>> ^ElJardinero:
Free healthcare for all isn't socialism, it's called "sticking together". Where I live you pay the same amount for a strained knee, brain cancer e.t.c. , 30-40 dollars I think. No insurance needed, just being a citizen.


There's no such thing as a free lunch. Want to work for me for free? Didn't think so. Socialist health care is paid by taxes (nominal appropriations) and inflation (wage and savings value appropriations). Those are both forced methods of payment, there's no opting out.

Say, for example, your neighbor decides to smoke his whole life. He comes down with lung cancer and undergoes numerous operations, receives numerous drugs and therapy, all totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now let's take several people who paid the same amount into the system and got nothing because they never smoked. Those people effectively paid for his costs. A complete transfer of wealth, despite having no control over that person's personal decisions. Money that could have gone to a better home for themselves, another child for themselves, better food for themselves. Gone, given to the guy who smoked under the idealistic notion of coerced charity for the public good.

In fact, if everything were provided to you based on other people's money, why would you work at all? And if people don't work, where does the money come from? Now you now why the USSR fell and every other country who became too socialist. When you have an incentive model that says, no matter how hard you work, you're gauranteed the same share as the next guy, why excel? Or no matter how many risks you take with your health of your own volition, you will be subsidized by others who didn't. It completely perverts incentive.

In capitalism, on the other hand, where money is market determined (gold), and you have no central bank price fixing interest rates, and government is only funded to the extent that it protects rights and offers courts, people just... trade with one another with the effect of benefiting both parties. Two people acting in their own self-interest will make mutually beneficial trades even if they were only thinking of their own welfare.

>> ^MINK:
socialism is just a word.
america is not a word, neither was the USSR, nor is Sweden. you're all arguing about a word ffs.
I guess Obama is trying to distance himself from the word because it was subverted by fucking idiots for 100 years.
I repeat... if you are not a socialist, what are you? Antisocialist?


Socialism is simply the opposite of capitalism. Socialism is the percentage of capital controlled "communally" via the government. Capitalism is the percentage of capital controlled by its earner. We are probably 60% socialist at the moment, and it should be around 10%.

I love how the debate on marginally different tax rates between the two is now the main distraction of the day. You can't possibly be serious if you think more money being spent by its earner rather than by politicians who can dish it out like candy because it isn't their labor being lost, is to blame for this mess. Last I checked, the government's preferred method of taxation is just creating new money out of thin air from the Fed's magic checkbook and then lying about how much they're doing it. Inflation has so thoroughly devalued the dollar in which wages and retirement accounts are denominated, and goods are priced, it's ridiculous to focus attention on nominal tax appropriations. But it is election year, after all.

http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/2005/0624.html

In simple terms, a republic protects the rights of the minority by instating a constitution that gaurantees them certain protection regardless of the consensus will of the majority. In a true democracy, a majority vote could divy up the belongings of the minority with impunity. Very mob-like.

Republican and Democrat are names of political parties trying to push certain agendas, they have no correlation to the lower case government types. They both have historically shown on-and-off regard for the constitution. FDR confiscated gold, LBJ went to war without congressional declaration. Bush suspended rights of suspected combatants to due process and also failed to declare war (the reason we have that is because it enables total subversion of the whole rights thing. Want to arrest a political dissenter? Why not label them a terrorist?).

Not to mention the hundreds of programs created by both that are not authorized by the constitution as government functions. Although, to some degree, I have to agree that our constitution is poorly worded in many places and has numerous loopholes. For example, it bans "cruel and unusual punishment" without defining it. The 10th amendment is cast aside as a truism from its wording even though it was probably intended to restrict federal powers to those expressly given by the constitution. That was a real barn burner. Document just got way too fancy, many libertarians have made a dream constitution to replace it. Most of them start with "THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHALL NOT..." haha. Try slipping around that wording.

isn't it lack of government oversight that got us into this mess in the first place???

Were the riots of the 60s a result of government failing to enforce Jim Crow laws? Rather than put law enforcement under a single umbrella, you need to understand the difference between a good law and a bad law. Before you even make the jump to regulation, ask yourself if the regulators are being regulated by the constitution? Nope. Sort that one out first, there's your problem. "Regulation" is an extremely general term used by politicians to great effect to blame others for problems and changes in market behavior that they create. We have a central bank in this country that price fixes interest rates since 1913. This is a socialist idea that was passed on the basis of its objective rather than its result. It turns out that letting a pseudo-government agency set interest rates results in an artificial lowering to delay politically inconvenient recessions. This artificial price fix results in the wrong kind of investment decisions and incentives, leading to phony bubbles that carry with them the seeds of their own destruction. I'll explain below.

In order for credit to exist, savings must exist. That's what credit is, someone else loaning their money out to someone at interest rather than spending it. Everyone wants a low rate of interest as a borrower. Everyone wants a high rate of interest as a saver. By definition, savings is underconsumption. Someone, somewhere, has to be saving rather than spending money in order for real credit to exist. These two forces are at odds with each other, to find the happiest medium between savings and production. That's completely perverted by a price fixing system where the government is dictating the interest rate for political purposes. Too easy dictation in the 90s caused the tech stock bubble, worthless tech stocks were trading at hundreds time earnings. When that "growth" came crashing down in 2000, Bush didn't want to have the recession occurring under his first term or he wouldn't get re-elected. So he and Greenspan lowered interest rates to 1% for a whole year to keep businesses borrowing and consumers consuming. The problem is, where is the savings coming from to allow both to happen at once? Overseas. We are the world's largest debtor nation now, borrowing from everyone to consume products that they make. They accumulate our paper money. We get their products. 70 billion a month trade deficit and still going. That's our economy the last twenty years. We abuse a reserve currency of the world status gained under the gold standard to export our now inflationary currency all over the world. That's coming to and end at some point. The Fed is increasing its balance sheet like there's no tomorrow, trying to replace the credit no longer being loaned to us with a printing press. It won't work. It didn't work in Weimar, it didn't work in Argentina, it didn't work in Zimbabwe, and it won't work here. The inflation is in the pipeline, it will hit during Obama's term. Obama and McCain are both socialists, the pork filled bailout bill they voted on ought to be evidence of that. Neither one understands that the recession needs to happen like the druggie needs withdrawal, and the more you try to stop the failures and painful reallocations with more drugs, the longer you're going to be in rehab.

So where did all that money from tech stocks filter into? With such low rates of interest and a removal of houses from the government's own inflation calculations, inflation shifted from tech stocks into real estate rather than being purged in a recession. So nobody but a few libertarian economists who learned a type of economics that isn't taught here could see the problem, one of them being Ron Paul's economic advisor Peter Schiff. In that mania, lending standards were abandoned to take advantage of the artificial demand created by the dictated low interest.

In other words, the market got drunk, but it was the FED THAT SPIKED THE PUNCHBOWL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucDkoqwflF4

You can see the austrian view (Schiff) directly in conflict with the pro-government keynesian/monetarist view that is predominantly taught in this country (Laffer/Swonk). That's why none of the so-called "harvard educated, brilliant, phd holding" managers of a these banks and investment firms were not only oblivious to what was going to happen, but regularly confuse weaknesses for strengths. It's that ass-backwards, we teach the economic equivalent of astrology. Why? Because who has the most to gain from a sexy interventionist theory that says inflation is necessary to prevent hoarding and politicians spending its citizens' money for them can stimulate economic growth? Why, it's the benefactors of inflation!

I'll address Necrodancer later, I gotta go. He seems awfully confused on what socialism is and how socialist we are.

You say: Europe is choking to death from socialism.

No, they're deteriorating from it and on the path to serfdom. But as I said, they live within their means, and their lack of military spending and their lack of domestic oil reserves has resulted in better energy efficieny and policies, because they were spurred by high gas prices that we never had. You can HAVE a benevolent dictator that works to your advantage for a while, but the enablement of certain powers gaurantees inevitable costs that outweigh those benefits. You need to understand this, and why our forefathers bothered with a constitution limiting government from the get-go. They knew it, they lived it, they saw it happen, and as a result of this document, gold money, and unmitigated markets, we rose from nothing to the most powerful, affluent country in the world. Government was miniscule on the way up, it will be humongous on the way down.

It was 1913 the path to destruction began, the federal reserve and the income tax were passed in the same year. The Fed's inflation of the 20s caused the correction of 29, then turned into a long depression by Hoover and FDR's interventionist policies. The Smoot Hawley bill was a protectionist reaction resulting in retaliatory tariffs on American exports. Taxes then went from 20% to 63% under hoover, then 90% under FDR. Anyone with any money to hire people, sat on it. What revenue did come in from those taxrates, government used it to pay government workers to basically dig holes and fill them back up again. The policies always destroyed more wealth than they created, decreasing unemployment for the sake of it. You simply can't centrally direct the desires and wealth brought about by millions of diverse individuals freely transacting and trading with each other. They also ordered farmers to plow under fields and slaughter livestock to reduce the supply of food, because they believed falling prices would hurt the economy. This is also the same guy that confiscated people's gold (for which he should have been arrested), absolved the banks of having to pay people back despite their fraudulent lending, and allowed Pearl Harbor to be a massacre. It wasn't until he died and Europe was ransacked by a world war that we got out of it.

Europe is getting there. One thing you can always count on when you're putting your faith in benevolent dictators spending other people's money, is that it will invariably corrupt and cascade in on itself. Socialism has failed in every country that's tried it, including ours now. It fundamentally perverts the risk reward system of capitalism. Because if you're gauranteed the same share regardless of your contribution to the pool, why excel? Where's the incentive? If you're spending other people's money, why be thrifty? It's not like you're wasting something you worked hard for.

Fannie and Freddie were pseudo-government institutions in many democratic congressmen's campaign coffers, formed originally under the socialist ideal of making housing more affordable. Every one of their managers got golden parachutes. They accomplished exactly the opposite in the end, prices are now exorbitant, bid up by inflation equipped flippers, who left the banks with the mortgage after they realized that the appraisal price was phony and that legitimate buyers had been priced out of the market. Now the banks are stuck with the collateral, homes they loaned money out to buy at the appraisal price, well above what they can sell it back for. The market would have them decline in price, good for savers.

Or how about the Federal Reserve? Why self-regulate from a fear of bankruptcy when the government creates an arm to backstop it with inflation? If there's no risk of consequence, what is the disincentive to taking huge gambles with other people's money? Likewise, if you're a depositor, why not invest in the highly leveraged bank down the street offering a 5% yield by gambling on subprime? The government insures your deposit if they fail, so you have zero disincentive to give them your money with which to make those bets. If there was no FDIC, no one would be reckless enough to do it, thus that business model would have never existed.

If people don't start realizing how government policies change human behavior that create economic distortions and disruptions, we are gauranteed an inflationary depression.

I say: Check your facts again, Europe is excelling, and we're declining, and between the two, we're vastly closer to libertarian philosophy.

We are nowhere near being 90% capitalist. The majority of our GDP is controlled communally by the government, making us a socialist nation by definition. We are absolutely drowning in socialist failures and my list should have convinced you of that. Yet you sit here and tell me to vote for someone who just passed a trillion dollar bailout mortgaged on my children to reward someone else's bad behavior.

You say: Monopolies don't/can't exist.

I say: Google Enron and California.

Enron wasn't a self-sustaining one like government monopolies, it died a quick death, thank god (today, it would probably be bailed out by your money). It was a scam business enabled by ignorant employees and citizens who have been completely brainwashed into company directed 401k programs, as well as speculative, non-dividend paying investments. Enron never had to prove it was making money by paying a dividend because people allow themselves to be fooled by wall street valuations of stocks. If you're buying a stock without a dividend, you're purely speculating on the price going up or down. Just like the tech stocks of the 90s. People thought they were rich on paper, but when the stocks crashed, they had nothing. Because they didn't sell at those paper prices, they didn't complete the gamble by guessing the top like Mark Cuban did, who was one of the lucky ones. People illogically shirk responsibility on learning basic economics and stock principles and then flail helplessly for the government with which Enron was colluding to help them. It's idiotic. Rather than admit the mistake and educate others, they flip out emotionally, call on the government to recompensate their loss with their neighbor's money, and resign themselves to repeating the same mistake. It never would have been possible if they had taken twenty minutes to be skeptical and educate themselves.

Why don't you start listening to libertarian Ron Paul advisor Peter Schiff? The guy is brilliant in explaining this stuff, and predicted most of this mess years in advance while most economic types were dumb enough to confuse problems for strengths.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhJaVEWAG24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-a_r4qx4WE


When's the last time you saw a small, independent grocery store?

Yesterday. I go to several. The big chains won't carry most of the organic and specialty items that I want. And I purchase my grass fed meat directly in bulk from a local cattle farmer, stuff's amazing.

You say: Regulation of banks with pesky laws is impossible, so let's get rid of them so that people are forced to police the banks themselves.

I say: Why stop there? Why not get rid of property laws too, and let people engineer their own way of defending their property from thieves?

That would actually be a good start because banks would start fearing failure again. But I want fraudulent fractional reserves banned. You can't currently take them to court for it, because it's federally sanctioned. See, politicians are big spenders with a symbiotic relationship with the inflationary banks. They don't want honest money, they don't want a system where they are limited to direct taxation, because taxes are overt appropriations that elicit a lot more resistance. The average citizens can SEE how much exactly he's being taxed. Not so with inflation, it's very confusing and has a lag effect. The trillions that the Fed is adding to the balance sheet over the next year is going to result in hyperinflation, not immediately, but down the road.

Other countries' socialist policies, like in say, the whole of Europe, do quite well compared to us.

Actually, this is causation without correlation. If you go to Europe, living situations are deteriorating. Their massive amounts of welfare have created a situation in which immigrants are coming not for opportunity, but to be subsidized by programs they haven't paid into their whole lives like existing citizens. Sound familiar? Our programs are being strained by the same problem. I won't deny that they've made better decisions with their socialist powers over the past twenty years. If you want to make this an argument about whose dictator is doing a better job at emulating the market, then certainly Europe wins. France, for example, gets 80% of their energy from nuclear power and is the largest energy exporter in Europe. I'm jealous. That's what the market would have chosen. Our dictators, however, have been blocking it for thirty years due to the influence of the radical environmentalist lobby. Our government-directed economy has also pumped billions of forcibly appropriated money into agri-business bio-fuels like ethanol. It reduced the supply of food because it became more profitable after all the subsidies to grow corn for ethanol than some other crop for food. And it takes almost as much energy to create as it produces. Negative net result, that money would have been better off staying in the hands of people who really couldn't afford to have it taken away. We realize this now, but it never needed to happen. Any product that wouldn't be able to compete on the market without being funded with stolen money isn't worth a damn. So why did we think a bill could do something the market couldn't? All subsidies are retarded, they have collusive anti-competitive redistribution written all over them, and that's exactly what we got despite election year promises that it would give us miracles.

In fact, imagine if a stranger comes to your house and says "Hi, I'd like to take some of your money from your paycheck every week because I think I can spend it better than you can on products and services for your life. You look pretty busy, irresponsible, and unintelligent." Would you give it to them? Why would you do that? That's essentially socialism in a nutshell. People spending other people's money on the claim they can do so with greater thrift than the person that earned it.

Another thing that we do different than Europe is maintain a gigantic military empire. Of course their socialist programs are better, they don't have a military industrial complex sucking trillions of dollars away from them. It's really not necessary in the nuclear age. No nuclear power has ever been invaded domestically. Because it's a losing proposition. If you win the ground war, they have nothing to lose so they launch them. But we're idiots over here, we have this manchausen syndrome where our CIA creates problems that eventually blow back in our face, at which point we can launch all out invasions under the pretense of self-defense. This might include installing the Shah in Iran. Or giving bioweapons to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq conflict. Or arming afghani warriors to fight the Soviets. Or paying off Musharraf in Pakistan to be a puppet. Terrorist propaganda becomes effective because of this shit.

Nowhere else in the world has a more libertarian system than us, as near as I can tell, and it handicaps us.

Price fixing interest rates = socialist
Bailout out bankruptcy with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Allowing one industry to loan out money they don't have, at interest = socialist
Subsidizing one company and not another = socialist
Taxing one company and not another = socialist
Nationalizing private industry to be financed with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Directing industry and research with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Declaring lending standards discriminatory to low income people and forcing banks to remove them via the Community Reinvestment Act = socialist
Issuing a non-market determined or constitutional money, banning competing currencies, and taxing dollar debasement gains on gold as if it were income = socialist
Blocking nuclear power for 30 years = socialist
Blocking domestic oil drilling for 20 years = socialist


Actually no, they would just need to get enough market power, and apply it ruthlessly to stomp out competition wherever it rises.

Bullshit, no one but the government has endless streams of capital to buy up anything and everything. Only government monopolies are self-sustaining, because they're the only monopolies financed with forcibly appropriated money.

In your version of the world, AMD shouldn't exist. Aptera Motors shouldn't exist. Right? I mean, giant corporations a thousand times their size existed before they even entered the market. They should have been bought out. Oh, wait, what's that? Not all companies are publicly traded.

The reality is, in order for a MARKET monopoly (note: in an environment where they don't have access to government specific powers like inflation and subsidization) to stay that way is to continue to offering the best product at the best price. Because then there's no window, no opportunity for someone else to come in and eat into that marketshare. If a company is delivering crap or overcharging, however, that immediately opens a window for someone else to come in. That's how AMD got so large, Intel was doing exactly that with netburst architecture. Even with a monopoly position, competition was waiting in the wings.

Suppose Microsoft took XP off the market and put Windows 3.1 on the shelf? Do you think they wouldn't go bankrupt? Do you think a competitor wouldn't arise to take their place? Because they're an all-powerful monopoly, right? They don't have to deliver shit, they can just buy Macintosh and anyone else while they pay thousands of programmers to create a product that doesn't sell.

Doh. Someone doesn't understand basic market principles.

One of my favorites from the roaring 20's was the rate war. Slash your prices to nearly nothing, and let your company lose a lot of money, on the premise that the smaller company will go bankrupt before you do.

Actually, large businesses with lots of workers have far more overhead and are much more inefficiently run. That's why most businesses today are small businesses. My mother owns an advertising business for wedding directories with no one but herself employed. A local newspaper owned by the Gannett company recently created a staff of twenty people to try and compete with her. They lasted two years before the magazine ended the operation. It was costing way more money than it was bringing in, and the so-called greedy megagiant slashed it.

Nuttery, Ron Paul is the only politician who believes in the law? Seriously, that's what you're saying? He's probably the only Republican who believes in the law being supreme, but there's more than a few Democrats who believe in the supremacy of law (including some joker with a law degree from Harvard running for President...).

Supreme law is the constitution doofus. It's the law that came before all other laws, it's the laws against government to prevent them from becoming a tyrannical, collusive nuthouse like all other governments before it by assessing which powers, which enablements, it shouldn't have under any circumstances. And inflation was one of them. But after a couple hundred years, people became complacent, arrogant, and ignorant, like yourself, and politicians found that they could ignore it with impunity. There was no longer a bunch of gun-toting, tea-hating radicals ready to hang them on the nearest tree when they broke it. There was nothing but the opposing party. But that party loves to spend, too. So they compromise by allowing the other to break it so long as they get to break it in another way. Remember how the bailout failed and then got passed? They put some extra pork in there to get the votes they needed. Rum and arrowheads...

http://www.greenfaucet.com/economy/porky-the-bailout-bill/19680

Welcome to our country, and the socialist enablements that make this spending possible.

No, but he can still bribe the politicians to look the other way on violation of rights. They do it now, and I'm not sure why it would change, just because the companies have more money to spend (according to your theory).

The bottom line here is that attacking Democrats as being socialist is a huge fucking straw man. We like the free market, and we want it to work.

No, you don't, You don't even know what it is.

Most investment banks are now crying out to be regulated in the wake of this credit crisis, and given that they bribed the government into deregulating them in the first place, that should tell you something.

They're not crying to be regulated, they're crying to be bailed out after being regulated. What do you think regulation is exactly? Do you realize that the fundamental way in which banks operate is fraudulent? How do you regulate that? How do you oversee to make sure fraud is being conducted in the best way possible?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking#Money_creation

This is the type of nonsense I hear from the republicrat camp. Regulation, the buzzword of the day. It's meaningless. To "regulate" the bank runs this system was causing, the Federal Reserve was created to backstop bankruptcy. Yes, failure, that free market pinnacle that makes private business suffer and fear consequences for risk and imprudent policy. Or how about the FDIC, FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INSURANCE on deposits. Don't worry, now you don't have to fear about losing your deposit on this scam industry. We've regulated it with the FDIC. OOPS, THE FEAR OF LOSING ONE'S DEPOSIT WAS WHAT DETERRED PEOPLE FROM GIVING IT TO HIGHLY LEVERAGED INVESTMENT BANKS OFFERING ABNORMAL YIELDS, CAUSING THAT BUSINESS MODEL TO GROW, CAUSING OTHER BANKS TO FOLLOW SUIT IN ORDER TO COMPETE.

The problem is regulation on fraudulent activity that should have never been allowed. It slowly but surely eliminated basic deterrents and self-regulating principles by backstopping risk and rewarding bad behavior.

Reading jwray's stuff makes me want to hurl.

Absolute capitalism without any welfare, inheritance/gift tax, or income tax would become practically indistinguishable from the worst sort of absolute monarchy as the vasy majority of the wealth is concentrated in a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.

Actually, socialist policies have done nothing but increase, and the problems you describe have gotten worse. Still waiting for that socialist idea that actually increases the wealth of the bottom. Prior to 1913 we never had an income tax. Special tax credits as a form of anti-competitive subsidy were thus impossible, and charity was at its highest in American history. Actually, the funniest part is just the idea that increases taxes on the rich helps in some way. All it does is incentivize those people to sit on their money, or move it into a tax haven, or leave the country altogether. Precisely what happened when Hoover raised marginal rates to 63% and FDR to 90% succeeding him. Would you go through the trouble of running a business if government is taking 90% of what you make if you make anything? Didn't think so.

Whoever owns all the means of living could dictate the terms of their use down to every detail such as what you're allowed to read in your apartment.

Epic fail. In a republic, a constitution prevents rights from being infringed, regardless of how much money one person has over the other. You can't even vote it away with a majority, that's the difference between a republic and a democracy. Who is responsible for electing politicians who follow it and punishing those who don't? You. You are the regulator for the regulators. 98% of the public didn't vote for Ron Paul, therefore 98% of the people don't believe the supreme law is important or should be followed. The end. You have no one but yourself to blame. You've chosen the benevolent dictator route, no law, no concept of barring certain powers under any circumstances. Good luck with that.

Ayn Rand fails to consider that if her pure capitalist system were followed absolutely, someone with enough money could have the same power over everyone as a fascist police state via owning all the media, owning all the land upon which the food is grown, etc.

In order to make that kind of money in a free market system that protects rights, the person to whom you're referring would essentially have to create every product and service with the utmost quality and awesomeness. Remember, with small government, he can't bribe a politician for forcibly appropriated money because the politician doesn't have it. He can't get an anti-competitive tax credit, because income taxes don't even exist for anyone, just like pre-1913. Fraud isn't an option because he would be taken to government courts and lose. False advertising either. Theft either. Rights are protected. What the hell does this person do to get wads and wads of money? Well... they essentially have to create a product or service that millions and millions of people will buy. Need workers for that. No problem, let's hire some workers for a penny a piece. What? They won't work for a penny because someone else is offering them a nickel? Shit, we'll offer them a quarter and still make money! WHAT YOU SAY, HE OUTBID ME ON THAT SKILLED LABOR AGAIN. CHRIST, THIS IS GOING TO TAKE FOREVER, MY PROFIT MARGINS ARE GETTING KILLED BY GODDAMN COMPETITORS TRYING TO DO WHAT I'M DOING AND BIDDING UP WAGES.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUFdj103G60

Anyway, Ayn Rand's brand of libertarianism is not the popular brand. You're dreadfully confused to be building up this kind of strawman in your fearmongering of capitalism. I think this Milton Friedman link ought to clear it up for you, as well as some other things, such as how dirty technology invariably contributes to its cleaner successor, and how government cannot possibly spend other people's money with as much thrift as people would spend their own. This stuff seems so obvious once you hear it, but you'd be amazed at how clueless most people are at these basic fundamental behaviors. They assume that because 100% capitalism doesn't work, that the optimal system must be 50% or even less capitalism. In reality, just a little bit of government force is necessary and it should require no more than 10% of a people's capital in order to exercise the functions of defending rights and offering courts. It was never intended to appropriate 50% of our money for undeclared wars like Vietnam and Iraq, or subsidize industries in exchange for campaign financing, or fund pet projects, or forcibly manage retirement and health care via unsustainable ponzi schemes.

Remember, outside of nominal appropriations (taxes), the government inflates with a non-market determined money that it is capable of duplicating at no labor or material cost. Even a poor family not paying any income tax and getting welfare payments is having their wages and purchasing power diminished by the inflation tax. This is the key. This is the root cause, it's how despite everything they are getting with the left hand, government is taking more from the right via inflation. This is how our economy came to be in shambles, how markets distorted, how wealth started to transfer from the bottom to the top, like every fiat economy before it. Because those who use the money the Fed is creating increase their bidding power with it while those who have no money can't get their themselves because their wages and savings are being perpetually debased by it. How do you accumulate so much money that you can live off interest on stock for a living when your cost of living continues to rise faster than your wages? Bingo, you've figured it out. Congrats. Inflation is how government finances most of its activities today and this is how our economy has been destroyed. We let go of the gold limit in 71, we had one decent Fed chairman that took away the punch bowl to wipe the slate for another bull run, and that was it, the inevitable collapse of our fiat money is assured from the current hole we've dug. We now abuse our reserve currency status of the world gained under gold to export our inflation worldwide, which is why the problems today are so global. 10 trillion national debt, 70 billion a month trade deficit, 60 trillion in unfunded liabilities, a negative savings rate, two income households barely making ends meet, and an economy that since the early 90s has depended on perpetual credit extensions from the savings of the world to consume imported products that those creditors make in exchange for paper interest that they can recycle back into us or lock in a vault. They get paper, we get products. Yay for them. Yeah, don't delink from the dollar, don't use those savings to invest in production, keep loaning it to us to consume products you can't afford because of it.

These, of course, are policies you support. Libertarians don't want government to have the ability to inflate, because it makes no sense. You can't give government instant access to every person's purchasing power and expect them not to mortgage it. That's precisely what fiat money enables. And chances are that some lawyer spending millions of dollars to get in a low-paying position of legislating and distributing other people's forcibly appropriated money isn't going to be a very honest or incorruptible individual. Not sure why you haven't figured this out yet or why you think this is more efficient or moral than an individual trying to convince you give him your money in exchange for a product or service you want and think might improve your life.

The threat of starvation is just as effective as the threat of violence.

Where are people most starving today and throughout history? Exactly in the types of places where people are least able to keep and spend their own money as they see fit. Did China have to build walls to keep people from going into Hong Kong, or did Hong Kong have to build walls to keep people from going into China?

>> ^Raverman:
This is what happens when a people worship capitalism and greed as a form of freedom.


Epic fail at attributing the problem.

Central price fixing interest rates = socialist
Bailout out bankruptcy with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Allowing one industry to loan out money they don't have, at interest = socialist
Subsidizing one company and not another = socialist
Taxing one company and not another = socialist
Nationalizing private industry to be financed with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Directing industry and research with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Declaring lending standards discriminatory to low income people and forcing banks to remove them via the Community Reinvestment Act = socialist
Issuing a non-market determined or constitutional money, banning competing currencies, and taxing dollar debasement gains on gold as if it were income = socialist
Blocking nuclear power for 30 years = socialist
Blocking domestic oil drilling for 20 years = socialist

The Democratic and Republican parties = full of socialists

So it's a good thing to vote for one of the two clueless socialist parties? You may as well not vote at all. This PSA is retarded to the extreme.

I agree with voting in the primaries, though. We had the best chance in a long time to get a libertarian on a major ticket, with a great understanding of economics and even more brilliant advisor in Peter Schiff. After listening to those guys speak and have prediction after prediction come true, it shows me that these individuals are forthright and their understanding of these issues is genuine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucDkoqwflF4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3Qefbt0n4

>> ^FishBulb:
Okay this is my interpretation of what he is saying:


Without defining what you think regulation is, I don't know how to respond. Government can't direct or stabilize transactions between millions of people and industry, that was sort of the problem to begin with. The interventions that have inadvertently perverted capitalistic incentive and self-regulation are too numerous to list. It's hard for the common man to understand how it happened, it was a chain reaction from trying to prevent banks from ever going bankrupt because this is perceived as bad for the economy (just this sector, I know, it's hilarious). Let me give an example. If you're a big bank and the central bank via the approval your government friends you helped get elected says it will bail you out if you lose your risky bets on real estate, what action are you likely to take that you otherwise wouldn't have taken? Now that you don't have to worry so much about bankruptcy, you go ahead and hedge billions of dollars of other people's money on subprime and junk bonds when Wall Street was rating them triple A. This yields such a high return, you can offer 5% yields on savings account. Even though people are skeptical of returns this high, they can't pass it up because the Federal Government insures deposits up to $100,000 to dissuade runs on the fractional reserve system. As more depositors choose this bank for the high yield, other banks are forced to do the same thing to compete or lose all their business to this bank. Yeah, you see where this is going.

Here's something else that led to an abandonment of lending standards:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_reinvestment

Basically, in the name of social progress, a bored congress one day decided to pass a bill that forced banks to make loans to extremely low income people. Apparently, the government felt that banks were discriminating or something by having lending standards at all. You can't make this stuff up if you tried. This stuff has ALL of its roots in government backstops and interventions, not spontaneous evolution of man becoming more greedy.

But yes, they should certainly be enforcing laws against the infringement of rights (which derive from property) and providing courts. The constitution would be a good start. *ba-doom boom ching*

>> ^MINK:
lithuania has a fairly free market because it's fucking corrupt, and i can tell you it's not beneficial to the consumer. the lies they get away with in unregulated advertising are shocking. of course they do it, because they can and it works.
corruption is what humans do unless someone with a bigger gun tells them not to.
individual freedom will always fuck up the common good. crime does pay. if you legalise business practices which are currently criminal, you'll get more of it, not a magical balanced free utopia.
Imstellar, in your version of a free market, who would stop Microsoft dominating the place with shitty software? I think we need MORE regulation there, not less. How is it efficient for microsoft to keep churning out that crap? you are asking for everything to be a marketing, bribery and advertising contest.
here on the sift we have a free market of ideas and video uploads, and look what happens, a bunch of cliques and lolcats and vote whores and the noise level is so high that you can't find the good shit without watching 10 crappy videos. Can you imagine what it would be like here if siftbot stopped checking for sock puppet accounts?


You're confused, I blame the all-encompassing buzzword of the day "regulation" for this, people don't understand the markets and have come to take it as meaning "government making it all better and overseeing greed." Government indeed has desirable functions in law enforcement and offering recourse through courts for disputes. They should NOT be price-fixing, monopolizing money, or handing out taxpayer money under socialist ideals of directing industry or "enhancing market confidence," this has collusion and corruption written all over it. Politicians are humans and someone spending millions of his own money to get in a low-salary position of controlling other people's money is probably going to be a more harmful source of greed than any businessman. Because even though Henry Ford became a millionaire, thousands of people got cars out of the deal. Not sure the same would have come from government expenditures...

But many would consider this form of corporate wealth redistribution "regulating" the market. I don't.

Your example of false advertising is an example of where law enforcement should take place. Can I sell a product that purports to do something it doesn't? No, that's a swindle, the contract was not upheld, and you can go to government-provided courts to be compensated. Similar things apply to other swindles, though in most cases even the government can't prevent you from falling for some e-mail scam to a Nigerian clearing house. Unless, of course, you agree to have them snoop all your incoming e-mail to check for this stuff. I'd hope you understand that that's a pretty stupid of you, though, for giving up your privacy in order to protect yourself from being gullible. Not understanding cost/benefit ratios is a huge socialist mistake. They're always missing the potential costs and focusing on the benefit.

Gun bans, for example, have the intention of reducing violence but in reality remove the deterrent criminals otherwise have against a society that does have them, causing crime to increase. Plus, it makes you defenseless to oppressive government. The utopian allure of creating a "perfect" society where no gun crime exists and everyone can live in peace and trust is what gets them to miss the greater cost incurred that any thinking man would have foreseen.

The Fed is another one. Fractional reserves caused a lot of bank runs in the old days. Instead of banning this practice, they backstopped it with a central bank, but the central bank price fixed interest rates, causing a crash in 29. Further temporary socialist measures turned it into a fifteen year depression, a nuclear explosion compared to the firecrackers of the original problem. Then the FDIC was created. This incentivized a lot of risk and borrowing, which has helped the current problem fester. See how the failure to correctly solve one problem has led to a cascade of "solutions" that create even more problems that beget even more solutions? That's socialism, my friends. It just builds and builds until eventual collapse.

I would say that another socialist mistake you are making is that law enforcement itself is a proper regulatory measure. Not when they're selective, they're not. There is plenty of legislation out there that legalizes something for one industry, but not the other. Banks can loan out money they don't have at interest. Any other industry, and you're thrown in jail for fraudulent lending practices.

LOLskers at your Microsoft argument, too. Who prevents Microsoft from churning out crap? Consumers, mayhaps? People were free to not adopt Windows ME or Vista, and that's exactly what happened, their sales were disappointing for both. Anyone investing in Microsoft don't like failures leading to lost earnings. But Microsoft is smart and continues to sell XP, which is a perfectly good OS even today. But if they currently get any tax credits or subsidies, they shouldn't. No company should have access to forcibly appropriated money, period.

I think the real scary thing about all this, besides the fact that you don't understand it, is that you seem to be implying that a government office operating on forcibly appropriated money is capable of greater efficiency than the private sector. Maybe it comes close for laying pavement and picking up garbage. But in the grander scheme, no. It wasn't the case with Chernobyl and it ain't today, buddy. You take a hell of lot of innovations and products for granted if you believe that.

>> ^jwray:
^ Downvoted for inability to put a coherent sentence together.
Income has diminishing returns. The difference between making 2 million a year and making 1 million a year is a very small amount of happiness compared to the difference between making $15K a year and making $30K a year. The poor have a lot to gain from socialism, and 60% income taxes in the top bracket would hardly affect the lifestyles of the super-rich. Market fundamentalists need to take a real economics course that deals with externalities. Not being able to afford healthy food, education, or doctors causes loss of productivity.


Not being able to afford those things is the result of inflation debasing wages, and price fixing of interest rates by the Federal Reserve. Not to mention utter irresponsibility of citizens to stop parroting for their party for a second to go do some real research to learn about this nonsense. Both of these are socialist policies embraced by most politicians of either camp calling themselves whatever and far from free market ideals. This borrow and spend economy full of business/government collusion simply would not have been possible in an environment with gold-backed money and no Federal Reserve. Some crooked old CEO somewhere driving his company into bankruptcy only benefits the companies who didn't going forward, and it pales in comparison to trillions of dollars being created at no labor or material cost, and repeatedly spiking the punchbowl with artificial interest rates as our communist central bank has done for decades now. This time, there's no Volcker or creditor base to get them out of their mistake. As the market has become less and less free, we've gone from the world's largest creditor nation with savings and the highest rate of individual charity to a nation with the most debt, unfunded liabilities, a negative savings rate, and a 70 billion a month trade deficit. If foreigners finally bail out of our bonds, they will sell products to themselves and reduce us to squalor. Socialist enablements like price fixing and monopolization of money and industry have turned this country's money in confetti and driven companies overseas to avoid the taxrates and anti-competitive redistribution of those taxes through subsidies and tax credits. This economy IS your government "directed, regulated" economy. And like the USSR before it, it has come tumbling down. The whole risk/reward system has been perverted. We reward bad behavior and punish savers, incentivize risk by backstopping it with the unlimited promises of inflation via the FDIC, the whole damn thing just distorts normal self-regulatory thinking. There's no fear of bankruptcy anymore, you may as well just load up with toxic debt for short term profits.

Do yourself a favor and listen to these clips of Ron Paul's brilliant economics advisor from years ago. Stop listening to the people who didn't see it coming in any way, shape, or form. Because as John Loeffler says, "if they didn't see it coming, they won't know what to do when it gets here."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhJaVEWAG24

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucDkoqwflF4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G3Qefbt0n4

>> ^vermeulen:
Monopoly and price fixing would can hurt the free market, and is possible under a free system.... how can you deny that.
Do you not think it is possible for the government to aid in the free market?
Such as to enhance competition?
I consider myself a libertarian, but I do think it is possible for some type of control of the markets to be beneficial.


"Monopolies" are one of the popular scapegoats for politicians to use to gain power, and one of the most misunderstood talking point for socialists. In truth, the only "true" monopolies around the world and throughout history are borne of government. I tend to draw a distinction by calling these "self-sustaining monopolies" because of way in which they are financed: with an unlimited stream of forcibly appropriated money rather than a choice to pay by consumers.

First, let's agree on one thing: in order to become a monopoly in a free market where every transaction is mutually agreeable rather than forced by the will of the clueless majority (like a tax or inflation), a company had to offer a great product that people wanted and that benefited them. As much as you may hate Microsoft, for example, Windows has changed the world for the better. As have Intel's processors. Now, many would consider these companies monopolistic. According to socialist theory, AMD should not exist. Intel was so large and dominant, that being such disabled any competition from forming without government intervention. What happened in the real world was that as a result of being large and dominant, and perhaps overcharging and under-delivering, a window of opportunity was created that allowed an AMD to come in and kick netburst's ass with the athlon series. They exist because of what Intel tried to do, not the opposite.

Here's the part that really busts the socialist's brains: If Intel had chosen not to overcharge and under-deliver, no window of opportunity would have existed. They would have effectively become a monopoly that was delivering a great product at a price no one could better. So... what's the problem with that? There isn't one. And while I agree that it can't last, socialists erroneously assume that a monopoly is inherently bad. It isn't, it just can't stay good. And when it doesn't stay good, it can't preserve it. Because even a monopoly can't put poop in a box and sell it, they are not immortal and all-powerful where they no longer need to deliver a product to service or prevent private capital not available for buyout from coming in and supplanting their marketshare.

The monopolies you need to be afraid of are the ones that are self-sustaining or government helped and enabled. Get companies AWAY from colluding with or taking advantage of government specific powers. When a company lobbies for a tax credit that another company or industry doesn't get, or a subsidy, or no-bid contract, or a bailout, or legislation crippling their competitor, that's when you need to be alarmed. So... be alarmed now, because this is everywhere and people are stupidly blaming the market when it is enablements in government like high taxes and an inflationary money making it possible.

Transactions don't take place between individuals unless they are mutually agreed upon, the government is simply supposed to be there to protect property rights and offer recourse through courts. That is the principle scope of government.

In socialist programs, payment is forced. What is a government paid teacher beholden to? The consumer, the parents? Certainly not. Does someone vote that teacher out or in? No, they are appointed by a chain of other government officials voted in by the MAJORITY, all financed with taxes. Taxes are FORCED PAYMENTS. You don't get any say for the product you get. That people could actually come on this board and be stupid enough to equate profit with bad service is a real laugh. So many things around them, all the products you use came about from free people mutually transacting with one another. That orange you bought at the local market is a transaction as much as that computer you're using. And somehow profit and self-interest is bad? That's what incentivizes people into these transactions. But you people can't even figure out that without the taxes to fund public schools, people would HAVE more money to afford private education. It only looks unaffordable in an environment where you're getting reamed by the inflation and taxes that provide this socialist nonsense, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Famed libertarian Harry Reid once said "Government breaks your leg, hands you a crutch and says, see, without us you couldn't walk!"

The least regulated market in the world is computers, and we can easily compare what its done to advance society over some utopian ideal where people pay a king to dish out orders demanding innovation and self-sacrifice purely for the good of society. It doesn't fucking work that way. Nobody invents cool shit that helps society under some government edict, someone creates something in their self-interest that someone else might want with the end EFFECT of benefiting both parties. Yes, Henry Ford was a millionaire at the end of the day, but that money was from selling millions of people cars. That's a bit different from some despot who has a million from taxes. Unless a company in a truly free market can convince other self-interested people that their product will improve their lives, they're not going to get their money. If they lie about the product or infringe on rights, they can be taken to court. That's a desirable function of government. Not to engage in the market itself and make products or dish out subsidies to people with forcibly appropriated money, but 50% of GDP is controlled in this way.

Here's the government programs that are fairly simple in task and don't do much damage: delivering mail, picking up garbage, laying concrete. Here are the extremely complex market services that don't operate in the consumer's advantage: operating on your body, teaching and caring for your children, "managing" everyone's retirement, building and maintaining power plants. These things have impoverished an entire sector of society with the taxes needed to fund their inefficient operations. You can't opt out, you can't avoid it, even if you don't want the service. Not to mention the trillions stolen and redistributed to some companies and not others in this corporatist atmosphere we've accepted (subsidies, bailouts, tax credits). How does a company get an anti-competitive special advantage from government if it doesn't have anything to give? You idealist idiots who think your politicians are selfless angels in no one's pocket all these years need to wake up and stop entrusting them with you and your children's wealth. THEY BLOW IT. On themselves, and their corporate buddies. And it was all forced, they never had to convince you with a product on a shelf, all they had to do was get on a podium, appeal to your sense of being under-appreciated and underpaid, and promise you the mother-fucking world. Then they tax and inflate the bejesus out of you, only to hand it off to some dick providing you a "service." Then, now that they've impoverished you and made you dependent on welfare, they get on the podium again and tell you the answer is that it simply wasn't enough. That the private sector went crazy and their price fixing and interventions had nothing to with it. They need more. More power, more redistribution, more bailouts. Manchausen syndrome.

And every time some fistfuck runs his company into the ground for a million dollars, so fucking what? That allows a better company to rise up and take its place. Better than the USSR. It's not a perfect system, there's a lot of incestuous activity in the bigger companies for sure. But if you bail any of them out, it will be a merry-go-round for these fuckers. Some of the worst payouts recently have gone to Fannie and Freddie CEOs, these are pseudo-government institutions that were designed with the INTENTION of making housing more affordable, in reality leading us to the exact opposite. Their CEOs were former Clinton advisors, they're in bed with the Dodd's and Frank's of the world, they've channeled millions into Democratic and Republican campaigns alike. There are crooks everywhere, you need to figure this out already.

The banks, our money system, the lifeblood of an economy, are heavily, heavily connected to the government because of its desire to inflate rather than tax. We allow banks and only banks to loan out money they don't have AT INTEREST via fractional reserve banking. We have a non-market determined monopolized money, we allow the banking industry to centralize and price fix interest rates, THE ROOT CAUSE of credit malinvestment bubbles worldwide. You can't regulate this stuff any more than you can regulate murder, because it is inherently fraudulent what we are allowing them to be doing.

Your money is like a vote with far more overt benefits. As a consumer, that's the best vote you've got. If you want to switch off your brain and just have prosperity come down to whether the majority correctly chooses the best dictator or not, I guarantee you we are on the road to hell as we speak. There are some powers that GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT HAVE, because it matters not how long you can correctly choose the upstanding citizen to exercise them in YOUR rather than THEIR best interest if eventually someone comes in and abuses it, causing the whole damn thing to implode on itself. That is the importance of the constitution, it was supposed to stop this from happening, but as soon as they realized they could ignore it with impunity, they just use as toilet paper. Forget laws for politicians, right? Who needs regulation for the regulators? They're all angels out to save us from our greedy selves. Gimme an effing break.

>> ^spoco2
I'm not in a position to really state whether any of that is true, but if it is, and the Republicans have been in power for the last 8 years... then surely it'd be stupid to vote in more of the same leadership?
No? And if you're going to try to suggest that all the problems are because of a democrat being in office in the 1930s... please, respectfully... f ck off.
If your chosen part has been in power for the past 8 years and has done nothing but help your country sink into its own financial abyss, then have the bloody balls to accept that, don't pull some shit about someone 70 years ago causing the trouble now.
That's some serious blinker you have on there.


Though it sounds like quantum doesn't really understand what he's parroting, to those learned libertarians in world who understand the problem, he's actually kind of right and it's not as ridiculous as it sounds. It's entirely a matter of socialist big government policies that have been building over a long period of time, just waiting for someone highly corrupt to abuse them. Are you aware of the benevolent dictator argument? The idea that just because it's possible to have a benevolent dictatorship for a certain period of time, the costs of that system ultimately catch up to it because as long as those highly centralized powers EXIST, they WILL be abused by an eventual regime change and destroy the country. This is why we embrace constitutional limits on government and a system of inefficiency in which it is (supposed to be) extremely difficult for any political group to do this. Those limits started to get ignored at the turn of the 20th century and are almost all violated in some fashion today. It doesn't matter how convinced you are that your candidate is telling you the truth, some powers shouldn't exist. The system should not come down to who can pick the best dictator, and then being left with the consolation of "I told you so" when the people finally screw up and elect the wrong guy. Because there are actually two ways to do harm: through stupidity or through deceit. It's perfectly possible to be a well-intentioned, charismatic guy that is just plain wrong or ignorant how to best solve a problem. It's also possible for someone to promise to do one thing to get elected, and do the opposite once elected. People on this forum are educated enough to see #2. They're not seeing #1.

Bush is a highly corrupt individual, no question about it. But to restrict the debate to a choice between liberalism and neo-conservatism is to restrict the debate to socialism, because that's exactly what both of them are with minor differences. This population needs to understand libertarian principles, and fast. Because make no mistake, these socialist enablements and crises and scandals have plagued politics in general over the years and it was bound to come to a head sooner or later. We are in the late stages of socialism, there is nothing "regulatory" that can be done about something that is inherently fraudulent or corruptible. You simply have to understand that markets are merely individuals making mutually agreeable transactions with one another. Government's main functions are very simple, it is to make sure rights are not infringed with police/fire/national defense, and to provide a system of courts for recourse and the settlement of disputes. It is not to have its hands in every part of the market to regulate "greed," this is a nonsensical statement that assumes politicians with privileged power to forcibly appropriate money are not themselves greedy. This is the kind of idealist thinking that enables lobbying, corporatism, etc, and it's stunning that people haven't figured this out yet. The only way a person or a company can turn a profit, without infringing on people's rights, and without colluding with government-specific powers that they do not have (see:below), is to create a product/service that people will want to improve their lives with. That's it. It doesn't matter that the primary goal in a business venture is to make money in a truly free market, because the only way to make money in that system and keep it is to meet the demands of someone else. The EFFECT is that both parties benefit, even though the goals are both driven by self-interest. People are also very generous and are more apt to give excesses to charity under this system, charity was at its highest in America in the late 19th century. Because we didn't have inflation and we didn't have an income tax. Here is a short list of things that have brought us here and Ron Paul was the only one talking about any of them.

1. Centralized price fixing of interest rates by the Federal Reserve System: sends the wrong signals to investors to prevent politically inconvenient recessions, incentivizing massive misallocations of capital investment. Enables catastrophic insolvency, market scapegoating and further socialist interventions. This is THE root cause of the two market bubbles which are now collapsing, as well as the bubble that formed in the 20s and crashed in 29. This one spanned both Clinton and Bush presidencies, started with the easy money policies of the 90s that led to the tech stocks collapsing, then the inflation was filtered into real estate by Greenspan's 1% artificially low interest rates in 2000 (he also egged on the market for years, completely oblivious to what he was doing), and finally the inflation is coming home to roost in basic commodities. Borrowers are walking away and banks that invested heavily in the housing mania with are now left with mortgages that are nowhere near worth the price that they could actually sell the home. The housing market mania was so intense that people were buying homes to flip them to other people who were buying homes to flip them, until eventually, all that was left was speculative sellers with no one buying to LIVE in them other than idiots with bad credit who bought with no down payments.
2. An unconstitutional, non-market determined money: easily manufactured at no labor or material cost by the banking industry that controls it, transferring purchasing power from those who have to work for them to the recipients of this free money in wall street and in the government without asking the working man. Morally reprehensible and enables bailout legislation to deal with the insolvency that #1 causes.
3. Fractional Reserve Banking: government enables the banking industry to fraudelently loan out credit many times what it actually has in reserves and earn interest off of it. The effect cascades as a result of successive deposits of this phantom credit between banks and enables bank runs and extremely unstable leverage, creating an environment that all but necessitates an FDIC and central bank to be lender of last resort in the event of a run, which of course leads to the creation of #1.
3. Heavy subsidization: enables corporate lobbying for government handouts of forcibly appropriated money as an anti-competitive advantage
4. Income-taxation, a direct tax on production, very difficult to enforce without intimidation tactics, enables special tax credits as an anti-competitive advantage
5. Anti-competitive regulation: who's regulating the regulator? Idealist FDA powers to ban products from being chosen on the market have led to anti-competitive bans such as Stevia, resulting in health repercussions unbecoming of an agency that is supposed to protect it. Special legislation such as NAFTA, a 100-page "free-trade" agreement acting as a pretense to lower tariffs to get the WTO to raise tariffs
6. Nationalization of industry: enables predatory anti-competitive takeovers for the largest institutions of smaller institutions, enables government monopoly in industry financed by forcibly appropriated money.
7. Medicare, SS: Unsustainable, government run ponzi schemes purporting to be welfare measures. New investors paying old investors in real time, continually increasing tax rates to prolong solvency, continually changing rules about retirement age to prolong solvency. Trust fund anually tapped by congress to spend the excess by replacing them with government promises of future dollars (bonds). CPI-adjusted payouts, allowing government to underpay by understating real inflation.

And after listing all of this shit, it should be obvious to see why I'm so incensed by simple little quips like charliem's that get rated up: "unethical" loans. You want to talk about ethical lending? You think the government doing the things above under either party gives one bloody shit about ethics? Lending money is a gamble, it's a gamble you implictly allowed that bank to take by giving them your money to gamble with. Banks aren't a free storing house for money, they immediately take the money you give them and loan most of it out to someone else at interest, that's how they pay YOU interest for keeping it on their books when you could otherwise put your savings in a lockbox for a fee. But seeing as how people are cheap, ignorant bastards that have no idea how fraudulent the current system is, they will continue to ask politicians to coo-coo them with "ethics reform" and other nonsense that do nothing to solve the fundamental problems.

And let me make this dirt simple if I haven't already: you can't "regulate" or "oversee" these activities any more than you can "regulate" or "oversee" murder. It is fundamentally fraudulent to loan out something you don't have, price fixing of interest rates creates shortages of capital when people otherwise would save it, and an easily inflatable currency is nothing more than legalized counterfeiting for government and anyone who colludes with them. Wake up already.