RE: Your political views
December 15, 2010 at 3:10 am
(This post was last modified: December 15, 2010 at 3:21 am by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
(December 15, 2010 at 2:44 am)Micah Wrote: On monopolies - http://mises.org/daily/621An interesting read, if founded on a number of false assumptions, like competition being able to not get quashed by someone who doesn't want competition.
The entire paper seems to be based (if not explicitly) on the same premise that power only corrupts when government is involved. But the kind of bought-and-sold power that being filthy rich gives you? You're a goddamn saint of Capitalism.
(December 15, 2010 at 2:44 am)Micah Wrote: When discussing economics, one must always keep in mind the broken window fallacy. You have to take into consideration what is unseen. This is how it goes - a hooligan throws a brick through a baker's window and runs off. People gather by the broken window and state that it is actually a good thing for the economy because the baker will have to purchase a new window, which will boost the glass maker's business. This helps the economy. This is false because the glass maker's gain is merely the baker's loss. The baker had to spend $100 dollars on the new window and because of that he couldn't spend that money on a new coat he wanted, so the glass maker's gain is only the coat maker's loss. There is no gain in the overall economy. You have to take into consideration these unseen factors.You ever hear of company-owned towns? What about being in debt to that company, allowing them to essentially keep you employed by law in a perpetual debt to them?
If a company doesn't pay its employees fairly, they will just leave to find a better job. The company will either fail because its production will go down significantly because of a lack of workers, or it will increase the amount it pays its employees, so that it remains viable as a company.
And that's just the nice ways that companies can essentially enslave their own employees, leaving things out like physical threats and intimidation in a world where public awareness and law enforcement can be purchased or controlled.
(December 15, 2010 at 2:44 am)Micah Wrote: If a company puts out shitty products people will not buy those products. The company will fail or change their products.Or, they can make you purchase their products because it's a necessary product (like gasoline and pharmaceuticals in the US) or they can control what information you have about their products beforehand or by eliminating their competition.
What's always fun in a world of no government regulation is the game of 'guess what's in tonights dinner' without the courtesy of intervention from the food and drug administration.
Have you heard about the US meat packing Industry in the 1900s? According to your logic, those employees should have just walked out and the meat packing industry should have failed, but thanks to a combination of the book "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, Unionization (which is something the government helped with thanks to other events during the mid-20th century), the Civil Rights Movement, and numerous safety, food standard, and sanitation rules, the entire industry managed to improve.
Also: the steel industry, railroads, car manufacturing, and many more.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan