Ron Pual knows money

No, can we please go back to ripping on Sarah Palin? Ron Paul actually talks about relative issues, thats no fun, he makes too much sense. I much prefer grand promises and bumper-slogan speeches.

This country doesn't belong to us anymore.

^ amen, sister.

according to many of my fellow libertarians, it hasn't since 1913.

though with varying degrees of militancy, we often refer to it as The Coup of 1913.

I really wish this man was in for president

>> ^GeeSussFreeK: Ron Pual knows money


But apparently not much about history:
"the markets are down, maybe five or six-hundred points...we've seen days like that quite frequently" - Ron Paul, Sept.29 2008


The DOW dropped 777.68 today. The largest point drop in any single day in history.

I don't know which world he's been living in where this happens "quite frequently" but I don't want to live there.

where is this in the news? they don't even care about congressional approval.

Ron Paul is absolutely clueless about what the failure of this bill means to middle America.

Do you really think this is a bailout of Wall Street? No, this is a bailout of all the citizen debtors who never had the ability to pay their mortgages in the first place. By transferring these bad mortgages to the govt, these homeowners are getting a reprieve from foreclosure.

You can be sure the U.S. govt is a much more lenient lender than these banks ever will be.

America, what are you doing???

^demosthenes

http://mises.org/story/3128

read that

http://mises.org/story/3131

and that, and tell me if you still believe in what you just said.

Its lenient lending that part of the problem here. Bad mortgages and inflated real estate was a bad investment for these banks. What makes them better for the government? The temporary band aid will fall off and what then?

These banks were giving out loans left and right, but it didn't matter. They cooked the books and got their bonuses when the time came.

The damage is done, but this bail out not only puts the dollar at further risk, but also gives the government power they don't need down the road.

Why not free up some taxes instead? Capital gains? There's some money there. Free up our money and give this time to correct itself.

There is a simple theory to all this.

You take in toxic debt, when you know its toxic, you repackage it and sell it out to other banks when its still toxic. Makes it your own fault.

The banks should fail. They fucked up. The economy would recover with alternatives anyway.

To make it sound like if Merill Lynch collapses the entire US Economy falls apart is just stupid.... Oh wait... Didn't someone buy them...

^Yup Merill Lynch and Lehman Brothers proved the market is a big boy.

"The market's ability to make swift adjustments without much drama was vividly illustrated only a few weeks ago when the very large investment bank, Lehman Brothers, was allowed to go belly up. The world did not come to an end. Instead, this was a healthy development. A money loser was eliminated from the market. This freed up resources to promote growth.

One could have made the case that when Lehman was on the brink it was too big to fail — assets of $639 billion and employing over 26,000 people. Yet in a few days the market, once allowed to do the job, reallocated the good pieces of Lehman to various buyers and the bad parts have vanished. It was poetry."

-from the link I posted.

Our 401K is in Merill Lynch. It's taken a small hit, but not too bad. Since my husband has many years left to work for me .. I expect it'll come out of this little setback.

I don't know if what he was saying was true or not. I'm still upvoting because what he said was done so quite eloquently and without a great deal of sensationalism.

I don't fully understand the implications of either side of the bill, I don't fully understand the economic situation that caused the current mess, so I can't possibly have a good stance on this... and surely that's the case for most people. How many people really understand all of this?

The links I see and the op ed pieces all have their own axes to grind, all can spout off stats from all over the place, but all seem to be able to gloss over or ignore bits that disagree with them.

So... yeah, upvote for good discussion, but it's not like Ron Paul is some bipartisan member who is giving a completely non biased roundup of things here, he has his own slant on things.

I like Ron Paul, but I'm just hearing some double-speak here.

It's like he's saying "we don't need any more cops, we just need law enforcement."

He's saying, "We don't need cops in Wasilla, Alaska. We need cops in Compton, California." You go where the crime is, and the crime is not in free market capitalism. The crime is in governmental regulation, which involves sticking bureaucratic fingers in too many pies.

Paul isn't worried about the market, so he doesn't think it needs policing by the government. What he is worried about is the dollar, which is being devalued by inflation. This is a direct result of pumping too many dollars and too much debt into society, which is done by the Federal Reserve, along with the White House. That's where the crime is, and that's where the "police" should be.

>> ^rougy:
I like Ron Paul, but I'm just hearing some double-speak here.
It's like he's saying "we don't need any more cops, we just need law enforcement."

Wait, where's the press? He has his own TV show now?

>> ^rougy:
I like Ron Paul, but I'm just hearing some double-speak here.
It's like he's saying "we don't need any more cops, we just need law enforcement."


Its kind of like when all the cops are out enforcing speeding tickets and possession violations, when there's a high percentage of burglaries and violent crime.

@rougy:
Ron Pauls opinion is that the free market do not need regulations, it will regulate itself, Federal institutions, on the other hand, wont, because they basically have this bottomless well of money, the state, that they can keep screwing up without consequences. A privately funded company that screws up, goes out of business, its that simple, because private companies cant just print money.. So Ron Paul wants strict regulations on federal institutions, and little or no regulations on private companies.

You know what i don't understand about that logic... it seems to be based around the principles... that the executives and heads of these companies... care about them... their employees... their investors... at all...

They CLEARLY do not... Those executives and decision makers rarely seem to be hurt at all by this 'free market' system... it's really only the others...

It's hard for me to accept that somehow they would just do the right thing... without collapsing everything first as long as they get theirs in the end... and why not... they sure always seem to.

>> ^rougy:
I like Ron Paul, but I'm just hearing some double-speak here.


It's because he only believes in theory, not in reality. He doesn't give one shit about you or me, only his precious Austrian school of thought.

I'm quite sure he understands the necessity of theory in relation to reality.

Why do you think he doesn't care about us?

>> ^volumptuous:
It's because he only believes in theory, not in reality. He doesn't give one shit about you or me, only his precious Austrian school of thought.

>> ^thinker247:
I'm quite sure he understands the necessity of theory in relation to reality.
Why do you think he doesn't care about us?


Other than repeatedly screaming out the word "constitution", his platform doesn't and has never contained one progressive theory that moves our country forward, and improves the lives of citizens.

If my state adopted his domestic policies, my lifestyle would be drastically and negatively changed forever.

So it's wrong to be guided by the principles of the Constitution, and to make his allegiance to those ideas?

I don't know what state you live in, but I don't see how watching the Federal Reserve so they don't destroy the dollar counts toward the destruction of your way of life. Unless you're Henry Paulson.

Are you Henry Paulson? Because, if so, I've got some words for you.

>> ^volumptuous:
Other than repeatedly screaming out the word "constitution", his platform doesn't and has never contained one progressive theory that moves our country forward, and improves the lives of citizens.
If my state adopted his domestic policies, my lifestyle would be drastically and negatively changed forever.

>> ^thinker247:
I don't know what state you live in, but I don't see how watching the Federal Reserve so they don't destroy the dollar counts toward the destruction of your way of life.


I didn't say it was his economic policies (although his concept of a "free market" is a recipe for economic and ecological ruin) that would destroy my lifestyle, but his domestic policies.

You can't just point out the policies you agree with, and ignore the ones you don't. I did this for a while with Mr.Paul, but eventually his draconian "states rights" nonsense is too much to ignore.

It's hard for me to accept that somehow they would just do the right thing

Just for the record, I only tried to present RP's views as I understand them, not my own. Like you, I am personally more skeptical to a free-market solution. And I disagree with Ron Paul on the socialist side. IE: Market regulation, -interfering in the free market- may be a bad idea, but I still think that some parts of society ought NOT to be privatized at all, such as education, healthcare, law enforcement and the military. These sorts of building blocks of a welfare state that, if they are run correctly, can give everyone a better life quality, ought not to be tossed to the free market, because they are all about protecting the weakest of us.

Oh no i totally got that BicycleRepairMan... and i agree... I respect him as a guy who seems to believe what he believes outside interests be damned... But i can't say I agree with him.

To further what BicycleRepaireMan said... things like education, health care, law enforcement, public transport et al. Should not be RUN FOR PROFIT.

If you run them for profit you end up giving the users a lower quality of service, or have a service that only the insanely rich can properly afford.

After looking through some of his policies he seems to be all about the privatization of things, which I'm very AGAINST.

The basics of building a strong community: Health, Education, Transport, Protection should not, ever, be privatized. I've seen too much go to shit here in Australia as things that used to be government run become privately run.

And to go on about being more 'efficient' and less 'bloated' etc. Well, what would be so wrong about having a public sector run with a bit of bloat? If you employ more people because of that, surely that's a good thing?

^If affordable healthcare, education, and transportation are desirable goals, employing more people for the same level of production is a bad thing--it forces the price of goods to go up.

Prior to FDA regulation, the average time to market of a drug was 18 months and the average cost was $500,000. 10 years later, the average time to market was 8 years and the average cost was $8,000,000. If you would like to see what your life would be like without the FDA, take the cost of your last prescription drug and divide it by 100. Your $30 a month birth control would be $0.30. Your $50 antibiotics would be $0.50. Your grandmothers $1000 heart medicine would be $10.

Yes, the FDA has prevented some dangerous drugs to market, but how many life-saving drugs could have been made available to dying patients if they were released 6.5 year sooner? How many tens of thousands of lives were lost waiting for drugs to be approved? You don't hear about their class action lawsuits because they are all ghosts.

>> ^volumptuous:


It's because he only believes in theory, not in reality. He doesn't give one shit about you or me, only his precious Austrian school of thought.


I really doubt you know the man well enough to make a statement like this. So a few of his policies dont benefit YOU. That clearly makes him an ass that doesnt care one bit about people.. clearly.

"Free Market Capitalism" without some sort of authority figure--i.e. the government--there to play referee and make sure that everybody is playing fair and by the rules quickly boils down to a "Lord of the Flies" scenario when corporations are left to their own devices.

That's my point.

I'm not advocating the destruction of the free market paradigm, and I don't want the government to stick its nose into every little facet of business life.

But I am saying that it's foolish to think that a "free market" will magically do all of the right things when you put corporations in charge of their own oversight.

What you will have--time and time again--is a "big fish eating the little fish" scenario that results in a concentration of wealth, and a centralization of power that is not in the public interest.

^Free market capitalism is an economic system--not a political one. The government exists as a separate entity from the market. Its purpose should be to control (protect) individuals, not control (regulate) the market. We have a separation of church and state, why don't we have a separation of market and state?

In effect, what you buy and sell are choices you make just like who you marry or what sports you play. You wouldn't dare have the government regulate who you marry, so why do you think it should regulate the food on your table, or clothes on your back?

I am not advocating anarchy.

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.

I like turtles.

Actually, I can pick and choose from his beliefs, because I never said I'd vote for him. I just like his economic ideas. I don't agree with all of his platform, though.

>> ^volumptuous:
I didn't say it was his economic policies (although his concept of a "free market" is a recipe for economic and ecological ruin) that would destroy my lifestyle, but his domestic policies.
You can't just point out the policies you agree with, and ignore the ones you don't. I did this for a while with Mr.Paul, but eventually his draconian "states rights" nonsense is too much to ignore.

this country was not intended to be a democracy. this country was supposed to be a republic--that is, ruled by law, not ruled by the majority. a democracy results in lynch mobs and human sacrifice. democracies have no values.

yes we have democratically elected representatives, but that does not mean we are a democracy. we are a republic ruled by law (the constitution)...or at least we are supposed to be--the vast majority of US law is unconstitutional.

America is acting as a lynch mob precisely because people have failed to make this distinction.

*Edit: Heres the video I was looking for to illustrate the difference, posted by Farhad2000: http://www.videosift.com/video/Basic-Forms-Of-Government-Not-Found-In-Public-Schools

Alexander Fraser Tyler wrote: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse (defined as a liberal gift) out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship."

James Madison [fourth U.S. President] wrote: "In all cases where a majority are united by a common interest or passion, the rights of the minority are in danger!"

John Adams [second U.S. President] wrote: "Unbridled passions produce the same effects, whether in a king, nobility, or a mob. The experience of all mankind has proved the prevalence of a disposition to use power wantonly. It is therefore as necessary to defend an individual against the majority (in a democracy) as against the king in a monarchy."

Sounds pretty familiar, does it not?

>> ^imstellar28:
Prior to FDA regulation, the average time to market of a drug was 18 months and the average cost was $500,000. 10 years later, the average time to market was 8 years and the average cost was $8,000,000. If you would like to see what your life would be like without the FDA, take the cost of your last prescription drug and divide it by 100. Your $30 a month birth control would be $0.30. Your $50 antibiotics would be $0.50. Your grandmothers $1000 heart medicine would be $10.
Yes, the FDA has prevented some dangerous drugs to market, but how many life-saving drugs could have been made available to dying patients if they were released 6.5 year sooner? How many tens of thousands of lives were lost waiting for drugs to be approved? You don't hear about their class action lawsuits because they are all ghosts.


I'm pretty certain most people would say that paying 100x the price for the drug is worth preventing the taking of a human life. If I (or my grandmother) has to pay $990 to relatively ensure that someone else--or even my grandmother herself--doesn't drop dead from taking the drug, we can both live with that cost. By the way, most of my grandmother's drugs are covered by Medicaid/Medicare which also ensures that she never pays that $990 but a minor co-payment instead.

You'd have to be pretty inhuman to bitch about how expensive drugs are and how much better off we'd be if we'd just led people die from the experimental drugs and figure out which ones are safe that way.

As far as drugs that are slow to get to market go, if you really want to try experimental drugs that badly you can go sign up for the clinical trials. But a lot of people wouldn't take the risk even if given the chance to participate. The number of willing risk-takers is probably much lower than "tens of thousands." Except for people with the most dire terminal illnesses, waiting a few years to make sure the drug is safe isn't going to hurt anybody.

And by the way, do you know what the failure rate in drug testing is? According to an article I read about a Japanese company developing new drugs here in the U.S., a new drug has maybe a 1 in 10,000 chance to make it to human trials and a close to 1 in 1,000,000 chance of getting through the human trials without unacceptable side effects being discovered (or the trials showing the drug doesn't actually work as advertised). I'd much rather have the FDA keeping those 999,999 potential dangerous/useless drugs off the market than having to have me or my doctor pick through all those choices whenever I get sick.

^SDGundamX
I'm pretty certain most people would say that paying 100x the price for the drug is worth preventing the taking of a human life.

What gives you the right to make that choice for me? If I have cancer, and I have one year to live, who are you to tell me what products are safe for me to use? What if I don't have health insurance and I can't afford a drug which costs $100,000, but I can afford the drug that costs $1000 even if the side-effects aren't well known. Are you saying I should just die?

If 50,000 people die from heart disease and a drug is invented which cures heart disease, you just killed 325,000 people waiting for it to get FDA approved (50,000 x 6.5 years). You are looking at the situation from only one perspective, and you haven't looked at the FDAs track record. If you count the number of lives saved and the number of lives that could have been saved--the FDA has an awful lot of blood on its hands.

And by the way, do you know what the failure rate in drug testing is?

You act as if companies make profit when their drug kills people and their name is all over the news. They don't. No company wants to be headline news for killing thousands of people, which is why they would purchase private testing. Would you buy drugs from a bum on the street, even if they were FDA approved? No. So why would you buy new, unproven drugs from a company with no safety record? You wouldn't unless you had no other choice--and a bad option is better than no option.

In addition, when companies release products they usually do it slowly, and in small numbers. So if problems do arise, they can recall them and few if anyone is injured. However, when a company receives the FDA seal of approval the product goes into immediate widespread production. This has happened many times. One case is the government mandated that all pajamas be made flameproof, so companies used the cheapest chemical available (FDA approved) in a rush to comply with the law. Years later they found out all the kids who wore those pajamas got cancer. If the market had been allowed to operate, they would have introduced "brand new flame-proof pajamas" and the market would have adopted them slowly and the number of kids would not nearly have been as high. Eventually, the flame-proof version would become widespread because what parent wants their kid to catch fire? The difference is that the product would have been proven safe in the market years before tons of consumers adopted it.

It's fine if you really believe the FDA is the way to go, but you aren't being fair to yourself or the issue if you don't take an honest look at both sides of the story.

If you go the route of the FDA, you are putting your life in the hands of a dozen bureaucrats.

If you go the route of the market, you are putting your life in the hands of the sum knowledge of hundreds of millions of mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, each looking out for their personal wellbeing and the wellbeing of their families and friends, who personally use the products and judge them as harmful or beneficial.

To illustrate this concept--when you buy a product, say from amazon. Do you base your decision more off what the single reviewer wrote, or what the hundreds of buyers wrote?