Select Page
Poker Forum
Over 1,291,000 Posts!
Poker ForumFTR Community

Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

Page 5 of 18 FirstFirst ... 3456715 ... LastLast
Results 301 to 375 of 1312
  1. #301
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    28,082
    Location
    himself fucker.
    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    Going back to the capitalism/morality thing, here's a great video that shows the importance of profits.

    <object width="425" height="355">
    We didn't really leave Captialism/Morality, though. Maybe with this Orwell stuff, but not much before.
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>
  2. #302
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    28,082
    Location
    himself fucker.
    Renton, what does morality mean to you?

    The video says that if you went to the guy and 1300 dollars was too much, you're free to walk away. Or what if someone else had bought the generator at the rock bottom price of 500 before you even got there?

    This does not strike me as the form of the question. If someone in need, in an emergency, petitions you for help and you have the help, you give it. You don't consult the market first.

    If the next person petitions you for help and you have none left to give, sorry, but you have none left to give.

    If everyone plays by these rules, I guarantee we out perform a society playing by yours in crunch time.

    Good book that struck me from thinking on this situation "Hiroshima" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_(book))

    Read about how people deal in a disaster and how silly it sounds trying to talk about the fair price.
    Last edited by a500lbgorilla; 12-21-2013 at 07:04 PM.
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>
  3. #303
    The point is more that the markets handle the system in aggregate better than laws. Which they do. Not only does legislating morality not work, it exacerbates problems and creates additional ones. For example, the drug war is pretty much entirely legislated morality.

    I know all the time I've spent on the side against free markets was because I assumed that without government guaranteeing rights and fair treatment, we'd all be suffering under the iron fist of our corporate overlords. But I've since learned that just isn't true. Competitiveness of the marketplace means that these sort of overlords can't exist, and the lack of competitiveness in government means that special interests maintain control. It's like with rent control and height limits on buildings. These are terrible for the economy, but because of the special interests of residents of city centers that have become vibrant commercial centers, economic growth is hindered in substantial ways. These anachronistic residents vote, and politicians pass laws that keep them in place, but the consequences are of dramatically reduced wealth and networking of business and the overall economy
  4. #304
    Markets assess value of your capital far better than any morality or government can. Supply and demand is just a crazy awesome phenomenon like that. Things like rent controls have mutli-pronged negatives by subsidizing low value of certain citizens, which disallows growth and immigration of high value of others, while also decreasing growth in opportunity for those subsidized. This hurts everybody, and it's in place because people don't like change and governments rubber stamp it
  5. #305
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla View Post
    If someone in need, in an emergency, petitions you for help and you have the help, you give it. You don't consult the market first.

    If the next person petitions you for help and you have none left to give, sorry, but you have none left to give.

    If everyone plays by these rules, I guarantee we out perform a society playing by yours in crunch time.
    The problem with your logic is that need isn't objective, but subjective. There are a limited number of generators and a greater number of people who need generators. However, they need these generators in varying degrees. One person needs a generator to so he can use facebook and play Playstation. Another needs it to continue doing his business which he feels is vital. Yet another needs it so he can keep his insulin refrigerated. A small medical practice might need it in an even greater way because it has ten patients and needs power to vital systems in order to continue treating them.

    So, a society in which people with generators give them to people who "need" them without asking for remuneration of any kind sort of breaks down in the face of this. Market-based price coordination is not a perfect way to distribute a vital resource in short supply. After all a really rich kid who wants to play playstation could still pay 1300 for the generator, but its better than forcing people to give them away at a cost much lower than the subjective value to the first lucky person that comes along to grab it.
  6. #306
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    28,082
    Location
    himself fucker.
    Renton, my logic is appropriately subjective and objective. The weakness with yours is that it's too objective and this should be obvious. Remember, we're talking about the Philippines during and immediately after Typhoon Hiayan and not a few weeks later when it might be possible to survey the entire marketplace and come to rational pricing and logistically match up needs with resources.

    I appreciate that your sense of morality is to most equitably and efficiently match resources with needs but you are making a mistake in thinking that discretely quantifying these things during a crisis is the best method. There is a superior method that will both yield more profitable results and execute itself more naturally. It's actual morality. The rules of engagement which nature's evolution has already taken the time to build into us. The rules that say if you have the help to give, you give it because, if roles were reversed, that's what you'd desire.

    This point should not be a hard sell. (Remember, typhoon bearing down on us.) If, along side your merchant, there was another man with a second generator who did not charge for its services but apportioned and reapportioned it out based on his judgement of greatest demand and asked for nothing in return, who would be generating more wealth? The second man. The first may never find the appropriate buyer, may constantly have to adjust prices, or simply settle for the first price which comes along and pocket the one time exchange, but in return he will always be branded by the community as a price-gouging douchenozzle. The second man will be generating wealth first by transferring his resources to those more in need for just as the world becomes more wealthy when a man with 2 dollars gives 1 to a man with 0, the world becomes more wealthy when this man provides for those in need in their time of need. After the disaster has passed, it would be the second man that would profit from a natural sense of deep reciprocity, admiration, and love from all those who he helped - should he return to business, he'll have adoring patrons for life.

    And you can know that I'm right because the second man is exactly the man Wal-mart and Coca-cola and all of them try to be during and immediately after a disaster.
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>
  7. #307
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    I'm failing to see how your system creates an effective signal for more generators to be supplied to the area. I'm assuming you are in favor of a FEMA-type organization that apportions resources and stimulates supply. But we've seen how ineffective such organizations are. I think you are also greatly underestimating the speed with which a market would adjust during a disaster. The prices could coordinate within a matter of hours.

    But forget about all that, and take bottled water for example. This is an area where price gouging would literally save lives, because bottled water is often overbought by people in a panic. A seller increasing the price of a bottle of water from 1 dollar to 5 dollars GREATLY mitigates this panic-buying problem and distributes the water far more equitably. And as mentioned before, an area with water selling for 5$ per bottle is an area that is soon to be flooded with supply of bottled water, which returns the prices toward equilibrium, again, often in a matter of hours.
    Last edited by Renton; 12-22-2013 at 06:58 AM.
  8. #308
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    28,082
    Location
    himself fucker.
    Dude, a typhoon just hit. If you're making generators, I'm sure you'll sense an increased market demand. And the market will come back into use quickly after the disaster has passed. Just as impromptu marketplaces set up some time after Haiyan. But during the mayhem, is what your video was on about.

    And you're going to have to walk me through HOW the market would stabilize price. "It will" isn't helping me.
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>
  9. #309
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla View Post
    Dude, a typhoon just hit. If you're making generators, I'm sure you'll sense an increased market demand. And the market will come back into use quickly after the disaster has passed. Just as impromptu marketplaces set up some time after Haiyan. But during the mayhem, is what your video was on about.

    And you're going to have to walk me through HOW the market would stabilize price. "It will" isn't helping me.
    Re: generators, I'm not talking about producing them, but distributing them. If generators are selling for 1300 dollars in hurricane afflicted miami, distributors of generators in neighboring cities like Orlando will respond very quickly with supply, which will push the price back down and make the shortage less severe.

    With a more mobile and liquid resource such as bottled water, the adjustment would happen VERY quickly. It's kind of like how white blood cells attack an infection, bottled water would immediately flood to the area if there is a profit signal. People would compete over selling water at an increased price, which would result in a decreased price from the initial gouge. So if a bottle of water is 1 dollar pre disaster, and the initial gougers are successfully selling their water for 5 dollars, the increased supply and subsequent competition may result in the price stabilizing at like 1.50 within a day. And importantly, shelves wouldn't run out of stock nearly as quickly like they would in a gouging-prohibited scenario.
  10. #310
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    28,082
    Location
    himself fucker.
    It all sounds like it requires communication across the market that would not exist during a typhoon.

    edit: And if your distributing generators and you hear a typhoon hit somewhere, I'm sure you'll suspect some increased market demand. You don't have to hear the price to generate the same response.
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>
  11. #311
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla View Post
    It all sounds like it requires communication across the market that would not exist during a typhoon.

    edit: And if your distributing generators and you hear a typhoon hit somewhere, I'm sure you'll suspect some increased market demand. You don't have to hear the price to generate the same response.
    Well, I'm sure Dasani is always happy to have an uptick in water sales, even at the pre-disaster price, you're correct that there will be "some increased market demand." But it would never be the same response. It would be a weaker response. Supply and demand are simply far more responsive to one another in a free market than in a price-controlled market. I'm not sure how that is even arguable. Less incentive = less response and greater delay.


    I feel like your "dude a typhoon just hit" rebuttal is trolling a bit. Most of the gouging happens days prior to disasters in the case of hurricanes/typhoons. The weather reports a 50% chance of severe storms and here come the water bottle nuts. They buy like 8 cases of water and 20 flashlights. When gouging is prohibited, all the stores are bought out of flashlights, water, and canned food right away. Not prohibiting gouging makes this problem less likely and provides a strong incentive for increased supply. The end result is that people are by and large more prepared for the disaster if and when it happens. Really the only negative here is that the poor people who truly cannot afford the initial gouge price have to wait a while for the price to subside to an affordable level.
    Last edited by Renton; 12-22-2013 at 07:36 AM.
  12. #312
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    28,082
    Location
    himself fucker.
    You're not arguing with me any more, you're arguing against price controls and all that. My position was that the morality of the free market given in your video was not the best method to address the needs of people in the situation it described. You keep trying to shove me back into your economics world by fitting what I'm saying into what you understand.

    "I'm assuming you are in favor of a FEMA-type organization that apportions resources and stimulates supply."

    "
    Supply and demand are simply far more responsive to one another in a free market than in a price-controlled market. I'm not sure how that is even arguable. Less incentive = less response and greater delay."

    I'm focusing on how people act in the world and you're focusing on how people act in a free market.
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>
  13. #313
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    28,082
    Location
    himself fucker.
    I'll try to get at my point in a different way. I would like to observe that Typhoon Hayain leveled the infrastructure necessary to conduct a free market. Because of this, using free market analysis to find a way to alleviate the needs of those on the ground during the disaster makes little sense.


    "even at the pre-disaster price, you're correct that there will be "some increased market demand." But it would never be the same response. It would be a weaker response."


    "Less incentive = less response and greater delay."


    "the adjustment would happen VERY quickly"


    "bottled water would immediately flood to the area if there is a profit signal."


    All of these quotes chopped up from a couple of your posts say to me that there is some inherent communication across the market and I believe you're over estimating the effectiveness of this communication.


    Anytime we want to robustly analyze communication we are compelled to consult shannon's model of communication.


    It's pretty straight forward, a source encodes a signal, transmits through a channel, a receiver decodes it and the communication is a success. It's the channel that I want to focus on.


    The channel that would transmit this economic information is murkey to me. Is it that you'll see competitors revenue streams increase at price points, or hear on the radio what things are selling for, or consult some central hub of information, or have salesman throughout the area phoning each other, or that people will go two miles down the road for water priced more reasonably? How would the price signal leak out of an area where power is down and roads are swept into the sea? If the possible channels for communication are all significantly compromised, I don't see how the free market can effectively price anything. Without this price information flowing through the region to allow for every demand to be matched with a resource at the theoretically rational price level, you do not effectively have a free market.


    This is why I find my method for allocating resources to needs entirely more effective. Everyone can enact it locally; it'll get the best result given the dire state of affairs; it has its own moral rational; and it doesn't require some magical level of information flow across a region in relative chaos.
    Last edited by a500lbgorilla; 12-22-2013 at 09:13 AM.
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>
  14. #314
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    The communist one is about state control of the people through propaganda (which we don't have but communist nations did/do)
    We are inundated with propaganda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
    Erín Go Bragh
  15. #315
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla View Post
    I'll try to get at my point in a different way. I would like to observe that Typhoon Hayain leveled the infrastructure necessary to conduct a free market. Because of this, using free market analysis to find a way to alleviate the needs of those on the ground during the disaster makes little sense.


    "even at the pre-disaster price, you're correct that there will be "some increased market demand." But it would never be the same response. It would be a weaker response."


    "Less incentive = less response and greater delay."


    "the adjustment would happen VERY quickly"


    "bottled water would immediately flood to the area if there is a profit signal."


    All of these quotes chopped up from a couple of your posts say to me that there is some inherent communication across the market and I believe you're over estimating the effectiveness of this communication.


    Anytime we want to robustly analyze communication we are compelled to consult shannon's model of communication.


    It's pretty straight forward, a source encodes a signal, transmits through a channel, a receiver decodes it and the communication is a success. It's the channel that I want to focus on.


    The channel that would transmit this economic information is murkey to me. Is it that you'll see competitors revenue streams increase at price points, or hear on the radio what things are selling for, or consult some central hub of information, or have salesman throughout the area phoning each other, or that people will go two miles down the road for water priced more reasonably? How would the price signal leak out of an area where power is down and roads are swept into the sea? If the possible channels for communication are all significantly compromised, I don't see how the free market can effectively price anything. Without this price information flowing through the region to allow for every demand to be matched with a resource at the theoretically rational price level, you do not effectively have a free market.


    This is why I find my method for allocating resources to needs entirely more effective. Everyone can enact it locally; it'll get the best result given the dire state of affairs; it has its own moral rational; and it doesn't require some magical level of information flow across a region in relative chaos.
    Well you have direct communication which your contention is that typhoons would interrupt or severely damage. But even still, there would be stores nearby or adjacent to one another competing at price gouging. Two gas stations on the same corner competing to sell gas at a gouged price, for example. Competition like this requires very little actual communication. And in a disaster like a tornado or earthquake which affects isolated parts of a city, there'd still be intact communication for a majority of sellers.

    But more importantly, suppliers can reasonably assume that prices will rise during a disaster. They don't need an actual price signal, they can just expect that prices will increase in accordance with the expected increase in demand. And in a gouging-prohibited state, they can safely assume that the goods will sell at the same price as ever. Either way they'll probably increase the supply to try to maximize profits, but in the former case they will have a much greater incentive to do so with great haste than in the latter.
  16. #316
    Quote Originally Posted by seven-deuce View Post
    We are inundated with propaganda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
    I knew somebody would point out that I said "don't have" instead of "don't have Orwellian levels of", which, for the most part, means we don't really have it. Virtually all the propaganda you would point to in the West is a Huxleyan version, not an Orwellian. Fox News, for example, is propaganda, but not state propaganda. It's not Orwell. It's all about private interests and that dollar dollar bill. The West has very little state run propaganda. Even the stuff that is state influenced isn't Orwellian in nature
  17. #317
    Quote Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla View Post
    I'm focusing on how people act in the world and you're focusing on how people act in a free market.
    Which is the same thing, at least in this context. The market includes virtually everything anybody would choose to do. Choosing to allocate generators during a disaster for free is a market behavior, and so is choosing to send money to a disaster relief fund. The issue here is that laws exist that try to solve perceived problems, yet they don't.

    I think it's important to keep in mind that markets are fluid and consequential. Allowing price gouges doesn't mean all prices will be gouged, but people tend to think it does. Overall, allowing price gouges probably increases competition and lowers prices to the most effective rate. Gouging is usually a terrible business decision, and companies that do it go out of business. In a disaster scenario like this, markets react very efficiently. It isn't magic, and it's even swifter than overnight. Business puts its focus where its needed and wanted. Every business does this, but to us they don't seem that mobile because most are set up in such a way that they aren't supposed to be mobile. But others are meant to be mobile, and some of those are companies with a lot of disaster relief product
  18. #318
    Yeah, I remember reading an interesting article on how disaster relief can actually do harm. The way this works is that when there's shit going down in South Sudan that causes throngs of refugees to be displaced and be without, savvy business men in Kenya and and Ethiopia know not to load up the trucks, because they'll be effectively competing with unbeatable competition. Their competition is not selling, but giving it away. Now when disaster relief pulls out, there's this shock to the system, because the supply chains haven't organically set up since the disaster.

    Now, I don't think this is even what Rilla is talking about. I think Rilla is trying to get at the nuance of it all. I'm with that. This simplistic either, or; socialism(welfarism?), free market dichotomy-- maybe the opposing ideologues are what keep it balanced, but if either won out, shit would be in shambles.
  19. #319
    Welfarism happens after taxation; socialism happens before it. Welfarism is "let's have the government tax private entities to pay for services to benefit the welfare of the people"; socialism is "let's have the government manage production so that everybody gets what they're prescribed to need"
  20. #320
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    I think there's a reason you always see economists and libertarians (and especially libertarian economists) harping on about rent controls and price controls on basic goods. It's because these are examples of price controls that can easily be illustrated and demonstrated to be very harmful to society. It's simple to mentally sort out why these types of price controls do great harm to the very people they are meant to help.

    The goal is to establish a very basic tenet that ALL price controls are harmful. It's not quite as easy to demonstrate why wage controls or price gouging laws are wrong because a lot more emotional stuff enters into it and also the systems aren't as logically transparent. But we can go back to the simpler concepts and deduce that even the price controls that "feel" more right are most likely just as wrong for exactly the same reasons why rent controls are wrong.
    Last edited by Renton; 12-23-2013 at 05:51 AM.
  21. #321
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    28,082
    Location
    himself fucker.
    Don't knock emotional stuff. Evolution makes you feel compelled to save your sister from harm for good reason. Evolution makes you hate price gougers for another. It might not have a consideration for the logic of your modeled understanding of free market interaction, but hey no model is perfect. As George EP Box said, "all models are wrong, but some are useful."

    Anywho, my point could best be summed up as: that video was particularly poor at making its point and I disagree that human interaction and free market logic are one and the same in the context of the example it gave.
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>
  22. #322
    Rilla, let's not conflate the defense of the right to price gouge with promoting price gouging.
  23. #323
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    28,082
    Location
    himself fucker.
    I'm not. I just don't think that if, in a hurricane, a neighbor asks for your generator to keep her insulin fridge running, giving it without cost is a mistake.
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>
  24. #324
    rong's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Posts
    9,033
    Location
    behind you with an axe
    This is good. Definitely anti-capitalism too, so relevant.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0
    I'm the king of bongo, baby I'm the king of bongo bong.
  25. #325
    I'm not sure I agree much with the video. Everybody has a description of what caused the economic problems, yet strangely most of them are not economically sound. These sorts of things are so culturally pervasive that anthropologists and geographers seem like they should get a say, but the problem usually just boils down to a few technicalities, which appears to be the case this time too.

    According to what I've learned from the most credible economists I've found, in a nutshell, the crisis (there were several different ones caused by different things, but whatever) was caused by contractionary monetary policy and regulatory moral hazards. Basically moral hazards created by government regulations that let lenders know they wouldn't have to foot the bill for a bad loan, and monetary policy that failed to loosen enough to keep NGDP growth stable. It's a mixture of the government trying to keep bad things from happening (so it does things like guarantee deposits), the government trying to make good things happen (like spurring growth through home ownership and construction), and the Federal Reserve over-learning the lessons of 70s stagflation. The saying is that generals are always fighting the last war. It's true even with political policy, and the Fed basically created the Great Recession by not adequately recognizing the differences of stagflation and the Crisis of 08. Fortunately for us, the Fed is moving in the right direction, especially the coming Yellen Fed
  26. #326
    If you think about it, Obama is a free market champion. The capitalist-constitutional view for healthcare insurance is to have private industry run everything while the government guarantees that the law applies to everybody equally. This is basically what the ACA is. I wonder if the libertarian/anarcho-capitalists, who basically end up using theory of mass insurance to explain why protections exist in a stateless society, believe that even without a state to guarantee access to insurance, all are insured. Given that virtually everybody except a small handful of extreme hardliners thinks that the state should exist in order to guarantee these sorts of civil rights, I wonder why people are against the ACA in the first place. It's a libertarian's wet-dream. Well, if the libertarian understood his own ideology, that is
  27. #327
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Well some of the ACA is pure price control, which any one in favor of liberty should be against. Forcing insurers to charge the same for women, for instance, is fucking ludicrous as women require loads more healthcare on average than men do. And obviously people with pre-existing conditions should have to pay more for insurance in accordance with the increased risk they impose. Nothing wrong with having laws that keep insurers from defrauding people, but many of the provisions of the ACA are a bridge too far.
  28. #328
    It's a great price control. Great for the economy? Maybe not, but civil rights -- equal treatment under the law -- are integral aspects of societal governance. The constitutional principles that guarantee equality under the law are among the greatest improvements in the history of civilized society, and if we're going to abandon them for a market theory, that market theory has to provide for that equality. But the markets have shown that they don't account for all these concerns, and the fact that the ACA has price controls like the one you mentioned demonstrates the inadequacy of pure markets, not just the inefficiency of government. The stance that a stateless society can be Utopia is no different than the communist extremist ideals of a classless society. Both cherry pick what they want from history, and neither account for the necessary attributes of the other.

    Besides, if the markets could account for equal treatment under the law, the Supreme Court would never have had to rule on any major civil rights issues because the markets would have already dealt with them. This is similar to how a lot of anti-government people claim Medicare is a mess and healthcare would be covered by the markets if only government allowed it to be so, yet they forget that government use to allow it to be so, and Medicare was created because the markets abandoned the elderly. And now the ACA has been made because the markets abandoned the sick or possibly-sick

    It's ironic that many who deride equal treatment are those who forget the great good that the principle of equal treatment has done them. Equal treatment under the law is as much a constitutional principle as civil liberties like privacy.
  29. #329
    I think equality should be put into perspective because usually when we lay discuss it, we bastardize it. Basically, the US judiciary has determined that the constitution requires that some level of equality under the law must exist, but the SCOTUS gets to be the final arbiter of where the line is drawn. The constitution is generally vague on the specifics, but the principle is still deeply embedded, so it can't be ignored. It can be said that the judiciary is just an arm of the people, which is demonstrated in that its power comes from legitimacy and the SCOTUS almost never takes the controversial position. Its interpretations of the constitution have been overall very consistent on fundamental levels, but given the complexity of the issues, this has involved about-faces on specific issues. Still, the rulings have been based in a handful of principles regardless of the specifics.

    The SCOTUS's view of equality is mainly broken up into three classifications: suspect, quasi-suspect, and non-suspect. Every relevant issue brought before the court is considered along one of those tiers based on a plethora of factors that mainly have to do with what we have learned about our society in particular. What this means is that when the court hears cases that involve issues of equality that have to do with race or religion, it is highly suspect of the motives since the country has a history of bigotry on those grounds. So the claimants have to prove that what they're doing does not in anyway violate equal treatment by race or religion. The bottom tier consists of things like taxes, which are a technical discrimination, but are not nearly as discriminatory or as problematic constitutionally as race or religion, and the court tends to just assume they're merited in usual circumstances. Libertarians tend to consider things like taxes an egregious violation of their rights, but I think that view doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

    The middle tier is the one of primary interest because people tend to be heavily split on it. The quasi-suspect classifications are ones like discrimination on gender/sex or sexual orientation. The SCOTUS does not consider these top tier issues because the history is not as obvious and the populace is split. The whole reason I'm mentioning this is because the claim that women use healthcare more than men and thus should have to pay more is a discriminatory practice that falls right on the current line, and it's important to note that even though these differences exist on race or religion, nobody considers them worthy because it's obvious to us that it's wrong to discriminate healthcare costs based on race or religion. Well, it's also wrong to do it on sex/gender or sexual orientation. Eventually, the SCOTUS will recognize those categories as suspect classifications alongside with race and religion, and all our grandchildren won't even fathom what it's like to live in a world where it's reasonable to think there's economic merit to charging women more than men for healthcare.

    So basically this is an issue where the faltering analysis lies on the side that thinks it's totally cool to discriminate prices based on sex/gender. It isn't that the ACA is setting a price control on the market, but that the legislature -- backed by the people -- is making a judgement on what healthy discrimination is and is not
    Last edited by wufwugy; 12-27-2013 at 02:07 AM.
  30. #330
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    How do you make the logical leap from "there should be equal treatment under the law" to "people who cost far more to insure should nevertheless pay the same low price as lower risk insurees?" And since when is equality = giving shit to people who don't have enough shit? Welfare is a completely separate issue to equality under the law and should be treated as such. I have no problem with a position that is in favor of welfare, but with citing equal treatment under the law as the reason.

    The ACA should have just been medicare for all and that be the end of it. Trying to impose price controls on an entire industry was a terrible play. Keep your welfare separate from your markets, IMO.
    Last edited by Renton; 12-27-2013 at 03:14 AM.
  31. #331
    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    How do you make the logical leap from "there should be equal treatment under the law" to "people who cost far more to insure should nevertheless pay the same low price as lower risk insurees?" And since when is equality = giving shit to people who don't have enough shit? Welfare is a completely separate issue to equality under the law and should be treated as such. I have no problem with a position that is in favor of welfare, but with citing equal treatment under the law as the reason.

    The ACA should have just been medicare for all and that be the end of it. Trying to impose price controls on an entire industry was a terrible play. Keep your welfare separate from your markets, IMO.
    I was trying to give perspective for why it's reasonable to claim that discrimination against the sexes for healthcare is akin to the other sorts of discrimination we consider wrong. There are all sorts of price controls embedded into treating race and religion the way we do, and we should apply the same logic to the other areas that we consider equally important to protect: sex, gender, sexual orientation.

    Overall, these sorts of price controls have marginal effects. It's ones like rent controls that have substantial effects. I partially agree that the ACA should have just been Medicare for all, but if we're going in a market-oriented direction, the ACA is fantastic. It does everything it can to let the markets work while guaranteeing access for all. In a Medicare for all scenario, most private industry would get knocked out of competition, but the ACA basically gives private industry the ability to make the best of it.

    Besides, if the logic is that women cost more for healthcare so they should be charged more, we should look at why they cost more. It involves a bunch of stuff they do for men or that men benefit from. So if we charge women more then we're just subsidizing the social status of men. If the markets can't account for this, then it should be okay for the government to guarantee that these sorts of discrimination are illegal
  32. #332
    Blacks are at higher risk for a number of medical ailments. Should we be able to charge them more for healthcare?

    How about the poor?

    What if we found that statistically, Muslims cost more to insure.

    How about people who otherwise fall into a category of low cost insurees, but can be shown through social networking to be friends with predominantly higher cost insurees?

    If in principle you think the market should be able to take all of these factors into account, that's fine. But what is the result? Is our society better off, or are you just arbitrarily sticking to a rigid ideology?
  33. #333
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Blacks are at higher risk for a number of medical ailments. Should we be able to charge them more for healthcare?

    How about the poor?

    What if we found that statistically, Muslims cost more to insure.

    How about people who otherwise fall into a category of low cost insurees, but can be shown through social networking to be friends with predominantly higher cost insurees?

    If in principle you think the market should be able to take all of these factors into account, that's fine. But what is the result? Is our society better off, or are you just arbitrarily sticking to a rigid ideology?

    Insurance companies assess risk, that's their job. If they are allowed to compete in a free market, they have to do a pretty good job of assessing risk to be able to compete and keep costs/prices down. If they aren't allowed to assess risk for this reason or another then why even have insurance companies at all? Yes, if blacks have a statistically higher rate of disease and thus are a greater risk, of course they should pay more. Insurance should be more expensive for people who live in dangerous neighborhoods as well, and its unfortunate that those people tend to be poor. Insurance companies aren't responsible for dispensing healthcare to people equally at an equal price. They are responsible for assessing risk, charging premiums based on that risk, and paying out legitimate claims when the unlikely happens.
  34. #334
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Is our society better off, or are you just arbitrarily sticking to a rigid ideology?
    The problems with healthcare aren't especially because of insurance companies fucking people over, they're systemic within the entire healthcare industry, from doctors to pharmaceuticals on down. Most of these problems would be lessened greatly if there wasn't an AMA or an FDA.

    Anyway I'm not trying to stick to a rigid ideology here. As I said, I think obamacare should just be medicare for all. Subsidizing the poor directly is a less market-invasive policy than trying to manipulate every little detail of an incredibly complex industry.
  35. #335
    But realistically it was this or nothing. Of course a single payer option is better, but that wasn't a realistic end game in this world.
  36. #336
    Honestly I'm unconvinced that a single-payer option is better. With a handful of the right regulations (and a lack of the wrong ones), private industry should be able to achieve lower costs and a better user experience. Governments do have negotiating, innovative, and competitive power, but I can't imagine it can compare to what the private market can achieve. Under the ACA, each company will have incentive to provide better coverage for cheaper prices than the other companies, but when the government runs its own insurance, it tends to be able to outbid initially but not have as much incentive to improve

    However, a potentially big problem is that without single-payer, hospitals will still end up caring for the uninsured who show up at the ER, and they'll still have to write it off as a loss and raise prices to compensate. Unless there's a provision where the government will cover all costs accrued by uninsured. I don't know if there is
  37. #337
    Did I win this thread?
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  38. #338
    rong's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Posts
    9,033
    Location
    behind you with an axe
    So the vid in rando thread about the guy who's daughter died of cancer got me thinking.

    Let's say a 5 yr old kid has leukemia and it's parents are poor. Society has several options for it's care.

    1. We pay for everything it needs to give it the best chance of survival.
    2. We give it a bit of care but not as much as we would a rich kid.
    3. We give it some care and bankrupt the parents.
    4. We say tough shit kiddy, you ain't getting Jack.

    It seems to me that capitalism favours 3 and 4 where as alternative set ups may favour 1 and 2.
    I'm the king of bongo, baby I'm the king of bongo bong.
  39. #339
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    10,322
    Location
    St Louis, MO
    I'm no expert, but the way I understand insurance is exactly that it is a community subsidizing itself. All of the people who have various forms of insurance with a company pay a small monthly fee. This money is used to pay for the tragedies that are insured against, no matter to whom the tragedy happens. It is a system whereby the entire community of insurance holders with that company all pay for the tragedies that befall the community.

    Maybe I'm not getting it. ?


    Overall, though... I am uncomfortable with the idea that laws should encourage morality. Whether something is morally right or wrong is unimportant to me in a legal sense. In fact, it's worse than unimportant to me, a moral argument in terms of legal issues is anathema to me. It turns me right off of the speaker. I don't like that approach, since morality is soft and people disagree about morality. I don't think the laws that govern a people should cater to unsubstantiated whimsy. I don't think all moral ideas are whimsy (certainly not my own moral ideas), but I do respect that they are a "soft science" if a science at all, and therefore not objective, and therefore not compatible as rules for a society at large.

    EDIT:
    Like, if you know the Heimlich, and you see someone choking, then it shouldn't be a law for you to help them, but you're totally douchy if you don't.

    I think there's a danger in letting the douchy people inhabit the decision-makers' positions.
    Last edited by MadMojoMonkey; 12-31-2013 at 12:46 PM.
  40. #340
    Quote Originally Posted by rong View Post
    So the vid in rando thread about the guy who's daughter died of cancer got me thinking.

    Let's say a 5 yr old kid has leukemia and it's parents are poor. Society has several options for it's care.

    1. We pay for everything it needs to give it the best chance of survival.
    2. We give it a bit of care but not as much as we would a rich kid.
    3. We give it some care and bankrupt the parents.
    4. We say tough shit kiddy, you ain't getting Jack.

    It seems to me that capitalism favours 3 and 4 where as alternative set ups may favour 1 and 2.
    That sounds about accurate, but it's a mistake to assume that capitalism addresses everything. Capitalism is better for a bunch of very important things than any other system by far, but it isn't the only aspect of society. So if somebody says "well capitalism is immoral because it favors 3 and 4", I get to say "well capitalism isn't supposed to fully address this problem in the first place".

    Of all the counters to capitalism, none work, and they're all far worse, but that doesn't mean capitalism addresses everything. But when you add welfarism to capitalism, now you're talking. The capitalist-welfarist model is tried and true. No other models are. To me it seems the derision of capitalism is just a giant straw man. Of course, a lot of its proponents are straw manning it too
  41. #341
    Quote Originally Posted by rong View Post
    So the vid in rando thread about the guy who's daughter died of cancer got me thinking.

    Let's say a 5 yr old kid has leukemia and it's parents are poor. Society has several options for it's care.

    1. We pay for everything it needs to give it the best chance of survival.
    2. We give it a bit of care but not as much as we would a rich kid.
    3. We give it some care and bankrupt the parents.
    4. We say tough shit kiddy, you ain't getting Jack.

    It seems to me that capitalism favours 3 and 4 where as alternative set ups may favour 1 and 2.
    However much you may hate it human life has a monetary value on it. Everyone should get a basic level of health care but sometimes you just get dealt a bad hand and that sucks dick. Obviously if you had a child who had some rare disease where the only treatment cost £1 million and had a 10% chance of survival if you had the money you'd cough it up without a doubt but I don't think you should expect society to cover the cost because they can't.

    Obviously this becomes a much harder as the decision gets closer, but if money was used on stuff like that then someone else has to miss out.
  42. #342
    rong's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Posts
    9,033
    Location
    behind you with an axe
    How many layers of profit are in that million?
    I'm the king of bongo, baby I'm the king of bongo bong.
  43. #343
    Quote Originally Posted by ImSavy View Post
    However much you may hate it human life has a monetary value on it. Everyone should get a basic level of health care but sometimes you just get dealt a bad hand and that sucks dick. Obviously if you had a child who had some rare disease where the only treatment cost £1 million and had a 10% chance of survival if you had the money you'd cough it up without a doubt but I don't think you should expect society to cover the cost because they can't.

    Obviously this becomes a much harder as the decision gets closer, but if money was used on stuff like that then someone else has to miss out.
    Wait, so now it's a zero sum game?
  44. #344
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    That sounds about accurate, but it's a mistake to assume that capitalism addresses everything. Capitalism is better for a bunch of very important things than any other system by far, but it isn't the only aspect of society. So if somebody says "well capitalism is immoral because it favors 3 and 4", I get to say "well capitalism isn't supposed to fully address this problem in the first place".

    Of all the counters to capitalism, none work, and they're all far worse, but that doesn't mean capitalism addresses everything. But when you add welfarism to capitalism, now you're talking. The capitalist-welfarist model is tried and true. No other models are. To me it seems the derision of capitalism is just a giant straw man. Of course, a lot of its proponents are straw manning it too

    Yeah, I'm really glad you keep pushing this idea that what people want-- the cause of their Scandinavian envy, is not socialism, but capitalism-welfarism. It's like an honest rebranding. It allows people on both sides to see the issue as it really is, without the false negative associations brought on by the words "communism" and "socialism". It's neither of those things, but people feel like it has to be since the capitalist/communist dichotomy has been pile-driven into their brains for the last half century.
  45. #345
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Yeah, I'm really glad you keep pushing this idea that what people want-- the cause of their Scandinavian envy, is not socialism, but capitalism-welfarism. It's like an honest rebranding. It allows people on both sides to see the issue as it really is, without the false negative associations brought on by the words "communism" and "socialism". It's neither of those things, but people feel like it has to be since the capitalist/communist dichotomy has been pile-driven into their brains for the last half century.
    yaaaayy somebody reads my poastsssss

    Seriously though, we forget how big a deal the Cold War was, what it really meant, and how it impacted the views of most modern people today. I mean, when I learned that the Cold War ended in 1991, I was like wtffffffffffff that's so recent?!?! Yet so many of us act like it never existed.

    We think of people like the Kochs as sinister and machiavellian, but much of their ideology really is about all that anti-communist stuff. They truly believe they are heroes of civilization when they support private individuals in the face of government intervention. They and almost everybody over 50 have a hard time thinking of government in other ways than the Soviet threat they battled, and they're not entirely wrong. I'm not defending the Kochs or people like them, as I think they have additional incentives and their ideas are archaic, but when you understand the depth of meaning behind the Cold War, I think so much is revealed about all sorts of interests represented by the Republican Party. It's things like if you don't know about the Cold War, the phrase "American exceptionalism" is conceited, but back in the early 90s, nothing was truer

    It isn't untrue to say that United States was the savior of the civilization. It's a little pompous to say, but the Cold War really was a global battle of ideologies backed by militaries and vehemence, and the US was the main fighter on the side of right. It wasn't so much that the US was big and strong and extra-patriotic, but that the US was able to invest heavily in its allies in every region the Soviets attempted expansion
  46. #346
    See, but that's just the thing, the Koch's brand of capitalism didn't save civilization. New Deal capitalism saved it. But welfarism has been maliciously or unintentionally conflated with communism-- so much so that proponents of welfarism themselves identify as being socialist leaning.
  47. #347
    Hmmm, I'm not sure what I'd say to that, because it's tough to quantify exactly what saved civilization, what the Koch brand is, and what the New Deal brand is. Overall, I'd say the idea of private enterprise is at the heart of it, and that's something the Koch brand endorses, regardless if they know how to fully implement it or sustain it. As for the New Deal, I need to learn far more about it to say for sure, but I do think a lot of the props it gets for things like solving the Great Depression were really solved by monetary policy of the Fed

    My point about the Kochs was more about showing that in their worldview, they really are the defenders of justice. The populace makes them out to be greedy scoundrels, and it doesn't do any good because they and those who think like them don't do it for greedy scoundrel reasons. It's like this for many of the wealthy business class in the country, but I recall reading a long ass biographical article on the Kochs specifically that went into great detail of how extremely anti-communist they are and how it influences their view of everything else. While it isn't true that the ACA is communist, they think it is because the battle against communism was easily boxed into a battle against government intervention in the economy, for example.
  48. #348
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    See, but that's just the thing, the Koch's brand of capitalism didn't save civilization. New Deal capitalism saved it.
    Sample size IMO. It's very hard to establish clear cause-and-effect relationships with economics because time is so short. The 50s-70s prosperity could just as easily have been thanks to the comparatively worse effect of WWII on other countries than ours as it could have been thanks to the new deal. Same thing when X presidential candidate says Y incumbent's administration has crashed the economy. It is more likely that economies cycle of their own accord and do not respond to the mere whims of presidents.
  49. #349
    While I agree they don't respond to mere whims of presidents, political economics is far behind academic economics. Unfortunately, we don't see this because so many are enthralled by the political aspects. The amount that can be derived from correlations is pretty huge, but most of what enters the political sphere is not that which is derived from known correlations.

    The short of it is monetary policy. Always monetary policy. That shit will blow your fucking mind. It isn't a coincidence that the Federal Reserve has been known to be able to create as deep of deflation or as great of inflation as they so desire. It isn't a coincidence that steady growth didn't exist until monetary policy was under central banking control.

    Yes, basically I'm saying that everything everybody says is the product of this or that is really just a product of monetary policy. It's like how some people might say their ability to walk is a product of their muscles when it's really just their spinal nerves. Monetary policy is the spinal nerves of the economy
  50. #350
    Quote Originally Posted by rong View Post
    How many layers of profit are in that million?
    What does profit margins have to do with it? At times very little, at times lots. Wasn't really the point.
    Quote Originally Posted by boost View Post
    Wait, so now it's a zero sum game?
    Why does what I say make it a zero sum game? It's managing a limited amount of resources to try and provide the best possible service. The point was in a more socialist health service like the NHS it can't afford to give everyone the best possible treatment. The general level of service for everyone shouldn't be cut to save the lives of a tiny proportion of people. Some types of treatment or healthcare just don't make sense from a resource management perspective.

    And unfortunately when we are working with finite resources decisions like spend x amount of money on a or b have to be made and for some people that's a death sentence but the point is to always try and pick the best possible choice.
  51. #351
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by rong View Post
    How many layers of profit are in that million?
    Yeah let's just ban profits and watch all of the world's ails melt away.
  52. #352
    Thesis of this presenter: the rich are not job creators
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g

    Thoughts?
  53. #353
    It's terribly simplified, and if he knew better I would also say it's also disingenuous. IIRC the reason TED didn't like that presentation is because it was low on the substance, not because of his point.

    Both businesses and consumers are job creators. The problems of the last few years have virtually nothing to do with rich people being rich, but the populous response has been molded by the suffering of all the non-rich. Naturally, we point the finger. I may post more about this idea later today, if I feel up to it
  54. #354
    Chrony capitalism and free market capitalism are not one in the same . . . that is all
  55. #355
    Quote Originally Posted by sah_24 View Post
    Chrony capitalism and free market capitalism are not one in the same . . . that is all
    Just like how chrony socialcommunism and "real" communism are not one in the same, when I compare the people bastardized versions of both imma haf to say chrony capitalism is the best right now AINEC
  56. #356
    I would agree the chrony capitalists version is definately a better plan than chrony communism/socialism , I think you can look at history for that fact to be proven . I think capitalism receives a lot of hate when in reality its not the system but the people running it that cause the problems !
  57. #357
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    So crony capitalism allows the current major superpowers to emerge with massive prosperity, every shift from semi-controlled economies to less controlled ones, as in India, has had the same effect. Yet for some reason U.S. and Western Europe trend back toward controlled economies. At least, they want parts of the economy to be controlled, entire sectors like healthcare, education (including higher education), and agriculture. I'm so tired of getting accused of hyperbole on this "its not the USSR" shit. Yes, when your government controls like 35% of the economy that's akin to communism, dude.

    On the other hand, we know this capitalism is flawed because it is crony capitalism and not capitalism. We also know you can never have pure unfettered capitalism. But you can approach that by reducing the power of government, which reduces the power that cronies have.
  58. #358
    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    So crony capitalism allows the current major superpowers to emerge with massive prosperity, every shift from semi-controlled economies to less controlled ones, as in India, has had the same effect. Yet for some reason U.S. and Western Europe trend back toward controlled economies. At least, they want parts of the economy to be controlled, entire sectors like healthcare, education (including higher education), and agriculture. I'm so tired of getting accused of hyperbole on this "its not the USSR" shit. Yes, when your government controls like 35% of the economy that's akin to communism, dude.

    On the other hand, we know this capitalism is flawed because it is crony capitalism and not capitalism. We also know you can never have pure unfettered capitalism. But you can approach that by reducing the power of government, which reduces the power that cronies have.
    Bingo , which is why the usa will continue to follow the democratic party to total socialism/communism . It will take a crash ala the soviet union before a reversion back to more free market capitalism occurs . Big governments always trend to communism once they start growing its tough to stop the thirst for control and power !
  59. #359
    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    So crony capitalism allows the current major superpowers to emerge with massive prosperity, every shift from semi-controlled economies to less controlled ones, as in India, has had the same effect. Yet for some reason U.S. and Western Europe trend back toward controlled economies. At least, they want parts of the economy to be controlled, entire sectors like healthcare, education (including higher education), and agriculture. I'm so tired of getting accused of hyperbole on this "its not the USSR" shit. Yes, when your government controls like 35% of the economy that's akin to communism, dude.
    Haven't you been reading wuf's posts about capitalism with welfareism vs socialism/communism? It's not communism just because the government funds healthcare and education because the means of production, and the relevant dependent manufacturing are still under a capitalist system.
  60. #360
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by d0zer View Post
    Haven't you been reading wuf's posts about capitalism with welfareism vs socialism/communism? It's not communism just because the government funds healthcare and education because the means of production, and the relevant dependent manufacturing are still under a capitalist system.
    But they're not. The government isn't just subsidizing these systems, it's telling the providers of these services exactly how they should do their work, and forcing its subjective and often arbitrary morality onto them.

    And the means of production and manufacturing aren't under a capitalist system at all. Now sure, everything at a school isn't made by a government controlled entity from a government school bus to a government pencil. But the way in which these jobs are distributed is often corrupt or nepotistic with few incentives to cut costs.

    (warning: anecdote)

    When I landed my first architecture job, it was for a firm in Atlanta that had a contract with the FAA to do design work for the airport. How we landed this contract I'm not 100% sure, I'm assuming it's because the principal of our firm was a big guy in the Atlanta community and well respected. It was very lucrative work.

    During July every year we would participate in this project where we would physically go to the airport and do all these surveys, using a click-counter to count how many people go through different entrances, corridors, security checkpoints etc. Everyone who worked at the firm was invited to do this work, it required absolutely no skill. I did a couple of shifts with my boss, my hourly rate was 16 dollars, his was like 60 dollars, and we were billed out to the FAA at 4 times that much. So basically they were paying 240 dollars an hour for my boss to count cars driving into the economy parking lot at 5am.

    So this is an anecdote of how government "capitalistically" allocates its resources. A private airport administration entity would have hired college kids to do its surveys and paid them with beer. The FAA has very little incentive to cut its costs, and every incentive to distribute massive amounts of tax dollars to whatever winners it chooses.
  61. #361
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business


    ITV a totally-not-gay guy articulates the points I've made in this thread better than I ever could.
  62. #362
    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    But they're not. The government isn't just subsidizing these systems, it's telling the providers of these services exactly how they should do their work, and forcing its subjective and often arbitrary morality onto them.
    Large clients have a lot of sway over providers regardless of whether they're government or private. Wall-mart has sway over its providers and they have to bend over backwards because it's in their best interest to. I don't see how that is even coming close to approaching communism. The communism rhetoric really does just seem like libertarian hyperbole for "the government is controlling something".
  63. #363
    The government not only telling me I have to buy a product but the exact product I have to buy is not socialism/communism you have to be fucking kidding me right ? How did you kids graduate high school ?
  64. #364
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    The communism rhetoric really does just seem like libertarian hyperbole for "the government is controlling something".
    OK you're right. When the government coerces insurance companies into charging obscenely unprofitable rates to its customers, that's not communism yet, its socialism. When said insurance companies go bankrupt because of this and the government bails them out and owns them, then that will be communism.

    Similarly when the government sets price controls on interest rates and the housing markets bubble and crash because of this, and the government is forced to bail out and outright buy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it goes from socialism to communism again.

    So yeah I guess it is hyperbolic but the point here is that it all starts with price controls. Or unreasonable regulations that in effect act as price controls. Socialism or communism, these are the root problems.
  65. #365
    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    OK you're right. When the government coerces insurance companies into charging obscenely unprofitable rates to its customers, that's not communism yet, its socialism. When said insurance companies go bankrupt because of this and the government bails them out and owns them, then that will be communism.

    Similarly when the government sets price controls on interest rates and the housing markets bubble and crash because of this, and the government is forced to bail out and outright buy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it goes from socialism to communism again.

    So yeah I guess it is hyperbolic but the point here is that it all starts with price controls. Or unreasonable regulations that in effect act as price controls. Socialism or communism, these are the root problems.
    I feel like this is becoming too focused on obamacare, which may indeed be a mess, but the whole American health care system seems to be a bit of a mess to begin with. I was initially responding to your comment about western countries moving towards controlling economies with regards to healthcare or education.

    Let's look at the Canadian health care system as an example of something often called "Socialist":

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_...nada#Economics

    Basically the government acts as an insurance provider for private doctors and funds independent hospitals. The insurance provider part would be considered socialist, but so would the American military. Doctors are still free to purchase supplies from private medical suppliers, Patients are still free to choose their doctors. All of that is under free market capitalism so when you say "The government controls 35% of the economy", including health care, you make it sounds like they're controlling every aspect of Healthcare, when they're not. It's a mixed system that has aspects of socialism and aspects of capitalism. Competition is still allowed to thrive, albeit in a more limited way than it was in America, as the government has replaced insurance providers. But was the American free-market alternative, HMOs pre-obamacare really a shining example of capitalism?
  66. #366
    Ironically, it's probably more accurate to call the ACA more socialistic than Medicare-for-all. This doesn't mean I'm not a fan of certain socialistic elements. It's probably okay for government to regulate certain things in business. I guess you could say that's socialistic, but it's problematic to say if we do that, we're now in socialism or communism

    I think looking at the ideologies in these nuances doesn't help anybody. Virtually everybody on any side believe in elements of the other side. This suggests that the ideologies aren't fully accurate, which should be obvious since no ideologies are.

    Here's an example: the FDIC. We need this. The economy suffers tremendously when there is not a guarantee of deposits, and there is virtually no feasible way to get this exclusively through the private market. So we absolutely need the government to do it. This benefits every private interest. But this creates a moral hazard, because bank incentives change when they know they're not completely on the hook for deposits if they go under. This means that we need some other form of regulation to keep the moral hazard at bay. Which is what the government does, but that ends up creating other moral hazards. Then we get a perpetuating loop of regulations and hazards. Some are better than others, some are worse, some are unknown, some are solved. Some people look at this and say "see, regulations are the problem". But they're wrong because the lack of the initial FDIC regulation is super terrible. Others look at this and say "see, regulations solve the problem". But they're also wrong because some regulations create their own unique problems

    No ideology can get us through this
  67. #367
    A pretty great, relevant post by my fave economist that deals with why smart economics is so counter-intuitive

    http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=640
  68. #368
    I'm reading through some of his archives, and came across this very compelling claim

    I wonder if Konczal realizes that even Krugman doesn’t go that far. Indeed Krugman recently argued we could avoid liquidity traps with a higher inflation target. There’s absolutely no benefit to big government if you are trying to avoid “depressions.” Last time I looked most of the “depressions” were located in Western Europe, which (coincidentally) has the largest governments in the developed world.

    In contrast, Australia has one of the smallest, and had no recession. And Hong Kong has a rigid dollar peg, which exposed it to huge demand shocks in 1997 and 2001, and yet it avoided “depressions” despite having the smallest government sector in the entire developed world. Maybe it was those flexible labor markets that the liberals insist will only make a depression worse. But they’d reply that it’s better to have inflexible labor markets, like Greece and Spain.
    http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=21332
  69. #369
    Man so many gems in his archive comments. This was back when Sumner first created the blog to shine a light on how everybody was reading the 08 crisis wrong, so it was small-time at first and he explained loads of topics very well in comments section

    Companies do not determine wages, markets do. If companies had that ability, why would McDonald’s often pay starting employees wages far above the minimum wage? Or why would companies pay workers in Switzerland 100 times more than Bangledesh? The answer is that wages are determined by productivity. Low skilled workers would still prefer more wages to less, and will seek out the job that is best for them–where they are most productive. So I am not at all concerned about the issue you raise. My proposal would generate full employment, and the wage level would then be determined in each industry by productivity levels, not by company decisions. It only seems like companies have an ability to determine wages because there are cases where the labor market is not free, and companies have monopsony power.
  70. #370
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
    [video=youtube;ON5SxrCjbCU]All of that is under free market capitalism so when you say "The government controls 35% of the economy", including health care, you make it sounds like they're controlling every aspect of Healthcare, when they're not. It's a mixed system that has aspects of socialism and aspects of capitalism. Competition is still allowed to thrive, albeit in a more limited way than it was in America, as the government has replaced insurance providers. But was the American free-market alternative, HMOs pre-obamacare really a shining example of capitalism?
    The American and Canadian governments both spend almost 45% as much as their GDPs. Not in capitalistic ways, more like in ways I described in my FAA anecdote. The US federal (30) and state (10) governments own over 40% of all the land in the U.S. including as much as 95% in western states like Nevada. In light of these facts how is it hyperbolic to state that that countries like the U.S. and Canada control over 1/3 of their economies? I think it's an understatement. They spend over 1/3 of it based on the whims of a congress that anyone on either side of the aisle would admit is as corrupt and incompetent as any congress in American history. And this isn't even to mention all the absurd and destructive price controls they impose on on all aspects of the economy.
  71. #371
    Look at whats being done with online gambling then try and say with a straight face america has any form of "free market capitalism" ! Every single industry is regulated to prevent the free market , not push it . Within a 5 year time period they made it illegal , took down the industry leaders , and then made it legal and handed out licenses to the big casino industry . Entrepreneurs got screwed and a bunch of chrony capitalists will get rich . This has been the repeated story in every industry since the 40s .
  72. #372
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business


    A shorter, lighter video by the same guy as above.
  73. #373
    I'm trying to figure out exactly what I think the government should be involved in. At this time I've a question for Renton: how do the free markets stop companies from colluding to not hire each others' employees as a way to suppress wages? Apparently reports are showing the big players in Silicon Valley have been doing this on the hush-hush. ISPs collude in other ways (keeping prices higher than they need to be), but also on the hush-hush, because if the colluding can be proven, some very important people would get in legal trouble. I think I can figure out how the markets would stop the ISP type collusion, but not the Silicon Valley type.
  74. #374
    Renton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Posts
    8,863
    Location
    a little town called none of your goddamn business
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    I'm trying to figure out exactly what I think the government should be involved in. At this time I've a question for Renton: how do the free markets stop companies from colluding to not hire each others' employees as a way to suppress wages? Apparently reports are showing the big players in Silicon Valley have been doing this on the hush-hush. ISPs collude in other ways (keeping prices higher than they need to be), but also on the hush-hush, because if the colluding can be proven, some very important people would get in legal trouble. I think I can figure out how the markets would stop the ISP type collusion, but not the Silicon Valley type.
    Well, there's no law in libertarianism against employer collusion, admittedly. Employers reserve the right to mistreat their employees as long as it doesn't violate the NAP, and employees reserve the right to negotiate better terms.

    That's not to say however that there wouldn't be a ton of factors going against this type of behavior in a free market in the modern age. First of all its pretty risky for employers to engage in this behavior because it opens them up to being exploited by competitors who don't play ball. The threat of such competitors emerging would be ever-present, and it would take an awful lot of influence to get market-wide cooperation of this sort.

    Second of all, who's to say there wouldn't be a market for transparency and fair business practices in a free market? Watchdog organizations would certainly pop up where people value such services. Employees can also cooperate, in the form of voluntary unions, strikes etc. Really what you're describing is the opposite of a worker's union, actally. It's an employer's union, and I think it's pretty logically incongruent to condemn one and condone the other.

    Third, and this comes with the watchdog package, but with enhanced transparency on things like this you have the possibility for public outrage. Businesses don't want to risk ruining their reputation, or facing boycotts or other protests. This is a factor even if no one protests or boycotts because reputation protection is a preventative thing. It only takes the threat of reputation harm to lower the likelihood of shady actions.

    Finally, you have substitution. These types of trusts/cartels/monopolies/whatever are often not worth the trouble of forming them because even if you are successful in doing so, customers can often substitute different products or services for the one you have cornered the market of. If some steel magnate monopolizes the industry and jacks up the prices, builders can just switch to concrete or heavy timber. If employers form a trust to pay X job a lower wage, that person can apply his skills to a slightly different discipline for a more competitive salary.
    Last edited by Renton; 01-17-2014 at 02:36 AM.
  75. #375
    a500lbgorilla's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    28,082
    Location
    himself fucker.


    Sunday meditations from an expert on economic history. Good with coffee.
    <a href=http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png target=_blank>http://i.imgur.com/kWiMIMW.png</a>

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •