Political compass test

[theVOID]

Aww that must be it, you think the Government are angels, because why else would you suggest that CEOs are bad for not being so? CEOs are people, the vast majority are ethical and lawful just like any consumer or civil servant, it's the bad few that you let cause your striking conformation bias.

No i believe Ceo can be as corrupt as Govenrmenet officials...

So what if they want to make money for the business? A CEO is judged on their ability to bring about positive growth in any aspect of the business.

Then CEO job is not fulfilling demand, but making positive growth in the corporation

And the only way they can do that is by producing goods or services that are in demand to exchange for money... Do you think there is some other way to grow a business? The size of the company is largely relative to the amount of demand they cater to.

Health is less important than eating, breathing and defecating and as important as security, you can check the whole hierarchy of needs

If security is important enough so is health

You're perilously close to taking that hierarchy as gospel it seems.

Firstly, those acts such as breathing and water are only important if you desire to live, the respect of others is only important for people who desire it. A desire creates a demand for the thing being desired and without such a desire the thing simply is not important to the person in question.

Secondly, the order of events isn't based on a very empirical conclusion, it's an understanding from a largely psychological perspective from limited data in the 1950's, a time that was essentially the infancy of analytic psychology.

Thirdly, just because the average person needs security of health in order to fulfil their desires does not make them justified in taking resources from other people to secure that. They most definitely have the right to be free from being forced into poor health, but to say they have the right to procure their security at the expense of others is entirely different.

We still largely have normative reasons for helping people have secure health, namely in promoting the desire to make or keep others healthy and encouraging them to keep themselves healthy we create an attitude that has the potential to instil it's self in others, indirectly fulfilling our own desire for security of health by making people feel it is of value to them and thereby giving them reasons for action towards this end - This type of approach is not one of rights however, it is one of mutual benefit through shared resources, if it will genuinely benefit the most people to do x (public health) rather that y (private health) then the most people have reason to enforce that standard, it doesn't however necessarily make it the right thing to do nor does it make taking resources from others to achieve this goal justified.

I think there is a good case to be made for private health insurance and charity without the interference of government. We could certainly have some government security for the disabled and those unable to provide for themselves (and not those who simply chose not to), that is a system that could be funded through rather marginal taxes or after-the-fact public donations. It would also limit the cost to others because of people who knowingly harm themselves, such as smokers and overeaters - These people are a tremendous liability to the system and are largely responsible for their own situation.

Ideally we would buy our own health insurance with our income and donations to charities would take care of the brunt of the costs for those without the means. How feasable that is i'm not sure, but it's a situation that if it worked would be far more resource effective than any government controlled spending.

Charity can never truly compensate for that, it's also the reason why america has one of the worst health rates in the industrial world(or something like that)

Have you got any more than an assertion to support that claim?

America has one of the worst health rates because of their obesity problem. As far as private health coverage is concerned they have one of the best systems in terms of quality of care per patient. It is the lack of ability and/or will of some people (unfortunately some who are parents to small children) that cause the problems with the genuinely unable from getting healthcare. Charity could more than cover every child and dependent in the system, especially if you aren't taxing incomes to fund the self-caused health problems.

What has the source of their imports and exports and ratio there of got to do with how capatalist they are? Also, the exports have only increased relative to the demand decreasing in the rest of the world, their competativeness will see their exports increase as other currancies rebuild their purchasing power.

Also, their rate of in-country consumption is rising as their relatively poor average standard of living starts to increase. This national trade is just as valid to be counted as their gross supply as what they export. They've really got no choice either, they're not going to be giving the US more loans to spend on more products for much longer, not with the debt already being 2 Trillion that they've got a very real risk of never recovering. The decline of the US as a monetary leviathan is going to see the standard of living increase in china as the governent releases more assets to consumer spending because less of their supply sector is going off shore, it's a rather ironic development.

Could you rephrase this bit it left me a bit confused

Okay.

Traditionally china have been exporting most of their production, they have been making large surplasses by doing so and this has allowed them to make extremely large loans to other nations who have a rate of consumption higher than their rate of production and therefore a debt problem. China has been giving loans to the US so they can buy more and more products while producing less and less items and services of real value. With the US unable to maintain their current debt levels and the chances of China recovering their loans decreasing rapidly they have began to release more of their production into their own market and at the same time lowering tax rates so the Chinese people have more money to purchase Chinese goods, this decline of the value of the US dollar has lowered the incentive for China to export, which has the knock on effect of more of their resources staying in the country and increasing the standard of living. You perhaps could say that the US (unintentionally?) was inhibiting China's development by taking such a large portion of their production off shore.

You need to be clear here, 'social' policies does not make a nation 'socialist'. New Zealand is not socialist even though we have a decent sized social sector, progressive tax etc.

Also, the point was that China are moving away from socialism, the fact that they still have many social policies does naught to change that.

Ok i should what i say in socialism is in direct contrast with american irrational hate of socialism, it's just that in my country the socialist party is the ruling body and is seen as socialism-capitalism middle ground, while the socialism-capitalism Party is seen entirely as capitalistic(wanted to remove free public education from the constitution)

That's a little backwards

Realistically you're only a majority socialist country if the average tax rates are > 50%. If > 50% of the income is not taxed then you have a majority market system (that is of course unless the rate of other fines and tarrifs isn't making it > 50% of income). A balance of around 50% is considered a socio-capitalist (market socialist )system. This is in contrast to Denmark who have a 70% income tax and are socialists or New Zealand who are 25% average tax and are capitalists (centre right if you want to be specific).

Great, so what is your alternative to a free market that isn't voodoo? Expecting the government to make the best use of limited resources is a laugh.

I have nothing against a free market, however i have everything against a wild market

And what do you suppose the difference is? A free market in the truest sense is a market free from government manipulation - It is still grounded by the rule of law so that any person found to be forceful, fraudulent or coercive is doing wrong and is punishable, but the government does not take action to influence the direction of the economy by allocating resource, redistributing wealth, controlling the money supply, borrowing on behalf of the people etc.

More governemt = more control = more chances for corruption, it's when the governent can use a force to change the market dynamics that they create an opportunity for corrupt businesses to offer financial insentives for favorable conditions - That is exactly what caused the housing bubble.

I don't understand much about the housing bubble could you explain or point to a good source?[/quote]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj8rMwdQf6k

Less legistation =/= less law and order. Any 'absue' is still a crime. You just have to stop making stupid legislations aimed towards government control of the direction of the growth of the country, the government has nowhere near the capabilities needed to determine where the resources are best used, leave that up to the actual existent desires of the people.

Can you point a few examples of that type of legislation

Social security. Rather than require people save over the course of their working lives the government takes their resources for planned spending and to make up for it demands that future taxes will be paid to them upon retirement. The only problem is that Social security spending and investment does not make a profit, it's a pay as you go ponzy scheme where the later you enter into the system the more you are paying for the people who got in first.

It's in practice no different to the Bernie Madoff investment scheme.

2. More Government = More Spending = More taxes = Less Windows for abuse

That makes no sense what so ever, if it were the case the highly socialist countries would be the least corrupt. With communism as the epitomie of socialism it's clearly not the case.

When i said less windows for abuse i meant in the market not in the government in retrospect that wasn't a good argument either

Yeah, you can't separate the two. Government being used by business to create favourable market conditions puts them in a situation where their risks are of less consequence allowing them to make decision, investments and policies that would be too much of a risk in a free market.

3. More regulation =???= Less Productivity (How?) = Higher Ration of consumption of unhealthy products

The more regulation the less oportunities, the higher the cost of compliance, the less efficiently the limited resources are distributed. Regulation is the bane of the supply sector.

Tell me other examples that isn't the drug law you mentioned below[/quote]

I gave you the example of social security above, here's one of the housing market.

During the 90's there was the dotcom bubble, everyone was investing rapidly in the Internet in businesses that were losing money because they thought that as the Internet caught on even companies who had no resources, no income and huge debt would become profitable, this saw all sorts of online-tv, shopping, catering and service businesses receive a massive amount of investment that would a few years latter be completely wiped off the face of the earth as people began to realise that their investments were worthless and hurried to sell them off. The Clinton surplus was caused by this same bubble, the value of the stock market was incredibly high at the end of his presidency and collapsed shortly after Bush took office in the form of the 2001 NASDAQ crash - In order to stop the dollar losing it's value bush did the typical Keynesian thing and introduced a stimulus package - He bailed out lots of the failed companies and investment firms and set about establishing another high-growth area to take up the shortfall of the stock market, in doing so the government set up Fannie may and Freddy mac in an attempt to creating a boom in the housing market - They created subsidies to be paid directly to home buyers and set about guaranteeing all of the loans for the big investment firms by proxy of Fanny and Freddy. Fannie and Freddy had guaranteed loans and as such the risk they faced from investment was incredibly low while the short term gains were incredibly high - they began buying loans from other investment firms at attractive rates with one term payments and put no effort at all into checking the viability of the loan because the government had guaranteed their finances - this lead to brokers going out and getting 'sub-prime' loans from buyers who had no chance at all of repaying the loans long term, they simply didn't care because they could sell the loans straight to Fannie and Freddy.

This caused a boom in the housing market, people went crazy building, buying and renovating properties, as the demand for houses went up the prices went up, this created a staggering rate of home appreciation of 10-12% Per year - This rate of appreciation increased the demand even more and as supply started becoming inadequate the supply sector (tradesement, home-depo style stores) had to follow suit - hundreds of thousands of people invested their time, training, assets and resources into this new booming sector.

When people began to realise that the price of housing was contingent upon these loans that people had no change of paying pack they panicked and sold their houses rapidly just as was the case in the dotcom and nasdaq bubble, leading to the value of houses plummeting, the loans being called in, teaser interest rates being cancelled and the supply sector had no work and shed most of it's value and employees.

This lead to unemployment and debt rising dramatically.

What was Obama's solution? He's done the exact same thing that bush did by bailing out the big institutions, creating a surge in car purchases resulting in more debt, created tons of unproductive jobs in green energy and infrastructure that lead to even more debt because these jobs are unprofitable etc. He's just done it 4 fold bigger than Bush.

Just like last time the economy will recover on the back of a bubble only to burst and delve deeper into recession that ever before.

Simply look at drug laws, regulating weed cuts of trillions of dollars in revenue from ever reaching the public market.

My socialist country pioneered a method to get rid of this, see what happened
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/...46,00.html

I don't have time to read that right now. How did the idea work?

Here's the typical conformation bias again. That is only the case for the vast minority of businesses. All businesses deemed to be foreceful, fraudulent or neglegent should be punished.

But for finding these corrupted businesses we need the government, defending again the "as big as it needs to be" government

Which is still SMALL.

A government that needs only to police force, fraud and coercion is a SMALL government, a Government that subsidises industry and creates economic booms is BIG government.

Oh, and the government is necessary for these ones who would swindle to set up lobbies and create favorable conditions.

Lobbylists are necessary some times, but it doesn't mean they have to corrupt the government to hold power, if i remember correctly in the EU lobbyists are allowed but between themselves they made a list of "bad" lobbylists

Lobbyists are never necessary, they all represent self-interested groups trying to establish favourable conditions. We don't need this structure AT ALL. Let their businesses rise and fall relative to the demand there is for their services and their ability to efficiently and effectively cater to this demand.

Your desire for some angel system is foolish, stick to reality and you might not get so swept up in nonsense.
And your conformation bias is once again stinking up the discussion. Also, The DO care about my demands because if they can't meet them they don't get my money. The sole job of a business is to cater to demand.

Businesses are not individuals, and i don't desire for angelic system, but you treat the free market like it's one

No I don't, I treat it like it's fair and unbiased, unable to be manipulated through legal force by corporations who seek favourable conditions, perks and guarantees that allow them to take unreasonable risks with the resources of their investors.

Where did I say that they were individuals? I never made that claim nor is it in the slightest a factor in my argument.

I'm not saying no government, i'm saying no to big government.

Agreed as long it's caters with the needs of it's citizens

It only really needs to prevent desires from being thwarted by other desires of other people or organisations, it does not need to help us fulfil our desires.

And remember, all needs are relative to desires. A need is the means to an end, you need water because of it's ability to sustain your desire for life. As such there are no clear cut needs that we must ensure, the most we can do is look at which systems are best suited to serve the most demand with the available resources. In terms of basic non-competitive infrastructure it's the government, in most circumstances I believe that it's best left to the people.

Which is small. The govt only need to focus on law and order, making sure that anyone who exherts force, coersion or neglect upon anyone else is accountable for it. Anything else is optional.

Isn't ignoring the citizens health a form of neglect...

I mean neglect in terms of negligence. You could neglect my desire for weed, that wouldn't make it a bad thing for you not to cater to my whims, you wouldn't be negligent relative to some responsibility you have either legally, contractually or morally.

An example would be as follows: If I agreed to provide you with a care to take you across the country and this car has a serious and avoidable mechanical flaw that resulted in your injury I would have been negligent. I was not obligated to provide you with any care, let alone a safe one, until I agreed to the responsibility of providing you with transport.

If you had wanted a dangerous vehicle to perhaps kill yourself I would not be negligent in providing you one relative to my responsibility to the contract, which was in this case to provide you with a dangerous car.

Abuse comes under the category of law and order, not regulation. Regulation involves the government trying to manipulate the market.

So is ponzi schemes under the category of regulation or law and order

Law and order, they are fraudulent and coercive. Government social security is both fraudulent, coercive and forceful upon penalty of imprisonment.

They also stop a lot of mergers that would be beneficial.

Example?

There was one airline merger they blocked last year (the names of the companies escapes me) that would have seen two companies heading for bankruptcy remain viable, this process was blocked because the merger would have given them a larger market foothold but instead it was denied and the companies both collapsed, this lead to an emergent monopoly that they could not avoid because the competition of the two 'hope-to-merge' companies stepped up and secured the whole market.

I will try and find the report later if you like.

Oh yeah like Al Gore and the internet!

Because businesses and individual citizens cannot muster the cash enough for large scale innovation and societal shifts, only governments can

That's bullshit. You think governments caused the industrial revolution? Think again.

Also, for every successful government expenditure there are more that are running a deficit. It's no good to point to some examples where a state-sponsored investment paid off unless you are going to look at the entire spectrum.