You are arguing that no regulation is necessary because industrialists will behave ethically. So how do you explain The Great Recession (2007-2009)?
The Fed is an integral part of the nation's banking system. But the rest is all nonsense. It seems you are arguing everyone gets to make their own rules, determine the rules they want to accept and reject those they don't. That is not how a democoracy works. In fact that is not how any government works. They all act to enforce their laws. We alread tried the monetary model you are advocating and it didn't work. It was the reason the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation - our nation's first governing document.
Gold is valuable now, but all I'm saying is there is no guarantee it will retain it's value in the event of widespread economic collapse. Money isn't real, it's something we all conspire to agree has value for the sake of convenience.
Its not. We need a system of wealth. This is how much we have because this is how much our community built. You get exactly what you put in. However, we are all specified pieces of a well built highly efficient machine of wealth. We all have our job. This guy makes pigs, this guy is a teacher, and these guys are the workers of the Standards Office who keep everyone up to par, and they themselves, hopefully, to hold high wealth, and so no one cheats the rest of the community. It comes down to what we do need, and what we do not need. We do need cooks, and managers. We do not need CEO's, and corporations. Paying men to do paper work for a free enterprise is a waist of possible man power. Its much simpler to condense all corporations into one overall work force managed for love, and efficiency. How many can a man do in a hour? Obviously, you won't work tirelessly to feed everyone else who works to your common standard. So we build up as much as we can, but no less than this, or people are not putting in. Then you have the market, where everything is bought and sold. Say your a painter, and a pig farmer wants your work. In that case the artist would go get an official appraisal with the farmer. There is no money system. The farmer only has his pigs. The artist doesn't want 1,000 pigs. He gets this converted to a wealth voucher which is covered by the Kingship who absorbs the 1,000 pigs for distribution. This wealth voucher will be covered by Kingship goods.
What we need is a system that remains competitive. Once people achieve power and wealth the lesser skilled tend to insulate themselves from competition using government and other means. We do need CEOs. To do the job well, it is a tough job. I know these guys and they are always on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They do much more than push paper. A good CEO is worth is well worth his/her pay. The problem occurs when you have bad CEO's who are virtually unaccountable to anyone.
CEO's? The guys who get paid millions upon billions convene with their VP's and bullshit derp derp derp. Give me reason, sir! The CEO of target is in charge of TARGET. TARGET DERP. DERP. DERP.
Well contrary to your notions, CEOs are managers; they are leaders; they set the direction and provide the resources. Worker bees cannot work if they don’t have direction, if they don't have training, if they don't have resources. It is the CEO that provides all of that and more. Good CEOs are vital and worth their weight in gold. Not all CEOs are good as I previously mentioned. Some are overpaid. Some do not deserve to be CEO much less their overly generous compensation. Those are the ones who like to lock themselves in and protect themselves from competition. If you think running a business is easy, I suggest you start your own. Try it and see how you like it. Just because there are some bad apples in the bin, it does not mean that all apples everywhere are bad. What is needed in the corporate world is more independent boards and stronger minority shareholder rights in order to prevent bad CEOs from feathering their nests at the expense of shareholders, consumers and the taxpayer.
Ah, no. First of all, in a moral society people must act within ethics or they break the law. I'm not arguing for no rules (although no rulers would be nice Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! With mulitple currencies we'd know the price of money. This, as you know, would REDUCE uncertainty and make the markets MORE stable. As it is, we go through artificial boom-bust cycles created by the Fed that has been robbing the middle class blind. In a multicurrency world, the Fed can still print money, but they'll have to compete, just like anyone else. AND no income tax to prop it up. As it stands the Fed could raise interest rates OR lower OR nothing. They could do more QE or no QE. No one can know. THIS creates uncertainty AND it's immoral. Speaking of Industrialists, Steve Jobs NEVER once allowed Apple to donate to a charity. It was against his person belief. Now that he's dead, they do. So, was Steve Job's immoral? Did he break a rule of ethics? Did he HELP make society more prosperous or less prosperous?
Ah, no. I'm arguing that the use of multiple currencies (which would have contractual agreements) be put in use. At first, side by side with the current system. It's happening anyway. Frequent flyer miles are a form of currency. Zenga is a form of currency. If they had Income Tax to back them, the USD would go to zero and people would switch. So, obviously we have to get rid of that nonsense.
Well, gold IS money. Fiat is currency. Actually USD are issued with debt. Gold OTOH has to be dug out of the ground, which gives it an intrinsic value. It's also limited, this increases the value. If you could wave a wand and make gold appear, then it'd have no value. What gives it value and makes it money is the fact that you can't do that. USD on the other hand can be made like that. So? What gives them their value? One of the things is our military, another is oil (which go together like hand in glove). Another is Income Tax. That said, YOU have NO say in the value of USD. That's up to a few private bankers who sit on the board of the Federal Reserve. When you see gold going up in value, it's NOT going up in value. The USD is going DOWN in value do to the decisions of these men. People accept inflation as if it's natural. It's not natural. If we are becoming MORE productive we should see DEFLATION. Ben Bernanke stated he wants to see 2% inflation a year. That's stealing and it runs counter to the feds own charter which is to creates a stable money supply. A 98% loss in value is NOT stable. Hence now both parents work, soon their kids will too. MOST of that loss came when we decoupled from the gold standard. Why do you suppose that is?
No it isn't. If you think it is, go ahead and try to pay your water bill in gold and let us know how far you get. There is no such thing as "intrinsic value," in any economic sense. No, the only thing that gives anything (financial) value is the ability to trade it for other things you want. The willingness of people generally to exchange things that others want for dollars. Same thing as gives anything value. Another is our economy itself, and the stability of our political system. There are no countries with bigger economies, nor more established, stable political systems. Sure you do, although it's necessarily pretty small (big country and all that). The people who make the decisions about monetary policy are appointed by elected officials. We get to elect those officials, and if we don't like their appointments, or the corresponding monetary policy, we can fire them and elect someone more to our liking. We can also have our elected officials change the powers of the Federal Reserve, or abolish it entirely, at any time. It is emphatically not the case that some cadre of private individuals dictates our monetary policy with no oversight or accountability. It is obvious that you haven't even read the introductory material on the Federal Reserve to be found on its Wikipedia page. Which would take you all of 2 minutes. Despite this total ignorance, you seem to feel qualified to spend hour upon hour expounding upon monetary policy - an issue you manifestly know nothing about - here. You should stop doing that, and instead behave more seriously. Again, you make a typical amateur mistake, common amongst people with zero understanding of how money works, what value means, etc. To wit: you are arguing in a circle. The value of an asset (be it dollars, gold, or whatever) is measured by nothing more or less than what you can exchange for it. Part of the rise of the (dollar) price in gold is inflation, but very little - inflation has been at historical lows during the gold explosion. Most of it is real - an ounce of gold today will buy you a lot more things than it would have 10 years ago. That is driven by speculation and gold-bugs, and it is a real increase in value, not an accounting artifact of a declining dollar. If you think that inflation has matched the rise in the price of gold in recent years, then you are simply, egregiously wrong, to the point of calling your competence at basic economic concepts into severe question. No, people accept a certain level of inflation as a price for other factors that they want (low unemployment and growth, specifically). That doesn't follow, and the premise begs the question to begin with. That's a historically rather low rate, note. That is a bullshit assertion that you have repeatedly failed to meaningfully support, despite multiple direct challenges. As such, I demand that you drop this line of assertion. Obviously you are not familiar with the Fed's charter (this has already been amply established, in fact). The Fed is tasked with balancing inflation, unemployment and growth. A zero-inflation policy would produce insufficient employment and growth. Especially in a recession, or the aftermath of a financial crisis. All of the adults in the country are on the same page with this stuff, so if you want to spend all day talking about it you should get up to speed. If you want to remain ignorant, then you should stop polluting this forum with your childish nonsense.
Wrong, sir. CEO's are your head manager. Why have 100 managers to manage the 100 managers of the 100 stores? Why just one manager to manage everyone? How is paying millions of people millions of dollars to congregate over Pepsi? I understand the idea of standard. Tell me what the CEO of corporation A knows that I, employee corporation A do not know, other than company knowledge. And if there were no company there is no need for company knowledge. YOUR MISSING THE POINT. Still haven't seen the light.
Who many CEOs do you know? How do you know what CEOs do? Where is the text that supports your position? Ok, is there a point? Have you ever managed anything? It is obvious you have never managed a store much less anything else; otherwise you would know the answer to your question. Things don’t happen magically. Teams require coordination, resources and leadership. Good results don’t happen in a vacuum. Corporations require individuals with diverse talents. You need someone to manage all the various groups within the corporation. Tell me what the employee of corporation “A” knows about engineering? Does that employee know about accounting too? Does he/she know about marketing? Does he/she know about law? Does he/she know about finance? Does that same employee know about human resources? Does that same person know about taxes? Who coordinates and directs the work of all those individuals? It is the CEO.
OK right now the interest rate is at zip. Is that good or bad? Are you saying you want high interest rates? The Free-Market rate is the 23-1/2% (or whatever it is) for unpaid credit card charges. I don't get it. The rate set by the Fed is their rate, and it's always the lowest rate out there. They adjust their rate downward to offset inflation and upward to offset deflation. So whatever they're doing is for the good of all - to help the economy. Where's the issue? I'm not sure what you mean. These people are applying proven methods to stem the crash that we're narrowly avoiding. So far it has worked. Are you sayiing you want the Fed to do nothing to let us crash? If so, why? The bailouts were necessary to prevent a crash. You may feel like individual banks should have been allowed to crash, but the crash of the economy is the worst possible disaster imaginable. It wouldn't matter what the government paid to the insured depositors then because in a general depression the dollar itself would likely crash. All of your complaints that you have today would seem frivolous because you would be subject to shortages of vital goods and services - food, utilities - everything. The whole country would shut down. No one could afford to buy anything from anyone else and business as we know it would collapse. All the real estate would become worthless. Etc. You want all of that to happen just because some rich people may have benefitted from the bailouts? I don't get it. I'm not sure what you think is lacking when you say "free market in money". You mean unregulated? Let the corporations do as they please to establish prices, quality and safety? What difference does income tax make? Considering what it buys, why eliminate it? And then, what are you going to rely on to replace what it buys? Some of the significant policy changes that were under the banner that Obama advocated were thwarted by Republicans. Who is controlling people's personal money supply? If I want to protect my money I can take measures to do so and no one can stop me, so where's the issue here? what does that mean? you mean with the Fed stepping in to prevent a crash? as opposed to what? What's wrong with the currency, when did it go wrong? What's the problem with printing currency? What's not fair? What should the government compete with? How does QE affect the value of savings accounts? Do you understand what will happen if QE is not used when it is needed? It's one thing to appeal to authority and entirely another to rely on sound policy decisions by experts who are professional economists and who are able to show progress in the war to keep the economy afloat. By "by surprise" you mean the Fed was not aware that Lehmann Brothers was doomed to crash from its subprime lending through BNC? I would have a hard time condensing the complexity of that scenario into a transcript from a meeting. You disparage the Fed a lot but I don't understand why. You know the subprime lenders were at fault. I still don't understand the animosity aimed at the people who are addressing the problem and battling it with the proven tools that continue to work and produce beneficial results. I don't think most people know who he is. One thing he's not is an idiot. But why the complaints against the Fed? It deals with economics, a specialized field of study. To even understand what they are doing requires a background in that field. Would you blame a trained mechanic for replacing a faulty brake cylinder, or the sugeon that removes a tumor? What's different about the economists that makes them inherently wrong, and subject to criticism not normally brought against a mechanic or doctor? I have no idea what you mean. Do you understand why the Fed expands or reduces the money supply in the first place? It's for a reason. Why do you fault them for acting according to a reason to fix a looming problem? I think a better analogy would be antibiotics to cure an infection. Intervention was necessary and it worked. You seem to be in favor of a general crash - a depression - but I don't understand why. Economists believe that it's immoral to allow a crash - which will kill people - when they have measures available to avoid it. Averting a depression is protecting the country from ruin. I don't understand why you don't think so. You mean some rich people profited from rescues that were done? In this case a 1929 scenario has been averted. We learned from history not to repeat it. You seem to want to repeat it. I see bias in the assumptions that the Fed is doing something wrong. I think that some folks are led around by the nose believing pundits like Rush Limbaugh, FOX, etc., who are always railing away at the Fed (and Obama) in order to stir people up, in some of the worst most unfairly biased reports that shift the blame away from the subprime lenders who started this mess, and instead blaming the medics who are trying to revive the patient before his children end up on the streets (like in '29). I think oversimplification, misunderstanding and cynical blame of the wrong people is what's happening. Anyone who feels led around by the nose is free to learn economics. That would seem to be the key to freeing oneself from being led around by the nose.
I think it's bad. Imagine how retiree's are bing punished for a lifetime of work, watching their small saving being sucked away by no interest on their meger savings AND Benny Boy's stated AIM of a 2% destruction in their purchasing power. BUT, it's doesn't matter what you, me or Ben thinks. It should be left up to the free-market. AND free markets always put interest rates above inflation... obviously. I disagree and concidering we're it's nearing half a DECADE and we're going to see more QE (maybe under a different name) I'd suggest these imbeciles don't know what they're doing. It'd be like asking a Shaman to treat your cancer and he's dancing around "doing all the proven methods" but sicker you get. THEN by chance you recover (unlikely) and he takes the credit OR you die and he says he wasn't given enough spices and the leaves weren't the right color green or some other bullshit. Expect to hear Shamenology speak in the coming years. We NEEDED the crash. At least parts of it. Yes, we live in a shitty Fed system, so the Fed should have back-stopped people's personal saving deposits and the government should have taken over all of the banks (sending the CEOs and minions to poor street). We'd be coming out of it right now. Iceland told the bankers to go F themselves. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Surely WE could do better than Iceland?!?! See, they took their medicine. We OTOH took a hit of Crack - yeah, it feels good now (actually, not that good... wait for tomorrow then you'll feel real pain). We are forced to accept USD. You can NOT legally NOT accept USD as payment. It started going wrong in 1913. I don't have a problem with printing it, IF it's subject to a free-market. When the Fed's STATED GOALS is to have inflation and destroy the value of money by 2% per year... how do you think that makes retirees feel? 5 years later and they've lost 10 of their total savings purchasing power. AND I'm sure it's over 2% for the items retiree's buy. Another 5 years will have wiped out 20% or much more of their saving... that's when you'll see more retiree's eating the cheapest cat food available along with pink sludge. As is the case right now. You mean the Depression the fed caused and then the fiasco the Government + Fed caused America to live through for 15 years? THAT Depression??? We're only just getting started.
Ok so rules are ok and it is not immoral to force people to do things they don't want to do? How do you reconcile that with Libertarianism? How do you reconcile that with your previous statements on immorality? Who determines which rules are ok and which are not? Currencies are traded every day. The US dollar is traded every day on markets accross the world. So we have multiple currencies. What you want is for the US government and anyone else be forced to accept whatever currency you want to use at any given time. That would be inefficient and drive up prices as vendors would also have to bear the currency risk of whatever currency you want to use on a given day. Do I care? I don't know what Jobs did or did not do with respect to charity. But is it important? I think not. As a Libertarian I think you should be able to appreciate that notion. If Jobs gave money in secret, so much the bettter. I don't like people who donate out of narcissism. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/the-mystery-of-steve-jobss-public-giving/
He doesn't. That's why he goes round and round in circles, making endless strings of mutually inconsistent assertions. It's a hash. This is typical of youthful libertarians. Michael does, obviously. Any law that he doesn't want to follow is a flagrantly immoral transgression against basic human rights and decency, and any law that he supports is a democratically legitimate rule that can be morally enforced to protect the rights and dignity of everyone. This is the whole appeal of libertarianism: you get a ready-made framework that allows you to pound the table about "logic!" and "morality!" while conforming exactly to whatever it is that you personally want to assert at any particular moment. Some people get off on the rush of this faux moral authority, and subsequently climb so far up their own asses that they can never find their way back out. Yeah, this whole "competing currencies" thing is equal parts inane (in that we already have such, if not exactly at the particular scale he wants to focus on exclusively) and silly (in that it's an obviously bad idea, to the extent that it differs from what already exists). This is characteristic of these kinds of exercises in Libertarian ideology. At least it's kind of amusing, in a pathetic sort of way.
the US goverment must go in further debt to help out the state goverments who are lying off goverment employees as well as , putting money into the infra-structure of the whole of the whole of the US and increase the tax on the wealthy it seems kind of obvious
you see , in Ontario Canada , in a small town I have this construction going on , I have one bridge rebuilt , one bridge that is being rebuilt , and one that is being refurbished ( just outside my door , literally , and that gets supplies from the local lumber yard ) and thats in less than a 10 sq, kilometer of where I live need I say more
Ethics. Ethics, the study of morality, determines which Laws are moral and only moral laws are OK. As in the example of the island, we saw a woman wash ashore. The 5 men votes to make rape legal. While it could be legal, it couldn't be moral. In a moral society you couldn't pass such a law. Initiation of force against an innocent person is immoral. You are misconstruing what is meant by "force". For example, if I own a tea-pot business, you can not come in and steal from me. That's immoral. Stealing is therefor against the Law. However, I'm not "forcing" you NOT to steal from me. I'm not initiation force against you. IF you do steal from me, then I have the right to protect my property. I can use force to defend myself. Another example could be my kidney. It's MY kidney. My body is my property. If I pass a Law that says you can't take my kidney. I'm not using force against you. I'm not forcing you to not take my kidney. If you try to take my kidney, then I can defend myself by using force. My body, like my tea-pot, is my property. That last statement: Does everyone agree with it? Is MY body my property? If so, what is the difference between my body and my tea-pot in regards to ownership? What is the difference between my tea-pot and my USD in terms of ownership? We accept that the US government can force us to give up our USD (income tax). I maintain this is immoral. I am 100% sure that if the government was taking people's kidney's, you'd agree it is immoral. It's only that USD is so abstract, that we do a mental backflip and allow it to happen. But, it's still using force to take from you. That is stealing. Stealing is immoral. This is why there was NO income tax in the US Constitution and we had to amend it. The Founders understood stealing more as I am describing it than as we think of it today (or at least the good ones did Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! No one is forcing you to conduct a trade. IOWs, you might want a Japanese tea pot. If that person uses Yen, then you're obliged to give them Yen if that's what they want in exchange for THEIR tea pot. No one is forcing YOU to buy the tea pot. It's this other person's tea pot they have a right to keep it, trade it, break it, give it away. It's there's. So, when you say "you're forcing me to use X currency" that's not using the word 'Force' in the same manner. You don't have a right to the tea pot. You have to trade for it. The owner has a right to ask for it what he/she would like. You don't have to conduct the trade. In a free-market, if the person making the tea-pot is asking for an unreasonable trade to occur (maybe they want sex for the tea pot). You simply don't conduct the trade and as there will be other's who'll trade with you for a similar tea-pot you can negotiate a better deal with them. So, just because I were to make my own currency, doesn't mean people have to accept that currency. You make it sound like the system won't work because people are being forced to use a different currency. No they aren't because the buyer isn't forced into conducting the trade. They do so voluntarily. Perhaps you say I'm only willing to trade in USD and not Yen. Well, that's your right. Suppose you had a tea-pot. You wanted to trade it for USD. But someone came along and said, I'll give you 10 ounces of gold. Then you think to yourself: Do I want to conduct this trade? You think, well, this is a nice tea-pot, handed down generations, but that is a lot of gold. I'll accept/decline to make this trade. Suppose the person said I'll give you 10,000 bitcoins. You think, WTF is a bitcoin? You decline the trade. The person leaves his contact information if you should voluntarily want to make the trade. You do some research or you contact your online monetary service company you have a contract with (which could all be done in real time on an iPhone) and you say, hmmmm seems like this person is giving me a lot of these bitcoins for this dusty old tea-pot. Yes, I'll make the trade. OR you tell the person, I'm only willing to trade in USD. Exchange your bitcoins into USD then I'll trade. The person does this in real time and makes the trade. Or the person says nope and leave. See the difference? These are all voluntary trades. As it stands now, you MUST accept USD as payment. That's the Law in the US. See, there's nothing to get THAT worried about. I'm not even sure why you guys are arguing over this other than you're worried about change. No harm is going to come to anyone as all of these actions are voluntarily performed.
