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Genevieve wrote:

jags wrote:1) In response to the free market ideas you're talking about, I think Bill Maher explains the idea pretty well in this video, minus the snarkiness. I support a capitalist market but there has to be laws and regulations imo, otherwise the strongest will take advantage of everyone else. Skip to 2:56, the part about the meat inspectors. I don't think the earlier part of the video really applies to your ideas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55zDEBNqfk4

Many private companies already exist that lend their label to restaurants or brands to ensure quality to consumers. A business would be wise to get certified by a trusted company so consumers know that they're ordering quality.

Compare this to government inspectors who allow a certain amount of rat feces in food or pus in milk.


Bill Maher is criticizing libertarianism, even though 3 out of 4 of the people's he's highlighting aren't even libertarian. Like Ayn Rand who was an objectivist (quite pro-state and pro-military) and Paul Ryan was a neocon appointed by Mitt Romney.

jags wrote:Also, I don't think you really got my point about the drug market. Don't get too hung up on the black market thing. All I was saying was that in the absence of a state having a monopoly on the use of force, you'll basically have, well, anarchy. This will happen in a black market, but it would also happen in a "legal" market that has no regulations and lacks a proper government and police force to uphold laws and common decency. My point wasn't about black markets, it was about the monopoly on violence.

I got your point innitially and I argued it. Now it's your turn to argue my points rather than repeating the one I already debunked.

jags wrote:2) "People saw no mutual benefit in creating chaos, so they didn't." Well, I'm not totally sold that it wasn't chaotic and that people weren't regularly murdered, but if it really was as good as you say, I still think it would have descended into chaos eventually. Also we live in a very different world today. It's much more densely populated and there is more mass communication/media. I think it was easier back then to let communities handle law enforcement.

Recorded history disagrees with you.

This is one of those arguments where the people making them assume they're the only ones clever enough to know that being violent to each other and creating chaos are bad.

jags wrote:3) A lot of your arguments seem to boil down to "look at the problems in the current system. my system wouldn't have these problems. therefore, my system is better." E.g. - "There's another thing wrong with your argumentation; public law is already corrupt" and "This Mafioso considers the current situation of prohibition a wetdream because he's able to operate his violent cartel more effecticely". You seem dangerously close to creating a false choice between the current system and anarcho-capitalism. Obviously there are other ways to ameliorate these problems that don't involve the abolition of the state. I'm sure you already know enough about them, I don't need to explain them.

You're arguing why anarcho-capitalism wouldn't work. So it should be no surprise to you that I explain to you why anarcho-capitalism would work. This isn't about false dichotomies, but sticking to the topic of the debate.

jags wrote:4) "What has existed, is statist society. If we were to apply the logic of your argument properly, patriarchy would then have been created by statist society since that has been the predominent model for the past 2000 years." - This is very problematic logic imo. We haven't really had a strong statist model for the past 200 years. Sure, there have been de jure states, but they didn't necessarily have a monopoly on violence (everywhere) until maybe the last 200 or so years (wild west?). And that's when we've seen patriarchy begin to reverse. Sure there are areas, particularly cities like Rome, where there may have been proper and effective police forces, but the amount of land that has been essentially ungoverned throughout history is enormous compared to the small amount of land that was governed. And as you point out, many police forces today are still not completely effective.

History was written by the places that were governed by the state or the church (or both), not by the unchartered backwoods.

Fight

Economics is like dubstep, tru hedz don't admit it but if you do people think you mean Skrillexonomics.

I'm not debating shit until people provide evidence that we live in (mostly) unfettered capitalism. The term is thrown around so much, without any evidence for it or defining the term adequately. Until someone supplies concrete, direct, undebatable evidence that we live in a fundamentally free market or in unfettered capitalism this won't go anywhere.

I'm waiting. Tick.. tock...

It seems strange that you would make a condition of a debate that a poster provide undebatable evidence your position is incorrect.

I don't think we do live in an unfettered market fwiw so we're in agreement there it's the conclusions we draw from that that we differ on.

scspkr99 wrote:It seems strange that you would make a condition of a debate that a poster provide undebatable evidence your position is incorrect.

True enough.But I think we're either in an 'unfettered capitalist' system or we're not. Or we're mighty close to it or we aren't. But in my history debating the current nature of our economic system, it's always presupposed that unfettered capitalism or free markets are a very real thing, at the heart of our current economic crisis and the cause of decline of the middle class. But no one ever provides any evidence for the claim or poses an actual argument; it's always just presupposed as true and my arguments to the contrary are literally ignored. No one has actually debated me on it.

I think for the sake of intellectual honesty, you would have to concede that at least currently and even historically, we have not had a free capitalist market (defining capitalist as pro-property rights. Not the 19th century definition, that can either be called state-capitalist or in modern times "corporatist", which is a very different thing from free marketism). Regardless of whether you support or oppose it, it's only fair to admit it.

i agree with you genevieve i don't think we live in a completely unregulated free market system. we have meat inspectors in the US and in Europe. Somalia on the other hand....

i don't get why that's so important to your argument...

jags wrote:i agree with you genevieve i don't think we live in a completely unregulated free market system. we have meat inspectors in the US and in Europe.

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

~ Frédéric Bastiat

jags wrote:Somalia on the other hand....

Somalia: Far from a failed state?

Situation - government = not necessarily good

Situation - government = always better than + government

Somalia is more than just stateless.

jags wrote:i don't get why that's so important to your argument...

People blame the free market for current economic crisis. They presuppose unfettered capitalism, assume everyone will agree with them and never provide any evidence for the claim. The evidence, however, suggest something very different from "unfettered capitalism" and many planks written in Marx's 'Communist Manifesto' have already been fulfilled. We don't live in a communist society, but for the sake of intellectual honesty, you would have to admit that none of the ills of society at present can be attributed to unfettered capitalism.

Genevieve wrote:

jags wrote:i agree with you genevieve i don't think we live in a completely unregulated free market system. we have meat inspectors in the US and in Europe.

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

~ Frédéric Bastiat

I get this point, don't think that I'm not seeing this distinction. I personally believe that when a certain industry has a large impact on human life (eg health care), it's too important to leave that industry to the forces of the free market, because the free market has proven again and again that it will value profits over human life, and that's unacceptable in today's current world in my opinon.

In America at least, and I'm guessing probably in Europe as well, meat inspection is either a public service or it's a highly regulated private service (FMIA, FDA, USDA). I cba to look up whether they are actual government employees or if they're just highly regulated private businesses (it probably varies by state anyway), but does that distinction really matter? The end result is essentially the same.

Genevieve wrote:

jags wrote:i don't get why that's so important to your argument...

People blame the free market for current economic crisis. They presuppose unfettered capitalism, assume everyone will agree with them and never provide any evidence for the claim. The evidence, however, suggest something very different from "unfettered capitalism" and many planks written in Marx's 'Communist Manifesto' have already been fulfilled. We don't live in a communist society, but for the sake of intellectual honesty, you would have to admit that none of the ills of society at present can be attributed to unfettered capitalism.

I think this is more relevant to the argument Phigure was making than to mine, but I also think you're looking at this issue as if it's black and white. It's not that simple. Every country/economy/sector is capitalistic-socialistic to a certain degree, like on a spectrum. it's not just one or the other. And people attribute many of the problems we face to the capitalistic aspects of our current economies. You can't say that the world we live in is "unfettered capitalism", but you can't say it's completely socialistic either. Different sectors have different degrees of regulation and government involvement. I am of the opinion that more government regulation/involvement is associated with better outcomes than less regulation and involvement, but obviously there are nuances and not every regulation is effective. Some regulations are bad. You gotta be smart about it.

But you gotta admit that on the whole, we're definitely closer to unfettered capitalism than to complete government ownership of the means of production, right? At least in America I feel that we are, and while I don't know as much about certain European countries like Denmark, Finland, Sweden, etc, I would guess that they are also still closer to unfettered capitalism than complete socialism despite being the most socialist countries in the (developed) world.

Genevieve wrote:People blame the free market for current economic crisis.

Blaming the free market or free market operations on the current crisis doesn't mean you believe we live in a completely unregulated free market. Just like blaming poor government actions doesn't imply you think we live in a completely central planned authoritarian state. You can put blame on aspects without presupposing what the whole current system is like.

The crisis was caused by an unregulated and relatively free market banking system. It's a pretty good example of a free market operation being a complete failure but you can't come to the conclusion that free markets don't work as a whole system based on it. I think when people blame the free market for the current crisis they don't blame the system as a whole and assume we live in a completely free market but they blame the free market operation of the financial sector; which in my opinion is hard to argue against unless you do it based on ideology.

Muncey wrote:

Genevieve wrote:People blame the free market for current economic crisis.

Blaming the free market or free market operations on the current crisis doesn't mean you believe we live in a completely unregulated free market.

People have called it, and still call it, 'unfettered capitalism' (as I clearly pointed out in the innitial post). There is a difference between saying 'we have a relatively free market' and calling it 'unfettered capitalism'. Unfettered capitalism would be anarcho-capitalism. Calling us anything close to anarcho-capitalist would be foolish and intellectually dishonest and a partisan lie.

If people presuppose it, they need to explain it. I always explain it. But no one has ever given any evidence for it being unfettered capitalism.

Muncey wrote:The crisis was caused by an unregulated and relatively free market banking system.

How would you incorporate this in that statement?

Genevieve wrote:

Muncey wrote:

Genevieve wrote:People blame the free market for current economic crisis.

Blaming the free market or free market operations on the current crisis doesn't mean you believe we live in a completely unregulated free market.

People have called it, and still call it, 'unfettered capitalism' (as I clearly pointed out in the innitial post). There is a difference between saying 'we have a relatively free market' and calling it 'unfettered capitalism'. Unfettered capitalism would be anarcho-capitalism. Calling us anything close to anarcho-capitalist would be foolish and intellectually dishonest and a partisan lie.

If people presuppose it, they need to explain it. I always explain it. But no one has ever given any evidence for it being unfettered capitalism.

Muncey wrote:The crisis was caused by an unregulated and relatively free market banking system.

How would you incorporate this in that statement?

Fair enough on the first point, I agree with you.

As for the federal reserve act, it was a global crisis. Different countries were effected in different ways and different degrees and for different reasons. The actual crisis was caused mostly by an unregulated and relatively free market financial sector.

Muncey wrote:As for the federal reserve act, it was a global crisis. Different countries were effected in different ways and different degress and for different reasons. The actual crisis was caused mostly by an unregulated and relatively free market financial sector.

Icelandic banks operated under the assumption that the Icelandic central bank were to bail them out if their (by their market determined too risky) malinvestments were to fail. The fourth paragraph said as much. It's a point often ignored, but it wasn't just the banks that were "deregulated", but the central bank was also granted more authority by the state.

In a situation where you "deregulate" (strategic deregulation isn't just pure deregulation) banks, but then also promise an imaginary safety net in the form a central bank to catch you when you fall, you're not operating under free market principles.

It was a global crisis because the modern economy is global. But it's hard to deny the role central banks play in the modern economy since they are at the basis of all market policy world wide and give out loans at low interest rates and bailouts (in secret too) to various corporations, overseas AND at home and that's not even beginning to mention the way they finance governments

Yeah good point, I agree the central bank safety net did play a crucial role. However the problem in economics is its almost impossible to repeat history and see how things would have turned out if things were different and therefore its pretty hard to justify saying banks wouldn't have acted in that manner without the safety net in place. The main players in the crisis got paid handsomely and would have done so with or without the safety net, the safety net allows them to repeat their actions and get off with not much more than a slap on the wrist. Maybe without the safety net they'd have faced harsher consequences and that may have deterred them but in general they'd have gained just as much and lost just as little if they were left to fail.

Lehman brothers was left to collapse and many walked out of that with their billions in tact, if they were given the opportunity to go back and act differently knowing they wouldn't get bailed out I'd be very surprised if they would.

Central bank safety net definitely played a part but I find it hard to believe the crisis wouldn't have occurred without it.. but again its impossible to prove.

The major players wouldn't have been able to make the investments they made (with their clients' money) had it not been for the central bank's artificially low interest rates on the loans.

I believe in a regulated economy as well. I think it's probably to do with how you were raised.

cool, here's the reply i was halfway through writing when everyone got butthurt about posting in the happy thread

Genevieve wrote:

Phigure wrote:i dont really see how anyone living in today's world can advocate the free market. just look at the terrible inequality of wealth/income (and the power that comes with it),

Today's world isn't a free market. Your point is moot.

i was actually careful not to ignore that fact, and it doesn't negate my point. like muncey said it's "Just like blaming poor government actions doesn't imply you think we live in a completely central planned authoritarian state. You can put blame on aspects without presupposing what the whole current system is like."

Genevieve wrote:

Phigure wrote:yet workers and the average person have received none of that.

That's called time preference. People value stuff now more than later. That includes wages. Laborers did make more money 110 years ago, before the state inflated the currency through legal tender and pro-monopoly laws protecting the federal reserve.

this is kind of an irrelevant argument, of course people value things sooner more than later, but what kind of a system allows laborers 110 years ago to affect the wages of people nowadays. um, why not just make employers pay people a fair living wage? it's not like they can't afford to. and im not necessarily in favor of causing inflation by printing money (hey, im into bitcoin), but there's worse evils than 1-3% inflation a year (in the US at least, obviously there's parts of the world where more irresponsible fiscal policy has led to hyperinflation).

Genevieve wrote:

Phigure wrote:obviously we don't live in a true free market, but it's not aspects of socialism, communism, etc or even neoliberalism that are at fault. how can you blame anything BUT the free market principles at work?

1) Private property has for the most part been decimated (i.e. state legislation trumps private application) and people are no longer capable of owning land; they can merely rent it from the state.

2) This speaks for itself. We apply a heavy. Most of the 1% even pay almost half of their income in taxes. It's only the top 1% of the top 1% who are exempt from progressive taxation. Check the state and federal tax code[/url]

3) Rights of inheretance aren't completely abolished, but limited.

5) The creation of the federal reserve and the European federal bank are examples of this. The centralization of credit in the hands of the state created among other things the housing bubble. Government sponsored enterprices Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae decided that more people should own houses (regardless of what market forces indicated). The federal reserve helped finance mortgages at artificially low interest rate, which caused consumers to malinvest in real estate. Pricing and interest rates are communicators in a market, they indicate what type of investment is profitable and what isn't. The central bank distorted that. The eventual bursting of the bubble made thousands of people homeless or poor.

This is how much purchasing power 1 dollar has lost since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913:



6) This goes without saying

7) Again, goes without saying.

8 ) The state has been active in trying to provide people with jobs.

9) YOU GOT ME!!

10) .... Do I even have to say anything?

nowhere did i advocate for the communist manifesto as the solution. marx was right about a lot of things (the relationships between proletariat and bourgeoisie, the problems of fictitious capital, tendency to commodify everything, etc), but he was also wrong about other things (there was no revolution of the proletariat in developed, industrialized nations as he predicted, instead it happened in mostly rural russia, etc). global capitalism is a much different structure than what was around in his time. of course his approach needs to be reapplied to the modern day

despite it being a total strawman i'll defend it anyways because i dont think any of them are the reason that there's such widespread inequality in the world today. i mean when i read some of your responses i think we're sort of living in a different world (how has private property been "decimated"???, rights of inheritance are hardly limited as we see the offspring of the wealthy go on and, you know, inherit their wealth and also be wealthy). how is a progressive tax the reason that there's inequality? also FYI the top 1% in the US pay an average nominal tax rate of 23%, don't know where you got "half" from (of course state taxes arent included but they differ wildly).

there "progressive" tax of today is hardly such. FDR put a tax of 94% on the top bracket and used the money to support those who needed it, and what followed was years of an economic system that was much more fair:


the US kept rates above 70% and were pretty economically successful during those times until reagan took them down to 28%. notice how income inequality starts creeping up again right around that time...

how are the federal reserve, european central bank, fannie mae + freddie mac, etc, in any way, communist implementations of state run credit? they'd work nothing like how those institutions do

Genevieve wrote:

Phigure wrote:the free market is a disaster. the great irony about people singing the praises of the free market is that there has never been a real free market in a developed society. the only free markets that exist are in the 3rd world, and that's a big reason why the 3rd world looks like it does.

The closest thing to a free market right now is in third world countries. Countries that mimic the situation of the industrial revolution. People's wealth in those countries is increasing and western intervention is causing a slowing down of the process. Like when westerners forced anti-child labor laws on Bangladesh, where children then opted to get into prostitution or starved to death.

arguing against child labor laws, okay. if it hasn't been made clear to you yet throughout your lifetime why that's probably an important thing, then i dont think i'll get it across in a forum post.

Genevieve wrote:

Phigure wrote:not to mention that proponents of free markets fail to take account all of the massive externalities that come about. and i'm not just talking about environmental disasters like pollution and the catastrophic climate change we're about to face because of unchecked capitalism, etc

Define uncheckered capitalism. Show us how it can exist with large invasions into the market by the state and with the existence of legal tender laws protected central banks that issue credits and make secret loans to, among others, McDonalds worth 13 billion.

like i said, we live in mixed economies, but it's the free market part that's causing these issues. companies pollute because of legal tender laws and secret loans to mcdonalds? that's absurd and you know it. they're environmentally reckless because it's cheaper than properly disposing of waste or reducing emissions, and they're not held accountable by anyone and/or they can get away with it.

Genevieve wrote:

Phigure wrote:chomsky has a good example of how markets don't really help to increase your choice, but restrict it: the free market gives you a ford or BMW, but it's not going to give you public transport like a metro system.

Except for the private bus companies here in the Netherlands.

well i cant speak for how they are since ive never used them, but buses are on a very different level than a metro system in terms of required investment and development. where i live in the US we also have private bus companies, and also private rail, and they're all completely worthless. trumped by literally every public transportation system i used whenever i lived or traveled in europe. as far as i can tell from a bit of googling, there's only one metro in the world that was privately funded and built, in india. that's because, like my space/moon example, it's otherwise just far too much of an undertaking for any business to take up.

Genevieve wrote:

Phigure wrote:markets only encourage individual consumption.

Markets don't "encourage" anything. Socialists and pro-central planners make the faulty assumption that markets are concrete institutions that people move in. That's far from the truth, though. Markets are merely what happens when individuals freely interact with each other and the resources in their environment.

semantics. of course everyone knows that markets are just free trade among people. let me phrase it differently for you then: "the dynamics of people interacint freely with each other and the reasources in their environment only encourage individual consumption." my points still stands, products/services oriented towards individual consumption are far more successful even though they're often more wasteful and undesirable

Genevieve wrote:

Phigure wrote:only commodities can truly succeed, things like vaccines or cures for diseases aren't profitable enough to justify their research and production (they can only sell you a cure once, in a free market you'd probably just get treatments that you have to buy until youre dead)

Insurance companies also find vaccines and cures profitable; if they can offer cures and vaccines to customers, then they have to pay less in healthcare costs and can offer cheaper services.

first of all they have to start researching these things without a guarantee that they'll ever get a return on their investment. but for the sake of the argument i'll give you that it might be so in some cases, but that exactly is the problem. if they estimate the cost of researching and manufacturing a vaccine at $50 million, but they only expect savings of $30 million, why would they do it? despite the good that those vaccines, cures, etc can offer the world, they won't be pursued because it's not economically rewarding

Genevieve wrote:

Phigure wrote:even if we say "okay, let's go with free markets" and ignore all their negative effects and shortcomings, there's still an obvious limit in terms of scale. do you think we ever would've made it to space / the moon in the last century had governments not taken up the task?

Maybe we would have waited 50 or 80, or 100 years and done it with a greater incentive, greater efficiency, without going over budgets by billions of dollars.

what you're failing to realize is the myriad of positive effects a massive project like the space program gave to the general public. first and foremost there's the employment it generated. the number of spinoff technologies that came from the space program could probably fill several pages, and probably accelerated the growth of human technological advancement by at least a few decades. the overall economic payoff from the project was many times greater than its original cost, and that's the whole point of government spending. it's been repeatedly shown that investment into science and technology generates a huge return on investment for the overall economy

Genevieve wrote:

Phigure wrote:there's a lot of things that are just too risky and not profitable enough for any business to undertake. we probably wouldn't be having this conversation right now because the internet (and computers themselves) grew as a government funded research project

The internet was restricted for decades. It wasn't until it was liberalized and private consumers. Look at each major innovation in the internet and computing; IBN, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Youtube, Gmail, Netflix etc. All done by private companies in the early '90s. Before that the internet hardly made any true progress in capabilities when it was still in the iron clutch of the state and military. You're saying that advanced communication would be unprofitable. This is false since the aforementioned companies rely on that.

gmail, youtube, netflix weren't around in the 90s. IBM (and basically all other computing innovators) was for the majority of its existence largely reliant on government contracts and funding for research. sure, it was still officially "ARPANET" until 1990, but it's an exaggeration to say it was in the iron clutch of the state and military, since it was used just as much by the academic world. the internet wasnt restricted as much as that it just wasnt much of a "world wide net" until shortly before the 90s, and therefore its broad public utility didn't exist yet either. i'm not saying advanced communication would be unprofitable. what i'm saying is that it, along with the development of computers, would've been unprofitable for at least another few decades


like jags said in the other thread though, it's kind of a rare pleasure to be able to talk to someone of this economic/political persuasion like this. also this is getting pretty long and branched into way too many subarguments and multiquotes so dont feel obligated to drag it on if you dont want, i just wanted to defend my thoughts from earlier

I just feel like you can take the SNL cowbell skit, replace cowbell with capitalism, and have Gene's argument in a nutshell.

Genevieve wrote:I'm not debating shit until people provide evidence that we live in (mostly) unfettered capitalism.

Whoever said that? Most people seem to just think our capitalism needs a little more fettering. Obviously if you live in a country with any sort of taxation and public service, you're not in pure capitalism.

The problem with a truly free market, or at least the problem with arguing for one, is that it'll never happen. Ever. It's an entirely pointless thing to believe in unless you want to be the economic equivalent of a fundamentalist God bore shouting for a return to Sharia Law. Never. Going. To. Happen. There will always be influences from outside, if only because we live in a globalised world and nobody will ever get every government on board for a global experiment in idealistic capitalism.

It's like arguing til you're blue in the face for World Peace. It's a lovely thought in many ways, but it's incredibly unlikely to ever happen.

The safest and most pragmatic option is almost always to introduce controls that don't allow people to be taken advantage of. Yeah, it might be a crude method at times, but it's also a possible one. A feasibility rather than a utopian daydream.

Phigure wrote:i was actually careful not to ignore that fact, and it doesn't negate my point. like muncey said it's "Just like blaming poor government actions doesn't imply you think we live in a completely central planned authoritarian state. You can put blame on aspects without presupposing what the whole current system is like."

No, you called it mostly unfettered capitalism. When you presuppose unfettered capitalism, you will back that claim up.

Phigure wrote:this is kind of an irrelevant argument, of course people value things sooner more than later, but what kind of a system allows laborers 110 years ago to affect the wages of people nowadays. um, why not just make employers pay people a fair living wage?

You completely missed the point.

Laborers get their wages paid within either a week or a month. The capitalist won't get to sell the goods that are being produced, usually, until months or weeks later. This difference in time is why the capitalist makes more money off of the products than the laborer (I went more in depth about this here). This is logical, because capitalists invest for a much longer time (labor costs, wages, rent, advertising, etc) before they see a dime. Laborers only work and see their money almost immediately.

Laborers made relatively more money 110 years ago because their money was worth more at the time, which has to do with the state's monetary policy.

You're reducing economics to kindergarten levels by saying 'why can't they just pay a living wage?' because economic decisions aren't just that simple and 'a living wage' doesn't just depend on how much the capitalist pays in wages, but also how affordable products/services in the economy are or how much your money is worth (the value of which is decreased by monetary policy), which are all beyond the control of the capitalist.

Then there's the following; more expensive wages makes products more expensive. More expensive products means that less people can afford them. You're making the common mistake as seeing wages as concrete things and thinking that your capacity to make a living solely based on the number on the paycheck. Value doesn't work like that. You can't simply raise wages and then believe that this won't otherwise have any affects on the economy.

I saw this on The Young Turks once where they were criticizing Walmart for it while trying to take down Rand Paul. Their hostess was critical of Walmart for the same reason 'WHY CAN'T THEY JUST PAY A LIVING WAGE?'. But legally (and morally) Walmart is NOT there to have people earn a living wage (unless you were to innitiate force on them). It's not the type of jobs they can offer in the modern economy and this is not their fault. But the TYT hosts never looked for the state; legally, the state is bount by the consitution to only allow gold and silver as legal tender. People's wages are worth nothing these days because the state crimanalized gold and silver as legal tender and forces people to only accept inflationary federal reserves notes backed by nothing as currency. And as you can see by the graph that I posted, the value of a dollar has decreased tremendously over a 100 year period. Meaning; if Walmart employees were paid what they were paid now, but with a gold backed dollar as strong as the one 110 years ago, pre-federal reserve, Walmart employees' wages would have far surpassed Elizabeth Warren's LUDICROUS ECONOMY KILLING CALL of 20 dollars per hour (in modern currency) in realistic wealth. The number may be lower (but again, the number doesn't mean anything without all others factors taken into account), but what they number can buy them in the economy would make worlds of difference.

And by the way. Did you know that Walmart lobbied for a higher mininum wage? They were unsuccessful, but do you know why they did that? It's not because they love their workers. It's because they know their competitors can't afford to pay that and would go out of businsess. If this means slightly less profits per product, but more sales (to gain even more profits), then they're quite fine with paying their laborers higher wages.

You can't just pass a law on gravity and then expect people to fly. Yet you think you can just 'pass a law on low wages' and then everyone can afford. But wages are only 1/10000000th of the equation and affect the entire economy far more than just the number of the paycheck.

Phigure wrote:it's not like they can't afford to. and im not necessarily in favor of causing inflation by printing money (hey, im into bitcoin), but there's worse evils than 1-3% inflation a year (in the US at least, obviously there's parts of the world where more irresponsible fiscal policy has led to hyperinflation).

This 1-3% inflation in one year isn't too bad. But this has been going on for 101 years.

I'll do the rest later. I'm busy today.

magma wrote:The problem with a truly free market, or at least the problem with arguing for one, is that it'll never happen. Ever.

Yeah, I don't get why the pro-free market view is often all or nothing and any problems that arise can be attributed to the system being not free enough. At that point you're essentially interested in how an economy should work instead of what economics is suppose to be about and learning how the economy does work.. in reality, here and now.

I've never understood why people believe free markets to be completely efficient and work for the best either. Hayek said socialism doesn't work because forcing a system to be fair/equal will ultimately make it unfair/unequal and while that may be true why would it not be the case for a free system to end up ultimately 'unfree'.

Also holding interest rates artificially low didn't really lead to reckless investments, it was holding interest rates artificially low for too long.. As is happening now imo.