Props to you for posting that. I downloaded the transcript and found that to be a fascinating read.
It does an excellent job of filling in the blanks in my explanation, and I actually learned a few things that really shed some light on questions that I had, and also on things I hadn't even considered.
Agreed, more likely it is a tragic failure of republican values.
Our republic did not fail us, we failed it.
I have seen every sign i need to see that tells me great men were screaming bloody murder. But it is we, the constituents of this once proud republic, that have failed to maintain the appropriate virtues of order.
Our country degenerated as we the rightful rulers have allowed ourselves to be spun in to a fantasy world turned to nightmare.
But if you blink for long enough, someone is always going to try to pull a switch on you. its just how it goes. You can't blame a perfectly valid concept (a market) for a simple and immutable truth.
a different question might be,
what institution would you trust better than the market?
its like saying you've found something better than nature.
Back in 2005, a friend of mine's wife summed it up rather nicely, albeit unknowingly. She said, "So, I went back to my homestate last year to see my old friends. They all had bought new houses and asked me if my husband and I had bought a house of our own. That's when I decided that I needed to buy a house."
The american consumer is ever-worried about keeping up with the Jones'. Now more than ever I am grateful that as a child my Dad taught me never to buy into such fruitless bullshit.
Ironically, my friend and his wife still own that home. They fixed their rate and make payments that is well within their limits. Unfortunately, the house might not be worth as much as it was when they bought it, but I don't think they are too concerned about that. As long as she can tell her friends that they own a home....
Besides, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland are relatively small countries with population sizes that pale in comparison to the United States. They are each countries with their own vast supply of natural resources. Norway, for example, relies heavily on seaford exports. Can you imagine the US having to rely that much on seafood exports?
And, again, it isn't an argument against capitalism. The reason being is that as far as markets go, those countries and the US are very similar.
Norway doesn't rely that much on seafood exports anymore. (still big industry though) Our oil, on the other hand, is a big factor.
There isn't much of a total difference when it comes to markets, but there are a few key differences in detail anyway. We may not have much more regulations, but we have better ones. Functioning and strict oversight institutions, for instance. Also the public sector is larger (mainly because of national health care and public pensions), and can be used as a tool to dampen international economic conjunctures.
In my opinion, the main difference in societal structure, is that Scandinavian countries have made a thorough and comprehensive welfare structure, while the US fights against that perception, but makes all sorts of band-aids, to have largely the same effect at a higher cost and higher risk for the individual.
For Drifting: The only system that has any kind of track record in the real world, is the system of capitalism coupled with comprehensive welfare provisions for the populations. The differences are in just how this is managed, and there are many ways to do so poorly. But there are many examples contemporary and historically that such an organization works pretty well. Also so far, "privatizations" and "deregulation" has been synonymous of the bullshit that made this crisis and others before it. If it doesn't work, maybe humans can't make it work in the real world. Just a thought there.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
If it doesn't work, maybe humans can't make it work in the real world. Just a thought there.
Peace
Dan
But markets DO work, and they are WORKING RIGHT NOW.
They are simply responding to decades of market distortion created by the Federal Government, and to one hundred years of inflation, and to a central banking system that created systemic risk.
And now the markets are actually doing their job, accounting for all that risk, and also for all that overpricing.
You can't say markets don't work, because they do.
Unfortunately they can react irrationaly and violently in the short term, and that stinks.
But had they (the markets) not been fueled by such horrible government policy (policy which hardly qualifies as "capitalist", okay, you could maybe call it "monopoly capitalist") we would not be in this mess to begin with.
Again to re-emphasize, there is NOTHING going on right now that can't be explained to be the result of bad government policy that made a mockery of the markets.
And Dan, while i think you guys may have a good thing going in Norway as far as what your system provides for the people, i think the thing you are not seeing is how much money is being transfered in to higher hands by virtue of your government structure.
I guess your contention would be that at least the little guy gets a little more. Although you certainly suffer a broad lowering of the standard of living because of this invisible money funnel.
But if its all the same to me, i'd rather go with the markets (regulated sufficiently to protect its own integrity) and get government out of the way as much as possible.
Because if we could get this country (USA) back to where our founders had invisioned, we would easily be able to afford the same great benefits that your country socializes, and we could do it with MARKET rates. But we haven't had a proper market for 100 years.
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
But since markets now does in fact NOT operate freely, what's "working" is in fact the (more or less) regulated markets, not the theoretical free market which in fact does not exist and never have. (and most likely never will)
You can't divide up what's happening as neatly as this (bad stuff) is government's/regulation's doing and this (good stuff) is the free market working. The pros and cons are both from the intermixing system, and it's more a question of how one mix the ingredients than any pure ingredient by itself.
Or do you think that what we have is a "free market" in the way you and others envision it?
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
But since markets now does in fact NOT operate freely, what's "working" is in fact the (more or less) regulated markets, not the theoretical free market which in fact does not exist and never have. (and most likely never will)
You can't divide up what's happening as neatly as this (bad stuff) is government's/regulation's doing and this (good stuff) is the free market working. The pros and cons are both from the intermixing system, and it's more a question of how one mix the ingredients than any pure ingredient by itself.
Or do you think that what we have is a "free market" in the way you and others envision it?
Peace
Dan
I don't envision an entirely unfettered market.
I don't think any great economic thinker (not that i claim to be one) ever has.
For instance, Adam Smith, widely misconceived to be an utter "free market" guy, was actually very much pro-municiple energy. He understood that the massive economies of scale present in such "utilities" inherently goes against the free market principles of competition. Thus he thought such tasks should be left to the state or municipality, to be administered in the interest of the people themselves.
Likewise, i certainly recognize certain limitations of the market,
but what i do NOT understand is the attitude i see reflected here so often.
And that is the assertion that "capitalism has failed".
Because it has NOT.
What has failed is unreasonable and unsustainable INTERVENTION in the markets by the government.
Can you not acknowledge that the large portion of this current catastrophe (i'd dare say 90%+ ) is the fault of a bad credit system that suffers CONSTANT manipulation by The Federal Reserve via interest rates and "open market" activities? As well, can you agree it is the result of constant moral hazard through a bankrupt system of Federal Deposit Insurance, along with the other interventions woven in to this Central Banking scheme such as Fannie and Freddie, HUD, and other blanket market subsidizations?
When one adds up the sum total of manipulations by non-market Government-origin forces, the weight of these burdens is plainly so massive that it is hard to understand how anyone could view the current disaster as ANYTHING but a result of such anti-market forces.
This isn't a failure of the markets.
It is a failure to RESPECT the markets.
And that is the argument i put forth.
Because i see the most pernicious danger in this crisis being the penchant of the common people to view their system as innately failed, and to seek its overthrow in favor of something far more scandalous -- socialism.
And that is most troubling, because in truth our system would work just fine, if we would only respect the very markets whose intrinsic virtues we now honor only most superficially.
If we allow our system to be subverted and ended in a national socialist (nazi) order, we will have fallen right in to their trap.
In fact, we will have acted out upon the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky directly. We will have been The Permanent Revolution that the communists saw as the end game of transition from capitalisim to communism.
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
I don't envision an entirely unfettered market.
I don't think any great economic thinker (not that i claim to be one) ever has.
For instance, Adam Smith, widely misconceived to be an utter "free market" guy, was actually very much pro-municiple energy. He understood that the massive economies of scale present in such "utilities" inherently goes against the free market principles of competition. Thus he thought such tasks should be left to the state or municipality, to be administered in the interest of the people themselves.
Likewise, i certainly recognize certain limitations of the market,
OK, fair enough. I have debated with people on here and elsewhere who subscribe to such views, and they're usually austrians too. But if you agree that the market cannot be unfettered, that removes a big chunk of my disagreement.
but what i do NOT understand is the attitude i see reflected here so often.
And that is the assertion that "capitalism has failed".
Because it has NOT.
What has failed is unreasonable and unsustainable INTERVENTION in the markets by the government.
Can you not acknowledge that the large portion of this current catastrophe (i'd dare say 90%+ ) is the fault of a bad credit system that suffers CONSTANT manipulation by The Federal Reserve via interest rates and "open market" activities? As well, can you agree it is the result of constant moral hazard through a bankrupt system of Federal Deposit Insurance, along with the other interventions woven in to this Central Banking scheme such as Fannie and Freddie, HUD, and other blanket market subsidizations?
When one adds up the sum total of manipulations by non-market Government-origin forces, the weight of these burdens is plainly so massive that it is hard to understand how anyone could view the current disaster as ANYTHING but a result of such anti-market forces.
This isn't a failure of the markets.
It is a failure to RESPECT the markets.
And that is the argument i put forth.
This is where it gets ideological, political and based on perspective.
(Based on my opinion, and what I have read about this thing in various papers) The crisis is as much a case of misregulation and a heavy case of "the goat minding the sack of oats", as the norwegian saying goes. It's not that there aren't enough regulations per se, they just didn't work as they were supposed to. So "more" regulation may not necessarily be the answer, but "better" regulation may certainly be. And the big company CEOs should not be left free to decide the government policy on their company's doings. If respect of the market is a problem, it is not only "disrespected" by the government, but most crucially by the very people in the private businesses. The blame goes many ways here. Focusing solely on the government's role does not do justice to the situation. What has worked best is when the regulations are smart and minded by politically independent, strong institutions.
Because i see the most pernicious danger in this crisis being the penchant of the common people to view their system as innately failed, and to seek its overthrow in favor of something far more scandalous -- socialism.
And that is most troubling, because in truth our system would work just fine, if we would only respect the very markets whose intrinsic virtues we now honor only most superficially.
If we allow our system to be subverted and ended in a national socialist (nazi) order, we will have fallen right in to their trap.
In fact, we will have acted out upon the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky directly. We will have been The Permanent Revolution that the communists saw as the end game of transition from capitalisim to communism.
OK, just to ask. Is "socialism" to you like the soviet union, or like, France and Europe in general? If you mean the soviet system, I agree that was a bad one. If you mean the social democratic, slightly socialist governments of Europe for the past 50 years, then go socialism! There is an enormous difference between the two...
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
I guess your contention would be that at least the little guy gets a little more. Although you certainly suffer a broad lowering of the standard of living because of this invisible money funnel.
Wait I don't get it...we, the closest country to free markets are like 13th in Standard of Living, and Norway, Sweden, Iceland, etc., socialist as they may be, are in the top 5...how does that work?
Wait I don't get it...we, the closest country to free markets are like 13th in Standard of Living, and Norway, Sweden, Iceland, etc., socialist as they may be, are in the top 5...how does that work?
To be fair, Norway and Sweden have pretty open and free economies. At least Norway ranks high in that respect. We just have comprehensive welfare states as well. The rumours of our socialism is a bit over-rated. Social democratic capitalism would be more descriptive.
As for Iceland, we'll see if they go bankrupt in the next couple of days. They've been having their own little financial bubble that burst amid the current world crisis.
(edit) and Drifting, if what we're getting is lowering of living standards, I wonder what raising them is like. Our living standards have shot through the roof the last decades, and continue to do so these last years. Just this year, wages increased roughly 5% across the board. It's America that has totally stagnated in real wages, not us.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
But markets DO work, and they are WORKING RIGHT NOW.
There's something I don't understand. You claim the problem is that the market is suffering from massive government interventions. Then you say the problem is the Fed is not controlled by the government or the people. But isn't the fed one of the most prominent actors of the market? How does that paradox work?
And, it's purely ideological, but I strongly disagree with your quote. The markets rely on the hypothesis that infinite growth is possible, while in reality it isn't. In that respect the market cannot work in the long term. But that's just an opinion, not a fact
Comments
Props to you for posting that. I downloaded the transcript and found that to be a fascinating read.
It does an excellent job of filling in the blanks in my explanation, and I actually learned a few things that really shed some light on questions that I had, and also on things I hadn't even considered.
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
Back in 2005, a friend of mine's wife summed it up rather nicely, albeit unknowingly. She said, "So, I went back to my homestate last year to see my old friends. They all had bought new houses and asked me if my husband and I had bought a house of our own. That's when I decided that I needed to buy a house."
The american consumer is ever-worried about keeping up with the Jones'. Now more than ever I am grateful that as a child my Dad taught me never to buy into such fruitless bullshit.
Ironically, my friend and his wife still own that home. They fixed their rate and make payments that is well within their limits. Unfortunately, the house might not be worth as much as it was when they bought it, but I don't think they are too concerned about that. As long as she can tell her friends that they own a home....
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
Norway doesn't rely that much on seafood exports anymore. (still big industry though) Our oil, on the other hand, is a big factor.
There isn't much of a total difference when it comes to markets, but there are a few key differences in detail anyway. We may not have much more regulations, but we have better ones. Functioning and strict oversight institutions, for instance. Also the public sector is larger (mainly because of national health care and public pensions), and can be used as a tool to dampen international economic conjunctures.
In my opinion, the main difference in societal structure, is that Scandinavian countries have made a thorough and comprehensive welfare structure, while the US fights against that perception, but makes all sorts of band-aids, to have largely the same effect at a higher cost and higher risk for the individual.
For Drifting: The only system that has any kind of track record in the real world, is the system of capitalism coupled with comprehensive welfare provisions for the populations. The differences are in just how this is managed, and there are many ways to do so poorly. But there are many examples contemporary and historically that such an organization works pretty well. Also so far, "privatizations" and "deregulation" has been synonymous of the bullshit that made this crisis and others before it. If it doesn't work, maybe humans can't make it work in the real world. Just a thought there.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
But markets DO work, and they are WORKING RIGHT NOW.
They are simply responding to decades of market distortion created by the Federal Government, and to one hundred years of inflation, and to a central banking system that created systemic risk.
And now the markets are actually doing their job, accounting for all that risk, and also for all that overpricing.
You can't say markets don't work, because they do.
Unfortunately they can react irrationaly and violently in the short term, and that stinks.
But had they (the markets) not been fueled by such horrible government policy (policy which hardly qualifies as "capitalist", okay, you could maybe call it "monopoly capitalist") we would not be in this mess to begin with.
Again to re-emphasize, there is NOTHING going on right now that can't be explained to be the result of bad government policy that made a mockery of the markets.
And Dan, while i think you guys may have a good thing going in Norway as far as what your system provides for the people, i think the thing you are not seeing is how much money is being transfered in to higher hands by virtue of your government structure.
I guess your contention would be that at least the little guy gets a little more. Although you certainly suffer a broad lowering of the standard of living because of this invisible money funnel.
But if its all the same to me, i'd rather go with the markets (regulated sufficiently to protect its own integrity) and get government out of the way as much as possible.
Because if we could get this country (USA) back to where our founders had invisioned, we would easily be able to afford the same great benefits that your country socializes, and we could do it with MARKET rates. But we haven't had a proper market for 100 years.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
You can't divide up what's happening as neatly as this (bad stuff) is government's/regulation's doing and this (good stuff) is the free market working. The pros and cons are both from the intermixing system, and it's more a question of how one mix the ingredients than any pure ingredient by itself.
Or do you think that what we have is a "free market" in the way you and others envision it?
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
I don't envision an entirely unfettered market.
I don't think any great economic thinker (not that i claim to be one) ever has.
For instance, Adam Smith, widely misconceived to be an utter "free market" guy, was actually very much pro-municiple energy. He understood that the massive economies of scale present in such "utilities" inherently goes against the free market principles of competition. Thus he thought such tasks should be left to the state or municipality, to be administered in the interest of the people themselves.
Likewise, i certainly recognize certain limitations of the market,
but what i do NOT understand is the attitude i see reflected here so often.
And that is the assertion that "capitalism has failed".
Because it has NOT.
What has failed is unreasonable and unsustainable INTERVENTION in the markets by the government.
Can you not acknowledge that the large portion of this current catastrophe (i'd dare say 90%+ ) is the fault of a bad credit system that suffers CONSTANT manipulation by The Federal Reserve via interest rates and "open market" activities? As well, can you agree it is the result of constant moral hazard through a bankrupt system of Federal Deposit Insurance, along with the other interventions woven in to this Central Banking scheme such as Fannie and Freddie, HUD, and other blanket market subsidizations?
When one adds up the sum total of manipulations by non-market Government-origin forces, the weight of these burdens is plainly so massive that it is hard to understand how anyone could view the current disaster as ANYTHING but a result of such anti-market forces.
This isn't a failure of the markets.
It is a failure to RESPECT the markets.
And that is the argument i put forth.
Because i see the most pernicious danger in this crisis being the penchant of the common people to view their system as innately failed, and to seek its overthrow in favor of something far more scandalous -- socialism.
And that is most troubling, because in truth our system would work just fine, if we would only respect the very markets whose intrinsic virtues we now honor only most superficially.
If we allow our system to be subverted and ended in a national socialist (nazi) order, we will have fallen right in to their trap.
In fact, we will have acted out upon the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky directly. We will have been The Permanent Revolution that the communists saw as the end game of transition from capitalisim to communism.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
This is where it gets ideological, political and based on perspective.
(Based on my opinion, and what I have read about this thing in various papers) The crisis is as much a case of misregulation and a heavy case of "the goat minding the sack of oats", as the norwegian saying goes. It's not that there aren't enough regulations per se, they just didn't work as they were supposed to. So "more" regulation may not necessarily be the answer, but "better" regulation may certainly be. And the big company CEOs should not be left free to decide the government policy on their company's doings. If respect of the market is a problem, it is not only "disrespected" by the government, but most crucially by the very people in the private businesses. The blame goes many ways here. Focusing solely on the government's role does not do justice to the situation. What has worked best is when the regulations are smart and minded by politically independent, strong institutions.
OK, just to ask. Is "socialism" to you like the soviet union, or like, France and Europe in general? If you mean the soviet system, I agree that was a bad one. If you mean the social democratic, slightly socialist governments of Europe for the past 50 years, then go socialism! There is an enormous difference between the two...
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Wait I don't get it...we, the closest country to free markets are like 13th in Standard of Living, and Norway, Sweden, Iceland, etc., socialist as they may be, are in the top 5...how does that work?
As for Iceland, we'll see if they go bankrupt in the next couple of days. They've been having their own little financial bubble that burst amid the current world crisis.
(edit) and Drifting, if what we're getting is lowering of living standards, I wonder what raising them is like. Our living standards have shot through the roof the last decades, and continue to do so these last years. Just this year, wages increased roughly 5% across the board. It's America that has totally stagnated in real wages, not us.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
And, it's purely ideological, but I strongly disagree with your quote. The markets rely on the hypothesis that infinite growth is possible, while in reality it isn't. In that respect the market cannot work in the long term. But that's just an opinion, not a fact