I don't think  I responded to the first version of this post;  but..............

                 I am a true conservative:   I like small government,   low taxes,  and a very balanced budget.  Pay off the national debt and reap the rewards of NOT paying interest charges.

                 Whomb thou-ist sleep-ith with is only of thou's buisness an NOT of anyone else's-ith.  A true conservative would NOT think of infringing upon the civil rights nor social aspirations of others. A true conseraitive would NOT  and  COULD NOT  consider race nor religion nor previous conditions of servitude,  before making a judgement

                 A true conservative could NOT sit in Judgement without sanction from the body politic.  Then look out!!!!

I am someone who has been accused of being an extreme libertarian, a communist and a right wing nut job. So I don't know how you should classify me, but here's my take.

I would call it more self regulation. Where people in a particular industry need to pay for their own regulation and security and not burden other people with the cost of their activities. For example, banking and investment, many people never have much of a need to borrow money or play the stock market. Why should these people subsidize through their taxes the people that do? Why can't it be done through private companies that are paid for by the users of these services?

Look at Ebay, they are a private company but they have rules, they can punish abusers or ban them from the site. The government only need get involved when there is criminal activity. But the cost should be paid for by the users. Just like in the airline industry the people that fly should pay for the extra security and not everyone else.

I against private ownership of land and natural resources and rights such as water, fishing and mining rights that give priority to one group over another.

What is true is that what the people on the political left and right really want is to have one group of people be subsidized on a continuous basis by the rest of society. The government has men with guns that can force this on society.

I'm OK with time limited benefits for people in an education or job training program or people that agree not to have more children in exchange for benefits.

But the private company must follow the rules for public fire safety. How is a fire inspector that is part of a government union not a private interest? They are just an individual that goes out and does a job that someone pays them to do. Is there any evidence that the quality of work is worse when privatized or a direct government employee? 

Which is why we need mandatory birth control and immigration restrictions. Overpopulation put a tremendous amount of stress on these services and the environment. If you just guarantee a stress free life without this, the overpopulation will swamp all services pubic or private.

As part of a social contract it makes sense to help them. But socialist don't want this, they want unconditional entitlements. So you end up with more people asking for the freebies and few people willing to subsidize others.

I would say what is limited is natural resources and humans overpopulate until we reach the limit of exploiting them. Because of this overpopulation there will be too much competition for jobs driving down the price of labor. If you implement minimum wage, how are they helping the guy that is willing to work for less but no one will hire him? This also discourages people from developing a job skill society needs, so we have an oversupply in one area while there is an undersupply in fields like nursing, engineering, etc... without minimum wage.

Which is what you do when you shop. You look for the cheapest price for what you want. So aren't you driving down wages with this behavior? Why are the employers the only villains in all this? Aren't they just a middleman between you and the laborer?

And why are they able to pay a low wage? Because someone else will work for the low wage if the worker quits. And if it is so easy for capitalists to make massive profits exploiting cheap labor, why don't other capitalists compete in the same business and drive up the wages? The problem is really overpopulation and allowing the rich to buy up land.

How does a bank keep people from stealing the cash? Through expensive security systems and guards. But if I don't use this bank, why the fuck should I pay for this? Politics is a game to try to get something for nothing.

Are politicians and people that work for government morally superior? Aren't they just looking out for themselves? Why are the teachers, firefighters and police unions all demanding ridiculous pensions if they are "working for the public interest"? It is a big scam that anyone is not exclusively self-interested.

If you think a private company sucks, don't do business with them. The government is a monopoly and you have no choice about doing business with them when they suck.

I think you have to view politics as practiced as just a way for groups to try to get another group to subsidize themselves. Libertarians do the same thing in demanding their property rights be defended by the rest of society instead of paying for these costs themselves. They claim to be for freedom, but when they put up a 'No Trespassing' sign on their land, they restrict my freedom.

The whole political system is just a bunch of hypocrites left, right and libertarian, just give me something for nothing. The only hope is for people to dump these irrational ideas of 'rights' and morality and develop a system of rational social contracts.

I've generally heard that the privatization of a public service usually ends up with the worst of both worlds, generally because the conditions of a private business that motivate the individuals to work hard and do well don't apply to the areas that public services tend to cover.

What's more, I see the "Government is a Monopoly" argument as BS.
The Government is not a private company run on profit.
It is a state organisation that is accountable to the people it governs.
That's significantly different to private companies.

Some of them do refer to themselves as 'libertarian socialists.' The ones on the left seem to be less business freindly; if not outright anti-capitalist. Some of them don't value property rights the same way right wing libertarians do. Others are just small government liberals who take stereotypical liberal stances on issues but don't want bloated clumsy government programs handling problems.

Bush wasn't a conservative. A lot of the Republicans aren't. I refused to vote for McCain since he was a non-conservative Republican. Those big-government Republicans were worse than the Democrats when it came to debt. But now that the Dems are back in charge, they are worse than the Republicans were. They seem to trying to be one-up each other on overspending and borrowing.

The DEA,  ATF and NLRB are good examples of things I would like destroyed and replaced with nothing. There are hundreds of Federal Bureaucracies. Some of them serve legitimate roles. Most exist only to supply their workers with jobs. If we are to reduce the size of the government, going after then hundreds and hundreds of questionable bureaucracies would be the first step.

Guess how many new bureaucracies H.R. 3962 will create? 1? 2? 10? 50? 100? Nope. All those numbers are too low. 111 new bureaucracies will be created by that one bill. It is fucking absurd. We need to take a serious look at our bureaucracies and how much money they are allotted.

The FDA and (for workplace protection) OSHA. Not all bureaucracies are useless money wasters. There are a few that serve a neccessary purpose that I support. I don't want shit in my food or cancer from my job. It sounds like a legitimate government activity to ban contaminated food and unreasonably dangerous workplace conditions.

They should save up before hand or they won't have food while searching for a job and they won't have expensive medical operations. I knew middle aged adults working minimum wage jobs. If they need some expensive operation, society should NOT pay for it. They choose for decades to work the absolute minimum amount that they physically could. They live in government assisted housing. They are not retarded or crippled. They just liked working part time for minimum wage in a movie theater. Spending two years working with those people has made me against healthcare for everyone. I really hope that I never inadvertently end up paying for one of those people to get free healthcare in the same way that I pay for them to get housing assistance.

Look at the US Census. It asks people if they have a tv, car, microwave, washer, etc. Look at the stats for households below the poverty line. They live in great material wealth. I'm not against that. I just don't consider most of them poor. The US poverty line is set too high in my opinion. See the quote at the bottom of this post for some stats on how rich so-called 'poor' households are.

I do part time work as a contractor for an engineering company. It screws me on taxes to do that, since I pay a special 'self employed' tax that a regular employee making as little as I do would not pay. I don't have much left over after paying expenses. Some of the things I own (motorcycle, guns, XBOX) were purchased using money that I built up earlier. I consider those things to be needless toys. They are real fun to have, but I would not consider myself poor to lack them.

I agree with you on the first three statements. I don't agree on the last one.

I don't support the minimum wage. I was talking about US law, not my own opinions. I didn't make that clear. I don't like there being a minimum wage, but it isn't a big enough problem for me to worry over. The libertarian way of viewing this would be no minimum wage and no union protection laws.

I knew a couple that worked minimum wage jobs part time. I visited their government-assisted apartment a few times to hang out with them. They had the best computer I have ever seen in private possesion. They had a DVD player, multiple game systems and an extensive DVD collection. I am certain that they are defined as poor by the government. Their refusal to work more than the bare minimum has given them much more than just the basics. I can only assume that all the money they saved by getting government housing assistance was wasted on all the luxuries I witnessed at their apartment. I am sure that some people on the bottom are lacking the basics. Somehow I have only met people on the bottom that have a lot of luxuries and all the basics. And the US Census says the same thing.

Let's look at what the US Census has to say about so-called "poor' households:

Does that sound poor? Or is our definition of 'poor' skewed? There is real poverty in the US. It is just largely unrelated to how most below the poverty line households are living. I'm not trying to belittle true poverty. I just want us all to realize that a lot of so-called 'poor' people are living very, very well. It seems wrong that these people get government handouts while paying for satellite subscriptions to watch on their TV when they get bored with their DVD collections.

I think that it is worse than that.  Politicians come and go a lot more frequently than CEOs do.  Politicians will rarely induce short term pain for long term stability.  How do you fix a problem of too much debt?  With more debt of course!   So guess who takes care of the long term better?

The value of our money is centrally planed via interest rates.  If you control the price of a dollar, you control the prices (although, a bit crudely).  Central planning and price controls never work in the long run.  But my opinion is that republican vs. democrat is just a waste of time.  We have become a de facto corporatocracy; a reduction in the size of government will help, but choosing between republicans and democrats will only allow for more time for the corporatocracy to gain more influence over what will become the shell of our once functional republic.  True libertarianism is the only viable alternative that I am aware of; it is too bad that libertarians have to fight so many straw men and are largely misunderstood.

Where are the rules about what anyone deserves? Who came up with them? God? Did you deserve to be born? Do you deserve to live to 100? Did Haiti deserve the earthquake? You need to realize this notion of morality is complete BS.

It's supply and demand. Someone else is willing to work for a low wage. Doesn't this person deserve a shot a working? And where does the money come from to pay the living wage. Eloise will tell you how greedy capitalists pigs are so we know it's not coming out of their pockets. The pigs either raise prices or don't hire anyone.

It's an oversupply of unskilled labor and an undersupply of natural resources. Fix the problem with population controls and education that works. Minimum wage just encourages more of the behavior that leads to an oversupply.

You have to start understanding that our problem with supply primarily is generated by a problem with control. We have oligarchs runing every aspect of the society, shaping it to their interest. The third world countries have little to no influence on their own production and most of the disasters are due to this simple fact.

Yes, they deserve a shot at working. They also deserve to have control of their own country, so that they can arrange the work in the interest of their people, NOT in the interest of a corporation.

A corporation should have ZERO say in the policies of a democratic country, yet they control US policy and basically run every country under influence of US. Supply and demand theory is bullshit. The only demand here is the demand of population for control of their land and industry and the only supply is the supply of slavery by the corporations.

You just asked yourself: "Doesn't this person deserve a shot a working?" Those are YOUR words. All the stuff you mention is built into us, no matter what you want to call it. If you want to call it compassion, sense of justice or God's will, no one half educated should care - these things have been a subject of study and philosophy for millenia and are as real as your inability to formulate a valid argument. We use these simple and not so simple concepts to formulate our interests.

You are arguing for corporate interest by invalidating the interests of everyone else. You are attacking the way people argue for their interests - you must see this is as fake an argument as arguments get. You don't have a leg to stand on by questioning the word "deserve". People in Haiti are saying: we want our means of production of cement and food back from the international corporate into our own hands. Corporations say: no way, we want profit. Whatever bullshit argument you may present about how the word "deserve" is not carved in stone, this basic issue is not changed.

Because we allow rich to buy up natural resources. We have uncontrolled population growth and failed education systems. Ergo a monopolization of natural resources an oversupply of unskilled labor and gullible consumers. Minimum wage laws do nothing to correct the undersupply/oversupply, they can only make it worse over time.

I was asking the question because the person believes in the concept of "deserving" something. I just want them to explain the rules for what people deserve and who decides it. It's a BS morality concept. But yes we have been programmed to think this way by our irrational society (as means to control us.)

I agree we are 'built' with a desire to cooperate with others, when it's in our interests. To look for win-win situations. But what society(e.g. moralists and religionist) have done is use this instinct and used it to control us with irrational guilt. I think it's good for everyone to have a safety net for people to help pull themselves out of poverty. But what socialist want is unconditional, unlimited entitlements, like minimum wage. It's they win, I lose.

No I'm arguing for a system where what a corporation does or doesn't do doesn't really affect me or anyone else unless they voluntarily cooperate with them. Isn't a corporation just a group of people that cooperate for their common interest? If you don't like the wages they offer don't work for them. Don't buy their shit if you don't like them. Corporation are only a burden to the rest of society when they monopolize and fail to pay for natural resources they use.

I agree they should give back any natural resources they've taken. But then they take it too far and say we want to steal other people's property without paying them for the work they did. The communist mob can be just as much of a greedy thief as any corporation.

That is just too narrow and obviously untrue. People giving their lives for others are obviously not going for any win-win situation and I will bet you that a very significant part of global population, if not almost everyone, could give you a thing or two they think is worth dieing for.

People use a language to try to explain what is obvious to them. Many of these same people are knee-deep in blood in third world countries trying to mitigate what the system you idly observe and comment on has brought with it. You should get to know some of these "leftists" and "right wing" religious people.

Impossible.

No. A corporation is a concentration op political and financial power. Some of them can rival whole countries and they don't have any "group of people" as their interest. It is a tyranical organisation, modelled on communist and fascist societies: 1 top, everyone else subject to orders, no exceptions, no excuses. Some of the more recent ones openly assassinate people and fight wars in third world countries, and I am not even talking about Blackwater.

What if they put pressure on your local legislators against public interest? What if you have an obligation to deposit in their institutions? What if they station armed ex-military men to "secure" your neighborhood, paid by some third party, unacountable to judicial system? What if they run 70% of intelligence gathering for US government, still with private interest?

Should I just stop buying their shit? Well, I think I have a duty to do more than that.

That is because a communist party acts the same way a corporation does, only much less organised.

Generally I think you are going too far with your isolationist thing. Clearly people don't do everything in their own interest. There are lives we envy, but there are certainly also lives we admire and those are almost per definition led by people who have taken the tougher high road one too many times to stay anonymous.

Perhaps, but a socialist or libertarian is fantasy land as well. It's a fantasy to think that coorporations could be banned and replaced with anything better. What needs to be limited is their power to monopolize.

Certainly can. Can you give an example were an action was not self-serving? I can point to tons of evidence that free will is illusion, thus our free will to be moral is an illusion as well. Many psychological studies that demonstrate behavior is highly altered when others are looking. I just think the more you understand these thing, the more one should realize that morality is just pressure to conform to the goals of the group.

But unfortunately Mother nature doesn't care what anyone thinks is fair. If our societies work doesn't produce enough food for our overpopulated planet people will starve. So it only makes sense to have social contracts between people not so called rights and entitlements that nature doesn't care about.

How can we make food, shelter, healthcare and reproduction rights and then not expect nature to come deny these rights through lack of resources?

And hire fewer workers. The decision to risk money to start a business is based on expected returns. So don't you discourage more companies to shut down or move away and less to get started? So in the long run, how can this benefit? Isn't this what drove manufacturing out of the USA to Mexico and China? This is also what has driven illegal immigration.

But these guys that were "treated like dirt" did so voluntarily, so being unemployed must be even worse for them. How are you helping them by making it harder to find a new job?

What's anyone's qualifications in economics? Do I need a diploma or a Nobel peace prize, otherwise my opinion doesn't count?

I think you should read up on Malthus, Adam Smith, Hume, Garrett Hardin and Thomas Locke to understand where I coming from. I actually shocked that more atheists don't take this position. It's seems this belief in morality rather than rational social contracts is very similar to religion. It makes people feel better to believe that people are 'good', so just like religion people believe in it to get this good feeling even though there is no evidence for it and a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that free will and morality are delusions. So this constant appeal to morality(i.e. what is fair) is just as irrational as appealing to what God would want.

You mean like the heros and the brave soldiers and servants, unlike those selfish cowards? It doesn't happen that often and and the fact that you have so much praise for them just proves it done for social approval.

And nature rewards them for this behavior by making them feel good. This is how her DNA gets passed along.

And sacrificing for the cause makes them feel good. People die for their religion too.

Let me guess, it's not me. This person make you feel good, so sacrificing for them makes you feel good. But not me because I don't make you feel the right way. People die for their cigarette and drug addictions all the time because of how it makes them feel.

The reality of how I'm supposed to think and conform to social pressure? Or the reality of what the evidence really is. Should I choose to make my reality on fact or like they religious on social pressure?

Because communist party members are less selfish and the party and union bosses are more concerned about the workers. Please. Your less selfish than a CEO.

We need to reform the political system so they don't control the politicians with money. But if we get rid of income tax they won't have a pile of money to go after now would they?

So you don't like competing against them. Maybe they don't like competing against you. But that's the world we live in. Is your group of communists going to be any less self interested? Aren't you going to try to monopolize power and the economy as well?

But doing this feels this the right thing to do. I makes you feel good to think about doing this.

One group fight against others groups you're all selfish bastards trying to monopolize money, power and natural resources. How are you morally superior or less power hungry than anyone else?

Getting lung cancer doesn't feel good either, but people light up their cigarettes knowing they might get it. Why? It feels good to light up. It feels go to believe you would sacrifice for another person. It feels good to believe there is an afterlife.

Thanks for proving my point. It's all about the warm feelings of social approval. I supposed to feel like shit now for not believing in the nobility of self-sacrifice.

Then I would be retarded to believe that one.

Agreed. So we need a more direct democracy, especially on how our money is spent. We need to move to a pay for the services you receive instead of an irrational tax system. If you choke off the money for the do nothing politicians, lawyers, corporations, unions and welfare cheats, there goes their authority as well.

But we're not going to get there with this game of moral superiority.

I don't care as long as corporations don't put a gun to my head and force me to buy their products, work for them or monopolize all the earth's resources. But with socialism this is what you get. With socialized healthcare I'd be forced to pay the medical industry for shit I don't want or need. Give me the freedom not to associate with corporations that suck as well as government that sucks.

Dieing can not be about warm feelings of social approval - you die, game over, all potential and current value is over for you. I can also tell you with certainty that my mother's feelings for me have nothing to do with social acceptance. Same with mine for certain other people.

Even supposing that it all is for social acceptance and warm feelings, it is significant that that is the way we are built. I am not talking about nobility, I have now in three posts said the same: it is a fact that we value self-sacrifice and it is a fact that we are cold and calculating and kill people some times - both have significant impact on how reality turns out. It's up to us to promote circumstances where it is hard to be cold and calculating. You could argue that cold calculation is just as imaginary, because it breaks up the minute you go to places where your actions have consequences - because we are built that way, we function that way, that IS our reality.

I wouldn't be so sure.

Never mind moral supperiority, I am interested in promoting one kind of society rather than another. Some systems promote cold calculation, others don't. Complex theory shows clearly that segragation happens on it's own and this fits reality well. People segragate automatically, especially by power level in society. If you want a more direct democracy, we will have to do something about the more powerful grouping up. Government and corporate sector are not separate in the US.

They put guns to other people's heads (literally since Blackwater came to existance), including US citizens. Eventually they will comme to the heads of every man woman and child in the US, including yours. I think we should make this type of stuff impossible and that we should start now rather than when they come to your head - much more effective doing things while not on gun-point.

When I say "primitive", I don't mean it as a put down.
Their ideas are still important.
What I mean is, if you use them exclusively, you miss out on the 200+ years of development that furthered these ideas.

If someone wanted to study economics, these sources might be of historical interest, but surely it's better to learn from an up to date contemporary source?

But when you and others disagree with me about workers rights, it always ends up an appeal to what is fair, what is compassionate, what is unselfish. So it ends up being a debate about morality. Can we assume then that the forces of nature don't care about what anyone thinks is fair? Nature will cause misery for humans if we overpopulate and we don't have technology and infrastructure to overcome these forces. Agreed? Otherwise, I may as well debate theists that think human misery is due to sin.
 

I think you are copping out on an explanation as to why if it is so easy to make massive profits employing below minimum wage workers, why doesn't a competing business get in the market and get in on all the easy money, thereby eliminating any labor oversupplies? You tell me how greedy capitalist all are, but then no explanation as to why capitalist competitors don't enter the market when there is so much easy money to be made. There are barriers to entering the market and we should fix these fix instead of saying the free market doesn't work.

Your agrgument is an appeal to morality and not an appeal to reason.

There tends to be two camps of economics, those that believe in the free market, those that don't. Those that don't make an appeal to morality and then completely ignore the secondary effects of a particular policy, they are OK with helping the poor now even though this help will lead to even more suffering in the future. The libertarian economists claim to be against monopolies and wealth without productivity, but then the policies of private ownership for profit of natural resources will of course lead to this. Neither group wants to touch the issues human overpopulation and an ineffective education system. So I don't really fit into either camp completely.

What should I do? I don't fit into either camp. I have my own ideas and I only partially agree with both sides. Sounds like you think I should just conform to the opinion one so called expert.

Then why is there this constant appeal to morality on this MB? How have we've moved past them? What is the basis by which workers or anyone deserve "fair" payment?

Well sure, there are pleanty of economists that have contributed their own ideas. I metioned Garrett Hardin because I think he pointed out a couple of gaping holes in Smith's idealized theories. Elinor Ostrom has explained what is wrong with privatization and monopolization of natural resouces.

 A whole series of people have followed on and developed more complex theories. But the problem is if you think Smith was more correct than Keynes, it is a difficult thing to measure empirically.

Sure. But there is no way to say anyone is correct. They all have ideas that have their merits. But take Keynes for example, perhaps stimulating the economy does lower unemployment in a recession. But what about the side effects of increased government debt, power, dependence on government and overuse of resources? Perhaps the cure is worse than the disease in the long run.

I think an outline of it would be a good start in historical context. Darwin was a brilliant man just explaining as best he could with the facts available at the time. Just as Newtonian physics is a good start in that science. If you start with something modern, it may be too difficult to understand without years of study.

Of course, that is about as shrude and incorrect summary of Keynes as you get, usually fom the corporate corner of government loving, but public influence hating rich people. An honest conservative would recognise Keynes as a conservative. Amongst his most radical conservative traits was his retributionist view of almost all parts of the judicial practice, including economic, which clearly does not go well with the government-loving narrative today's disaster profiteers try to pin on him.

In truth, people yelling the loudest against government today are it's biggest beneficiaries, namely the corporate few. They are not really opposed to government, just the public influence of the government.

My "summary" was of his economic theories and your followup seems to be about his political views.  I do not see a reply to the subject of my post here.

How many saw the housing bubble in advance of its crash?

I agree with this.  For example:
Adam Smith: 1723-1790
Corporate personhood: Fourteenth Amendment 1868

Corporate personhood is a game changer.  I think that it was a mistake because it allows corporations to be more influential in government than the citizens.  Minority interests that overwhelmingly guide public policy over the long term is one of the roads to civilization collapse, which is in no ones long term interest.

I recommend looking at Austrian Economics instead of Adam Smith in the same way that people should look at the theory of evolution instead of Charles Darwin.

I am not sure what you are aiming at. If you want to tell me that I am wrong in dismissing contemporary economists because many of them DID predict the crash, I partially agree with you. There are literally scores of both professional, politically involved and economists with various other affiliations that have both warned and yelled their lungs out against repealing the Glass Steagall act (back in '99 no less), against the low interest rates all through Clinton and Bush II (Greenspan/Summers/Geitner game of pump the bubble), all of them predicting a disaster not long down the road. Just the speech by Senator Byron Dorgan back in 1999 should remove ANY doubt that this was common knowledge for anyone who didn't have an interest in actually runing the system into a hole. Back when Bush gave the "the economy is strong" speech (2007 I think), for years there was a consensus of underground economists that the derivate/frequent trade world is just a pyramid scheme blown out of all proportions. I remember reading a report (2002-2003 or something) about derivate trade reaching value of 10 times the global industrial value.

If that is your point - you are right, there are many good economists out there and they know what our "economy" is really about. But, as I have already said, they are the underground and they are not allowed to teach proper economics, or even common sense. Even now the main stream story is that "no one could have seen it comming". Even after admitions across the board, after several risk assesment gurus wrote books about their own and the role of the government in purpusful destruction of regulation, the economist who saw this coming in 1990es and before are kept away from positions of power, ignored by the main stream media, or simply denied tenure at anything bigger than a flee circus.

Well, you could just have asked whether I was defending Keynes or attacking someone I assumend had a simplistic conception of the issue. To tell you in no uncertain terms - trying to call Bernanke a Keynsian is like calling Al Capone a Marxist. These guys are doing something, but it's got nothing to do with being "mistaken" about some ideology, just like you wouldn't say Capone had a mistaken belief in organising the proleteriat and just happened to form a mafia family by mistake.

Here's what I share with the crowd who have been shouting since before 1999: it's criminal and reaching much farther than a simple economic crysis, with roots in destroyed economies anywhere IMF decided to plant a seed of "free market miracle". Don't get me wrong, I am not attacking the free market - one can't attack an abstract idea that never has and never will exist in practice on grounds of factual inacuracy. There just isn't and can never be any empirical data on it. This should tell you something about the idea, however - namely that it has a different purpose than to be applied in reality.

Here's what I don't share with Ron Paul: it's not a matter of economic theory, ideology or whatever else you want to call it - there is no place for "admiting that they were wrong" - their actions are intentionally criminal and Ron Paul is not calling a spade for a spade. This would worry me to the extreme, if I was to endorse him for office.

Here's what I think Keynes got right: free market will never be free. We will have to fight for every inch of common sense in economics, because nonsense is good business for elites.

Here's what I think we have to do about it: stop kidding ourselves and start fighting the war we've been served. So it's a class war, so what? Am I going to let Ron Paul-like characters slide in and call it a mistake because some german said x, y and z at some point in history, Bernanke chose to pick him up as a shield and now they will have a stern conversation? That's the question with consequences for the 50k per year dead due to lack of basic healthcare, countries like Haiti being raped for decades and bombs falling in the middle east - those people are sure as shit not seeing any Keynsianism in their neighborhood and neither are the homeless, jobless and/or dead Americans.

You are off target considering this a theoretical question - that is just the newest issue of the muppet show, smoke screen for the college graduates. It's much simpler than that and the average Joe on the street understands it. You have to be thoroughly educated to miss the point.

PS: I just watched the vid you posted with that Peter Schiff guy - pure propaganda. I call these guys 90% right 10% wrong. They attract the target public (in this case somewhat educated folk like yourself) with 90% right factual stuff, straight talk, appealing way of speaking and a slight humoristic bend. The 10% that is left unsaid, or is vowen into the fabric of the talks, is the reason why they are in the spotlight in the first place.

Am I bullshiting you? Well, can you explain to me how he managed to avoid mentioning expenditure for two wars and an overblown Pentagon budget through the last 60 years? Not once did he mention this largest exspense on or off the books, while he mentioned "kitchen restauration" and "borrower speculation" as the main sinner? I can give you a qualified guess - he is a businessman with understanding for power of opinion (stock market is built on opinion after all) and the need to NOT step on the toes of power, if you are angling in for some office somewhere, or simply going for advertisement and exploit of opportunity in muddy water. I personally think he's going for both.

Prime example of 90% right 10% wrong is Lyndon LaRouche, the straight talk express propaganda machine, devoted to gathering all the succeptible intellectuals under his teaching and then effectively nullify their potential dissident effect in politics.

Bottom line: you want to listen to guys like these and follow their advice, you are either a member of the elite or about to be raped. He is useless noise - if you want solutions, we are the one's we've been waiting for.

Who is this question adressed to?

If you ask me, you will not like the answer - there is no such thing as a politic-free introduction to economics.

You need a course in intellectual self-defense first, otherwise you will be forever lost in bullshit. Intellectual self-defense consists of argumentation theory and non-mainstream history (go especially through Argentina, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile in the past century; go through Indonesia up to now; go through Palestina since 1930 to today, remember to check sources, avoid main stream and stick to low level reports - people on the ground).

If this is done properly, you can pick up basically any book, article or newspaper, go back to your sources acquired through intellectual self-defense course, use common sense and check the validity of claims.

In my prior posts, I use "Keynesian economics," not "Keynesian."  Likewise, any time I talked about Keynes, I made sure to state that my statements were in reference to his economic theories.  Stating things like calling "Al Capone a Marxist" seems to tell me that you think that I am talking about Keynes' political views.  I have not once referenced anyone's political views in this thread above.  Bernanke and others are following a classic Keynesian economic recovery move:  Lower interest rates and have the government spend more money via debt.  If you do not think that Bernanke is Keynesian with regard to economic theories, I am fine with that, but his actions regarding our economic situation originate from Keynesian economics.  If you think that I am calling Bernanke a Keynesian from a political aspect, that is off topic from my posts.

I like Hanlon's Razor.  It states "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."  Why do I like that?  Because as humans, we have a natural psychological tendency to think that things happen for a reason and that it has something to do about us.  A bias of sorts.  This is why people love conspiracy theories.  Conspiracy theories often assume that something was done on purpose and it was to harm us.  The reality tends to be that people do stupid things and sometimes they just so happen to involve us.

Here is my perspective on our situation, for over 100 years (probably further back than that if I want to do more research), various independent self interested parties have been slowly changing our government for their benefit.  This has had a cumulative effect that gradually undermines our republic and economy (although the visible effects are sometimes not so gradual).  There is plenty of blame to go around for all of these parties, but I think that various levels of blame could be attributed to everyone.  cj brought up the point of over simplified theories going by various "ism's" (libertarianism, capitalism, socialism, communism, etc.).  The two party system in the US seems to delude some people into thinking that voting democrat or republican will change something about this accumulated corruption, and another group of people recognize that problem but reason that nothing that they can do can will fix it.  I think that some blame needs to be assigned to those groups of people, because it is the duty of every US citizen to try to protect our republic.

Libertarianism, while another such ism, seems to be a better option because it removes many of the powers from government that the special interests have corrupted.  While the free market may seem like a scary alternative to some, people living today have never seen a true free market in the US.  When the US moved to a fiat money system, it allowed interest rates to be planned, and under the fractional reserve system, this means that the price of money has been planned.  This is the equivalent of crudely central planning the price of every good and service in the economy!  This, of course, is most definitely nothing like a free market.  It corrupts the free market.  It distorts economic signals that allow capital to be efficiently allocated and allows good behaviour to be punished and bad behaviour to be rewarded.  Although much of this can be also be attributed to what the government has done with its powers (not just the monitory system), which is why I support removing those powers from the government.

I agree that we should stop kidding ourselves, but this is not a class war.  Saying that a particular class or "ruling elite" is responsible is just too ambiguous and also over simplifies the problem, or worse, prevents us from addressing the real problems at their sources.  Instead of the class or the elite (which implies people), it would be more productive to mention corporations.  While corporations are made up of people, they are treated as artificial persons by the government.  They even behave like artificial persons in that they have a built in motives (profit, stay alive / in business).  They have huge resources, some of which are used to influence the government.  But unlike real persons, they do not experience an eventual death like real persons do.  Thus, their assets and power continue to accumulate beyond many generations of real people.  When most people think of class, they tend not to think of corporations and the problems that they present that are unique to any problems that the rich can present.

I certainly agree with the spirit of "You have to be thoroughly educated to miss the point."  The economics that are taught in almost all colleges these days (based on Keynesian economics) allows educated businessmen and economists to think that they understand the economy when they really understand the economy like a witch doctor understands medicine.

About ZuS's comments about the videos, I have been following Peter Schiff prior to the housing crash.  Are you suggesting that the 10% that is unsaid is wrong?  He has mentioned that the government needs to cut spending many times.  I think that a reasonable person could assume that this includes the Pentagon budget.  Peter has also mentioned that war itself is among the worst forms of economic activities.  Mainly because we produce things and then proceed to blow them up.  He is against the Iraq war, even against using debt for war.  Peter is a large critic of large government, so I am not sure why you think that he is afraid of stepping on the toes of power.  He already has and continues to do so.


ClockCat,

The financial sector repackaged pools of subprime loans into different securities by rated safety.  Essentially, there was a security that got paid the most interest, but if there were defaults, the principal would loose value before any of the following pools.  The second security within this pool got a slightly less interest rate, but could also have its principal wiped out if the pool of loans went bad.  The last and most safe security paid the least interest, but was insured and considered safe.  After all, if the home owners did not pay, the bank would own an asset that always goes up in value!  They are not making any more land after all!    At least, that was the overwhelmingly popular theory at the time.  Even if that failed, the insurance would pick up the tab for the lost principal.  Unfortunately, the economists who judged the risk of this model did not use housing prices for more than 20 years ago or something ridiculously short like that.  So prior history where housing prices have fallen was not taken into account in the risk models.  Thus, people who thought that they had safe securities did not because someone who was trusted to be smart enough to know better did something stupid.

The hedge funds who bought the risky portions of the subprime pool were known to be risky.

The leverage ratios that you mentioned are unwise, but they seriously thought that they had risk under control.  Identifying risk is something that they spent a lot of time on, but obviously, it did not work out for these types of securities.

Here's a quote from C. Munger in his recent article "Basically, It's Over":

"The strong faith of these Basicland economists in the beneficence of hypergambling in both securities and financial derivatives stemmed from their utter rejection of the ideas of the great and long-dead economist who had known the most about hyperspeculation, John Maynard Keynes. Keynes had famously said, 'When the capital development of a country is the byproduct of the operations of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done.'"

Why am I telling you this? - you should ask. I am not telling you to take another look at Keynes' economic theory - I couldn't care less about it in this context. I am rather telling you to adopt a more sceptical view on all of them, because they serve a purpose other than guidance in fiscal policy - a smokescreen of excuses. I don't know ANY classical economist who would say that creating money backed by no real value, destroying the industry and gambling for amounts that the whole world doesn't have is a good idea, yet that's exactly what's going on. We need to focus on reality and political action, not discuss theory - plenty of time for common sence in economics once these people are safely in prison.

If I saw a kid with a black eye, I would say he might have walked into a door. If I saw the same kid with a new black eye same week, I might start doubting my first assumption.

Hanlon's Razor is exactly applicable to the economy here - there are too many indicators pointing to calculated political and clandestine moves to ignore. Destruction of the middle and working class, destruction of South America, Africa, Middle East, the unilateral negative votes in UN on resolutions and general disregard for international law, instantiation of military bases in 100+ countries (remember, this is a conscious effort unlike anything you can imagine - 100+ countries with US military bases sustained for half a century - that alone is indication of HIGHLY focused and efficient activity).

The economy is a part of the puzzle, but you MUST NOT bug yourself down in a discussion about which theory is correct - its exactly this kind of BS that induces blindness to political activity and makes you support this or that 90% right 10% wrong guy.

Ok, I agree with most of this. However, to be complete you must include history of "free market" ventures in the third world and all of the stuff I mentioned above. Add to that the consistency with which corporate media ignores issues & attacks dissidents while you're at it. This puts a different picture on the table, so that we can start putting the puzzle together.

Look, I don't think Libertarianism is bad. I just think that the whole discussion is fucking irelevant. We are not facing people who are 'mistaken' in not following Libertarianism, we are simply facing fascists - no amount of this or that theory will help you here - ONLY popular organising and political action, just like it has always been. How do you think blacks got the right to vote? How do you think US workers got the right to organise? What do you think the rest of the world celebrates the 1st of May? Look it up, it sure as shit isn't Reagan's Law Day - but there's a reason Americans do!

Spot on - *clap clap*

I agree that class war is the wrong word. War against fascism headed by hypocrites might suit the situation better.

Agree with 90 %, disagree with 10% - the theory is irelevant; ANY theory will be wrong, if the institution that educates representatives of the people is restricted for the top and their cronies, since people have no one representing them.

90-10, see how that works? 90% are facts we can agree on, 10% is the wrong direction suggested. If I was a retard, I would repeat after you - down with <insert random insignificant theory here>! This is a very efficient control technique, because you gain my trust all the way through the 90% of 'bold speech'.

Just like I said above, the 10% I have a problem with is not factual content, but the suggested direction. When Schiff says x, y, z about the economy, that is all fine. He can go up to 90% with that and get 0 credit with me - I will listen and learn from him because he obviously is awesome at what he does, but I will watch his intent. It's the last 10% that matter, which is the form, omissions, suggestions of action and affiliation. On all of the above Schiff scores a round 0. Now, I might be wrong on this one guy, but who cares? Following one guy is ALWAYS the wrong thing to do - organise and follow the informed masses - they know their interests and can set policy just fine. Martin Luther King wasn't a leader, just a very eloquent follower.

I think the biggest problem that enabled the meltdown was allowing insurance companies to issue mortgage insurance without assets to back it up. The insurance business originally started out as groups of rich men that would put up their own personal fortune to pay if they lost insurance bets. But now, we let limited liability corporations like AIG issue insurance. The managers and investors make big money when times are good, then incorporation allows them to be shielded from any personal liability when the market is down. The free market can't work if companies can write fraudulent policies and issues policies without the money to pay off in case of disaster. If an insurance company fails, we should go after the personal assets of the investors and managers of these companies.

But before we blame it all on corporations, remember it was the leftists going all the way back to FDR that encouraged people to buy houses beyond their means. They were the big supporters of Fannie and Freddie, low interest rates, tax breaks for home buyers, encouraging lending in poor neighborhoods, etc... So they can hardly say "see the free market failed" because the government has been heavily involved for the last 75 years in getting people mortgages and creating the bubble.