Member Profile for yaroslavvb

winkler1

says...

offtopic? This is on a pinecone vid

In reply to this comment by yaroslavvb:
I've watched half of the second video, and they propose to abolish private lending at interest, just letting the government print money to finance its spending. There is a couple of problems with this:

1. If the government is elected like in US, it would be motivated to print large amounts of money to coincide with elections, to increase it's electability. This was seen with Carter administration putting pressure on the Fed to lower interest rates (thereby increasing money supply), that were raised to battle stagflation. Fed didn't bulge, Carter got voted out, and Fed managed to conquer the stagflation crisis. US government being forced to borrow from the Fed puts a check on irresponsible spending, likely to prevent hyperinflation episodes like in Russia or Yugoslavia

2. If there's no private lending with interest, how would promising ventures get funded? Surely we couldn't have some government bureaucrat review funding for every start-up

Eklek

says...

Hi! I just posted some information about her. Extra info is welcome..
Best regards, Eklek.

In reply to this comment by yaroslavvb:
I wonder what became of her (the singer)

jonny

says...

here's some potential fixes for your dead Louis Theroux vid:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4413388146858417528 (full doc)
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1mrt6_louis-theroux-most-hated-family-13_travel (1 of 3)
http://www.shoutfile.com/v/dmMh1zA6/The_Most_Hated_Family_in_America_(17)

The last one is the only one that is, I think, an exact replacement, but since it's not on one of the "blessed" hosts, only a gold star would be able to use that to fix it. If you would rather the exact replacement, let me know and I'll do it. Personally, I'd recommend the first, since documentaries in particular seem to be the unwritten exception to the "no full episodes/movies" rule.

jonny

says...

My apologies for hijacking your particular post yaro - like I said it wasn't anything personal.

Click that search link I included in my initial comment. It's not anything obscure - a search for "charlie brooker career". I know you wouldn't have been able to promote it yourself, but I'm sure lots of folks (myself included) would have been happy to do so.

In reply to this comment by yaroslavvb:
I didn't raid anyone's discard pile, found this on delicious

qruel

says...

holy shit. great contribution. thanks for the link

In reply to this comment by yaroslavvb:
An interesting statistic in the fossil vs. nuclear debate is that coal power plants release 3 times more radioactivity into environment than nuclear power plants, per MW. http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

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yaroslavvb said:

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> Paul Volcker is one such exception, but as you yourself pointed out -  Greenspan made 180k per year. I don't know if you quite get this, but the average American makes around 33k per year.
Average American doesn't have Greenspan's qualifications. The point is that someone like Greenspan could make over a million per year by accepting a position in private sector. And a quick google search shows that Greenspan's family wasn't rich either. 
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/martin-greenspan.html

> "The Congress would always be pressured to lower the interest rates and stimulate the economy, regardless of long-term consequences."
> Here's one question for you - assuming the Congress took over control of the monetary system(as they have the right to do), what would be the purpose of an interest rate? The interest rate only sustains the profits and dividends of member shareholders of the Fed - operating costs are covered by the budget of money the Fed has allotted itself to print. So why would there be a need for an interest rate?

The Fed could loan money at 0% interest rate. Since the Fed can print money, that means it would hand out free money to any bank that asks. Surely you don't think that would be a good idea?

> FYI - I do not sustain any faith for the Capitalist system, as the end result of Capitalism is ultimately Plutocracy(which is what we are currently living under today - people that represent the richest 5% of the population control 95% of the population) - so, just so you know, I would have no qualms with abandoning the Capitalist system entirely.

Abandoning the system for what? Soviet-style Gulags? A lot of the inventions you are using right now are here thanks to capitalism. Take your computer for instance. Proof of concept transistor was developed in Bell Labs, and brought to the masses through capital ventures Shockley Semiconductors and Fairchild Semiconductors. Intel was one of the the child ventures. Those were all possible because of large investment. You need to have a workable alternative to capitalism, or admit that you don't care about progress. Neither communism, nor anarchy have proven themselves workable over long term.

> Bank runs are only a bad thing for the banks in most cases, because it shows, to their clients, exactly the level of corruption of a central banking system. Yes, people will lose faith - and they should. Yes, people will take what little money the bank has left for them out of the bank - AND THEY SHOULD.

It's not the banks that are hurt the most by bank runs, but the people who keep money in the banks. Banks are required to only keep 1/6th of the money it loans out on hand. So if everyone decides to take their money out, 83% of the people will be left holding an empty bag.

And when the people lose faith in banks and stop depositing money there, all the loan-takers will be hurt. How will someone get a mortage for a house? Or take an inventor with a bright idea who needs a large loan to develop it?

A worse thing would happen if public loses confidence in the Fed itself. The currency that we use are the Fed promissory notes. Without confidence in the currency, how will people continue their economic transactions? We could go back to barter, but that is annoyingly inefficient. Imagine having to find 2 goats, a hub-cap and a pile of dirt that someone wants in exchange for a new coat.

> They should be able to, as an exercise of power over the banks. In what is professed to be an ultimately Capitalist system, where is the competition to the banking industry that, should they mess something up, the public will exercise power over them?

What is the competition to the banking industry? The role of banking industry is to accumulate a large amounts of resources to direct into various areas of development. The capital is amassed because of people volunteering to store their capital is the banks. The main advantage of banking is that capital formation is done through volunteer means. One competition to this system is the Soviet-style system -- the government amasses resources through forceful means -- ie, by telling a million people to come together and dig a hole here and there. And if they don't want to dig a hole? Too bad, they should've been born in America.

> If there is to be a central bank, it must be addressable by the people themselves, SOMEHOW. The public themselves must be able to exercise some form of power over the bank in order to keep that very system in check...otherwise, the public is not responsible for what happens, and must not be legally bound to abide by such a corrupt system.

> Ultimately, if the banks are to be private, as the Federal Reserve currently is, the people should be allowed - encouraged, even, to create their own forms of currency to challenge the private form of currency.

What's stopping you from creating your own currency? Fed notes started by being promissory notes -- it was a note that you could exchange for a certain amount of gold if you brought to the bank. So likewise, you could hand out slips of paper, in promise to exchange them for something tangible if a person brings it back. In essence, shops handing out gift certificates are in essence issuing their own currency. There was a period of time in US when there was no universally accepted paper money. Each bank would issue their own promissory notes. However, because banks failed often, people would trust notes from bigger banks more. Eventually the "currency" from the biggest banks would outcompete everyone else.

> T-bonds/bills - what is a bond? The OED essentially defines it as an "Obligation," or a "promise to pay."

That's not the kind of bonds that government issues. The bonds are that the government issues are papers that US government promises to pay interest on. They don't promise to buy it back, and in fact, it's unlikely that the government will EVER buy it back. The government hasn't bought back any bonds since WWII.

> Can you imagine a form of currency that is not interest-bearing, that the people themselves CAN be held responsible for the rise or the fall of?

You really put a lot of trust in "the people". If people were so responsible, we could give each person a printing press and let them be directly in charge of the monetary policy. They would then rely on their superior knowledge of monetary policy and print more money exactly when it is needed. However, the reality of it is that people are greedy and irresponsible. In the scenario above, everybody would start cranking out money with no regard to economic harm that causes. That's a prime instance of the "tragedy of the commons"

The ideas you are advocating are far from new. People are by nature suspicious of rich people, especially bankers, and there have been many instances in the history when "the people" stepped in to "reign in their power of bankers." For instance, when Lenin carried out the revolution in then-capitalist Russia, his first targets were to take control of the railroads, the telegraph and the banks. The banks became the "property of the people", but that didn't help the people much when their savings have evaporated. My uncle worked as a pilot in Soviet far north for a decade and saved up an equivalent of $60,000 over the years, the savings that disappeared through governments mismanagement. Good politicians make bad bankers.

Or look at early American history. The ideas you are advocating are the credo of the Populist party, whose main ideal is to represent the rights of "the common people." Andrew Jackson was elected on the populist platform, and when he came to power, he destroyed the Central Bank by vetoing the renewal of it's charter. The government's money was then taken out of the bank, and distributed among various private banks. Needless to say it didn't work out too well, and US was back with a national bank 30 years later. You can read more about immediate effects here: http://www.maths.tcd.ie/local/JUNK/econrev/ser/html/destruction.html. Or read about "1837-1862: Free Banking Era" on "history of central banking" in Wikipedia.

The bottom line is that populist philosophy looks good in theory, but doesn't work well in practice, mainly because "the common people" are greedy and stupid. The current system isn't perfect, but it's better than the alternatives.

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