DescentBB

Robert Samuelson on why there was no depression.

Interesting read, but I thought this was funny

But this improved confidence is not optimism. It is the absence of terror.

Except market economies are little more then competitive wage castes, with serfs and lords. Corporations are the lords, the workers are the serfs.

I also believe money is problematic as a store of value in a highly specialized economy. In the ideal world of the idealogues, their version of how to run the world would work, in reality it doesn't.

People don't get rich by hard work, if you look at history people got rich by killing others and taking their property. In fact all nations (and many businesses) owe their existence to stealing land and killing others, in fact the whole of human history is one of war, fraud and outright theft.

This is why I always laugh when people talk about \"the economy\" the \"economy\" is part of a hitsorical process, and quite frankly we live richly today because your ancestors were bastards to others. People tend to forget that and think they \"pulled themselves up by their bootstraps\".

In a market economy everyone who is not rich rents their existence from those with the most money, it's just another kind of caste with covered rhetorically appealing language.

You get wealthy by exploiting really large numbers and volume, hard work has little to do with it once civilization reaches certian technical proficiency such as ours, we have lots of jobs that are completely useless and just shuffle money around that add nothing to the economy.

If we took the 30 richest people on earth stuck then on a planet with all their money, all that money would have no value, money only has value when you have people who are destitute and want to be free from debt and work, which 90% of humanity never will be.

I find it ironic those who speak about economics are the ones who despite all our modern advances are forced to work more then they need to every day because they have no political say or democratic ownership over the earths resources and how they are distributed, working for a wage allows others to manipulate it's value and thus control you, since you've been denied political say or ownership of the wealth nature naturally produced which man never made, people only reshape nature, they never created it, so I find individual property ownership without limits quite at odds with logic and rationality.

Businesses are run as pure dictatorships most of the time. What I find ironic is that people love this model of servitude when 80% of their life is spent doing what they don't really want to be doing because they don't own anything.

The economy as it stands today is a political relationship mediated by money and enforced by guns, the police and armies.

Technology saved the market from itself by allowing more physically efficient use of resources, and it was scientific knowledge and engineering that brought that about not ideology.

I pretty much agree with what you are saying Hatman, (in the most cynical context) but the problem is…when people revolt and replace the system with the “logical” replacement…they more often than not, end up worse off.

See “Bolshevik Revolution”

Hatman,

Welcome to the DBB.

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Regarding your post, I'm not sure I got your point as it relates to the discussion here.

You seem to take issue with the perceived value of money as it relates to power, but I'm unclear on your side references to property and technology.

Is there an overall point I'm missing?

Spidey wrote:I pretty much agree with what you are saying Hatman, (in the most cynical context) but the problem is…when people revolt and replace the system with the “logical” replacement…they more often than not, end up worse off.

See “Bolshevik Revolution”

Except the reasons why they were "worse off" is complicated and has nothing to do with market's being better, you and most north american's are really not qualified to comment on the disintegration of the USSR. There are a multitude of physical and knowledge based reasons things didn't work out, also everything we've read about so called revolutions is biased and filled with propaganda ("history is written by the victors").

While north many american's see market's and center or just left of center capitalistic approach to the world as the only way, other countries are going in the opposite direction because they had hardcore rightwing rule for ages (see: Greece)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125426541601450783.html

The real issue in all systems is human stupidity and human incompetence, and the inability of human beings to understand the flaws in the systems they make.

After all the United states bailout is proof that the us rulers believe in "socialism" (though I hate using such ideologically loaded terms) in the end to save capitalism because the rulers couldn't stand the people suffering and actually changing the system from the ground up into something that threatens them.

That's what should have happened, the banks and everyone should have went under and people around the world should have felt economic suffering en masse since that's the only thing that produces and spurs change since people tend to be creatures of habit and only change when they've got nothing left to lose.

Foil wrote:Hatman,

Welcome to the DBB.

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Regarding your post, I'm not sure I got your point as it relates to the discussion here.

You seem to take issue with the perceived value of money as it relates to power, but I'm unclear on your side references to property and technology.

Is there an overall point I'm missing?

What do you want to know specifically? Your post is awfully vague. I'm saying that all the wonderful wealth was not the result of markets or capitalist ideology but part of a larger historical accumulation of knowledge and increases in efficient use of matter and energy, and that our ancestors gained access to these energy and matter sources by way of fraud, war, theft and murder, and these actions of our ancestors set us up to be wealthy long before we were born.

Since humanity doesn't have a choice to where it is born and most humans are subject to historical limits on available opportunities.

Hatman wrote:
People don't get rich by hard work, if you look at history people got rich by killing others and taking their property. In fact all nations (and many businesses) owe their existence to stealing land and killing others, in fact the whole of human history is one of war, fraud and outright theft.

This is why I always laugh when people talk about "the economy" the "economy" is part of a hitsorical process, and quite frankly we live richly today because your ancestors were bastards to others. People tend to forget that and think they "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps".

I don't know what hole you climbed out of, but the above statement by you is quite possibly the most asinine statement I've heard on this board. I guess the idea of small businesses, you know...the corporations that provide 80-90% of the jobs in this country, started by a lone individual who did work 7 days a week to get his business profitable and thus defrauds your "think they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" phrase. Your misconception on where most corporations come from shows the only cretin here is you.

Welcome to the DBB

woodchip wrote:

Hatman wrote:
People don't get rich by hard work, if you look at history people got rich by killing others and taking their property. In fact all nations (and many businesses) owe their existence to stealing land and killing others, in fact the whole of human history is one of war, fraud and outright theft.

This is why I always laugh when people talk about "the economy" the "economy" is part of a hitsorical process, and quite frankly we live richly today because your ancestors were bastards to others. People tend to forget that and think they "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps".

I don't know what hole you climbed out of, but the above statement by you is quite possibly the most asinine statement I've heard on this board. I guess the idea of small businesses, you know...the corporations that provide 80-90% of the jobs in this country, started by a lone individual who did work 7 days a week to get his business profitable and thus defrauds your "think they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" phrase. Your misconception on where most corporations come from shows the only cretin here is you.

The thing I find very entertaining about this exchange ... is that both of you are correct. Yes, Hatman is right with regards to a LOT of people and nations. History has shown that time and time again from ages past clear to the present. At the same time, Woodchip is also right with regards to a great many people, especially on the North American continent ... and it is true that a great many of those North Americans took advantage of the intended system at the expense of a great many hard working honest laborers.

It's unfortunate that the view points are so strongly polarized from each other.

Woody, obviously Hatman has knowledge of what took place with the USSR that most North Americans are never taught or exposed to (right or wrong as that may be). Therefore his perspective is going to be much different from yours.

Hatman, You're going to find that a lot of people mistakenly apply the perceived standards and rules they believe of North Americans to the standards and rules of all other nations including those whose economics and markets function very differently from the North American "way" ... (regardless if the North Americans actually adhere to those standards and rules or not).

That's not to say that the North American "way" is any better than any other way (that's up to the individual to decide). They just forget that isn't necessarily the way of everybody else.

OK ... everybody flame me if needed.

Hatman, great post, but...in the absence of utopia or perfect communism all you did was eloquently state the obvious nature of man in competition when the market presents opportunity. Remove the opportunity (money, personal property, choice) and you have what?

You gave us the ultimate cynics view of human nature but didn't point out what specific change you thought the suffering should have produced. Is there a better system that we could adopt and have a reasonable expectation to work?

I'm saying that all the wonderful wealth was not the result of markets or capitalist ideology but part of a larger historical accumulation of knowledge and increases in efficient use of matter and energy, and that our ancestors gained access to these energy and matter sources by way of fraud, war, theft and murder, and these actions of our ancestors set us up to be wealthy long before we were born.

Since humanity doesn't have a choice to where it is born and most humans are subject to historical limits on available opportunities.

To that I say it can be considered accurate...but you leave it out their like an indictment of our best effort as if we have failed. I see it as a point on the time line of our markets and systems evolution. Not nearly as much raping, pillaging and burning and looting going on...now it's lawyers and treaties and global markets seeking equalibrium.
We're both seeing the same thing but you have an almost elitist swagger behind your comments that imply we have missed the boat. I think we're still building the first boat.
Half full half empty....

woodchip wrote:

Hatman wrote:
People don't get rich by hard work, if you look at history people got rich by killing others and taking their property. In fact all nations (and many businesses) owe their existence to stealing land and killing others, in fact the whole of human history is one of war, fraud and outright theft.

This is why I always laugh when people talk about "the economy" the "economy" is part of a hitsorical process, and quite frankly we live richly today because your ancestors were bastards to others. People tend to forget that and think they "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps".

I don't know what hole you climbed out of, but the above statement by you is quite possibly the most asinine statement I've heard on this board. I guess the idea of small businesses, you know...the corporations that provide 80-90% of the jobs in this country, started by a lone individual who did work 7 days a week to get his business profitable and thus defrauds your "think they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" phrase. Your misconception on where most corporations come from shows the only cretin here is you.

Welcome to the DBB

Those who aren't well read in history should refrain from making false accusations.

http://www.killercoke.org/

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... racy&hl=en#

Those who post off the wall links as supportive information should refrain from trying to sound intelligent.

woodchip wrote:Those who post off the wall links as supportive information should refrain from trying to sound intelligent.

fail.