I didn't realize a bureaucracy required gov't. Obviously there are parts of science that exist independent of gov't.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
There are also parts that don't like DARPA.
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I didn't realize a bureaucracy required gov't. Obviously there are parts of science that exist independent of gov't.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
There are also parts that don't like DARPA.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/...ted-market.aspQuote:
Originally Posted by CoccoBill
Quality page. This is largely political liberty stuff, which has a lot of crossover.
Don't read too much into it. "We" is a commonly used pronoun when discussing norms. I'll rephrase: the meanings of regulation and centralization in political contexts are effects from government intervention.Quote:
I digress, but I find your use of "we" here a bit amusing. "We", as in us the economists, who get it. A bit ad verecundiam, don't you think?
If it's not more powerful, then it's not effective oversight; if it's independent, then it's not done with government influence.Quote:
It doesn't have to be more powerful, it just needs to be independent. This actually works quite well in practice, similarly to corporations. Think of the internal audit function. Works much much better than no oversight at all.
The analogy of the internal audit function applied to government assumes the angels I referenced earlier. That governing body will still have total and unchecked power. Who are the angels you trust to not abuse this?
The revisionist history is astounding. The USSR was the greatest socialist experiment of all time. If you would like to discuss why this is the case, we can.Quote:
The Soviet Union was as much socialist as Russia is democratic.
I'm trying to provide insight learned from economics. The lesson often gets shortened to "greed is good." The lesson is that abundance and novelty arise from competition of peoples' greed in a free market.Quote:
Greed is also a big reason why societies have crime. Things aren't just good or evil. You're trying to paint the world black and white.
You extolled the virtues of voting and democracy as a contrast to my point. I pointed out that my position involves so much more selection by the people of their environments that it could be described as voting/democracy on steroids.Quote:
I don't see how this is relevant to my point.
The government is the too much power. Square this circle for me: on the one hand you acknowledge that some have more power than others, but on the other hand you declare that the solution is to give absolute power to somebody else.Quote:
You jumped over my whole point of there always being those who are more powerful than others. A government is simply a way to keep them in check, to ensure they don't get too much power and influence over others.
If the things you have said previously are any indication, you think the answer is democracy. But that has been demonstrably as well as theoretically inadequate. How many bureaucrats have you voted for? None. How many times a decade do you vote? Possibly a few. What level of influence have you had on the laws passed? Virtually none.
Religion isn't the only opiate of the masses; democracy is too.
Isn't that like saying "I don't care if you're right; you're still wrong"?Quote:
And I don't care if there would be even more stuff if free market.
They're not remotely similar. You have equated political power derived from having the biggest armies with the liberty of people to express a point.Quote:
I first typed only the US, but then changed it since the situation is pretty similar in countries with high corruption.
Bribery and lobbying are not the same thing. There is a measure of overlap, which is where lobbying shows its problems. But they are by nature two entirely different things. One is a gift exchange and the other is education.Quote:
Do you find any irony comparing this to tax vs theft or abortion vs murder?
A government without lobbying would be a lolbad disaster because the policies would not reflect reality that much. Politicians don't have enough money (and even if they did, it would be wrong for them to do so) to hire experts on every issue they legislate on. Lobbying is where they get it from. Lobbying is a significantly important attribute that gives the people (read: you) access to influence your government. That some people have greater influence is a problem, but that arises not from the existence of lobbying, but the existence of government power in that market.
In general terms, yes. This is an integral element of the construction of prosperity. Hierarchy based on capital is awash in the natural world.Quote:
Now you just lost me completely. It's good that those with wealth have a disproportionate influence over others?
Average citizens probably get more bang for their buck from lobbying than the rich do.Quote:
How is this a good thing? Because USA has the highest gun violence stats in the world? I'd go about differently trying to solve overpopulation.
Look at it this way: special treatment does exist and it's a problem, but it is also not the norm. That's not to say that it's not a serious systemic issue, just to say that people misdiagnose the problems in this area. The Kochs, for example, don't lobby for special treatment. Their agenda has always been to get government out of the lives of the people. Yet they have been demonized more than any other family in the western world in the last decade because multitudes of people get the wrong information.
Another lesson of economics is that this is not the case. There is no known mechanism that has provided anywhere close to the level of power and prosperity for the poor than free markets. This is not something economists disagree on. I suspect this should be right up your alley since you care deeply about engagement of the knowledge and understanding of science and expertise.Quote:
I only had a tremendously greater power in the first place if I happened to be wealthy.
There shouldn't be, and yet there are. Why do you think there are?Quote:
If the data is not available, there shouldn't be regulations regarding it.
Can't find anywhere a statement saying that decentralization and unregulation are principles of free markets.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
In case you're not familiar with internal audits, it's just an independent body within the organization that audit the processes and practices of the company, and reports to the board. They actually have zero power within the organization, they just report what's happening based on predetermined criteria and metrics. That's oversight. No angels needed.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Even if something may be the "greatest" it doesn't make it great, or even half-assed.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
https://chomsky.info/1986____/
I don't know, but I would wager that no economist argues that greed is universally good, just that it has beneficial properties within certain strictly defined economic scenarios. You seem to be ignoring all of the other scenarios and think greed is always and only positive.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I didn't say anything about the virtues of voting, I stated that the de facto way to have influence in a democracy, and lobbying is skewing that in favor of the wealthy. What you wrote was irrelevant to that.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
The wealthy are gonna have more power than the others no matter what. I'd much rather have some checks and balances on what they can do, than not.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Only in a world where more stuff is the only meaningful metric. I don't live in one.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
What do armies have to do with lobbying or corruption? In both cases political favors can be bought with money, only difference being in the USA it's legal. Like I said earlier, I'm using lobbying as an umbrella term for campaign finance, gifts to politicians, cronyism.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Sounds legit.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Sounds peculiar. Over here at least politicians certainly don't hire experts, they are government officials that work for them. Of course some also use paid advisors. We don't have major problems with campaign financing and politicians at least most of the time work, not just raise funds and filibuster. I've told you many times before over the years, your notion of a governments may be badly skewed because of the one you have.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I said disproportionate.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Average citizens don't have Super PACs.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I don't personally know what the Kochs ultimate goals are, and it doesn't matter. They shouldn't have the level of power they do no matter what they support.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
You said: "But you had a much more effective vote back before you constructed the tremendously greater power in the first place. Color me confused."Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I said: "I only had a tremendously greater power in the first place if I happened to be wealthy."
I again don't see how what you said now is relevant to what we were talking about.
I'm not arguing for the US government, I'm arguing for "a" government. We've only ever briefly touched on what I actually support. I've talked about outcomes, and I'm still not at all convinced free market is the silver bullet to everything, no matter how effectively it produces stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
We seem to be just going around in circles in the monster posts, and I don't feel you've provided any new info to me this time. I'll bail out.
I think we were getting somewhere (especially with your latest post), but I"ll respect that and not respond.
Well the hockey finals may have affected my mood, but I can't imagine anyone else enjoying reading these, so maybe lay them to rest for a while.
taxation=theft=hockey=socialism=aynrand
Now we're thinking!
Don't feel like you have to respond to this. It's just something I wanted to address, so I'll do it now, because I believe two of the most important misconceptions in the modern world are (1) the USSR was not socialist and (2) capitalism does not empower the poor while socialism empowers the poor.Quote:
Originally Posted by CoccoBill
Briefly, about the second point, the consensus among economists is that free markets empower the poor. Even the most left, pro-socialist economists in the West believe this. Economists of every variety are intense advocates of free markets. It's only on certain hot political issues, like healthcare, where hard left economists, who extol the virtues of free markets for most things, say that markets shouldn't be free.
The quote is describing an effect, not a policy. Socialism is not an effect, but a policy. A policy that enforces social ownership does not equal the effect of social power. If Chomsky were to have a problem with my use of the word "enforces," he would unwittingly be agreeing with free markets, because the voluntary act of social ownership is a derivation of free markets.Quote:
Since its origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation.
The bold is insufficient in terms because it accounts for only production. It's missing consumption and distribution. It's missing the concept of capital. It doesn't account for division of labor, economies of scale, and virtually every element integral to the scientific understanding of economics. Pannenkoek's description is humorism level wrong/debunked/outdated/unscientific.Quote:
As the Marxist theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed, “this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie,” but can only be “realized by the workers themselves being master over production.”
Even so, if we dissect the statement as if it's meaningful, it begins to look remarkably like free market capitalism. Production is an effect of and dependent upon worker capital. Free market capitalism is the consensus structure that optimizes worker capital. If we were to change "production" in the quote to what it should be, "production, consumption, and capital," then the statement remarkably reflects free market capitalism.
The statement is necessarily free market capitalism because of the bold. Chomsky is describing voluntary agency. This necessarily means he is describing a free market.Quote:
But the essential element of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the property of freely associated producers and thus the social property of people who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom.
Worker owned companies are 100% legal in free markets. Millions of them exist. There are a variety of reasons why economists believe not all companies are worker owned in a developed free market economy, and "exploitation" isn't on the list.
The bold is why the USSR system is socialism, and why Marx himself said that true socialism is communism. When you have a system where social ownership by workers is the law, a bureaucracy to enforce this is required. Some today reimagine socialism to meaning only social ownership of a company by its workers, but this was not the view of Marx and it was not the view of socialists during the Cold War. The logic is pretty straightforward: the "worker" is a class. When the philosophy is for the worker to have social ownership, it is not enough to look at individual workers and individual companies, but to view them as a whole. This necessarily means that all workers should have social ownership of all companies. How is it possible to achieve this? Central command and a stripping away of voluntarism. Ironic, I know.Quote:
A historian sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, E.H. Carr, writes that “the spontaneous inclination of the workers to organize factory committees and to intervene in the management of the factories was inevitably encouraged by a revolution which led the workers to believe that the productive machinery of the country belonged to them and could be operated by them at their own discretion and to their own advantage”
I never claimed the theory of socialism differs greatly from the theory of socialism, I'm talking about the practice in the former USSR. Saying that communism/socialism is bad based on how bad things were in the Soviet Union, is like saying Russia's current economic issues are due to them embracing capitalism and democracy.