Coercion, how I see it

[nietzreznor]

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This would be true if consumers actually bore the brunt of costs in the iraq war. Because the US government runs insanely large deficits AND manages to artificially support the value of its currency you are largely sheltered froms these costs.

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Except that we pay $$ in taxes (which may or may not go to the war effort), and we bear the brunt of the government's inflation.

In any case, the people who actually decided to go to war (the president, congress, etc) and the people who benefit from the war (the very same) are certainly not the ones paying for it. The citizens of the US pay for it, the Iraqi citizens pay for it, but certainly not the State.

[TheEkim]

What I was trying to explain is that you DONT bear these costs. Thats the beauty of having some smart, powerful, thugs on your team. The US government does a great job of providing tangible benefits for its citizens. One of these is the artificially inflated value of the US currency. The establishment of the US Dollar as the premier international reserve currency is responsible for the governments ability to run virtually unlimited deficits with little or no direct economic consequence.
http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/nov03/middleEast.asp
If anything US is in trouble because many countries have developed an intense dislike for US foreign policies in general and this war of aggression certainly doesnt help sway these opinions in the right direction.

If these negative world opinions lead countries to move away from holding reserve currencies in US dollars that would be problematic but this shift is unlikely as long as oil is only sold for US dollars. If this shifting then led to oil being sold for Euros, things would get really bad. US dollars no longer being artificially supported and all ... might actually have to pay some debt or face rampant inflation.

Any geusses which oil exporting nation was the first to try and sell oil for Euros?
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/m....un.euro.reut/

[BCPVP]

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The increased deficits have not resulted in any appreciable drop in the value of US currency, nor will it. Stockmarket is doing great (war is great for production...capitalists love war).

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P.S., I believe ianlippert is also Canadian. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[TheEkim]

I did mispeak there somewhat, to be more precise...
If you take the cost of war to date the amount of debt attributable to the war is about 425B (source) total US government debt is 8.9T wiki source.
Meaning if they didnt take of penny of tax dollars and just paid for the whole thing printing funny money it would represent like 4.77 percent of total debt. Trade imbalances, negative rate of personal savings, housing market crash (subprime mortgages et al) are all more significant downward pressures on value of currency then the 1/2T$ spent in Iraq.
However the benefit of maintaining the practice of petrodollars is very significant. We have not experienced anything near a 30% revaluation of the US dollar which is what many predict would occur if oil were to be exchanged for another currency (most likely the euro), further its difficult to measure the increase in GDP from something like iraq though i imagine it was significant too, lots of american businesses making lots of money over there after all.

I want to take a sec here a point out that im playing devils advocate a bit. I dont believe in the Iraq war and take a good bit of pride in the fact that Canada stayed out of it for the most part. I think the arguments against Iraq are many; both morally, and politically it was a mistake.


ps What is the pic supposed to mean? sorry im not getting it.

[Jeffiner99]

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You said "free market capitalism" is the best system, but this system hasn't existed anywhere, which is why I said in theory. Everything you are saying is speculative

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I think you are missing my point. It has nothing to do with free markets. When money is taken out of the economy (free market or otherwise) and spent in non-consumer areas (like Iraq) the members of that economy can only be worse off. So sure we've never seen a completely 100% free economy but it doesnt take a huge leap of faith to understand that removing the waste of the government can only lead to a more prosperous economy.

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This would be true if consumers actually bore the brunt of costs in the iraq war. Because the US government runs insanely large deficits AND manages to artificially support the value of its currency you are largely sheltered froms these costs.
Please dont take that as a prowar argument, I think the iraq war is misguided and insanely wasteful but it is inaccurate to imply you or the economy are suffering for it (I speak only fiscally, the human costs of war are always too high).
The increased deficits have not resulted in any appreciable drop in the value of US currency, nor will it. Stockmarket is doing great (war is great for production...capitalists love war).
The US through the size and wealth of its economy and overwhelming strength of its military manages to pretty much dictate all international rules and conventions, theyve done this with global monetary markets several times now to their benefit.

Not having to pay debts is a benefit of all that jack booted thuggery you AC'ers are always referring to.

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But we do pay for this. We pay for this in the inflation tax and a million other taxes. You cannot quantify it properly because the ones doing the counterfeiting won't let you. You only think we have low "inflation" because they only discuss price inflation and not monetary inflation. And they don't count things like food or fuel in price inflation indexes to keep the count artificially low.

But what about the huge list of other taxes that we pay? Someone on another thread listed a bunch of them. It was very long. I doubt anyone here really knows the extent of our actual tax rate. I believe it is somewhere in the 75% rate or higher when you add up everything. The extra cost of food, gasoline, liquor, cigarettes, tolls, postage excesses, dmv fees, licensing fees, required insurance costs, the huge extra expense of schooling thanks to gov't loan programs, property taxes, the extra cost of clothing due to minimum wage, the lost jobs due to minimum wage, the lost opportunity costs etc. The list is very very long.

Does anyone know the figure? I am curious.

By the way, do you know how much a trillion dollars really is? Start in the year zero, spend one million dollars every day of every year and never save a dime of it and it will take you over 730 years from today to spend one trillion.

Also, the full cost of the war in Iraq is 1T a year, your figure doesn't take into account all of the money paid to the private contractors, the transport costs and lots of other costs. See Ron Paul for better explanation.

And the risk of the entire world dropping us on our butts and leaving the dollar to ruin grows larger every day. How long do you think the "others" will be willing to carry us? Do you really believe there is no cost to theft?

And what are you saying morally? That because we have a big bully standing behind us we are a great system?

The answer to the initial question as I see it is that with government if you do not do what they say at all times they will kill you. I am not being hyperbolic. I am serious. Try saying no long enough and they shoot you dead. Now, you may have trouble making ends meet without that menial labor job, (which by the way there are a lot of) but you won't get dead. Government is force. Force is ALWAYS coercive. Always vs. sometimes. And that sometimes is not that often.

[Jeffiner99]

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BK, are you speaking of legal obligations or moral ones?

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It doesn't make a difference. But I mean obligations, not preferred behavior that one is allowed to choose to do or choose to not do.

I'm basically trying to see what is on the other side of the coin samsonite is talking about.

He points to one side, the capitalist, and says "Bad, exploitative!"

I want to see what he says when he points at the non capitalist. Does he say "Victim, he deserves free stuff!" What does he think this person needs to do in order to receive food and shelter from people who have it? Does he want a world where they are asked to 'contribute' but not required to do so? How do we measure if they are 'contributing' adequately, do we take their word for it? (i.e. "Trust me mr. capitalist, if I could have worked harder I would have")

It is convenient to point one's finger at a capitalist and shout "exploiter!" but what is he requiring of the non capitalists in order for them to live and eat and be clothed and housed, etc? I want to know if in his world I can get some people together and move to an island and chill out eating fish and coconuts and socializing with topless chicks while someone goes back to the mainland and collects a monthly stipend check for us in order to allow us to pay our bills.

Morobot promised me a UBI check (that stands for universal basic income, he advocates a world where everyone gets one simply for being alive, I love you morobot [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] ). Is samsonite promising me one of those or not? Is he advocating a bigger check be given to me and everyone else than morobot advocates or a smaller one? Is he going to make me jump through a few hoops before I get a free check for life, and if so, what are they?

I want to know how much he wants me to be able to ring out of the capitalists bank account and keep for myself with the minimal amount of time and effort expended on my part.

Because my order of preferences in various governments go like this:

1. bkholdem is king of the world government (please vote for this one guys!)

2. morobots world plan where everyone gets a UBI check (that means YOU work and I get a FREE CHECK of ~ 20K/yr. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]) That way I can move to Brasil and live in a beachfront condo and work an hour or 2 a day playing online poker as a suplement- I might have to do it on the sly as morobot might reduce my annual check if he know's I'm living in brasil but I think I can pull that off without a problem. If I get caught I can just say I"m sorry" and tell him I won't do it again and then keep doing it regardless cuz he ain't never gonna cut me off no matter what lol)

Then I can take a picture of myself sitting on the back of a free pony on the beach next to some hot topless chicks, while flipping the bird and laughing, and mail it back to all u suckas! lol

3. anarcho-capitialism

4. libertarianism

I want to know if samsonite is going to cut me a better or worse deal than morobot. I'm assumimng he's not gonna expect me to work nearly as hard as borodog or PVN would expect me to but I want to know how hard he NEEDS me to work, if at all, in order to live and pay my bills. What kind of deal is he offering me?

Samsonite, how much free shizat do I get man?

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Fantastic post! Great job.

[ianlippert]

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This would be true if consumers actually bore the brunt of costs in the iraq war. Because the US government runs insanely large deficits AND manages to artificially support the value of its currency you are largely sheltered froms these costs.


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Oh really? Like the costs that werent born by the american public in the 70s, the people that lost their jobs in the recession of the 90s, or how about all those people that lost millions of dollars in the tech bust. Its easy to miss this sort of stuff since it can take decades for it to finally work its way into the real economy. Its pretty obvious that America is due for a big correction sometime in the near future, probably once the dollar stops being supported china. Reading about the great depression I was surprised at how little warning there was. Up to even a few months before the crash people thought the economy was booming. American economic policy is on an unsustainable path and your democracy pretty much guarantees that nobody will be able to cut back on any sort of spending.

[Chromis]

In my relationship with my employer, I provide him with a service (labor) and in return he gives me money.

In my relationship with my government, I give them money and in return they don't throw me in prison.

Are you seriously equating these scenarios?

[BCPVP]

It's Frederic Bastiat if that helps... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[pvn]

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The increased deficits have not resulted in any appreciable drop in the value of US currency, nor will it. Stockmarket is doing great (war is great for production...capitalists love war).

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P.S., I believe ianlippert is also Canadian. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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