Economics and snake oil

The above is an example of a snake oil con artist posing as an economics theoretician.

What he says sounds rational and valid.   But critical details are missing which make his ideological talking points
ridiculously stupid.  

1) Having workers submit to lower wages is not an economic cost but a savings.   This is not mitigated
by the exaggerated claim that only men will be hired if women are paid the same for the same job.   Employers
depend on work applicants.   Not all jobs will have an excess of male applicants to pick over the women.  
Men do not want to work as secretaries for example.   And women are not too keen on physically strenuous work.
Employers can use the lower wage accepted by women to put downward pressure on the wages for men.
Friedman assumes from thin air that there is some sort of rational wage for any job.  History demonstrates
the opposite.   Workers were paid next to nothing and worked 12 hour days with no vacations back in the
late 1800s.   Every employer wants to minimize wages and will use any tactic to achieve this.   So giving
women equal pay for equal work actually keeps the wages higher.   That is true even if men are selectively
hired.  

2) Friedman worships the magical free market of no rules and survival of the fittest.   His assumption of
fair play in such a system is moronic.   Fair play costs more.  It is always easier to cheat and to abuse
workers with low wages and no benefits.   This is why workers organized unions and took collective action
to establish fairer wages for themselves.   This is now forgotten, including by the fake PC left.   He and
his ilk can pull all sorts of excuses, but laissez-faire results in mafia oligarchies.   The USA gilded era was
exactly that.   The US tycoons may have been more legit than the Russian crooks of the 1990s, but that did
not make working as their low wage slave any easier.   Friedman and his ilk cannot use the fairness fought
for by real socialist workers' movements as evidence of intrinsic laissez-faire self-regulation.   If everyone
abided by the ideology of lassize-faire, workers would still be making cents an hour and living in corporate
run traps where their shelter and food was all provided by their employer.   A perfect feudal system.

Interesting that the minimum wage idea doesn't work at management level... apparently people who sit in big offices need large salaries and holiday pay and excellent medical cover and a company car and a company car park, not to mention those power lunches they have to attend that get paid for by the company... they almost don't have to spend all that money they receive in their salary and not to mention bonuses for making the minimum wage front line monkeys exceed their goals for this month...

The more you look at it the more a company structure looks like a pyramid scheme where the founders and top people are essentially exploiting the work power of the large numbers below them...

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ubs-chief-economist-there-no-inflation-consumers-are-just-imagining-there

Reported consumer price inflation is low in the world’s major economies. Consumers are not inclined to believe this. Consumers are likely to think that inflation is higher than is being reported.

Consumers are subject to frequency bias when thinking about inflation. Consumers remember the prices of things that they buy frequently, and forget the prices of things they buy occasionally. Consumers’ views on inflation are driven by price changes for high frequency purchases.

Yeah, because higher priced purchases that occur rarely are just soooooo important.

The CPI racket hides the inflation in real estate using some BS "rent equivalent". Then it uses the ludicrous "hedonics adjustments"
to reduce the price of things like TVs based on extra features. Basically this makes it impossible to compare the price of a TV
over time. The fact is that these features are not some company breaking manufacturing expense so should be ignored.

The food inflation in the part of Canada I live in is over 7% per year. It has marginal impact on the crock of shit known as the
CPI because some 0.12 to 0.15 weight factor applied to food. As if all families in Canada and the USA spend only 12% or 15%
of their expenses on food. Of course expenses such as mortgages and rent are "inflation free" and they have higher weights.
The CPI is a total joke.

On the subject of free trade and the destruction of Russia's economy during the 1990s.   The scam at play is the
claim that free trade makes countries richer while protectionism makes their economies and technological capacity
stagnate or atrophy.   This claim is BS for many reasons

1) We clearly saw in Russia and elsewhere, free trade leading to the deliberate shutdown of manufacturing in
aircraft and other high tech industries with the pressure to replace this production with imports.  So Russia's
comparative advantage in oil and gas was to invoked to specialize it into an oil banana republic
dependent on this one resource extraction activity which of course would be done by western oil corporations.
The bitching about Russia being a gas station posing as a country is thick and rich BS coming from the same
clowns that pushed Russia to throw away all other industry to specialize in oil and gas exports.

2) No developed country ever adhered to free trade during its critical development stage.   This includes
the USA itself, Japan, South Korea and any of the European countries.   The reason for this is obvious
and Russia is an example.   Unfettered access by foreign corporations to an economy will mean that they
will own it since they have no start-up costs and have economies of scale.   Nascent companies in a
developing economy (not 3rd world) cannot compete with rich transnationals.  Full stop.  So pimping
free trade to Russia and any transition or developing economy is pure colonialism.

3) David Ricardo's analysis is simplistic BS.   Comparing advantages on a product by product basis is not
a valid systems analysis approach.   You can't just fix all the other variables and vary one of them to
"optimize" the multi-variate problem.    You have to vary all of them at once.   Using the ignorant analysis
of someone from the dinosaur era today is grotesque.    Ricardo did not even know about optimization
mathematics.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_optimization

Like all economists, he was in his own bubble.   So his product-by-product nonsense excludes the negative
impact on the functionality of the total economy from the shut-down of domestic industry and any form
of economic activity that supposedly is marginally more expensive than imports.   His theories are total
rubbish since under his import-fetish economics the GDP would shrink to optimize the time-snapshot price
of some good or service.   Every dollar of imports with an associated shutdown of domestic production
(or service generation) translates into a two dollar GDP drop.   GDP drops lead to unemployment and the
fall in domestic demand, which results in a GDP implosion feedback loop.    

Free trade only works for developed and powerful economies that can engage in colonialist expansion.   It is
poison for any less developed or even smaller economy.   And we see this in Canada, which has basically been
taken over by transnationals.   This has not improved the Canadian standard of living.   Basically, the
reason why Canada was not made into a 3rd world toilet outright is pure politics of stability and NATzO
cohesion.  Canadians are fed some crumbs to keep them happy.   The transnational corporations can
afford such charity in special cases since they can focus on the rape and pillage of other countries.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/03/how-an-austrian-and-british-malthusian-brainwashed-a-generation-of-americans/

The creation of false opposites has been a long-standing obstacle to human progress.

From the ancient pleasure-seeking Epicureans who argued against the logic-heavy Stoics of ancient Rome to the war of “salvation through faith vs works” that schismed western Christianity, to the chaotic emotional energy driving the Jacobin mobs of France whose passions were only matched by the radical Cartesian logic of their Girondin enemies; humanity has long been manipulated by oligarchs who knew how to set the species to war against itself. Although these operations have taken many forms, the desired effect has always been the same: divide-to-conquer bloodbaths which drowned out the saner voices of Cicero (executed in 44 BCE), Thomas More (executed in 1535 CE), or Jean Sylvain Bailly (executed in 1793 CE).

Today’s polarization across the Trans-Atlantic world has reached a fevered pitch with the “right wing conservatives” shouting for liberty and less government while left wing liberals call for more government and top-down reforms of the system (with Great Reset technocrats laughing in the background).

This article has some good points but as usual everything needs to be put into full context.

Malthus is a whipping boy for the "infinite resources = infinite human freedom" lemmings. Dismissing the fundamental aspects of
the analysis made by Malthus is moronic. Whether some regime wants to leverage for nefarious purposes the finite capacity of
this planet to support humans has no rational link to the validity of the latter. In some ways this sort of "thinking" is the same
as the PC totalitarian BS about denying the differences between males and females to force "equality". If you can't have equality
without such tricks, then you are not even trying. Believing that recognition of resource limits will result in oppression is the
same sort of inanity.

But the main point in this article is valid. The left and right as structured in the west and really around the world is a false dichotomy
based polarization. Both limits are away from the reality-driven optimum. Russia for the moment has figured this out and realizes
that pure monetarism is the same BS as command economy dictatorship. At the end of the day some sort of star chamber makes
all the decisions while idiots fight over "ideals". May as well have the elected government make these decisions instead of a
shadow power with the government being the sock puppet. Naturally, western propaganda has conditioned the sheeple to view
this as bad. Because private dictatorships are just so much better than government ones. The fake western left will never attack
the oligarchy and you can see how its PC idiocy is enabled by western corporations who pander to BLM and all the identity politics
depravity. The western left is their sock puppet like the western right.

kvs wrote:https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/03/how-an-austrian-and-british-malthusian-brainwashed-a-generation-of-americans/

The creation of false opposites has been a long-standing obstacle to human progress.

From the ancient pleasure-seeking Epicureans who argued against the logic-heavy Stoics of ancient Rome to the war of “salvation through faith vs works” that schismed western Christianity, to the chaotic emotional energy driving the Jacobin mobs of France whose passions were only matched by the radical Cartesian logic of their Girondin enemies; humanity has long been manipulated by oligarchs who knew how to set the species to war against itself. Although these operations have taken many forms, the desired effect has always been the same: divide-to-conquer bloodbaths which drowned out the saner voices of Cicero (executed in 44 BCE), Thomas More (executed in 1535 CE), or Jean Sylvain Bailly (executed in 1793 CE).

Today’s polarization across the Trans-Atlantic world has reached a fevered pitch with the “right wing conservatives” shouting for liberty and less government while left wing liberals call for more government and top-down reforms of the system (with Great Reset technocrats laughing in the background).

This article has some good points but as usual everything needs to be put into full context.

Malthus is a whipping boy for the "infinite resources = infinite human freedom" lemmings.   Dismissing the fundamental aspects of
the analysis made by Malthus is moronic.    Whether some regime wants to leverage for nefarious purposes the finite capacity of
this planet to support humans has no rational link to the validity of the latter.    In some ways this sort of "thinking" is the same
as the PC totalitarian BS about denying the differences between males and females to force "equality".    If you can't have equality
without such tricks, then you are not even trying.   Believing that recognition of resource limits will result in oppression is the
same sort of inanity.

But the main point in this article is valid.   The left and right as structured in the west and really around the world is a false dichotomy
based polarization.   Both limits are away from the reality-driven optimum.   Russia for the moment has figured this out and realizes
that pure monetarism is the same BS as command economy dictatorship.   At the end of the day some sort of star chamber makes
all the decisions while idiots fight over "ideals".   May as well have the elected government make these decisions instead of a
shadow power with the government being the sock puppet.   Naturally, western propaganda has conditioned the sheeple to view
this as bad.  Because private dictatorships are just so much better than government ones.   The fake western left will never attack
the oligarchy and you can see how its PC idiocy is enabled by western corporations who pander to BLM and all the identity politics
depravity.   The western left is their sock puppet like the western right.  

This is a good article about what you are talking about: https:

http://thedailyknell.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/old-rothschild-and-rockefeller-hands-controlled-the-libertarian-communist-dialectic/

This is good reading here about the evil of libertarianism:

https://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/the-satanic-core-of-libertarianism/

The elites are all about running puppet shows and divide and conquer. The proles are imbeciles who perpetually fall for these
tricks and are thus sheeple herded by their masters. I do not think that any particular ethnic group is the "source" of such
power games. It is a universal feature of elites since they are paranoid about losing what they ripped off and at the same
time consumed by avarice. Mammals are observed to lose control when supplied with unbounded food. Seals stop eating
the fish in the net and instead proceed to just bite one fish after another. Wolves do exactly the same thing in a sheep pen.
Instead of killing and eating a sheep, they kill all of them with no consideration for their ability to ever eat that meat.
The filthy rich deciders are are in the same mental state. One billion dollars is not enough, they need 10 billion. But then
10 billion is not enough either and so on. Even if they saturate their money grubbing, they still have raw power which they
feel compelled to exert.

In Orwell's 1984, a regime appartchik tells Winston Smith that power is about coercion. This is not some dystopian anomaly,
it is the norm. The west has long ago lost the plot and its elites have been raping and pillaging for centuries. They have
reached the point where the world is not enough and want to dictate to humans everywhere how to live and what to think.
And of course subject themselves to their exploitation. For now we have certain conditions where local power is preventing these
western elites from achieving their ambitions. Thus we have cold and hot war in response. And in some countries, e.g. Russia,
the elites are not monolithic with a counter-balancing that results in some sanity.

kvs wrote:

On the subject of free trade and the destruction of Russia's economy during the 1990s.   The scam at play is the
claim that free trade makes countries richer while protectionism makes their economies and technological capacity
stagnate or atrophy.   This claim is BS for many reasons

1) We clearly saw in Russia and elsewhere, free trade leading to the deliberate shutdown of manufacturing in
aircraft and other high tech industries with the pressure to replace this production with imports.  So Russia's
comparative advantage in oil and gas was to invoked to specialize it into an oil banana republic
dependent on this one resource extraction activity which of course would be done by western oil corporations.
The bitching about Russia being a gas station posing as a country is thick and rich BS coming from the same
clowns that pushed Russia to throw away all other industry to specialize in oil and gas exports.

2) No developed country ever adhered to free trade during its critical development stage.   This includes
the USA itself, Japan, South Korea and any of the European countries.   The reason for this is obvious
and Russia is an example.   Unfettered access by foreign corporations to an economy will mean that they
will own it since they have no start-up costs and have economies of scale.   Nascent companies in a
developing economy (not 3rd world) cannot compete with rich transnationals.  Full stop.  So pimping
free trade to Russia and any transition or developing economy is pure colonialism.

3) David Ricardo's analysis is simplistic BS.   Comparing advantages on a product by product basis is not
a valid systems analysis approach.   You can't just fix all the other variables and vary one of them to
"optimize" the multi-variate problem.    You have to vary all of them at once.   Using the ignorant analysis
of someone from the dinosaur era today is grotesque.    Ricardo did not even know about optimization
mathematics.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_optimization

Like all economists, he was in his own bubble.   So his product-by-product nonsense excludes the negative
impact on the functionality of the total economy from the shut-down of domestic industry and any form
of economic activity that supposedly is marginally more expensive than imports.   His theories are total
rubbish since under his import-fetish economics the GDP would shrink to optimize the time-snapshot price
of some good or service.   Every dollar of imports with an associated shutdown of domestic production
(or service generation) translates into a two dollar GDP drop.   GDP drops lead to unemployment and the
fall in domestic demand, which results in a GDP implosion feedback loop.    

Free trade only works for developed and powerful economies that can engage in colonialist expansion.   It is
poison for any less developed or even smaller economy.   And we see this in Canada, which has basically been
taken over by transnationals.   This has not improved the Canadian standard of living.   Basically, the
reason why Canada was not made into a 3rd world toilet outright is pure politics of stability and NATzO
cohesion.  Canadians are fed some crumbs to keep them happy.   The transnational corporations can
afford such charity in special cases since they can focus on the rape and pillage of other countries.

The US also had a similar policy in the 19th century known as the American School of Economics:

https://americancompass.org/essays/rediscovering-a-genuine-american-system/

It would be good if alternatives schools of economic thought were better known too like Henry George and Land Value Taxation:

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/henry-georges-land-value-tax-idea-whose-time-come/

https://www.econlib.org/land-taxes-the-return-of-henry-george/

andalusia wrote:It would be good if alternatives schools of economic thought were better known too like Henry George and Land Value Taxation:

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/henry-georges-land-value-tax-idea-whose-time-come/

https://www.econlib.org/land-taxes-the-return-of-henry-george/

The current market value assessment and taxation is a racket.   Even though the politicians claim that the mill rate will
fall as the property values increase, they always let the mill rate go up so that they get a massive windfall.    The LVT
tax is brilliant since it gets rid of the nonsense of paying more because you have spent more money on making your
house better.   This sort of taxation is discrimination and a penalty for people using their own money on themselves.
It is also a racket because the money people spend on themselves has already been taxed.  The municipality taxes
that money again.  

There was a crisis in the UK when Margaret Thatcher approved the implementation of a poll tax.   I support the poll
tax.  My house should not be free money for all the people who don't have a house in the city.   If there are to
be taxes, then they should be on income and not on possessions.   Current property taxes are the same nonsense
as an annual tax on socks or underwear.    The LVT recognizes that land is special and can be managed through
a land tax for the greater good.  But penalizing people for having a better house is BS.

The poll tax is ridiculous... a billionaire in a mansion with 20 holiday houses around the country pays for himself, while a family of working class people of say 5 pay for five in their tiny rented flat.

Poll tax is not fair...

They should be reducing tax, not increasing it and taxing new things.

The real problem with land value is property speculators... it is the same everywhere... find a place off the beaten track in the middle of nowhere, but with nice sea views or near a lake or a mountain you can ski on and build some houses... if you can afford to wait ten years the value of those houses will have increased a hundred fold... vastly more than any interest rate any bank will pay you.

Property speculators go to Auckland in New Zealand and buy 10 houses for about 1 million bucks each. They might have relatives going to university who could stay in them but most of the time they leave them empty and in 5 years time they sell them for 2 or 3 million each and double or triple their money.

Only the very rich can afford to do that... for the average person having a million dollar loan on your house means working like a dog for life to pay it, and sure in 5 years time you can sell the house for double what you owed for it, but you better be prepared to downgrade because the house you buy will be a shithole and will cost most of what you made selling the house you spent 5 years fixing up and making liveable...

House prices keep going up because people use houses as a way of making money... a lot of houses sit empty and are just investments for very rich people, or holiday houses...

No body makes affordable housing any more.

If the poll tax is aimed at people without viable incomes then it is bad. The only taxes there should be are income taxes.
For the rich this would include taxing all their stock price windfalls, dividends and other investments even if they are offshore.
But as usual it is the people who are not rich that are taxed in every orifice. In Canada we have the ludicrous regime where
the total bank interest it taxed even if it is below inflation but only 50% of stock dividends are taxed.

One tax I would support would be a head tax on babies. Instead of giving welfare for every little spawn, there should be
a disincentive for welfare queens to popping them out and making the lives of these children hell because they serve the
purpose of bringing money and are not wanted otherwise.

The argument against the poll tax is mostly BS since the example of some rich guy is trotted out. There are many people
in Canada who are not rich and own houses. And because of the real estate bubble created by the rich trying to park their
filthy lucre into real estate such owners in Toronto are paying around $10,000 per year in property taxes for houses that ain't all that.
Given that the average family income in Toronto is about $70,000 (mostly two wage earners) and income taxes are not less
than $10,000 for such households, we are looking at a serious financial load.

And no, telling people to sell their houses and move where it is cheaper is nonsense. They would have to leave the city
and the surrounding area completely. That means a daily commute of over 4 hours since they can't take their job with them.

Conservative libertarians have also misrepresented Adam Smith:

https://mcleveland.org/Class_reading/Amartya_Sen-Adam_Smith_The_Economist_Manifesto.pdf



The Poll Tax is vastly inferior to the Land Value Tax:

https://mcleveland.org/publications/Cleveland-Land_and_Power_ReviewD&S1117.pdf

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/verizon-strikes-deal-dump-remnants-aol-yahoo-apollo-5-billion

Market "capitalization" is the biggest crock of all time. Exxon is routinely touted as much bigger than Gazprom because of its stock
valuation. This is pure nonsense. Gazprom's real value is in the BTUs of hydrocarbon it owns and these greatly exceed those of
Exxon. In the above article we see that two companies that had a "capitalization" of 300 billion USD 20 years ago are now being
sold off for 5 billion USD. This sums up the whole stock "capitalization" racket.

The idea that any company can actually fully use its stock valuation is absurd. As soon as any company tries to sell off shares, they
lose value. The total worth of the company measured in stocks is a phantom.

It amazes me , how " Socialism" having failed in the soviet model for one time only , is underrated for all times past, present and future. While Capitalism , having failed thousands of times, during past and present and no doubt future, is heralded as the elixir of economic immortality ! Facts are that one in every four small businesses fail within the first 10 to 20 years. And therefore ALL businesses fail within two to three generations.

nomadski wrote:
It amazes me , how " Socialism"  having failed in the soviet model for one time only , is underrated for all times past, present and future. While Capitalism , having failed thousands of times, during past and present and no doubt future, is heralded as the elixir of economic immortality !  Facts are that one in every four small businesses fail within the first 10 to 20 years. And therefore ALL businesses fail within two to three generations.

Statistics don't work that way. There are more than a couple of businesses older than that.

The success of China's economic model shows the West's progressive slip towards more and more privatization of essential services is hazardous.

True. More than a couple. So best to say almost all Capitalist ventures fail quickly. Is true. I don't know about Chinese model, so I can not comment. But how old is the new " Capitalist" model in China?

The greatest period of stability in Capitalist production, is in the initial growth stages. With plentiful supply of raw materials and cheap labour and unfettered access to markets and probably little competition. It gets hairy later on. But why is it that despite all the fails, factory shutdowns and mass unemployment and ghost towns, that Capitalism is still viewed in such positive light?

Europe even before the EU was basically an admission that laissez-faire capitalism is a non-starter.    A mixed model is required.   Just
like the public good is served by building roads and running the judicial system, it is served by free education and health care.  

Americans have wallowed in their Kalvinist nonsense of God loving the rich and not the poor (from an era when the rich were 0.1% of the
population and 99% were poor).    But even laissez-faire America developed corporate welfare.   This created a trickle down effect that
has maintained a middle class.   But the current PC spasm is destroying the country.    Identity politics leftism is not sane and
you can see how it could care less about the economy.    Child genital mutilation is way more important to these freaks than any
worker's wages and employment conditions.    That's just white male patriarchy, so who cares....

But pure socialism or communism does not have long term viability.   It does not address human psychology and it therefore fails.  We
live in a perverse reality when it comes to human society.   If people get without effort, then they develop and entitlement syndrome
and become rabid welfare bums.    But when they are exposed to conditions where they have to earn what they get, they are exposed
to abuse through wealth stratification.   So we have two nasty and opposing poles towards which the dynamical system called society
gets attracted and the ideal is an unstable orbit in phase space that avoids both of these attractors.  

People are also afflicted with contrarian-think.   If their current conditions suck, then they idealize the alternative.   So in the disfunctional
socialist limit they pine for capitalism and in the disfunctional capitalist limit they pine for socialism.    Striving for a complex balance of
policies instead of drinking simplistic koolaid is not a characteristic of humanity.    And relegating this balancing to politicians is a non-starter
since politicians are crooks.

kvs wrote:Europe even before the EU was basically an admission that laissez-faire capitalism is a non-starter.    A mixed model is required.   Just
like the public good is served by building roads and running the judicial system, it is served by free education and health care.  

Americans have wallowed in their Kalvinist nonsense of God loving the rich and not the poor (from an era when the rich were 0.1% of the
population and 99% were poor).    But even laissez-faire America developed corporate welfare.   This created a trickle down effect that
has maintained a middle class.   But the current PC spasm is destroying the country.    Identity politics leftism is not sane and
you can see how it could care less about the economy.    Child genital mutilation is way more important to these freaks than any
worker's wages and employment conditions.    That's just white male patriarchy, so who cares....

But pure socialism or communism does not have long term viability.   It does not address human psychology and it therefore fails.  We
live in a perverse reality when it comes to human society.   If people get without effort, then they develop and entitlement syndrome
and become rabid welfare bums.    But when they are exposed to conditions where they have to earn what they get, they are exposed
to abuse through wealth stratification.   So we have two nasty and opposing poles towards which the dynamical system called society
gets attracted and the ideal is an unstable orbit in phase space that avoids both of these attractors.  

People are also afflicted with contrarian-think.   If their current conditions suck, then they idealize the alternative.   So in the disfunctional
socialist limit they pine for capitalism and in the disfunctional capitalist limit they pine for socialism.    Striving for a complex balance of
policies instead of drinking simplistic koolaid is not a characteristic of humanity.    And relegating this balancing to politicians is a non-starter
since politicians are crooks.

I totally agree with you KVS; a balanced point of view about economics is the best.  I personally can't stand libertarians here in the USA with their utopian ideals about perfect markets.  

Building a community of libertarians is like building a house out of pudding.

Libertarian individualism and community are almost perfect opposites. Libertarians are the least capable most inappropriate people on Earth for forming a community.

Community requires a cooperative/synergistic (whole > sum of parts) mindset, altruistic morals, a willingness to sacrifice and goodwill toward others.

Out of any group of libertarians, there are maybe 1 in 100 who are self-regulating enough to make functional members of a decent community. The rest will simply work the edges and arbitrage the goodwill of others until they are kicked out or the community fails entirely.

Almost every decent libertarian has already leveled up to some kind of Third Position authoritarianism. When you realize that what you hate isn’t “government,” but rather “government by people who hate you,” you see how impractical and anti-human libertarian individualism really is and you will never look at it the same way again.

I would like to make a few relevant observations.

1.In practice, most economies are mixed. During the darkest days of the post ww2 soviet union, there were incentives for those who worked hard in a particular field, and a barter economy. Even in the glory days of American free market capitalism of the late 19th century and early 20th century, there was a certain amount of government interference, and even the gold standard was never in practice what it was on paper. The difference between capitalism and communism may depend largely on who is doing the labeling, and what axe they have to grind.

2. “Capitalism” has become a near-religion to many. People have been convinced that “the market” can do no wrong and that the accumulation of money and power, as long as it is done through the market, is ok or even good. the fact of the matter is that almost any system is open to exploitation. Even in a truly free market, it is possible, in fact inevitable, that some greedy and crafty actors will find ways to exploit others and amass undue fortune for themselves on the backs of those who actually produce.

3. The driving force of the free market is supposed to be competition. “go out and start your own business” sounds great. In some cases it might be a viable option. In other areas, it is so much silliness. In many industries, the barriers to entry are simply too high. One does not go out and start one’s own airline the way one can go door to door and start one’s own lawn service, or lemonade stand. Any developed economy must have a certain level of organization and coordination that necessitates the dreaded words… government oversight.

4. many of our zealous “capitalist” fanatics would consider mixed model not capitalism at all. People have to get out of the mental rut that ALL government is bad. Those who value freedom and truth must understand that nature abhors a vacuum, and limited, accountable government that works to restrain the worst abuses of the wealthy is the best real world solution.

5. The question of capitalism vs socialism reminds me of the debate of democracy vs monarchy: who are the voters, and who is the monarch? the answer makes all the difference in the world. Is the problem so much our system? or that it is run by hostile elites who are intentionally killing the host?


This is a good essay here: https://www.masongaffney.org/workpapers/WP070%20Unearned%20Income%20as%20a%20Barrier%20to%20Free%20Enterprise.pdf

Hello everybody!
I can't believe it's been so long since I posted here!
Happily, I see that some of the persons I used to post with, are still alive and posting!
I was wondering if there was a GLOBAL ECONOMY thread?
I want to come back and read more posts, early in the morning! & see who all I remember, who is still here and posting!

Cowboy's daughter wrote:Hello everybody!
I can't believe it's been so long since I posted here!
Happily, I see that some of the persons I used to post with, are still alive and posting!
I was wondering if there was a GLOBAL ECONOMY thread?
I want to come back and read more posts, early in the morning! & see who all I remember, who is still here and posting!

HOLY HELL, WELCOME BACK!!!

It's been ages!!!

Ha Ha! Thank you so much, Papa Dragon!
It's definitely been a while!
I was going through cd's I had burned stuff to, and one was "bookmarks"! I gave it a look, and there was Russia Defense!
I have a spiral notebook with passwords written down, and there was my password!
I've been through several computers, and finally bought a new one!
& I've lived through covid, and pfizer vaccine! Thank God, but no booster shot for me! I'm done with that stuff!
I wasn't sure who would still be here, so I was happily surprised to see quite a few!
Glad y'all are sill alive and kicking!
I'm happy to be back and reading, etc.

This is a pleasant surprise... gentlemen, we will have to watch our language more now that there is a lady present....

Welcome back.

We have a global defence and strategic issues section, but that is broken up by region, so really it should be called regional defence and strategic issues.

Perhaps an economics area in the general discussion section, or maybe we could place threads in the general chat section and see if there are enough to warrant a new section to separate out the economics discussions.

Even if economics is not strictly on topic for this forum, it is relevant since it drives war and military activity. So perhaps
and economics section would be warranted. But there are many subtopics that cover the spectrum already...

GarryB wrote:This is a pleasant surprise... gentlemen, we will have to watch our language more now that there is a lady present....  

Welcome back.

We have a global defence and strategic issues section, but that is broken up by region, so really it should be called regional defence and strategic issues.

Perhaps an economics area in the general discussion section, or maybe we could place threads in the general chat section and see if there are enough to warrant a new section to separate out the economics discussions.

Thank you, Gary B.!