Concerned about the new 900 billion dollar bailout

[Epinephrine]

i am of the belief that yes, accreditation bodies do work - and, like all services, would work best on the free market. competition would increase individual companies' performances, overall effectiveness, and serve the public better.

You're right Jerome.

Cause the free market is soooo good. Excuse me while I forget about every credit rating agency, investment bank and mortgage provider in the last decade. Yeah they did a bang up job self-regulating, rating assets, and accurately pricing things for the betterment of society.

BTW I'm not 100% sure how it works in the USA, but in Canada, the College of Physicians and Surgeons is a completely independent body and has NOTHING to do with the Canadian government.

[Jerome Scuggs]

You're right Jerome.

Cause the free market is soooo good. Excuse me while I forget about every credit rating agency, investment bank and mortgage provider in the last decade. Yeah they did a bang up job self-regulating, rating assets, and accurately pricing things for the betterment of society.

i think the offer still stands from another thread - if you can show me the gaping hole where zero banking regulations existed, then i could see the implication of bankers as the main or only cause of this. the entire modern banking complex is not 'free market', it is a regime created by government, within which banks are "free" (emphasis on quotes) to operate. just like henry ford - "you can have it in any color you like, as long as it's black". bankers are free to make decisions, as long as the decisions are in line with the government policy.

as it stands, government policy is obviously geared towards credit expansion - tim geihtner and those folks believe that credit is the cornerstone of an economy. my argument against that is aquinas-ish in nature - if credit is the cornerstone, then where did the first issued credit come from? they seem to confuse the long-term and short-term, confusing short-term consumption with long-term investment.

in my opinion, credit is only good when the credit represents actual value. if someone saved alot of money, and loans it to someone - that's healthy credit. going even further, credit is assumed to be "pay-backable" - but that's sort of true. production-related credit is far more reliable, because business usually get loans in order to expand - which generally guarantees that the venture will pay back for itself, if not generate a profit. consumer credit is far less general - because consumers often get loans that they then immediately consume. taking out a loan for a big screen does not usually lead to increased profits on behalf of the consumer.

let's put all the past behind us - and look at now, where we obviously do not have a free market in banking anymore. as part of the new rounds of plans, the government is creating thousands of millions of dollars out of thin air (meaning they do not represent actual value, which is bad) and this money will be going to consumers in the form of loans from banks and securitization (meaning the 'investment' is far more likely to be defaulted on, which is bad).

maybe i'm over-reacting, and the problem will never manifest itself... there's still the question of china. traditionally, there's been an unwritten rule - china buys u.s. treasuries, and that money is then spent on buying chinese goods. within the past four months, though, bernanke has doubled the money supply. our dollar is now worth 5% of what it was worth... in 1933. this combined with the 15% drop in china's exports, and i'm thinking they might get pretty pissed. china's rapid industrialization means that they're getting rid of paper money in exchange for raw materials and the tools needed to produce... giving them even more incentive to cease buying treasury notes, which would fuck the u.s. horribly, considering a majority of our states are approaching insolvency (cali and massachusetts already there). sadly, the flood of credit given to us via china was consumer-oriented, and the billions of products the consumers purchased have been consumed... with nothing to show for it, no net profits. no expansion or profit-generation means no savings, and no savings means no "healthy" credit - leaving us still dependent on magical fed credit. so you have a situation, then, where all credit will actually "dry up" (if you look at the stats, the amount of credit never "stopped", it just stopped growing... as fast). the result of this is a depression, which theoretically would last for quite some time, as credit would have to be built in a depression economy.

the end conclusion of my analysis of these stimulus bills is that they will merely quicken the slide into the depression, if not prolong it as well. i find this interesting, since europe was the first to start pumping money and credit, and the latest forecast shows they are sinking faster than the U.S. into the recession.

[Epinephrine]

Well your optimum solution is to 'let the free market fix everything' which basically means, a massive decrease in everyone's standard of living, millions without jobs, healthcare, housing or food, and just let the baby boomers die out so they don't bankrupt our generation. Why do I say this? Well obviously a lot of people have been living way beyond their means for a long time now and overconsuming by using credit instead of real production. So to 'rebalance' the world, people should only have exactly as much as they deserve, which is ideally a lot less than in the past decade where people have been affording homes they can't afford and so on.

That works fine for me I guess, I have a pretty guaranteed job which will always be in demand, sucks for other people though, but in a true free economy those people will ideally retrain and get better jobs, or just die out because they can't get with the times.

Sorta like how evolution works.


Personally I don't think the stimulus is the key to 'fixing' everything, because we absolutely cannot get back to how we were 2 years ago with our current levels of productivity and technology, but it should only be used ideally as a method of 'soft landing' so that millions of people won't become destitute, with the prospect of triggering huge social unrest (which by the way is already happening in poorer countries which do not have strong social safety nets). The purpose of this soft landing should be to get us through until the economy rebalances itself naturally and resources and manpower are once again better assigned. No more having 1/2 the graduating classes of the best universities on the planet supply Wall Street, but actually having those people address other issues in this planet.


This financial crisis was neither purely government engineered as you seem to think it is, nor was it purely motivated by greed, but it is a perfect example of how a system which has run afoul and self perpetuate and become worse and worse until it fails, something we've seen countless times in history in many other scenarios.

By the way, philosophically, there's no such thing as an entirely 'free market' because there will ALWAYS be constraints, whether due to manpower, resource, environmental or just the limitations of the real world. Government constraint may be an artificial layer of constraint, but as long as there is sufficient freedom within that system, markets still operate freely within that system. For instance, there are plenty of government regulations about cars which need to meet certain standards (i.e. have 2 working headlights or speed limited to a certain max speed for instance) where the market works around those regulations with ease and where you think is an 'ideal' version of 'self-regulation'.

The banking system for the last decade was operating freely enough that bankers and a self perpetuating and ultimately stupid system was allowed to get worse and worse for many, many reasons other than purely blaming everything on Bernake and or your hero Greenspan.

[Tone]

If my thread doesnt get merged with this one, please go see it, Make your OWN Economic Stimulus Plan in these tough times

[PaulOakenfold]

[Jerome Scuggs]

before i start... skimming through, i noticed that you defend government oversight... and use the automobile industry as an example. rly?

i think your argument gets kind of circular here, in that over the past few months, you've stated the biggest reason to not abandon the current path is to avoid some sort of economic holocaust. my argument is that the longer and harder the fedgov fights to keep its pipe dreams, the longer and harder the recession will be. so basically, your point will continue to get stronger over time, a self-fulfilling prophecy. the interesting thing here, though, is the impact itself.

i think the problem is one of perspective. you stated that a "free market" solution would "basically" ruin the country. the statement seems to have been made under the assumption that the status quo is not a free market - and that the "free market" would ruin the billions of complexities and government planning that run society. i see this from a different perspective... i see a society, ever-developing thanks to the trillions of daily interactions in the free market - and then i see government, everywhere, constantly meddling in the economy - which necessarily means, meddling with peoples' lives and liberty. what you would call a "free market solution", i would call an "anti-government" solution. the disaster that you blame the "free market" for - your rhetoric implies that it is the free market itself that lowers standards of living, creates joblessness, etc... that seems quite ridiculous, even to a more orthodox economist's eyes. this also makes it seem like the free market is some thinking entity that makes overarching decisions, irregardless of human interaction, above and beyond us. the free market is not such a thing... so how can the free market "do" anything? the free market is merely the aggregate of every choice made by individuals. it is government intervention that is responsible for creating the crisis... by trying to play god. the government can, and routinely does, impose its own will on the free market. the government is above and beyond us.

let me repeat that: the 'free market' is the choices made by individuals. once again, 'free market' does not mean: free to do anything, free to create or consume anything, free to have unlimited everything. in fact, i think i make it pretty clear that we humans are faced with an incredible amount of limitations - and it's these limitations that are the reasons i do not believe government planning works. things like... scarcity, which our government ignores in its belief of unlimited debt/credit/production. the limits of our own minds, which makes it turbo-hard, if not impossible, for men to somehow manage something as beautifully complex as a society. the free market is merely the instant in time where one dude and another dude make a trade, nothing more.

i'll give you an example. quoting, "So to 'rebalance' the world, people should only have exactly as much as they deserve"... how much do YOU deserve? how much... of what? what do you need? what goods? how much money? what should your new eating habits be? your buying habits? reality demands answers, and the best that men can do is use vague words like "fair", "reasonable", and "as much as you deserve". now, beyond you - what about all of those specific needs, for your family members? your neighborhood? your city? your country? or should you just give every individual the same lot and portion, and expect everyone to survive?

how about those college graduates? what should they study? what other jobs? why? what if the cure for cancer was dependent on a massive fund, which is wiped out because you decided that the smart people shouldn't be on wall street?

at this point, even a "social darwinist" system would seem far more desirable in comparison to the... chaos... of government planning.

the current crisis is not the result of the past few years, or the past decade, or even the past century. i've tried to explicate what i mean before, but here's another shot. i believe that there is a hierarchy of problems. you might say the crisis started because of recent deregulation... i say it started because 200 years ago, politicians legitimized the idea of a central bank. every few years a problem would emerge, and politicians would cobble together haphazard legislation. two centuries and 14,000 pages of (federal) legislation (alone, not including individual agencies, states, etc) later, this happens. like i said earlier - i'm only human, and noone will ever write up a concise list of Everything That Caused This. but this presents another problem: how is government going to "solve" or "fix" or even "ease" the crisis, when noone can even agree on WHAT to fix?

[Zerzera]

Nothing changes, Jerome is like a fountainhead keeps on running and running. Feel free to step out of 'our' system, but please leave us alone. The system works for us, we have good lives.

[DoTheFandango]

What he said.

[Epinephrine]

The free market works a bit like evolution. Stuff happens, certain things are favoured in a limited environment for whatever reason. No one can predict it. I've never said that the answer to everything is government controlling everything.

But as a student of biology, and thus necessarily evolution, I can tell you that once in a while all biological systems will go too far to some extreme. For instance there are too many predators, or resources/food sources are used up, or climate changes or whatever. And then during those times, nature will rebalance everything.

Thus via natural selection, a number of predators will die out, so that the correct number of predators for that ecosystem will be in place. That is merely what I meant.

Once in a while, things get really bad and really unbalanced, or there is such a large shock that the entire system is effected. During those times, as has happened many times throughout our planet's history we have something called a mass extinction. The mass extinction is a downward spiral of nature rebalancing itself but going too far, because the cycle is self perpetuating.

This is pretty analogous to our current problem right now in the world. We had a problem where for a myriad of reasons we started consuming way beyond our means, the entire system was out of whack. That system was unsustainable and eventually gave way, and thus we now have a financial crisis, which is now self perpetuating into a confidence crisis. People aren't spending because they aren't sure if they will have a job, and thus companies are making less profit so they fire more people, and people are spending even less because they are even less sure they will have a job. Stuff like this has happened before, most importantly during the Great Depression.

I'm not quite sure what the financial crisis right now is on the level of bad, but it's probably worse than a simple rebalancing but hopefully not as bad as a mass extinction. Either way, if we do nothing we will have a situation where we let this spiral run itself out (thus wiping out a lot of companies, jobs and so on) and due to it's self-perpetuating ability make it even worse than it could be. I'm sure in 100 years people will look back and not care at all what happened. But it could very well be for the next 5-10 years the economy could be really horrible and you could have massive unemployment and massive homelessness and massive hunger. There could be a lot of civil unrest which would affect people who do have jobs, and there would undoubtedly be a lot of ruined lives.

Unless your personal philosophy is so heartless and cold, that you really don't care what happens to all these people, many who got sucked into the spiral and had little to do with it's cause, then something needs to be done.

I don't think anyone serious is advocating that the US turns into a communist country and dictates who gets a loaf of bread as you seem to want me to say. But the purpose of the bailout is to make sure that the impact of the downward spiral is stopped before it gets out of hand, to have a temporary solution for employment, while simultaneously addressing needs that need to be met, and waiting for the world to rebalance on it's own while a soft landing is achieved.

I know all you really want is for the government to dissolve, for anarchy to reign supreme and for whatever happens happens, war of all against all, but hey I don't think anyone else but you actually wants that Jerome. All your arguments go back to this, and thus in the end they are not actually constructive. All of your arguments point to the fact that you'd want nothing better than for government to just go away forever, and that everyone can do whatever they wanted. It's a funny thought because it would actually never, ever, ever work in the real world. The second you take away current systems, new systems would just appear. Certain people would assert power, and a new system would evolve from that. Anarchy can never last for long because humans are naturally social animals and crave some sort of order whether it is familial order, tribal order or whatever, and humans also naturally want more, whether it is more power to control others or whatever. A system will ALWAYS be there, and thus advocating for no system as you endlessly do is pretty pointless.

Anyway I agree with the last 2 posters.

[Jerome Scuggs]

riddle me this: how do you propose to let the economy 'balance itself out' while simultaneously using government policy to prevent said re-balancing? it's a walking contradiction, and those never work themselves out.

regardless, i like your new notion of the economy as a dynamic process which can become "unbalanced". it seems you finally agree with what i said... back in october. of course, back then you were saying that my idea was out of whack with reality - i believe you even said my views were 100% different than anyone else's? glad to see you've joined the boat... i prefer your new ideas over your old ones:

Also I don't see any evidence of the world falling apart in 2008 as you so gloriously claim. The world is doing just fine actually. Sure there is a recession coming up in the USA, but in general the world is doing fine and in Europe where the welfare state is even more powerful they are having less of a problem with their economies than the USA (Canada as well for that matter is also doing better by most measures).

through these past few months, you'd be the first to admit that i have not veered from my position one bit. in fact, it would seem you have been veering towards my position.

back in october, i made this post:

and also remember - creating jobs in of itself doesn't create wealth or raise the standard of living. government employees get paid from taxes, meaning they are getting paid at someone else's expense (the one time where marx's theory of wealth creation/labor are applicable). even the products will be made with materials purchased with money taken from others. in the long-run very little to no actual wealth is created.

i don't even remember why i wrote that... but it hella-applies now, and you're even conceding it. maybe i'll just stop posting, and instead begin copying old stuff that i've written.

(edit: wait, i remember. the post was made in reference to the "oil crisis"... haha, do you guys even remember blaming Big Oil for high gas prices?)

this, too, applies:

Yeah, well, that's what I've been saying: fractional-reserve banking and keynesian fiscal policy will one day fuck everyone over, really hard, harder than any true free market recession ever could.

Don't blame the free market, blame the people who thought the free market could be controlled.

we've touched on this heartless issue before, and it's even funnier now. once again: i'm advocating that people be free to decide things for themselves, and you argue that they are too stupid and must have life shoved at them via law and legislation. legislation which, by nature of its being legislation, is utilitarian. riddle me this: how can you claim to defend the individual when you'd just as easily write them off in favor of... forcing everyone to live sub-par for awhile? that is not compassion, that is stone-cold calculation.

by your own logic, letting humans be responsible - letting humans be human - is "heartless". conversely, reducing human life down to a matter of numbers - "the greater good" - against their own will... that is compassion.

and you know what the most compassionate part about your scheme for fixing everything is? it's the fact that you don't even know if it will work. you're willing to gamble the world on the greatness of your idea. you're willing to gamble it, with no shred of evidence otherwise. you would commit an entire population to obeying some plan that you still have yet to even quantify or qualify.

am i responsible for your life? i'm responsible for my own life. looking at the worst-case scenario, for both of our "solutions", the failure, starvation, death... my ideas hold the moral high-road, as well as hope. if your plan fails, you've just sentenced a population to their death. and they would be helpless to stop it, as your legislation would have to be enforced. my plan... at least sets people free, and leaves them free to do whatever they see fit. start a commune, start a new country, start being responsible... i dunno, there's alot of people with alot of ideas, and that's what we need right now - alot of ideas. we do not need one plan, we do not need to merely obey.

i'm of the belief that people can do good things when you let them be people, and you're of the belief that they are cattle who need to be directed and punished and regulated, at the whim of whatever you think is a good idea... and you haven't even met these people. you do not know any of them. and i say, it is precisely because i do not know what is best for my fellow homo sapiens... it is because i respect their human-ness... that i advocate what i advocate. will you say that is a lie? alright then... what is my ultimate "motive", if not liberty? what, besides freedom and liberty, do i ever consistently defend anywhere and everywhere?

would you call me compassionate if i abandoned everything i believed and hopped on board the government bandwagon? would i be? instead of making it a point to defend human liberty and life wherever and whenever i can, would i be less heartless if i said "fuck people, let the president figure out this shit and tell me what to do"?

your morals are darwinistic. you don't give a damn about life - only survival. your moral ideal is survival. keep the masses alive, keep the population numbers nice and fat. if you must reduce human life to mere machinery in the service of your great machine, so be it.

i do not advocate my "free market" ethics because i want to jerk the livelihood away from millions of people. i do not want to see them suffer. i do not want to see them die. in fact, i believe it would be quite the opposite.

how can you claim to stand by these ideals, when you don't even give it a second thought - you assume that humans, left to themselves, would wipe themselves out. your ideal government is not one of compassion, but of duty, planning, and force.

my hero, nobel laureate f.a. hayek, warned us decades ago of the problems today. he sought to try his best to prevent many of the problems happening today. he did it because he did not want death, or starvation, or war. he did it because he was a compassionate motherfucker. he took pleasure in the peculiar delight of human irrationality, and what sprung from it. he wrote "the road to serfdom" in 1945 - far before any recent crisis. he was warning of a coming authoritarian America, before the seeds had even be sewn. why? he wanted to prevent what has since occurred.

your homeboy? paul krugman, nobel laureate? whereas a normal person might see war as vicious, violent, and horrible... krugman merely refers to world war two as a "public works project". yeah. score one for the "respecting the value of human life" team. hayek, like me, loved to rant... krugman's solution? take whatever the size of the stimulus bill is - and increase it by 50%. woooah, slow down there einstein!

so... to sum up, you want to let the economy "re-balance" by preventing it from re-balancing. you think my ideas are far-fetched yet yours continue to fall into line with mine. you claim a philosophy founded on a deep respect for individuals is 'heartless'. you advocate a virtual game of russian roulette with peoples' lives and call it 'compassionate'. you wish to prevent millions of people from doing the very things needed to save our economy... in the name of "getting things done". did i mention that all of these various opinions and ideas of yours are concerning a situation which a few months ago you didn't even believe was going to be an issue? you called it scare-mongering, while also warning that the "oil crisis" would have terrible consequences if we didn't immediately act.

well, we didn't immediately act. and who is complaining about the price of gas nowadays? sometimes i thank my lucky stars that gas prices plummeted before obama could take more of my life out of my hands. as for my "scare-mongering", it turns out that not only was i correct, but apparently, i wasn't "scare-mongering" enough. i say that these laws will lead to financial ruin and a deep recession, and you say doing nothing will lead to mad-max style road warrior shit.

but hey zerz, who gives a shit, right? you and dtf have good lives, why care about anyone else? or the problems our world faces? life's good, ignore the suffering, nod your head, and speak when spoken to. be complicit to all the problems and pain of the world, accept it and defend it as "necessary". and when dudes like me just snap, and rant... roll your eyes and say "oh, not again". sometimes i do wish humans were as homogenistic and non-unique as your average bureaucrat-planner would have you believe, so i could begin to understand why my compassion towards this subject irritates you. but it's a testament to the validity of my argument (as well as a blessing) that we are nothing alike.

edit: yeah. that last bit was sort of directed at the world-in-general, not you specifically, epi. i just got out of philosophy class, and there's a staunch marxist who just loves to push my buttons. apologies for the... terseness.

[Cops]

but hey zerz, who gives a shit, right? you and dtf have good lives, why care about anyone else? or the problems our world faces? life's good, ignore the suffering, nod your head, and speak when spoken to. be complicit to all the problems and pain of the world, accept it and defend it as "necessary". and when dudes like me just snap, and rant... roll your eyes and say "oh, not again". sometimes i do wish humans were as homogenistic and non-unique as your average bureaucrat-planner would have you believe, so i could begin to understand why my compassion towards this subject irritates you. but it's a testament to the validity of my argument (as well as a blessing) that we are nothing alike.

I remember you dismissing me for caring about those society leaves behind. It's hard to come across so heartless then try to play the role of the humanist. I know I'm full of shit, I think we all are, but what amazes me is that when you hear or read something new, all of a sudden those people who wrote said literature are now your idols. I applaud your desire to learn, but half the time I think you've ingested so many drugs that your theories start to twist and contradict themselves.

It's also interesting to see you lash out at those most likely to give a damn about others. When has DTF or Zerz ever come across as apathetic to you?

Your beliefs are nothing more than a revolving door, and it's getting more than a bit fucking annoying seeing you change every other week. I'm growing and evolving too, but I've never lost my core set of ideals and beliefs. I feel like you lose yourself then re-invent yourself as soon as you find something new to believe in. You can call the rest of us sheep, but you don't seem to know who you are yet.

[Jerome Scuggs]

but what amazes me is that when you hear or read something new, all of a sudden those people who wrote said literature are now your idols.

explain yourself. i want examples. hayek? you oughta read up on some jerome post history and you'll find hayek everywhere, son.

your theories start to twist and contradict themselves.

explain yourself. same as above, examples please. do not hold back. otherwise i'll think of you exactly as i do: buncha rhetoric, no real thought put into it.

It's also interesting to see you lash out at those most likely to give a damn about others. When has DTF or Zerz ever come across as apathetic to you?

uh, the two posts above mine

Your beliefs are nothing more than a revolving door, and it's getting more than a bit fucking annoying seeing you change every other week.

yeah, going from "anarchist" to "anarchist" to "anarchist" to "anarchist" must be a pain. once again, explain yourself. examples. you should really quote the posts where you accuse me of being the most hard-headed, stubborn dude in my defense of market anarchism.

if you're going to call me on something, then do it. if you're trying to defend your wounded sense of pride on an issue you were not even a part of, then do it. especially if you're going to call out the validity of my argumentation.

i waste my time here because epi is actually a fantastic person to argue with. if you're going to troll and annoy me like zerz, then save it.

edit: i'm serious. i will not post again until you have taken all the time you need to prove the various claims you have set forth.

[Cops]

Wounded sense of pride? Are you fucking serious? Once again lash out at someone for saying something, without even exploring the nature of why they said it in the first place.

I've talked to you, slash listened to you for several years. I've had open discussions, private discussions, and you must understand I'm not saying this to hurt you, or get your back up against a wall. I merely wanted you to realize that when you read something new your belief structure changes. It doesn't change in a way that most peoples change.

Do you really want to start dropping posts? I'd rather not turn this into a post war, my words came from the heart, you can either see that or you can't.

Anyways, I think you're right on your way to having this thread turn into a long winded 40 post war with Epinephrine. Good luck.

[Epinephrine]

I've actually been pretty consistent in my line of thinking Jerome. I've always been advocating for smart and efficient decisions which try to do the most good with the least amount of cost. As well, I've always believed that government, especially democratic government has a positive role to play in our lives. This belief is based on my own understanding in history, that in any system, there will always be certain people who will have the power and be in charge. Anarchy can NEVER be a sustainable system, because human nature will never let that happen. Knowing that, I would much rather have a democratic system where leaders change all the time and are at least elected as imperfect as it is, versus any other type of system where there is considerably less choice.

As well, I believe that government if created and run for the people, can at least be the best arbiter of justice for people. Yes it sucks that I can't do absolutely ANYTHING I would like to do at any time, but this limit on my actions placed upon me by government also prevents other people from doing similar things. I mean if I had my way, I'd drive at 100 all the time because it gets me to places faster, but if everyone did that, it would be a disaster, so yes I concede that regulation is necessary for the greater good in that instance, and in a great other number of instances.

I also concede that too much regulation is a bad thing, and thus I have never argued for too much regulation, but I've always been on the side of having just enough regulation so that there is still room for enough individual choice. I also agree with mass regulation because in the end, democratic government represents us, and even in the worst case can be changed by the people. Having systems administered by businesses and corporations which look out for their own interests in the very extreme, will never benefit people because when a system is based purely on money and no ideals of public good or morality that at least democratic government will acknowledge, then corruption will be abundant for sure.

You've somehow painted me as some kind of communist or something, and I've never been as such. Personally, being who I am, I have lots of reason to be very conservative in my thinking compared to a lot of people. This can be summed up with the idea that I come from a very ordinary family, went to public school and studied my ass off to get into medical school. All the money I make is due to my own efforts and foresight in picking a career that will always be in demand. Furthermore, as I work far harder than the average person and currently make 60% of what your starting GM worker makes, I have absolutely no pity for unions nor have I ever supported them. Furthermore considering my family emigrated from Hong Kong so that we could flee communism and move to a free and democratic country also strengthens my case against that type of government.

But regardless, in your view I'm some sort of hard core communist because I realize that the world in reality is never as good as theory shows.

The fact is, I've been talking about a housing bubble and the fact that it was unsustainable for years. You refused to see all this, because at the time you were so enthralled with Alan Greenspan that you could not see the man doing any wrong. Now that he's out of the picture, you convieniantly place all the blame upon Ben Bernake as if Greenspan didn't run the federal reserve and wasn't a huge part of the policies that allowed our current problems to happen in the first place.

Unlike you, I actually do not idolize anyone in this world, and so even Paul Krguman can be wrong. Yes I agree it was a bit insensitive for him to call World War 2 a massive public works project and I wondered when I read that editorial the other day if he was going to get flak for that. See, because I don't idolize people, I can easily admit when they are wrong. At the same time, if they say smart things I can agree with, then I will agree with them.



You ask me how can the economy rebalanace if there is government intervention. Well the intervention that I agree most with is the part where things which have always been in the public realm (i.e. public infrastructure) will have money to be fixed. I agree with giving individual states money to run their governments as states aren't allowed to be in debt. There was a nice article the other day that said due to dropping tax revenues, 500,000 teachers could be laid off unless this money came. Would laying off all those people really help 'rebalance' the economy when the majority of the country believes in the public school system and wants to keep it? Having money to keep these people in jobs, to keep things running is essential or else we will reach a downward spiral with unforseen consequences.

The stimulus is just that. I don't agree with massively expanding programs forever, and in fact if you'll note in Canada we've actually been a heck of a lot more 'conservative' than Americans have in our stimulus packages, and no one but the NDP here (our left wing guys) really think that there should be massive, massive increases in programs.


Now I know you are against all of this. You think the central bank is a horrible idea because you think prices in 1800 should be the same as prices in 2009 (I don't necessary agree with you on this point, but that's another argument). You think this stimulus is a horrible idea.

Unfortunately, everytime I've ever actually asked you for an actual plan on your part you don't actually say anything. You dodge my questions, because you know that to implement your agenda, the entire world would be thrown into chaos. Either that, or you actually have no idea how your ideas would work in the real world beyond some theoretical ideas of 'well everything would be better'. I just don't buy it, and I have never bought it.

And by the way, Cops is right. You've actually completely changed your views quite a few times already since we've started arguing. It seems like everytime you find a new book or a new person you're reading about, your ideas suddenly align with that person and those ideas are absolute. Sure your basic belief in anarchy remains the same, but the specifics keep moving about. Since we both know anarchy would never actually work as a policy there's no point debating that. But if your other ideals keep changing around, especially everytime they have been successfully argued against, then it really is very exasperating to contionously argue different points of view.

your morals are darwinistic. you don't give a damn about life - only survival. your moral ideal is survival. keep the masses alive, keep the population numbers nice and fat. if you must reduce human life to mere machinery in the service of your great machine, so be it.

I'm not sure you know what Charles Darwin actually talked about when he talked about natural selection. I'm going to go with a no on that one, because most people who aren't biologists get it wrong. But my moral views are far from Darwinistic because I actually believe that it isn't everyone out there for themselves, and that in many cases artificial constraints are necessary for the greater good. A view of anarchy and pure capitalism would be far more Darwinistic (or Hobbesonian if you prefer).

P.S. As a general debating rule, it's best not to continuously bombard the other guy you're debating with, with random name dropping all the time. I've never heard of hayek, nor am I some economist or specialist in this topic. It would be like me arguing medicine with you, and I start quoting some studies in various medical journals that you've never heard of to support my point. If you're to name drop, you need to at least explain what parts of this person's theory you're using, explain why it's important to the current debate, and show how it further supports your argument. And no, having random links doesn't help either.

These are just general debating tips, because I note that you love to name drop and link quite often.

[Epinephrine]

Anyways, I think you're right on your way to having this thread turn into a long winded 40 post war with Epinephrine. Good luck.

Hehehe, sometimes arguing with Jerome is a good way for me to take a study break. Studying is so boring.