@marbles

-Yes, Ron Paul is naive when it comes to economics, by putting his faith in neo-liberal doctrinal scripture that has no evidence to support it, nor any basis in the reality of a modern economy. The fact that he believes capitalism to be the embodiment of liberty is the root of this naivety.

Privatization, deregulation, international 'free' trade agreements and austerity -all principles of neo-liberal thought- have caused the lion share of our current economic woes: massive income disparity, high unemployment, wage slavery, inflation, labor abuse, war profiteering, eroding of civil rights, the death of many a small business, massive corruption, environmental harm, etc. Think of all the major economic scandals of the last few decades - The Saving and Loan Scandal, The Foreclosure scandal, Enron, the oil spills, Katrina (the aftermath, not the weather event), etc. All of them are the result of deregulation. I know that government interference is a big boogey man to the capitalist libertarian set, but every single one of these scandals could have been prevented with proper regulation and/or proper oversight.

-Yes, I'm sorry to say it, but Ron Paul does play the game, and he is a part of the two party system.
Check out the damage control here: http://videosift.com/search?q=ron+paul+earmarks

-If you remember 4 years ago, people were saying the same things about Obama that you are saying about Ron Paul today - that he is the answer to all our problems - but then he moved into the White House and was forced to abandon or compromise nearly all of his promises. I warn you against political hero worship. No matter how much you like the guy, no matter how much grandfatherly charm he exudes, he is still a politician who must play by the rules of the broken system.

I could be wrong, and these comments will be here next year to rub in my face in the off chance that America is transformed into Galt Island.

As Sammy Hagar once said in his infinite wisdom, "Only time will tell if we can stand the test of time."

This guy spends the whole video telling us what the symptoms are but ignores what got us here and how to fix it. No surprise the anti-free market (anti-freedom) people are oblivious to it.

Government and bankers have been running a ponzi scheme for most of the last century: Economic central planning and fractional reserve banking. Bankers have been stealing more and more from us every year through money manipulation and taxes.

Inflation is not some magical or natural occurrence. It is baked into the system. It is direct theft. A gallon of milk has pretty much the same value as it did 50 years ago, yet the price has changed, why? And for those that say, well prices have gone up but so have wages so it evens out. Not true. In the arbitrage between the two, you're always going to be on the losing side. And that ignores the theft of savings, and ignores how bankers exploit that arbitrage. That is why we have booms and busts. Bubbles are purposely induced through collusion and fraud to financially rape the people.

Without the fraud and collusion, there wouldn't be trillions of debt. And tax rates would probably be at the highest 10%. Income tax needs to eventually be abolished. In a free world, you trade your labor for wages. The government has no claim to your labor, so why does it have a claim to the wages you traded it for? Taxing consumption above the poverty level makes the most sense. But that can never be implemented without first eliminating the tax on income. You tax things you want less of, you bailout things you more of. The government taxes productivity (income), and rewards fraud (bank bailouts).

How do we fix this:
1. Eliminate the cancer: The Federal Reserve. Eliminate the whole concept of a central bank deciding monetary policy in general. Allow free choice and freedom of currency. Force banks to disclose their reserve ratio to issue loans. The free market will probably force banks to hold close to 100% of reserves. And banking would also become more of a co-op system like credit unions.
2. Cram down all the toxic loans on the Fed's balance sheet to the fair market value of the home and renegotiate the terms for the home owner.
3. Close down the Military Industrial Complex. End all wars. Close down all foreign military bases. Focus Department of Defense on actually defending threats instead of creating them. Abolish the CIA.
4. Break the global oil cartel.
5. Probably have to break up the big banks and pass regulations similar to Glass-Steagall to keep them from getting "too big to fail". Separate banks from investment firms, insurance firms etc. Enforce real regulations that protect consumers, not the parasitic speculators. If a hedge fund makes bad bets and loses, then they lose. No bailouts.
6. Eliminate the false free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT. Stop incentivising global companies to outsource production oversees.
7. Eliminate tax on production. (Income tax)
8. Ban health insurance. (The middle man) We would probably have to fully nationalize health care. (It is anyway really) And then work towards a system of free choice and volunteerism.

Probably more solutions, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. And yes, I'm a free market idealist.

@GeeSussFreeK, I think you just need to think about it more. It's not really that hard to realize that there's no harm really being done to straight people when gays get married, and that there's a pretty serious harm being done to gay people in denying them the ability to marry who they want.

Maybe the thought grosses out some straight people, but nothing is actually being done to them at all, while denying gay people equal legal status involves depriving them of something very important.

I do think developing nuclear bombs was done without any real attempt to think about the moral consequences of creating such a weapon. Given that they exist, it seems to me that a lot of things are justifiable in the name of keeping them from being used, considering how harmful they could be. That just makes me dislike them all the more.

I'm not sure why you'd ever be off the hook (morally speaking) from looking at the consequences of your actions. If cheetos and soda are made with slave labor, or are made via a process that's killing the environment, maybe it's not moral for you to buy them.

As for this:

Even if consequentialism were a valid moral dogma, it fails to be readily applied in beings that are mortal and can only factor in very very limited scopes.

This is as good an explanation as any for why liberals tend not to be particularly judgmental about people, unless their actions can clearly be seen as causing harm.

I don't really blame people for buying tube socks at Walmart, even though it's essentially just fueling modern-day slavery. I do think people should, if they want to be a better person, pay closer attention to that kind of stuff, but I don't blame them for not investing the time and energy to know. I'd rather we just do better about making slavery illegal, or at least set up trade agreements so we refuse to import goods from countries with labor conditions below a certain minimum level...

I can understand why you're tempted to reject the idea out of hand -- it's hard to suddenly realize that you probably should spend more time thinking about the ways in which your actions might harm others, rather than telling yourself you have a right to cause all the harm you want, as long as you follow a couple simple rules.

I don't really care if you adopt it as your own moral guide, but if you're interested in understanding the moral reasoning behind most left-wing people, it's essentially the underlying mechanic we use for judging what's right and wrong, and should help you understand why liberals come to different conclusions about moral questions than you.

The ramifications of our reckless and foolish international free trade agreements is a great topic for conversation, but it's so much easier to scapegoat foreigners than to read up on the topic.

>> ^bobknight33:

Government employees should not be allowed to unionize. It just wrong. If you want to serve the government then fine. But don't soak the taxpayers by getting union wages and benefits. We work too. We have families to support. I don't need to support lazy union workers.

What evidence is there that anyone involved in a union in Wisconsin is "lazy"? Remember, you're talking about school teachers and trash collectors here.

Why is there any difference between public and private sector unions? In both cases they exist because people have a basic human right to assemble and negotiate contracts. Are public servants somehow not human in your mind? Don't they have families to support too?
>> ^bobknight33:
Unions are bad for any business. Look at all the major companies that have failed or have been greatly crippled such as the Steel industry, Auto Industry, Airline industry.

The Auto industry is a bit broad, Ford is doing great with unions still in place, and without any government loans. GM took a government loan, and is now doing fine with unions still in place. Chrysler's problems were that they kept making ugly, sucky cars, even when they were merged with Mercedes. Hopefully now that they've merged with FIAT, we'll see an improvement in the quality of their designs.

The Steel Industry I know a lot less about, but the main thing that killed them there was bad trade agreements. It's tough for a country that believes in worker safety and humane treatment of workers to compete with countries that don't really shy away from using slave labor to do labor-intensive high-risk work.

The Airline Industry is in trouble because oil is already fucking expensive, and will continue to get more so. We're likely to soon find ourselves in a world where only millionaires will be able to pay the ticket prices that would make air travel profitable for an airline.

But at the most fundamental level, I don't get your motivations here. Why do you see unions as being some sort of unmitigated evil, while lining the pockets of millionaires and billionaires as some sort of ultimate good?

I would chose to have trading agreements and cultural exchange instead of being colonized. Colonization sucks.

If Tropico 3 is any indication ; there needs to be more banana plantations - maybe a new warehouse or two, a couple of residential blocks, a trade agreement/bailout plan with Russia and when the economy gets strong install a cheap tourism state at which point we can forget about the natives and prosper! Man, that game was great...

The CFR (Council on Foriegn Relations) is a think tank whos members comprise basically every prominent US politician, central banker and mega corp executives. They have a publication called Foreign Affairs that propagates the kind of thinking they're developing.

Trilateral Commission is much the same with international members spanning different countries in Europe and Asia.

Bilderberg group is secretive to the point of armed guards, people claiming not to have been there/know about it when it is provable that they do, etc. It seems to have many of the same members, however it is more selective than CFR/Trilateral, so probably at the top of the power structure (if there is one).

Combining these three groups, you've got perhaps the most powerful 500 people meeting in secret which are all then connected to the CFR and Trilateral commission. Both are extremely influential groups in the Foreign Policy arena, with the ability to effectively create cases for things like trade agreements that undermine national sovereignty, world food regulation by the WTO, and potentially their goal, a global central world government ruled by them, the most powerful people.. the elite.

As far as I can see it, the CFR in particular is the mouthpiece for this ideology and it happens that Obama's actions seem to fit in quite nicely with it.

This is a really serious issue. ..and as sad as the human story is, the problem is bigger than that. 60-70% of the primary forest in the Peruvian Amazon is under threat. Alan Garcia, the president of Peru, has suspended constitutional protection of this area to open it up to foreign timber, mining, oil, and agricultural use. He is responding to obligations in the free trade agreement with the US; so this is not just a Peruvian issue.

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0606-oil_or_death_in_the_amazon.html
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/ben-powless/2009/06/peru-battle-lines-drawn-over-amazon
Petition:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/peru_stop_violence/?cl=250341655&v=3461

^ I think your heart's in the right place, but I think you're missing the forest for the trees.

How Unions accomplished what they did was through strikes, and negotiations leveraged by that stick. The unions both then and now understand that they have to care about the economic welfare of their host company, it's common sense.

What's changed, is that it used to be possible for all workers to be part of a union, and really have power over their company to drive deals. There wasn't enough international trade to allow companies to get around them by simply offshoring their manufacturing.

Times have changed, and companies have been willing to go anywhere, primarily countries like China, that don't even have the protections that the unions built in the 40's and 50's here, so they can try to undo all the progress unions made in this country.

That's not the union's fault at all, it's management explicitly trying to kill off the unions and their protections, with the hope that people will support them when they say "we're just trying to be competitive." Unfortunately, it seems lots of people are lapping that up.

The answer isn't to tighten the screws on unions and make them be more sweatshop-like so they're "more competitive," working longer hours for less pay, less benefits, and less safety equipment. The answer is to retool our trade agreements with other countries so that they can't sell in our country unless they "compete" with our union's good working conditions.

Let's get this whole market-driven economy thing working for regular folks again, instead of just for the CEO's.

>> ^blankfist:
Still, what would a bailout prove? I remember experiencing a lot of fellow industry people in the tech-industry losing everything after the dot-com bubble popped, and Congress didn't raise a finger to bail us out. And why should they? The market was unsustainable because people were throwing too much money at it without a system of monetizing it. Those who could work through that collapse, did. The industry survived even though a lot of the major companies did not.

Difference is, with the dot bomb crash, the industry wasn't a monolithic triopoly, there were thousands upon thousands of fresh upstarts that turned to dust as quickly as they rose up. If we were talking about a similar situation with the auto industry, where most of the companies/products were new and non-essential, I don't think there'd be any talk of a bailout...or a union.

Conservatives (or at least people in Republican jersies, and self-identified conservative Democrats) helped them get too big by never exercising the FTC and having them actually stave off companies from getting "too big to fail" as GM, Ford and Chrysler have.

The same group also prevented government helping these companies take a long view of the global situation -- yes Virginia, I mean environmental issues, fuel efficiency standards, and alternative fuels.

GM, Chrysler and Ford are not sustainable. I'm sorry, but let's try not to make this a party issue. This is about private companies not being able to sustain themselves, and I'm sorry if those of us against the bailout oppose your party position for labor, but that doesn't make those of us against it "republicans". That makes us against nationalizing private debt. And, if you were smart, you'd be against that too.
Economy be damned when industries are falsely propped up.


Why are Ford, GM and Chrysler not sustainable? Could it be that we have bad trade agreements, allowing companies like Hyundai to sell 500,000 cars in the US, while limiting us to 5000 in Korea?

Could it be that every other country with an auto industry gives their companies government support, including both national healthcare as well as protectionist trade policies, and government subsidies?

Could it be that in pursuit of the conservative ideal of "free trade", we're forcing our employees to try to compete with countries with no worker safety or labor laws?

Then there's this little matter about the banks not being willing to give anyone loans for anything, including cars, which makes it a tiny bit hard for these guys to sell anything.

I know you'd rather it not be a "party issue", and that's fine. I just figured I'd lay the blame at the Republican party's feet, rather than saying "conservative ideology" where it probably rightfully belongs, because I always hear that Republicans aren't conservative, and they've been the ones pushing these failed government practices since the 1980's.

But hey, if you want to take the blame for making the environment impossible for the big three to operate as a non-sweatshop employer, who am I to stop you.

If you were smart, you'd be on the side of this argument that's looking to keep people employed, and fix the big three, rather than clinging to the same ideology that got us into this mess in the first place.

You've got a good point about propping up failing businesses, and I think that there should be serious, serious strings attached to any money we loan these guys, and that we ensure these are loans to be paid back with interest, not a big gift basket, like TARP is. Problem is those pesky conservatives (or Republicans as they call themselves) have fought to keep Democrats from adding environmental restrictions and management paycuts/restructuring, while at the same time trying to insert legislation that requires the unions to agree to salaries and benefits below the foreign auto makers. I suppose that's because under their reading of the conservative ideology, telling businesses how to operate is okay if it's to put the screws to unions, but not when management is being made accountable.

These are going to be party issues, and generally speaking, blankfist, I categorize you as being a 3rd party -- neither progressive nor "Republican", the former because it's accurate, and the second because you're as frustrated with that group of howler monkeys as I am.

However, don't try to tell me that Republicans are now high-minded conservatives, because it's a little suspect that they seemed to only remember those principles on Nov 5th, 2008, and they just so happen to lead them to the conclusion that the right course of action is to filibuster everything the Democrats try to do.

>> ^imstellar28:
my kind of protest. any links to the story?


They are protesting in front of parliment. We now have protests there every saturday at 15:00. People show up, 3-4 people hold speeches. These motorcyclists weren't an official part of the protest but wanted to do show support in this way. The flag the guy on the roof was raising is the flag of Bonus (icelandic Wal Mart, Tesco). The cops tried to get him but the crowd got him back and he ran away. I was very happy they didn't resort to spraying people with tear gas which they did this summer. When people are shouting at the police there they are saying "YOU ARE WORKING FOR US, NOT THEM". I suspect the police were this passive because most of them probably agree with the protesters.

Basically, Iceland is in turmoil. The credit crisis led to all of our 3 banks collapsing(12x the size of the GDP). It's down to a european trade agreement(can't remember the name in english). It gives companys all sorts of freedoms, some good, some not so good. It meant that our banks could operate anywhere in Europe. So, they went and started loaning in Holland, Germany and England. In England alone over 300.000 people had accounts (these accounts had very high interest rates). So.. when the banks couldn't get loans from other banks they started falling, they had expanded themselves way too much like everybody else. BUT.. while the law gave them freedom to operate in other countries, the banking license was still in Iceland. Which meant 310.000 people were now responsible for accounts of almost 500.000 people, many of which had high amounts in the accounts.

The Icelandic goverment started freezing the banks, to take over. A disputed act, but they couldn't really let the banks go bankrupt because then the country would have no way to buy anything, nobody would have any money. So when Gordon Brown saw what they were doing he talked to our goverment and they said they would probably be able to pay off what the law required of them (about 20-30.000 euros for each person I think). Somehow Gordon took that as us not being willing to pay. So next the British goverment froze all Icelandic assets in England (using the terrorist law) and declared Iceland as a bankrupt nation (even though the country itself had no debts and has been practically debtless for some years, quite rare for a country). Next we knew, iceland was on the same list as terrorist organizations like Al quaida and terrorist supporting nations. It has now come to light that before they did that, the assets of the banks would have sufficed to pay off the legal requirement and then some. But freezing everything and declaring us as a terrorist nation effectively took all value off those assets. Catch 22?.

We are now running down on foreign currency to buy in produce. We have been working with the IMF to get a loan to get the economy moving but word is that the english and dutch are working behind the scenes to deny us of that loan until we agree to pay way over the legal requirements. Gordon Brown is basically trying to look as some savior to the british people, he's been doing horrible in the polls and this is his Falklands war.

In essence, we got fucked by greedy businessmen and inept politicians. 99% of the nation had no idea we were written down as responsible for all these foreign accounts. The politicians championed these businessmenn while everything here was booming, they were buying up huge companies overseas, money here was very easy to come by. But as it turns out, it was a bubble, none of it was real.

In the last few decades unemployment has been from 1,2-2,2%. We are now facing a possible 10-20% next year. Numbers that have never been seen in the history of the country. Our international reputation has been terminally fucked. We read stories of icelanders in england having their dinner plates spat on, people getting verbally abused in the street e.t.c. Just for being icelandic. For the actions of about 30 people.

This rant could probably be 3x longer, but i'll stop here for now .

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081108/D94AO3T80.html

(Palin) also denied a report that she didn't know Africa was a continent, not a country, and that she didn't know the members of the North American Free Trade Agreement - the United States, Canada and Mexico. She remembered discussing both Africa and Obama's stance on NAFTA with people preparing her for her debate, she said. Anything reported as a gaffe was taken out of context.

"That's cruel. It's mean-spirited. It's immature. It's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news. It's not fair and it's not right."

Right now there's so many lies and half-truths pouring in from the mainstream liberal-run media about Palin that are equivalent to, "Obama is a Muslim".

Even after the stealth marxist made it into the White House, they've got to attack her.

You've got bigger problems to worry about, libs, like filling the empty suit behind the podium.

It's not a long article. I'll just post it and save you guys the click:

Obama is Stoking Racial Antagonism
by Rush Limbaugh

I understand the rough and tumble of politics. But Barack Obama -- the supposedly postpartisan, postracial candidate of hope and change -- has gone where few modern candidates have gone before.

Mr. Obama's campaign is now trafficking in prejudice of its own making. And in doing so, it is playing with political dynamite. What kind of potential president would let his campaign knowingly extract two incomplete, out-of-context lines from two radio parodies and build a framework of hate around them in order to exploit racial tensions? The segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s were famous for such vile fear-mongering.

Here's the relevant part of the Spanish-language television commercial Mr. Obama is running in Hispanic communities:

"They want us to forget the insults we've put up with . . . the intolerance . . . they made us feel marginalized in this country we love so much."

Then the commercial flashes two quotes from me: ". . . stupid and unskilled Mexicans" and "You shut your mouth or you get out!"

And then a voice says, "John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote . . . and another, even worse, that continues the policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families. John McCain . . . more of the same old Republican tricks."

Much of the media that is uninterested in Mr. Obama's connections to unrepentant 1970s Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright have so far gone along with the attempt to tie me to Mr. McCain. But Mr. McCain and I have not agreed on how to address illegal immigration. While I am heartened by his willingness to start by securing the borders, it is no secret that we have fundamental differences on illegal immigration.

And more to the point, these sound bites are a deception, and Mr. Obama knows it. The first sound bite was extracted from a 1993 humorous monologue poking fun at the arguments against the North American Free Trade Agreement. Here's the context:

"If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south. Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine 'cause those are the kinds of jobs Nafta is going to create. If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do -- let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."

My point, which is obvious, was that the people who were criticizing Nafta were demeaning workers, particularly low-skilled workers. I was criticizing the mind-set of the protectionists who opposed the treaty. There was no racial connotation to it and no one thought there was at the time. I was demeaning the arguments of the opponents.

As for the second sound bite, I was mocking the Mexican government's double standard -- i.e., urging open borders in this country while imposing draconian immigration requirements within its own borders. Thus, I took the restrictions Mexico imposes on immigrants and appropriated them as my own suggestions for a new immigration law.

Here's the context for that sound bite: "And another thing: You don't have the right to protest. You're allowed no demonstrations, no foreign flag waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies. You're a foreigner: shut your mouth or get out! And if you come here illegally, you're going to jail."

At the time, I made abundantly clear that this was a parody on the Mexican government's hypocrisy and nobody took it otherwise.

The malignant aspect of this is that Mr. Obama and his advisers know exactly what they are doing. They had to listen to both monologues or read the transcripts. They then had to pick the particular excerpts they used in order to create a commercial of distortions. Their hoped-for result is to inflame racial tensions. In doing this, Mr. Obama and his advisers have demonstrated a pernicious contempt for American society.

We've made much racial progress in this country. Any candidate who employs the tactics of the old segregationists is unworthy of the presidency.

^Farhad2000:
I disagree that free markets are highly prevalent in modern economies.
One tenant of a completely free market is the lack of asymmetrical information, that both the buyer and seller are aware of all other buyers and sellers.

Do you agree with the definition of a free market I gave in section I? I do not think a free market requires informational symmetry. As I defined, the only distinction is the restriction on the use of physical force.

In your example, the parent would know of all other kids competing for money to mow the lawn, the kid is aware of all parents seeking his services and at what price point.
This is just a small local example, this can be taken further on international levels, where it gets even more complicated as we factor in protectionist trade policy, trade agreements, trade restrictions, trade quotas and so on.

Do you think my example is invalid? I admit things get complicated as you increase the scope, but increased complication does not nullify the underlying principles.

As far as your examples:

1. Japan Auto industry: in your examples you are demonstrating how restrictions are harmful to the consumer. At this scope, it is not a free market, but if you reduce to scope you find free markets. The trade from manufacturer to dealer might not be free, but the trade from dealer to consumer is relatively free. and the used sale trades from consumer to consumer are 100% free.

2. International agriculture: again it sounds like you are demonstrating how restrictions are negative. Worldwide, if you reduce the scope of the market to only agriculture, the vast percentage of exchange occurs in the absence of force (it is a free market). Whether you are in a tribe in afrika or a suburb in the US, the daily or weekly exchanges you make to obtain food occur in a free market. When you buy food at a supermarket there is no physical force applied--even if there is physical force experienced at the level of the supermarket and its supplier.

3. Walmart: same argument here, when you walk into walmart and pick up an item and give the cashier money for it--no physical force is experienced (save, maybe for sales tax which does not exist in all states). The market which occurs between the cashiers and the owners however, is not free as there are minimum wage laws, overtime rules, etc.

This is what I mean by expanding and reducing the scope of markets to conduct analysis. While the overall market in all three of your examples are not free, the vast majority of the sub-markets which they are comprised of, are.