"assymetries between buyers an sellers" is the basis for having an economy in the first place, though

I think I can see what you think should be rewarded: "hard work, intelligence, talent and perseverance". However, the only thing that Capitalism rewards is how useful or valued your product or service is to someone else.

This is judged entirely subjectively, thus allowing for weird examples like insanely expensive collectible comic books.
In my opinion, a system that rewards the values you mentioned (which are labour-focused), does not guarantee that any value is actually produced.

Take a hyperbolic example: Einstein might spend 100 hours working on making a single pizza, but all his talent, hard work, intelligence and perseverance won't change the fact that it ends up an inedible, simultaneously soggy and charred mess.
Should he be guaranteed pay for the pizza? No! He should look at this strengths and weaknesses, and figure out where he can be the most useful to the people around him (or, to put it a more critical way: how he can create the appearance of usefulness in their minds, so they'll give him money - either way, they'll be happy and he'll get paid).

>> ^Crake:
If I win the lottery, I don't deserve the winnings. Same goes if I sell a mint condition comic book for tens of thousands of dollars. I don't have to worry about the buyer's reason for paying that price, it may be because he's a sucker, or because he really sees that much value in it (or because he knows he can resell it for even more later, which is probably the usual case).
So, there is a disconnect between buyer and seller, that allows for a lack of compassion for mistakes, I guess, but it's on a solid moral footing (voluntary, presumably rational actors), so it's hard to change.

What you say there is pretty much why us lefties like the idea of a progressive tax structure, a social safety net, and a body of regulations designed towards limiting the ways in which asymmetry between buyers and sellers can be exploited (and protecting people who are affected by the transaction who are neither the buyer nor seller).

Incidentally, it's pretty easy to see most economic success as being equivalent to winning the lottery. Hard work, intelligence, talent, and perseverance alone aren't enough to make you a billionaire. Hell, those things might not even land you a job that could support a family anymore.

^Voldemort quote. Nice

I agree that fairness it often an abused term when it comes to real-life issues (such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).

I'm not sure that's the issue here, though. I think Lewis is working from the basic assumption of Capitalism everywhere: It's voluntary, therefore it is fair (this is where the pirate comparison becomes problematic).

If I win the lottery, I don't deserve the winnings. Same goes if I sell a mint condition comic book for tens of thousands of dollars. I don't have to worry about the buyer's reason for paying that price, it may be because he's a sucker, or because he really sees that much value in it (or because he knows he can resell it for even more later, which is probably the usual case).

So, there is a disconnect between buyer and seller, that allows for a lack of compassion for mistakes, I guess, but it's on a solid moral footing (voluntary, presumably rational actors) , so it's hard to change.

nor should it be changed, but that's just my own Capitalist opinion

My next question would be.... can you help me find a buyer?

Interesting show. One minor nitpick about the summary: he doesn't "show why humans have a herd instinct when it comes to investment", he merely claims they do.

I do wonder if bubbles could be minimized by actually making the market transparent. Many politicians and economists claim to want to increase transparency, but little seems to come from it. I'd love to see an experiment to determine the effects of complete transparency of all publicly traded companies, i.e. any company that wanted to issue stock would have to make its books available to the public. Increased knowledge on the part of the buyers can only help the market work better.

I'd think this would give companies a hard push to profit by actually creating wealth rather than by creating the illusion of wealth via financial trickery.

SUPERLATIVE SUPERLATIVE SUPERLATIVE SUPERLATIVE SUPERLATIVE SUPERLATIVE SUPERLATIVE

This is where Apple's closed system begins to fail. On the iPhone/Ipod Touch it was okay that you were heavily limited to Apple approved products, applications and functions. People have low expectations from smartphones or at least did when the first version came out.

This is a different beast entirely. Since it's more or less looking to surpass the netbooks in a number of areas, it will be judged by near-PC functionality, and well ... it comes up short. Sure once they've gorged themselves on micro transactions which push the actual cost of the device way above the $499 introductory price, having youtube, ereader, video, music and an office suite should be enough for most people. Who knows that might be just enough to make it sell well.

But the point is, many people will be disappointed it doesn't offer them the range of packages that a Windows or OS X based PC does. They'll miss the free 3rd party content that they already have on their PC/Mac or have bought and can't simply transfer over because it's not a desktop level OS.

I remember a study found that a large majority of netbook buyers who bought it purportedly as their first laptop ended up disappointed because there was a preconception that it would perform as well as a full fledged PC. Apple denizens who staved off until now for a cheap and compact PC will be likely left out in the cold in the same way.

Alot of commenters have expressed the lack of conviction, nay, BALLS that we were hoping this product would have. Nominally the expectation was that Apple was going after the netbook market but logically then it would still have a keyboard. No this is their plunge into a market that hasn't really worked out for anyone and even Apple with their mass-market appeal may not crack it. Laptops compete very effectively with this and are better featured and more flexible. I concur with the tech shortcomings and no multi-tasking? Wow.

People may like this but the shortcomings will be apparent quite quickly if you've previously used a laptop. The market for this thing will be as an additional web-browser to whatever you already have and composed of buyers who don't mind being corralled and guided towards a controlled and sanitised environment. I might not object either but if only for the convenience and purported ease of use. That said it would still have to be cheaper; I can see this thing getting dropped as it journeys between the lounge and kitchen.

As to what this should have been or the market they COULD have invented; well that's what really interests me. They could have defined the kind of everyday tasks/chores that this device could have taken on. It would have required a camera and alternative input and even scanning options. The possibilities are exciting. Bring the real world into the device, solve real problems, meet real needs. But the iPad is just about taking some netbook share. That's all it is.

Who do you consider a great speaker?

Great speakers? Ronald Reagan, JFK, MLKJ. I'd even go so far as to say Bill Clinton was a good public speaker. Obama is an 'adequate' speaker. He does a workman job. He isn't a BAD public speaker, but he's definitely no maven like some people keep saying.

I picked out the man-child's speech register after hearing him only once. Listen to him. Obama has a clearly predictable and generally boring cadance - almost like a 'tide'. He ... PAUSES ... and then he ... CONTINUES to speak for a second before he ... PAUSES again and keeps on rolling and ... ROLLING until he ... STOPS again and ... FINISHES! You can almost set your watch by this little routine of his.

This is an artifact not of rhetorical prowess. It is an artifact of his dependance on his teleprompter. He is pausing and giving the prompter time to scroll up what he's saying next. Then he rushes though a few words to 'catch up' and then he ... PAUSES again, hitting emphasis on whatever word where he picks up his speech on. Not only is he totally dependant on his teleprompter, but he isn't even really very good at using it. Other speakers can use a teleprompter and sound natural. Obama sounds like he's fighting with it.

And don't get me started on his stupid head swing. Watching his head swap from teleprompter screen to teleprompter screen in a speech is like watching a game of tennis. Or maybe it is more like watching a lighthouse. Anyway - the guy just isn't very natural when he's moving his head. Bleh. The point with a teleprompter is to make it look like you AREN'T using it. Obama's method draws attention to his mechanical delivery. He gets the words out fine. He just looks and sounds forced and stilted doing it.

Simply put, the free market system for health worked fine in America until the 60's

BINGO! Nice to finally meet someone with historical perspective. Too many Americans are too young and ignorant of history and fact. Alas it takes a Canadian to point out the bleeding obvious to some of our youth. American health care was screwed up by GOVERNMENT. Ted Kennedy specifically was the one who passed his stupid HMO law which (basically) CREATED the insurance industry in America as we know it today. Up until that point, consumers dealt with doctors directly out of their own pockets. And guess what? When you take middle-men out of the picture, capitalism works just fine. Health care was affordable. Plans existed for catastrophic care, and they were easily affordable by almost everyone. The only thing HMO's accomplished was totally screwing up the relationship between providers and buyers. The solution to America's HC issue is not more government. The solution is LESS.

Torturing innocent people to death is an exaggeration? As in, we didn't do it?

I can find no credible source documenting the U.S. military 'torturing people to death'. Rhetoric such as 'murdering innocent people', 'going to war over false pretenses', 'sycophantic neocon ideas', 'purposefully plunging the economy'... These are the biased terms of left wing blogs. Speaking out against the Iraq War, or Bush, or whatever doesn't make you a kook. The WAY you speak out against them is what makes a kook like Olbermann.

That's why I propose we just waterboard conservatives until they confess to secretly being concerned about the well being of people who aren't themselves.

A fruitless endeavor, because conservatives are by natural proclivity concerned about others. They'd 'admit' it with a smile, and prove it with actions. The liberal approach to addressing the needs of others is to hand out a stringy, stinky government fish once a month. The conservative approach to helping the needy is to encourage them to create a fishing concern so they can make millions of dollars selling fish after they feed themselves like kings.

You are obviously OBVIOUSLY biased towards the other side of the isle

I am a strict fiscal conservative with strong constitutional constructionist leanings and a decidedly libertarian philosophy. Freedom is where I plant my flag. You can know in advance very clearly where I stand on any issue based on my guiding political philosophies of limited government power, and increased human freedom. I am not guided by 'party' politics. I'm guided by over-arching principles. Show me a liberal who fights for the consitution as it was written, fiscal responsibility, and personal freedom and I vote for them. But since the progressive liberal movement is decidedly anti-choice, anti-freedom, anti-fiscal responsibility, and anti-consitution they frequently get the stinkeye.

We need better health care. At least in the hands of the government it can be held somewhat accountable.

It is comments like this that cause me to - as you put it - 'shout'. If you really believe what you just said then I don't know what to say. You have the evidence of DECADES of solid, inarguable proof that the government being in charge of medical issues is never held accountable for tremendous waste, mismanagement, and outright misappropriation & graft. How anyone can look at programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and still think that putting government in charge of such matters is a good idea is beyond me. The proper solution is more freedom - not less. Medical care has been a government mis-managed fiasco in the US ever since Ted Kennedy's stupid HMO bill screwed up the relationship between buyers and providers.

Beck is easy fodder and this segment seems to be implying that gold's price is a result of illegitimate fear and not actual currency debasement worldwide. Not even Beck's massive ego can affect the price of gold. Gold began going up years ago when Greenspan lowered interest rates to 1% and blew up the real estate bubble.

http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/au3650nyb.html

The Fed's continued policy of inflation, the arbitrary creation of dollar units at no labor or material cost, is what is making dollars less scarce relative to gold. Yes, the real estate bubble was allowed to collapse about halfway, but gold continues to rise in anticipation of the banks eventually loaning all that bailout money they received. It can't just sit on the sidelines forever, either it's retracted and we pay the piper, or it's loaned out. The problem with loaning it out is that we may lose key buyers of our debt. A bond is a promise to pay future dollars, and if we are rapidly decreasing their scarcity relative to goods, it becomes a losing proposition to buy bonds at such a low interest rate. Some of the largest purchasers of gold are foreign central banks, which are currently VASTLY underinvested in gold. China has only 1% of its reserves in gold, the rest is paper. India recently bought 200 metric tons.

I will start believing in the gold bubble crowd when I stop seeing those infomercials getting highly indebted Americans to SELL their gold for paper. You talk to the typical person the street, and they're still oblivious to what gold represents, and those that do are not buying, but selling. This is just the beginning of a huge bull run, and it's kind of hilarious to see some people calling the top over and over again. Peter Schiff wrote a funny article in 2006 about what a gold bubble would actually look like.

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Schiff/apr252006.html

>> ^RedSky:
@NordlichReiter
The dollar is only really down to levels it was pre-financial crisis. Taking your reference point at the height of the global financial crisis is unfair because everyone was buying up US treasury bonds and over inflating the currency.
The fact that countries are considering moving away from the US dollar as the reserve currency, the currency they trade in, and which they keep as foreign reserves is a good thing in the long term. This has kept the US dollar overvalued for decades, and has contributed significantly to the unsustainable consumption and housing binge, and was obvious a major catalyst for the global financial crisis. A rebalancing would put the onus further on factors of GDP such as investment as a contributor to economic growth.
To say that the economy is in recovery is not disingenuous. They're simply using leading indicators such as stock price or inventory levels, which are generally good predictors of economic recovery and in this case a pending fall in unemployment. The scale of that is anyone's guess though, as is how much of the economy was spurned by returning business confidence in the private sector rather that purely government stimulus and specific programs such as first home buyer's grants and cash for clunkers.


Cash for clunkers was the biggest waste. The other parts of your arguments I cannot find fault with.

Taking assets that can be modified, recycled reused, and even melted down for metals and destroying them and leaving them in a dump yard is a waste. Why would you destroy something that has re-usable parts and resources?

Differential gears, transmission parts, bearings, four wheel drive parts, pinions, springs, headers, skid plates, hubs, disks, and shoes. Instead they put sodium silicate into the engines. All because the government doesn't want the cars traded in being re-sold back into the market.

I would argue that having a hulking dump of cars, like I see on the side of the Highway is worse than seeing a repaired 78 Volkswagen van that runs on diesel, or electricity.

@NordlichReiter

The dollar is only really down to levels it was pre-financial crisis. Taking your reference point at the height of the global financial crisis is unfair because everyone was buying up US treasury bonds and over inflating the currency.

The fact that countries are considering moving away from the US dollar as the reserve currency, the currency they trade in, and which they keep as foreign reserves is a good thing in the long term. This has kept the US dollar overvalued for decades, and has contributed significantly to the unsustainable consumption and housing binge, and was obvious a major catalyst for the global financial crisis. A rebalancing would put the onus further on factors of GDP such as investment as a contributor to economic growth.

To say that the economy is in recovery is not disingenuous. They're simply using leading indicators such as stock price or inventory levels, which are generally good predictors of economic recovery and in this case a pending fall in unemployment. The scale of that is anyone's guess though, as is how much of the economy was spurned by returning business confidence in the private sector rather that purely government stimulus and specific programs such as first home buyer's grants and cash for clunkers.

>> ^dag:
How the hell did this weasel get elected to congress?


After seeing the likes of Bachman, Foxx, et al. do you really have to ask? It seems like the primary qualification for congressional election is a pulse. No brain cells needed.

Buyer's remorse? So she's finally going to talk about her haircut?

Your video, Rachel Maddow: Buyer's Remorse, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.