes, you are my inferior"

or

"Please validate my existence as superior to yours"
"No you are inferior and must validate my existence as superior to yours!"

^ This one eventually results in one backing down and submitting to being the others "slave" (in terms of "will") after a fight (physical or metal) until one emerges as "master". Though naturally a top down hierarchy will develop where many are masters of some and slaves to others (with a big group of clueless and bewildered slaves at the bottom of the whole thing)

The end result is human relationships and societies naturally fall into a master and slave relationship. One person or group demonstrates superior "will to power" and subjugates the majority. However this is where the dialectic comes in to play as this relationship is not a static one (much like the human condition itself).

The Masters already have what they wanted/needed, validation from their "slaves", but the slaves do not. Thus it is the slaves that evolve and develop newer, superior and more powerful forms of "will" until inevitably a new "master" or group of "masters" is produced. At this point a new dialectic cycle begins with new "masters" and new "slaves" under a new paradigm.

The current masters exert their power and maintain the existing paradigm by covet means. So it is precisely this which we must supersede as their "slaves" in order to create a new more evolved human social paradigm.
The idea that anyone is entitled to disproportionate wealth or hereditary privilege must be destroyed utterly or we will never transcend the paradigm that makes them "Masters".

(Though that is not to say merit should not be rewarded, I don't have a problem with the hardest working and most valuable members of society enjoying just rewards. Just not at the expense of the majority getting a shitty deal.)

Taking the term "free market", as it's generally regarded in moderate economics circles, at a literal sense misinterprets its actual meaning. A good analogy is Creationists who cling to the notion that because evolution is regarded as a 'theory', given the colloquial definition if it, it is in dispute.

The key point of free market is voluntary setting of prices through of supply and demand by consumers and producers generally unhindered by external forces. However, a sub-field of this, market failure, deals with exceptions to the rule.

For example, negative externalities where production is incentivised beyond societally desirable equilibrium norms because costs are not bourne or captured by the producers who produce these goods and the consumers who consume them (e.g. carbon emissions).

Alternatively it also focusses on the supernormal profits that can be borne by producers who hold too much market power in monopolistic, oligopolistic or duopoly microeconomic market structures (such as what this examples presumably is, with some rent seeking thrown in on the side).

Since when is trading in futures of a commodity you do business in insider trading? Isn't that the purpose of the commodities market? Also, storing commodities for future sale at higher prices is exactly how people do business in commodities. Why do you think wheat silos exist? Cornering markets is unseemly, but most people that have tried that with any major commodity end up ruined. To pretend that GS has the clout to corner the oil market is absurd. I don't understand the complaint.

Find ways of bringing about a world without the need for money and I think we'll have everything sewn up.

You'll need to get hold of a death note.

Uhmm.. Isn't this just another way of making money? If everyone want to sell you the aluminum and you mark it up.. thats how things work. In any and all instances where a company lives off small transactions from many (millions) of people, even a penny increase per product or service brings in money like this. And it is done every day! If you think you can do better and cheaper, buy the aluminum before it reaches GS and sell it cheaper. Drive down that cost and make it no longer worth it for GS.

What I want to know is what is GS's costs for maintaining this round robin approach to storage and transportation.

As dismal and depressing as this video is, it would appear that if we can fix these problems we'll have gazillions of dollars of spending money with which we could use to build a utopian society.