http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2011/06/09/34042
From Box Turtle:

In this episode, CNN tracks down George Rekers, the therapist who treated four-year-old Kirk Murphy and turned him into Rekers’s poster boy for ex-gay therapy. Here we see Rekers learning about Kirk’s suicide at the age of 38. He responds by saying that there is no evidence that Kirk’s suicide was the result of Kirk’s treatment. He also tries to exonerate himself by saying:

Two independent psychologists of me had evaluated him and said he was better adjusted after treatment. So it wasn’t my opinion.

According to Rekers’s writings, two psychologists followed up with Kirk when Kirk was fifteen. As I wrote in our newest epilogue, The Doctor’s Word:

Buried in a footnote, Rekers wrote, “I express my appreciation to Drs. Larry N. Ferguson and Alexander C. Rosen for their independent evaluations.” By 1979, Ferguson was working as a research psychologist at Logos Research Institute, a conservative religious-based think tank that Rekers had founded in 1975. With Rekers as his employer, Ferguson’s participation in such an evaluation could not be seen as independent. As for Rosen, he had been Rekers’s longstanding colleague at UCLA: the two of them co-wrote at least fourteen papers — including three defending the kind of treatment Kirk received at UCLA against growing criticism. Rosen may not have been as personally invested in Kirk’s reported outcome as Rekers, but he was certainly invested in UCLA’s reputation.

Rosen has since passed away. Ferguson told CNN that the family was well-adjusted and he didn’t see any “red flags” with Kirk. But when Kirk was fifteen, the family was falling apart, with Kirk’s father was drinking heavily and leaving the family — hardly the picture of a well-adjusted family. As for not seeing any red flags with Kirk, his sister Maris had a ready answer: “He was conditioned to say what he thought they wanted to hear.”

But there was one set of independent evaluations that Rekers wasn’t a part of. Those occurred when Dr. Richard Green interviewed Kirk at the age of seventeen and eighteen for his 1987 book, The Sissy Boy Syndrome. That’s where we learn that at Kirk was still attracted to men, was deeply conflicted over those attractions, had engaged in an anonymous sexual encounter with a man, and tried to commit suicide because of it. For the remainder of Rekers’s career, he would never acknowledge what was uncovered in the The Sissy Boy Syndrome interviews. As far as Rekers was concerned, those interviews never happened and “Kraig”, his pseudonym for Kirk, remained a success story.

i feel ya BB.

it's just the current narrative that most people buy into propagated by the media.
why?
because they have shit to do,families to take care of and many times two jobs..sometimes three.
the factual information is out there but you have to look to find it and most people just dont have the time.
so we get folks regurgitating factoids and arguments given to them by well-paid pundits.
"they took our jobs"
if some dude from mexico who cant even speak the language, and has no education, took your job then you are a loser of such EPIC and humiliating proportions.
pablo didnt take your job,your job was outsourced to india.blame your company not some migrant worker.

in the 80's they gave us the narrative "welfare queens" now we are being told it is those "greedy" and "lazy" school teachers,and the unions they are part of,totally ignoring the history of unions and the thousands who died fighting so we can have:
40 hr work weeks.
weekends off.
safer work enviroments.
equal labor practices and the fact that its illegal to have your 8 yr old daughter working 14 hrs a day..7 days a week.
the list is impressive.

they say that universal health care is socialism while conveniently ignoring certain aspects of our government being of that very model.
they also ignore those pesky facts that health care would be cheaper on a single payer plan.one that we already have!
medicare is by far one of the most efficient per dollar than any other government institution.
but those facts just get in the way of their narrative.

look at how they formulate their premise.
using words to compare our government with running a business or household.
it is weak and factually dishonest but people can relate to that because they understand...
it relates to how THEY live,so it makes sense to them.
but it has nothing at all to do with reality.

the food stamp program,along with social security have been two of the great success stories.
keeping the poor and working poor from destitution due to all resources going to food.
lowered child mortality because these kids can eat and older,more vulnerable of this society dont end up homeless.
almost 70 million on food stamps but what will they show as their proof these things are a failure?
anecdotal evidence.not to convey a strong point but rather to appeal to the emotional nature of us all.

these people are being duped into believing that certain politicians think and feel just like they do.
no...they dont.
the ONLY time you matter to a politician EVER..is the election cycle.

for as long as public elections are financed by private funding special interest will always have their ears and by proxy...set the narrative.
they call it "public relations".
i call it what it is:propaganda.

oh man.total derailment.
my bad.

Yeah, I'd definitely have to disagree with his criticism's of Schindler's List. The movie wasn't at all a "success story," but of one man who risked everything to at save some people from destruction in a world gone mad. The movie (and I liked it by the way) still made me want to vomit and definitely made you think "how in the world did these things take place?" and "would I have had Schindler's balls - what does it take to stand up to those men?" I certainly didn't feel like everything was nice and neatly wrapped up at the end because in the second to last scene you still have Oskar Schindler weeping over the few more he could have saved despite having saved over 1,100 lives. He wasn't at all triumphant over his success, but broken over having wasted what could have been used to save more.

bcglorf, I'm glad you see this as a success story. Breaking a few eggs to make that omelet, I see.

How droll. That straw man won't be getting up any time soon after a beating like that.

Your claiming cutting police wages will make these situations less frequent, and better handled. I make the more modest suggestion that slashing police salaries is a good way to recruit MORE guys like the murder, and less like his partner and the rest of the force that is prosecuting him.

I suppose you also still to prefer to hide from the challenge of who the majority of the police force resemble, the murder or the ones trying him?

@bcglorf, I'm glad you see this as a success story. Breaking a few eggs to make that omelet, I see.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

I think it's called "mobbing" what happened to her. An online mobbing is one thing, but when they get a home address and a phone number, that takes it to a whole new level. It might look funny from the outside, but when complete strangers know more about you than a complete stranger should, it rattles your cage, believe me.

Also there's a residual paranoia that fucks with your mind after the mobbing stops. Sometimes people will say very innocent things, but there is a coincidence to it that sort of, behaviorally, puts the victim back in the same place they were before.

I'm all for free speech, privacy, etc., but if I could track down some of those 4Chan fuckers, I would do it. If the Pentagon could find them, I'd support that. I'd support prosecution to the full extent.

In reply to this comment by chtierna:
I'm a bit taken back by the lack of sympathy. I do think she made stupid choices and that she said stupid things, who hasn't. I haven't been harassed by a whole community of people online, but it must be just beyond horrible, especially if it connects back to your real life and you can't shake it off.

I have a real problem with communities like 4chan etc when they start going after someone, because at the end of the day if they drive someone beyond what they should, it's just a success story, it's just something to be proud of, it's just such a remote incident that they have no reason to connect with the people they are causing to suffer.

In reply to this comment by rougy:
I saw that comment of yours and really appreciated it.

Sadly, I think that blaming anybody but the perpetrators of the harassment is still sort of missing the point.

This thing really bothered me. I was stalked back in the nineties (in my 30's at the time), and I experienced something like Jesse experienced, and I don't think anybody here really understands how terrifying that is.

If it was rough on a thirty year old man, I can't imagine the effect it would have on an eleven year old girl.

In reply to this comment by chtierna:
I'm with you on this one, she is 11 and didn't deserve this treatment.

I think the problem with your extreme version of capitalism is the same with the Soviet Union's extreme version of socialism; they become increasingly harder to maintain the bigger they get, until they eventually come to contradict everything they stood for in the first place. I know your road to a laissez faire utopia is paved with good intentions, but it's so light on practicality and specifics and there are no success stories to point to.

1. Deregulate the market
2. ?
3. Utopia

It's faith, not science (IMO).

>> ^mentality:
>> ^rougy:
The special irony about this film is the stark contrast revolving around the beads themselves.
On the production side, in China, the people are busting their butts to meet quota and quality expectations. They are punished with wage cuts if they fail to make enough beads in a day, or if the beads aren't up to standard. They are confined to a compound and allowed to leave about once a week, if they're lucky. If they're lucky, they make $75 a month.
Contrast that with the Mardi Gras crowd. Each float in each parade throws out a minimum of $500 of beads to the crowd. Most of those beads are thrown away after the party as if they were trash.
There is no clearer example of how the third world suffers in order to maintain the first worlds decadent lifestyle.

This reminds me of reading about new immigrants coming to American in the early 20th century, looking for employment. Many would end up in cities like New York working for 16+ hours a day, 7 days a week, for pennies a day. And from this adversity there were some amazing success stories, embodiments of the American Dream. Criticize globalization all you want, but having the opportunity to work for a living is infinitely better than having no opportunity at all and starving.


Slave labor! It works!

>> ^rougy:
The special irony about this film is the stark contrast revolving around the beads themselves.
On the production side, in China, the people are busting their butts to meet quota and quality expectations. They are punished with wage cuts if they fail to make enough beads in a day, or if the beads aren't up to standard. They are confined to a compound and allowed to leave about once a week, if they're lucky. If they're lucky, they make $75 a month.
Contrast that with the Mardi Gras crowd. Each float in each parade throws out a minimum of $500 of beads to the crowd. Most of those beads are thrown away after the party as if they were trash.
There is no clearer example of how the third world suffers in order to maintain the first worlds decadent lifestyle.


This reminds me of reading about new immigrants coming to American in the early 20th century, looking for employment. Many would end up in cities like New York working for 16+ hours a day, 7 days a week, for pennies a day. And from this adversity there were some amazing success stories, embodiments of the American Dream. Criticize globalization all you want, but having the opportunity to work for a living is infinitely better than having no opportunity at all and starving.

>> ^quantumushroom:
You amaze me with your complete lack of looking into ANYTHING QM.
I don't need to look much beyond the Constitution, which says nothing about 'free' healthcare for all or robbing one group of people who worked hard to pay off others who didn't.


Bingo!

You treat the constitution like others (you perhaps also?) treat the bible... your one stop shop for everything. Everything begins and ends with one document and you'll be damned if any further discussion will be had because apparently that document is perfect. (Let's ignore the raft of amendments... they... um... just fine tuning and already perfect document aren't they?)



Have bothered AT ALL to look at other countries that do healthcare a SHITELOAD better than the US? How do you not think it's fair to provide necessary healthcare to everyone in your country? Under what warped logic do you think that only those that can afford it should be able to live, while those that can't die?
How does that work?


Life isn't fair and no amount of government force will make it fair. I wonder if you lefties even know what's going on in America. Socialized medicine practically exists NOW. WTF is Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security? S-Chip? You'd have to work pretty hard to not get the care you need, especialy if 20 million Mexican illegals are getting it.

No one is saying that the US system is GOOD now at all. But what you DO have is the situation where private health companies are consulted BEFORE you get treatment to see if you will be covered for that treatment. THAT is absolutely insane. Look, here in Australia we have public and private... public health guarantees you all the necessary health care you need, and you pay a levee on that in your taxes (Medicare levee), if you take out Private health care (as most do), then you don't have to pay that levee as you are paying your own way via the private insurer. You don't suddenly stop getting public health, just the hospitals get paid by the private insurer rather than the government. Also, private health care gives you elective benefits and better rooms in hospitals etc. (ie. your own room rather than shared). The deal is, you can get better 'extras' etc. surrounding core health care by being on private, but you never miss out on the necessary care by not being able to afford it... and that's the way it should be.


And your intro also speaks of being simple minded also:
Doesn't everyone deserves a free home
There is such a thing as government housing, and it's used by people who have fallen on hard times until they can afford something better. The houses are never fantastic, and you wouldn't want to stay in them, but they provide shelter while you try to pick yourself up... Of course you rally against such ideas and think they'll only be populated by the lazy, and how dare they get a roof over their head when you work for all you have...
I don't object to safety nets, but you know and I know that's not what we're talking about here. Also, with the Christianity bashing that goes on here at liberalsift, I wonder where the morality of the left exists on its own merit? Was every atheist born knowing 'the right thing to do'?

Wah? Huh? I don't get the point of this comment at all. If you're going down that religious path of 'well, I have this book that tells me my morals, and what is right and wrong... you must have no morals and not know what's right and wrong because you don't have a book', then sorry, but that's an insanely stupid tree to be barking up. If you truly believe that you would do 'bad things' if you didn't have the fear of god punishing you for breaking his commandments for doing so then you are a 'bad person'. Most of us don't do 'bad things' because we don't want to hurt other people or make life worse off for others, not due to some selfish fear for ourselves.


Um... ok, if you don't think there's a need for 'soup kitchens' and other such ways for people who have become destitute, then I would LOOOOOVE for you to end up jobless sometime and not have any family support, and then you can say there should be nowhere for those without money to be able to find shelter and food.
I'd friggen love it.
Well that's just fucking wonderful. With all the shit you've been through, you'd rather just wish harm on others that disagree with you, eh?

I didn't wish harm on you. I wished destitution on you (which doesn't have to physically harm you at all, just take your ego down a few notches). I wished that you ended up with no money and therefore be reliant on the very things that you think shouldn't exist, because apparently you lack a iota of empathy and are incapable of ever seeing how someone could end up poor and without help and need some help to get back on track. Sometimes, for some people such as yourself, the only way to get through that 'it's other people' mentality is for it to affect you directly.


You're making shit up that has nothing to do with my argument, so here it is again worded slightly different: is it the government's obligation to provide "free" basic everything ALL the time the way they claim to want to do with healthcare?


No, and no one is suggesting that the government should provide everyone with free everything. What we're saying is access to healthcare should not be dictated by your bank balance. I, because I earn a good wage, should not be able to get a heart replacement if I need it, but let someone else die because they couldn't afford the operation. That just isn't right, and nowhere in the bible does it say anything about looking after only those who can afford it. In fact, I'm pretty sure it talks about taking care of the weak and needy.


automobile No, but free/heavily subsidized public transport works wonders for actually being able to get to... oh, I dunno... jobs.
I'm not against local public transportation. In some places it works, in others it's been an expensive disaster. And it's not my point. But if you think people with no car have a right to a "free" bus, so be it.
No, people who have no access to their own transport through not being able to afford it, despite their best efforts, should be able to use public transport to get around. If you deny people the ability to get around, how are they ever going to get to the jobs to make the money to be able to pay for these things themselves?



(plus for kicks a high-paying job that pays the same whether you're a brain surgeon or sweep floors)?
Now you're just being a douche. You've got no concept of how any of this works do you? You think that those at or under the poverty line just LOVE living in government housing and surviving on handouts... hell, why bother working when life is so grand hey?
You're an idiot. People don't want to remain like that, people never want to GET like that, but some people do, some through no real fault of their own (some by their own fault, but so what). The idea is, you give them a hand through those times until they can once again become a constructive member of society. And people WANT to get a good job and be able to buy their own home/car and feel like they've been productive. I don't know anyone who enjoys relying on the handouts. But I sure as fuck know people who HAVE HAD to at one time or another and are bloody glad those things were in place to catch them during the tough times.
And some of these people now work for multinational companies in technical roles and are doing very well for themselves... because they were helped during the rough patches.
It ends up costing LESS in the long run you know.
Yeah, that's why we're several trillion dollars in debt. I have another theory about those success stories: those people might have made it whether there was government aid available or not.

Um... you're several trillion dollars in debt for many, many reasons, not least of which is the trillions of dollars you spend on your damn military. You can't take anything you don't agree with and try to suggest THAT is why you're in debt... sorry, doesn't work.

And in regards to those that would have made it one way or another... not necessarily so at all, although you'd LOVE to think so, because that's the right wing brain. "Successful people will always be successful with no help from anyone else". Which is a load of crap. SOME people pick themselves up completely independently and become successful with no external help, but ALMOST ALL have support from many places. A particular case I'm thinking of (a friend), spent years being horrendously insecure in themselves and doing f-all for his career and being effectively 'a drain' on society as you would say. But now he earns a good wage and is giving back to society through his taxes, so therefore paying back for his time. He needed that time being supported to get out of that rut. If there was no support... well, I don't know what would have happened to him, but it wouldn't have been nice.


Also... it'd be friggen hilarious if you got some illness that cost an enormous amount of money to treat, and your private health care provider decided that it wasn't covered (as they like to do)... then you'll be bleating that there should be public health.
If an American with a serious illness that requires expensive treatment knocks on Canada's door seeking asylum, do they let him in? Any Canadian sifters, let me know.
If you take nothing else away from this: I don't pretend to have all the answers, while Big Government tyrants do. I oppose socialism in general and in particular this health scam the Obamunists are trying to pass as quickly as possible before the people realize what they thought were brownies are really dog turds.
A government big enough to pay for your kid's "free" health care is also big enough to say, "You're over the limit for treatment costs. Back of the line."


Huh? You've given up again... you've obviously got some hardwired words in your brain that are 'bad':
'Socialism' = bad
'Big Government' = bad
without really thinking through what you're saying.

Saying that a government can turn around and deny care is, well ridiculous when you're comparing it to private companies that do it ROUTINELY. If government does it (please do give me examples where they have... hmmm? I can pull out stupendous amounts of private health examples), then they have public outcry from the country to contend with because it's health care that WE are all paying for. If a private company denies treatment then you'd just say 'Well... it's a free market, go with another provider'.

I really think that you've been taught to believe these right wing mantras but, like most right wingers, you haven't thought through the consequences of those actions AT ALL... You run on an endless loop of 'hard work will get you what you need', whereas we run on one that says 'a fair go for everyone'. Your loop ignores how people get started in the first place, how people need help to get up from being poor and uneducated and pull themselves up to be really productive members of your country. You think that anyone who can't afford to go to university or get healthcare or have a car only lacks those things purely through their own laziness. We think that maybe you help people to have the opportunity to become educated and not be sick, and maybe that gives them a better chance to spend time learning a trade and becoming skilled and earning a great wage and getting their family moving on and up rather than staying poor and a drain on society for ever.

You amaze me with your complete lack of looking into ANYTHING QM.

I don't need to look much beyond the Constitution, which says nothing about 'free' healthcare for all or robbing one group of people who worked hard to pay off others who didn't.

Have bothered AT ALL to look at other countries that do healthcare a SHITELOAD better than the US? How do you not think it's fair to provide necessary healthcare to everyone in your country? Under what warped logic do you think that only those that can afford it should be able to live, while those that can't die?

How does that work?

Life isn't fair and no amount of government force will make it fair. I wonder if you lefties even know what's going on in America. Socialized medicine practically exists NOW. WTF is Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security? S-Chip? You'd have to work pretty hard to not get the care you need, especialy if 20 million Mexican illegals are getting it.

And your intro also speaks of being simple minded also:
Doesn't everyone deserves a free home
There is such a thing as government housing, and it's used by people who have fallen on hard times until they can afford something better. The houses are never fantastic, and you wouldn't want to stay in them, but they provide shelter while you try to pick yourself up... Of course you rally against such ideas and think they'll only be populated by the lazy, and how dare they get a roof over their head when you work for all you have...

I don't object to safety nets, but you know and I know that's not what we're talking about here. Also, with the Christianity bashing that goes on here at liberalsift, I wonder where the morality of the left exists on its own merit? Was every atheist born knowing 'the right thing to do'?

Um... ok, if you don't think there's a need for 'soup kitchens' and other such ways for people who have become destitute, then I would LOOOOOVE for you to end up jobless sometime and not have any family support, and then you can say there should be nowhere for those without money to be able to find shelter and food.

I'd friggen love it.

Well that's just fucking wonderful. With all the shit you've been through, you'd rather just wish harm on others that disagree with you, eh?

You're making shit up that has nothing to do with my argument, so here it is again worded slightly different: is it the government's obligation to provide "free" basic everything ALL the time the way they claim to want to do with healthcare?

automobile No, but free/heavily subsidized public transport works wonders for actually being able to get to... oh, I dunno... jobs.

I'm not against local public transportation. In some places it works, in others it's been an expensive disaster. And it's not my point. But if you think people with no car have a right to a "free" bus, so be it.

(plus for kicks a high-paying job that pays the same whether you're a brain surgeon or sweep floors)?

Now you're just being a douche. You've got no concept of how any of this works do you? You think that those at or under the poverty line just LOVE living in government housing and surviving on handouts... hell, why bother working when life is so grand hey?

You're an idiot. People don't want to remain like that, people never want to GET like that, but some people do, some through no real fault of their own (some by their own fault, but so what). The idea is, you give them a hand through those times until they can once again become a constructive member of society. And people WANT to get a good job and be able to buy their own home/car and feel like they've been productive. I don't know anyone who enjoys relying on the handouts. But I sure as fuck know people who HAVE HAD to at one time or another and are bloody glad those things were in place to catch them during the tough times.

And some of these people now work for multinational companies in technical roles and are doing very well for themselves... because they were helped during the rough patches.

It ends up costing LESS in the long run you know.

Yeah, that's why we're several trillion dollars in debt. I have another theory about those success stories: those people might have made it whether there was government aid available or not.

Also... it'd be friggen hilarious if you got some illness that cost an enormous amount of money to treat, and your private health care provider decided that it wasn't covered (as they like to do)... then you'll be bleating that there should be public health.

If an American with a serious illness that requires expensive treatment knocks on Canada's door seeking asylum, do they let him in? Any Canadian sifters, let me know.

If you take nothing else away from this: I don't pretend to have all the answers, while Big Government tyrants do. I oppose socialism in general and in particular this health scam the Obamunists are trying to pass as quickly as possible before the people realize what they thought were brownies are really dog turds.

A government big enough to pay for your kid's "free" health care is also big enough to say, "You're over the limit for treatment costs. Back of the line."

And then one day, the whale said "hah, i need a better way of breathing on the surface like i need a hole in the head!" And thus they got one, proving that god does have a sense of humour.

Serious note - from two posts up - this video is probably being used as a very simple tool for the teaching of evolution. It's not meant to be a piece of proof, because scientists don't view ID/religious people to be opponenets to which they must provide evidence. Scientists know that evolution does actually happen, and the burden of proof is on the ID/religious people.

It's like er.. i dunno, beginning to teach kids in an art class by getting them to colour in between the lines. It's not art, it's just to keep them interested whilst they're young. This video keeps people interested and gives them a base of knowledge by simplifying and showing how the environment impacted on the natural selection process. Like i say, they're not at all worried about religious people pointing this out as bullshit.

And just in case the last post was serious. We don't come from monkeys, us and monkeys come from a common ancestor, and both of us are evolutionary success stories. We went different ways and both worked.

really fantastic video.
really depressing subject.

didn't really cover credit-default-swaps though. which is the so-called insurance for the "safe" tier. There was another video on the sift explaining that, but I'm too lazy to search for it right now.

the real problem is 1 word - greed.

it's great that people or families with bad credit can still buy a house, but for god sakes, buy something reasonable. ask yourself "is it worth this much?" I mean if it's a 2-bedroom house in a shithole LA suburb, is it really worth $500k+ ?? Or, if you have a small family, do you really need 3000+ sq ft of living space? Why invest in something so expensive?

and the "flippers" made the problem worse, along with all the stupid reality shows that are about flipping a house. Each show only had stories about people who succeeded. It's easy to fill 1 hour with 3 success stories, but what about the 13 failures that you aren't covering? Who sponsored that shit? Investment bankers?

new rule: only buy a house if you are actually gonna live in it.

I think one of the modern success stories of free markets and interesting self regulatory bodies that emerge are the labor unions. They were able to strike out their claims more effectively and nimbly than any government regulation.

Labour unions are given power through Federal and State government. In both cases business claim that minimum wages, safety standards, and work agreements pushed through by labor unions stifle business growth. Labor is seen as an input factor in economic thinking, not as a group of people. Mises always argued for the elimination of minimum wage for example. Furthermore if you remember the when the Detroit bailout was being discussed it was the Union workers that were blamed for over inflating their wages.

If labor mobility is taken as presented in Austrian economics then all trade restrictions must be done away with, there is efficiency reached when US manufacturing jobs are taken to less regulated non union parts of the world such as China.

The business has great power then its workers to dictate the terms of employment, dissatisfaction with labor conditions would mean mass firings and replacements, the exact reason why China has no labor problems with regards to unions there are so many people vying for the jobs as is.

Who are these "others" to which your refer? If a company charges a fair market price for its product, it can pay its workers well, and his family can prosper as well, the consumer also gets his product at a reasonable price. It is the happy medium.

Fair price is never set in the capitalist market, its is the abnormal profits price that is set. With migration of manufacturing to Chinese nations there has been no price fall in basic commodities like clothes. Per unit production costs are in the pennies, however the price charged is inflated. So what you bought for 50$ made in the US is still $50 when made in China, even though production costs are reduced. This applies to almost every industry. Even though market competitiveness is supposed to drive down price we do not see that as there is unspoken collusion of where to set the price. Or rather how much can you set such that demand is stable but with the highest profit creation possible. There is an entire course on profit maximization at the expense of the consumer.

It is when the government interferes with this that the unfairness is introduced.

What about Government intervention on child labour laws? Social externalities and pollution? In the last 8 years the argument has always been that firms in a free market system can account for externalization given the chance because they are hurting their own market in the long run.

However firms operate on short term profit maximization, and do the best they can in socializing their losses, and privatizing their gains. See Banking bailout.

It is only government regulation that allows or rather forces through economic incentives such as carbon trading to make firms pollute less or increase the welfare with regards to its work force.

Trying to merge two opposites is not wisdom. This is the idea of having your cake and eating it too. You can not have the powers of the market work if they are stifled in other areas. There ends up with a bubble of something eventually, and the market will always find that and exploit it until it bursts.

Really? Explain how socialistic and free market governments flourish in places like Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Finland and shit even China? Mixed economy systems are the most prevalent in the world yet somehow you claim they are all made to internally fail because there is government intervention. That flies in the face of historical fact.

China is the perfect example because you have centralized government which allows free market activity in the economy but nowhere else basically proving Mises belief that the free market leads to democracy in a populace is not altogether sound.

The resent housing bubble is the greatest explained of poor government regulation. the The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 caused the housing bubble by not alowing banks to use their normal risk evaluation models when considering blacks and other minorities for loans.

Utter right wing spin rubbish, I mean do you even think about it? A 1977 act results in a market meltdown some 32 years later. Be serious. The banks knew the risks, they just hoped the bubble wouldn't burst before making out, further increased exposure by repacking toxic debt and then selling that off as investment packages.

There clear causality found in the 1994 to 2004 time of Fed debates regarding regulating sub prime and derivatives markets, remember junk bonds of the 1980s? Same shit different name but far more severe effects.
For more http://www.videosift.com/video/Klein-Blames-Greenspan-Deregulation-for-Economic-Crisis

Greenspan believed that banks would self regulate themselves.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7687101.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/09greenspan.html

Committee chairman Henry Waxman, a Democrat, suggested that Mr Greenspan had added to the problem by rejecting calls for the Fed to regulate the sub-prime sector and some complex, risky financial products.

"The list of regulatory mistakes and misjudgements is long," Mr Waxman said.

"Our regulators became enablers rather than enforcers. Their trust in the wisdom of the markets was infinite," he added, saying that the mantra became "government regulation is wrong".

Central planning nearly always results in tyranny of the most extreme kind. Once the power is centralized, the ability to abuse that power becomes irrefutable as far as history is concerned.

Of course it does, but that makes my comment sound like an endorsement of communism and central planning, its not, its rather a clarificaition in that there is no idealized free market system that enables all citizens to be free in the vein of Rand and Friedman. One extreme is a mirror of the other.

Goverment intervention is needed to regulate markets through laws, laws that protect from monopolies from emerging and allow free market competitiveness to occur. To state that a free market system would simply regulate and account for all external costs that it imposes is ridculous.

At the end of the day the onus of proof lies at the feet of Free marketers to prove it can, well the derivatives and sub prime market was a free market entirely with no regulation and see how much profit maximazation and risky behavior that developed, primarily because each firm was acting as an independent actor working towards its own profit maximization.

What did it create? A huge social externality that they were bailout out for, so we continuously social the costs and risks through government and privatize the profits and benefits because that is capitalism.

If we allow free market thinking to take over all these banks should have been allowed to fail for their risky behavior in the market, but that would mean socio-economic collapse, though I think it would have been better since it would clarify to any one else that risky business behavior has its costs. But the people running the banks are tied closely to those running the economy, and you can't have a major change in the Wall Street it would create a huge loss of investor confidence that would create even worse effects. Business confidence is a frighteningly fickle beast.

Ha. I love this, people follow Misean view of economics without realizing that at it's cores it is against all statism and democracy as a whole. How would you like to be ruled over corporations and business interests?

You make an assumption here that is false. Businesses get the ruling over us when they are able to enforce the rule of law over us. When we are free to choose what we want when we want it, the consumer is in power.

On the other end of the spectrum, the labor side (means of production). There will always be a fight between the business owners and the workers. When there are many workers, the companies will be able to force lower wages, and vice versa, that is just the way it goes. I think one of the modern success stories of free markets and interesting self regulatory bodies that emerge are the labor unions. They were able to strike out their claims more effectively and nimbly than any government regulation.

When the power is in the hands of the people, they have to recognize that their dollar is indeed power, and where they choose to invest it directly affects the world around them. It is a world where much more thought and responsibility has to be taken into account.

I realized that capitalism possess no soul and could not work unless we were all robots and did not care about the welfare of others.

Business is all about providing solutions for people directly. You aim is for consumer satisfaction. Who are these "others" to which your refer? If a company charges a fair market price for its product, it can pay its workers well, and his family can prosper as well, the consumer also gets his product at a reasonable price. It is the happy medium. It is when the government interferes with this that the unfairness is introduced. When we are forced to pay twice what a hair cut is worth because we need to make sure the barber is placed in a position in society that we wish to make the new minimum, you undermine the consumers right to evaluate what things are worth, and thus undermine the entire price structure. Things will begin to break down and inflation will result, lowering the buying power of everyone and thus returning this man to the same status of which you wished to lower him out of, and over-complicating things by placing a moral agenda on economics that all don't hold to.

The key to good governance and national economy is the mixture of both
This is dialectic reasoning to think you can mix to things that are fundamentally opposed to each other. Trying to merge two opposites is not wisdom. This is the idea of having your cake and eating it too. You can not have the powers of the market work if they are stifled in other areas. There ends up with a bubble of something eventually, and the market will always find that and exploit it until it bursts. The resent housing bubble is the greatest explained of poor government regulation. the The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 caused the housing bubble by not alowing banks to use their normal risk evaluation models when considering blacks and other minorities for loans. The result was the sub prime mess of today; enterprising capitalist's found a way to exploit poor government controls for economic redistribution of wealth and manged to make the poor, more poor, and the rich more rich...which is usually now much government "level the playing field" laws go.

I was assured a full....
You were assured something, but where they something you even wanted? Where they something you asked for? The main problem with this whole idea is the massive waste that goes on, communism is extremely ineffective. It provides things to those that provide nothing. It provides things to those who do not want those things. It essentially is the most unfair system one could make when trying to make something effective and efficient. This is why Soviets could launch objects into space, but could not provide soap or women's pantyhose to its people, there is no real model for determining the value of things OTHER than peoples demand for them. There is no government system you could make until after you have a pricing model for them, it hasn't been shown to be possible without massive inflation or more widespread enforcement of market strategies.

Central planning nearly always results in tyranny of the most extreme kind. Once the power is centralized, the ability to abuse that power becomes irrefutable as far as history is concerned. The idea of the philosopher king (or planners)lacks the merit or the understanding of human nature. People are greedy. To place the power of all our lives in the hands of the few only begs for the worst kinds of tragedy that the world have known. More over, the few that we ask to do it are no wiser on those things than ourselves. Do you think that the hundreds of people on capital hill know what the best course of action is on green energy? Do their one or 2 advisers? No they don't. The only thing they can do, is force it. Even if it isn't the most wise course of action.