AC is just a game of words

[ElliotR]

[ QUOTE ]
Your community makes the decisions he's referring to by the mechanism of the market. It's the same way the community decides the price of a loaf of bread and the number of gas stations and grocery stores in town. He is OBVIOUSLY not referring to any kind of central community planning agency.

[/ QUOTE ]

So "what the community wants" is wholly determined by individual decisions, is it? Please explain how this "mechanism of the market" is going to work with respect to prisons, with specific attention to how the "market" will eliminate any free rider problems.

So far, this thread proves the thesis that is its title.

[BrickTamlin]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Your community makes the decisions he's referring to by the mechanism of the market. It's the same way the community decides the price of a loaf of bread and the number of gas stations and grocery stores in town. He is OBVIOUSLY not referring to any kind of central community planning agency.

[/ QUOTE ]

So "what the community wants" is wholly determined by individual decisions, is it? Please explain how this "mechanism of the market" is going to work with respect to prisons, with specific attention to how the "market" will eliminate any free rider problems.

So far, this thread proves the thesis that is its title.

[/ QUOTE ]


The gap between rich and poor grew under Democratic rule. There, I just proved that Democratic rule is a game of words.

QED

Oh sorry, your extreme arguments were only intended to refute AC positions but never to be appied to the status quo. I always forget that catch.

[Sifmole]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Your community makes the decisions he's referring to by the mechanism of the market. It's the same way the community decides the price of a loaf of bread and the number of gas stations and grocery stores in town. He is OBVIOUSLY not referring to any kind of central community planning agency.

[/ QUOTE ]

So "what the community wants" is wholly determined by individual decisions, is it? Please explain how this "mechanism of the market" is going to work with respect to prisons, with specific attention to how the "market" will eliminate any free rider problems.

So far, this thread proves the thesis that is its title.

[/ QUOTE ]


The gap between rich and poor grew under Democratic rule. There, I just proved that Democratic rule is a game of words.

QED

Oh sorry, your extreme arguments were only intended to refute AC positions but never to be appied to the status quo. I always forget that catch.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whats your point? You are correct the gap has grown under our current system -- what does that win AC?

[Exsubmariner]

Lots of people are happy to just take what they can get out of the present situation without improving anything. In fact, lots of people are happy with the present system and just take what it throws at them because they feel they have better things to do than be involved. Like make a living, for instance.

Whether or not we should be trying to improve is a matter of philosophy. So far, all efforts at improvement (via government change or intervention) have been dismal failures. If we keep trying to improve, is it concievable that we might [censored] things up even more?

Plan, who's plan? There is no one flying the goddamn airplane. The cabin door is locked. We have no way to break in. Having a plan won't change this.

The current government is an evolution of a government that worked very well. Even by somehow turning back the clock on the system, you only cause it to start over going down the road of destroying the market once more. This is the inevitable end of the state. Every past state invariably failed. It's only a matter of time before ours does too.

[Borodog]

Now that I can dig.

[Exsubmariner]

Boro,
It is going to take some time for me to answer your first point, so I'm going to think on it before I make my attempt.

In the mean time, could you demonstrate that things in the US are not as good now as some previous point in history. My data points for this assertion come from distribution of wealth, life expectancy, employment, availability of capital, individual property rights, and general standard of living.

I do agree that capitalism has done this in spite of government, but the government has stayed out of the way, or been kept out of the way, in the past enought to keep it under control. There are some things the government does, however that do work to keep things humming along. I would point to the agricultural policies that provide commodity market stability by preventing sever shortages or huge surpluses. I'm sure you have plenty of points to counter that arguement, but clearly, there are cases where government intervention in things is prudent.

[Exsubmariner]

It's not a silly leap. I could wax eloquent about all the ways people can screw things up acting out their own greed, but it would take too long. I am in no way defending the status quo. You will never prove me wrong because AC has never ever been and will never be a reality that you can use to prove me empirically wrong. I on the other hand, have plenty of data to back up my assertions. Just look at any statistics you want concerning the standard of living in the US and compare it to other countries or any point in previous history.

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
Boro,
It is going to take some time for me to answer your first point, so I'm going to think on it before I make my attempt.

In the mean time, could you demonstrate that things in the US are not as good now as some previous point in history. My data points for this assertion come from distribution of wealth, life expectancy, employment, availability of capital, individual property rights, and general standard of living.

I do agree that capitalism has done this in spite of government, but the government has stayed out of the way, or been kept out of the way, in the past enought to keep it under control. There are some things the government does, however that do work to keep things humming along. I would point to the agricultural policies that provide commodity market stability by preventing sever shortages or huge surpluses. I'm sure you have plenty of points to counter that arguement, but clearly, there are cases where government intervention in things is prudent.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think it's clear at all. There are no cases where government intervention is good. Government intervention in the agriculture industry is a disaster. Price supports and other subsidies keep more farmers in the market than it would otherwise support. This produces huge and continuous surplusses, surplusses that have to be dumped somewhere. Some goes into warehouses to never be used until it finally rots and is literally dumped. A large fraction is dumped on the world market, where third world farmers cannot compete with cheap American grains, for example. This keeps third world farmers in literal grinding poverty. Another outlet for these tremendous surplusses are "foreign aid" and "disaster relief". These programs are literal disasters themselves; artificial disasters that are far worse than the natural kind. Because American surplus subsidized food is dumped as "aid" and "relief" at zero cost, local agricultural economies are destroyed, almost over night. They simply cannot compete with free food. The local agricultural economy collapses, the capital goods (farm equipment and whatnot) is sold off or breaks down (the farmers can't afford to fix it anymore), and the country becomes an "aid" junkie. Meanwhile the food shipments become a valuable resource to be fought over and controlled by corrupt third world governments. American agricultural subsidies wreak tremendous havoc around the globe.

You can tell that something is wrong with America compared to the past just by looking at a few key numbers, for example, interest rates. The rate of interest represents the premium you must pay someone to induce them to forgo the immediate satisfaction of spending their capital and get them to invest it instead (for a future return). The higher the interest rate, the more you have to pay someone to invest capital rather than spend it, which indicates that they are less certain about the future. Real interest rates are much higher now than they were at the end of the 19th century. This is hard to see because the Fed pumps out so much fiat money. This funny money competes with real savings in the loan industry, which artificially increases the supply of money and hence artificially lowers its price (the interest rate). But eventually the inflation cannot be sustained and there is a "crunch", i.e. a recession, and interest rates jump. But the really interesting part to notice, and understand that government is making people uncertain about whether they'll be able to gain returns on investment, and hence incentivizing consumption instead of savings, is that even the artificially depressed interest rates during a modern "boom" are higher than normal interest rates were at the end of the 19th century. People are less certain about their future ability to accumulate wealth than they were 100 years ago, even though they are materially far wealthier. The difference is that government now consumes about half of all productivity.