Political compass test

[theVOID]

If the market was truly free there would have been no gamblers with safety nets, no quick profits, no cheap and easy money, no deposit free housing, no housing bubble, no stupid risk taking, no sub prime loans and no stimulus package to keep good on the governments promise.

Oh please. This libertarian dream land you speak of is just as dangerous as its opposite.
Just replace government dictator with "CEO" and you get the same damn thing.

False analogy.

All CEOs produce supply, supply is contingent upon demand. The consumer holds the demand. It's the ultimate balanced system of checks and balances. Unlike a government dictators there is nothing stopping a new (or a thousand) CEO('s) from stepping up and catering to the demand.

Introduce a system where someone can send their police force in and tell you where to distribute your supply and what you can and can not demand and what healthcare you have to buy and how much of your income you have to give away upon punishment of imprisonment to pay welfare to junkies and other lazy scumbags and you get a corrupt system - Now the CEO has the ability to buy-off the government and bypass the checks and balances of supply and demand.

To be fair, that's because Americans elect people who promise free money. Republicans cut taxes and spend. Democrats do whatever hte republicans tell them to because they're too damn spineless to do have their own ideas. When they do, they're just inefficient.

Great, that's why you need someone who spends less than they gather in tax revenue to develop a surplus to maintain all of the things deemed important and maintain a fixed supply of money so in a few generations everything you saved isn't worth 1/4 of what it should have been thereby creating the need for the ponzy-scheme called social security.

Oh, and the Dems would have borrowed and spent all by themselves.

China is a socialist nation with total government control over their economy.

Wake up, it's not the 1970s no more. Hong Kong and Beijing are amongst the most capitalist cities in the world. China have been heading rapidly towards capitalist totalitarianism since the 1970s and they show absolutely no sign of slowing down.

Income Tax Rates in China

* The tax on an individual's income is progressive. As at 2010, an individual's income is taxed progressively at 5% - 45%.
* The 2010 corporate tax rate for domestic and foreign companies is 25%.
* Small companies pay 20% corporate tax in certain cases. Qualified new hi-tec companies pay 15% corporate tax.

Yeah that's really socialist.... Keep dreaming mate.

Were it not for their lack of social liberty it wouldn't be a half bad place to live, give it 20 years and it'll probably be pretty decent in terms of social and economic liberty.

Government would be 10x better if it weren't so damn corrupt - thanks to those with money and power buying politicians who are elected on fantastic fantasy voodoo economics where republicans think cutting taxes and deregulations mean more freedom and more money and democrats are too spineless to have their own ideas.

No, they're just BOTH keynseians. That's the only fantasy voodoo economics here.

The more power the government has in terms of regulations the more opportunities there are for them to be corrupted and for that corruption to have impact.

And like fuck the republicans deregulate. They aren't as bad as the dems but they still do it.

I just keep amusing myself seeing how some of you will argue for low/minimum/no government and expect to have a freer and more prosperous nation on the inane notion that government and government alone causes evil and stupidity and totalitarianism.

Umm...

1. Less government = less legislation and bureaucracy = more liberty.

2. More government = more spending = more taxes = less freedom of choice.

3. More regulation = less productivity = higher ratio of consumptionavings = more debt.

4. More debt = more borrowing = even higher ratio of consumptionavings = more debt = more borrowing = more debt.

5. Only an institution can be 'totalitarian' by definition, not a market.

Really, the only amusing thing is the absolute lack of reason any of you display when arguing for big government. In a religious debate you'd be posting facts and trains of though and making arguments with established premises and reasons, when it comes to politics and economics it's just "Waaah waaah ceo totalitarian no prosperity corruption corruption!"

[Ashendant]

False analogy.

All CEOs produce supply, supply is contingent upon demand. The consumer holds the demand. It's the ultimate balanced system of checks and balances. Unlike a government dictators there is nothing stopping a new (or a thousand) CEO('s) from stepping up and catering to the demand.

Introduce a system where someone can send their police force in and tell you where to distribute your supply and what you can and can not demand and what healthcare you have to buy and how much of your income you have to give away upon punishment of imprisonment to pay welfare to junkies and other lazy scumbags and you get a corrupt system - Now the CEO has the ability to buy-off the government and bypass the checks and balances of supply and demand.

And CEOs are just angels that wants to fulfil the demand of the citizens instead of filling their huge pockets,
So is health a basic right or not?

Wake up, it's not the 1970s no more. Hong Kong and Beijing are amongst the most capitalist cities in the world. China have been heading rapidly towards capitalist totalitarianism since the 1970s and they show absolutely no sign of slowing down.

Actually their exports are coming down while their imports are coming mostly from the german industrial machine, Honk kong and Macau are autonomous regions(or something similar) and Beijing is a barely living city, sometimes i think china is purposely making their people living unhealthier so they have less people to deal with(they already complained about the problems of ruling a 1.6 billion people country)

Yeah that's really socialist.... Keep dreaming mate.

Were it not for their lack of social liberty it wouldn't be a half bad place to live, give it 20 years and it'll probably be pretty decent in terms of social and economic liberty.

I think it's really socialist for a progressive tax method, and a flexible corporate tax too, seems the chinese are being the smarter lot.

No, they're just BOTH keynseians. That's the only fantasy voodoo economics here.

I dislike Economic voodoo.

Umm...

1. Less government = less legislation and bureaucracy = more liberty.

2. More government = more spending = more taxes = less freedom of choice.

3. More regulation = less productivity = higher ratio of consumptionavings = more debt.

4. More debt = more borrowing = even higher ratio of consumptionavings = more debt = more borrowing = more debt.

5. Only an institution can be 'totalitarian' by definition, not a market.

Really, the only amusing thing is the absolute lack of reason any of you display when arguing for big government. In a religious debate you'd be posting facts and trains of though and making arguments with established premises and reasons, when it comes to politics and economics it's just "Waaah waaah ceo totalitarian no prosperity corruption corruption!"

1. Less Government = Less Legislation = More Windows for abuse (i dislike bureaucracy)

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

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

4. borrow and debt.

5. but the market is composed of institutions and members each capable of swindling the cash out of a few hundred guys

I dislike a big governments over it's beings, but the markets aren't perfect angelic beings that have descended from to heaven to guide us to our true path, they are powerful, they are corrupt, and they don't care about your demands, just your cash.
The government has a function and that is to serve and protect the citizen, yes it can go corrupt, yes it's not infallible, but together with the markets and the citizens make a nice dynamic that fuels a healthy system.
I don't argue for a big government, i argue for a big government as it needs to be.
Regulation is there to protects from abuse and literally feeding us poison
I know from reading bits of the actions of the european commission, they stop company mergers that would destroy competition, and pass fines to "price cartels".
And the recent germany Dioxin case.
Both of these would pass to hurt the citizen without the government

Also there's a reason why the government is responsible for innovation.

[Ryft]

theVOID,

I wish I could give multiple kudos to your post. That deserved far more than one.

[theVOID]

False analogy.

All CEOs produce supply, supply is contingent upon demand. The consumer holds the demand. It's the ultimate balanced system of checks and balances. Unlike a government dictators there is nothing stopping a new (or a thousand) CEO('s) from stepping up and catering to the demand.

Introduce a system where someone can send their police force in and tell you where to distribute your supply and what you can and can not demand and what healthcare you have to buy and how much of your income you have to give away upon punishment of imprisonment to pay welfare to junkies and other lazy scumbags and you get a corrupt system - Now the CEO has the ability to buy-off the government and bypass the checks and balances of supply and demand.

And CEOs are just angels that wants to fulfil the demand of the citizens instead of filling their huge pockets,
So is health a basic right or not?

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.

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.

Is health a basic right? I'm not sure that's such a clear question, People definitely have the right to be free of force making them unhealthy, so a company poluting a water supply is violating that right, but does their right entail that the government can take the resources that other people have in order to finance it? I'm not so sure on that, and i'm even less sure that you could make a sound moral argument for it.

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.

Wake up, it's not the 1970s no more. Hong Kong and Beijing are amongst the most capitalist cities in the world. China have been heading rapidly towards capitalist totalitarianism since the 1970s and they show absolutely no sign of slowing down.

Actually their exports are coming down while their imports are coming mostly from the german industrial machine, Honk kong and Macau are autonomous regions(or something similar) and Beijing is a barely living city, sometimes i think china is purposely making their people living unhealthier so they have less people to deal with(they already complained about the problems of ruling a 1.6 billion people country)

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.

Hong Kong is not in any way autonomous, it's under a different 'administrative region' whihc means that it has a somewhat more open policy in terms of trade, taxes, profanity and access alws and it's largely geared towards tourism.

Yeah that's really socialist.... Keep dreaming mate.

Were it not for their lack of social liberty it wouldn't be a half bad place to live, give it 20 years and it'll probably be pretty decent in terms of social and economic liberty.

I think it's really socialist for a progressive tax method, and a flexible corporate tax too, seems the chinese are being the smarter lot.

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.

No, they're just BOTH keynseians. That's the only fantasy voodoo economics here.

I dislike Economic voodoo.

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.

1. Less Government = Less Legislation = More Windows for abuse (i dislike bureaucracy)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

4. borrow and debt.

?

5. but the market is composed of institutions and members each capable of swindling the cash out of a few hundred guys

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.

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

I dislike a big governments over it's beings, but the markets aren't perfect angelic beings that have descended from to heaven to guide us to our true path, they are powerful, they are corrupt, and they don't care about your demands, just your cash.

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, They 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.

The government has a function and that is to serve and protect the citizen, yes it can go corrupt, yes it's not infallible, but together with the markets and the citizens make a nice dynamic that fuels a healthy system.

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

You think a healthy system runs a deficit?

I don't argue for a big government, i argue for a big government as it needs to be.

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.

Regulation is there to protects from abuse and literally feeding us poison

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

I know from reading bits of the actions of the european commission, they stop company mergers that would destroy competition, and pass fines to "price cartels".

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

And the recent germany Dioxin case.

Which is?

Both of these would pass to hurt the citizen without the government

You don't think the consumers are capable of figuring that out? Also, any business action that puts its consumers at risk is an unviable decision. The goal is to create these entities into the long term, short term profit that hurts consumers is going to see the business collapse.

Also there's a reason why the government is responsible for innovation.

Oh yeah like Al Gore and the internet!

[Ashendant]

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

Is health a basic right? I'm not sure that's such a clear question, People definitely have the right to be free of force making them unhealthy, so a company poluting a water supply is violating that right, but does their right entail that the government can take the resources that other people have in order to finance it? I'm not so sure on that, and i'm even less sure that you could make a sound moral argument for it.

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

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)

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

Hong Kong is not in any way autonomous, it's under a different 'administrative region' whihc means that it has a somewhat more open policy in terms of trade, taxes, profanity and access alws and it's largely geared towards tourism.

Yep sorry wrong name

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)

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

Example?

Which is?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12139407

Both of these would pass to hurt the citizen without the government

You don't think the consumers are capable of figuring that out? Also, any business action that puts its consumers at risk is an unviable decision. The goal is to create these entities into the long term, short term profit that hurts consumers is going to see the business collapse.

Still the damage is done and it can be a long term thing as long as nobody finds out

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

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

If the market was truly free there would have been no gamblers with safety nets, no quick profits, no cheap and easy money, no deposit free housing, no housing bubble, no stupid risk taking, no sub prime loans and no stimulus package to keep good on the governments promise.

Oh please. This libertarian dream land you speak of is just as dangerous as its opposite.
Just replace government dictator with "CEO" and you get the same damn thing.

False analogy.

Baseless statement.

All CEOs produce supply, supply is contingent upon demand. The consumer holds the demand. It's the ultimate balanced system of checks and balances. Unlike a government dictators there is nothing stopping a new (or a thousand) CEO('s) from stepping up and catering to the demand.

I don't know if this is just naivety or what this is but this certainly a result of having zero knowledge of history and human nature.
I get basic economics. Supply and demand - one determines the other.
What you don't get is that unfettered Capitalism is a game that can be won and the reason the US is headed as far away from unfettered capitalism as possible is because people were winning and taking far too much control of their share of the market for competition to a concern.

Not to mention the fun, fun times in US history when working 16 hours a day and 7 days in dangerous conditions with children as co-workers a week was considered normal. ... or at least too normal in respect for common human rights to live and live a decent life.

I would have responded with this post much sooner than I did, but clearly all of this is going to get ignored if I don't back up my statements. Ergo, let's talk US history, which many of you libertarians seem to forget when talking about how awesome it would be if the government just kept it's hands off of business interests.

So where do we start? How about the History of Illegal US Monopolies.

So how do monopolies form? Well, let's look at the above link.

The early industrial era was filled with brisk, unregulated competition. In the mid-19th century, numerous small firms sought to exploit resources and production for their own gain. Successful companies edged out their competitors and began to take over local markets. The New York Stock Exchange provided financing together with opportunities for further expansion. Men like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie strove to dominate particular fields, buying up shares in rival companies and soon coming to control entire industries.

So what happened when the US did unfettered capitalism? A few companies just fucking took over.
They didn't have complete control of the country or anything like that, but all of those people were already pretty much corrupting the system and eliminating competition, which just dead stops things like

All CEOs produce supply, supply is contingent upon demand. The consumer holds the demand. It's the ultimate balanced system of checks and balances.

utterly fails.

So there you have it right. This was tried, failed, and corrected in the only manner in which this problem could be corrected. The government passed a law that said "No, this shit stops here."

One such solution being the The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 because railroad company liked to fix prices without all that pesky competition that would their profit margins suffer.

Of course, even that failed as the banks and railroad owners worked together to eliminate competition and set prices despite the law.

It only helped cement their positions because...

the railroad companies were able to finance political campaigns through whatever and whomever was needed in government. With this control in Washington, there was no way to stop the overwhelming control of this industry over society. The entire nation was subject to the whims of this monopoly.

What's worse is that the railroad's practices had effects on other areas of industry that were far from healthy for the United States' continued economic and social health.

The effects on society were widespread and deeply influential in the way individuals carried out their lives. The most poignant example is effect railroad rates had on the Grange Movement. During the second half of the 19th Century, farmers increasingly relied on the railroads to transport their crops to the rest of the nation. These individuals were powerless to avoid the exorbitant rates of the railroad companies. The dominant analogy of the industry at the time was that of the Octopus. This beasts' tentacles control several different fields which feed on "the flesh of the yeoman farmer, diligent artisan, and honest merchant" (Chalmers).

Thanks to public backlash, the government had to get involved *twice* to stop this shit and get them to charge something reasonable (sounds a LOT like the problem with the healthcare industry right now given that the insurance companies are setting their own prices and Obama signed a law that forces them to set their rates in a particular way. Funny how history repeats itself.

... no... what's that other word? Stupid.

But there is also another major thing that "The History of Illegal Monopolies" covers that I frequently refer to when having this arguement against others on this forum. That being that of employee-worker relationship without the benefit of 'child labor laws' and 'employee safety laws' and other such nonsense that only gets in the way of the free market.

Andrew Carnegie's steel empire was central to the battle between producers and workers. Though later famous for his philanthropy, the Scottish-born entrepreneur built up the Steel Trust through a concerted campaign to control both prices and wages. Carnegie was quick to lock out workers who struck for higher pay and shorter hours. The result was the famous Homestead Strike of 1892. In a show of Carnegie's immense power, his Homestead Steel Works was able to call in the Pennsylvania State Militia to fire at the striking workers and disperse them. Seven strikers and sympathizers were killed in the bloody encounter. Carnegie finally settled the matter by cutting wages even further than prior agreements had permitted and by allowing back only nonunion employees.

Yeah, as you can see, ... well... this just reminds me of what happens when a government is so anti-government that they just tell their citizenry that they can pay whatever taxes they want and are shocked... SHOCKED... that no one (and I mean NO ONE) bothers to pay taxes.

This isn't even going into all the environmental abuses and the reasoning that created the current healthcare reform (I'll give you a hint: the Insurance Industry people give bonuses for rejecting the most claims. Plenty of internet-based examples of such rejections that were lethal to their customers.)

In any case, the oil trust was broken up by one republican Theodore Roosevelt - one of my favorite Presidents in US history. Reagan broke up the AT&T phone company for a number of abuses.

After all,

For most of this century both political parties pretty much agreed: government should keep corporations from becoming too big and powerful.

and

In an era of bitter ideological disputes, public opinion was virtually unanimous on the need for the national environmental policy NEPA would generate. Turning his reluctant consent into a show of visionary statesmanship, President Nixon chose to sign NEPA on New Year's Day, 1970--thus making the signing his "first official act of the decade."

So I'm rather confident in the following things:
1) History shows that unfettered/unregulated capitalism doesn't work
2) People have demanded that the government intercede on their behalf to get the regulatory environment the US has today (and I'm certain that this is true for most of the European Nations as well - particularly France).
3) Companies, if they can't, won't compete if they don't have to. It's bad for the profit margin.

I only referred to a few websites, but I could go so much further in research in this, but I've already made and proven my point.

Introduce a system where someone can send their police force in and tell you where to distribute your supply and what you can and can not demand and what healthcare you have to buy and how much of your income you have to give away upon punishment of imprisonment to pay welfare to junkies and other lazy scumbags and you get a corrupt system - Now the CEO has the ability to buy-off the government and bypass the checks and balances of supply and demand.

This statment is as filled with tripe as it is ignorance about how things work.
Again, know your goddamned history.

Great, that's why you need someone who spends less than they gather in tax revenue to develop a surplus to maintain all of the things deemed important and maintain a fixed supply of money so in a few generations everything you saved isn't worth 1/4 of what it should have been thereby creating the need for the ponzy-scheme called social security.

Oh, and the Dems would have borrowed and spent all by themselves.

...more pointless and largely baseless anti-government rhetoric...

China is a socialist nation with total government control over their economy.

Wake up, it's not the 1970s no more. Hong Kong and Beijing are amongst the most capitalist cities in the world. China have been heading rapidly towards capitalist totalitarianism since the 1970s and they show absolutely no sign of slowing down.

Hong Kong isn't a chinese city and it hasn't been for more than a decade. It is effectively like the Guam of China. It's run by its own government with its own ideas on economics. It is doing well as an economy, but mostly because it's still butt-buddies with China and benefits from their heavily-controlled economy.
That said, instead of starting at unfettered capitalism and moving towards a more regulated environment, they started at a total government control and working toward less regulation.
I'm sure they're benefitting from that as much as we benefited from the same thing, considering that we started at opposite ends of the spectrum and appear to be moving toward the same goal considering the result is a system that maximizes the personal freedoms and liberties of all of its citizens.

Income Tax Rates in China

* The tax on an individual's income is progressive. As at 2010, an individual's income is taxed progressively at 5% - 45%.
* The 2010 corporate tax rate for domestic and foreign companies is 25%.
* Small companies pay 20% corporate tax in certain cases. Qualified new hi-tec companies pay 15% corporate tax.

Yeah that's really socialist.... Keep dreaming mate.

What the hell was the point of that? An attempt to prove that China wasn't a socialist nation because it has a progressive tax code?
Do you know how socialism works? Because I'm pretty sure even Soviet Russia's citizens had an income of some sort that was taxed when that nation existed.
Socialist nations are socialist because they control their economic means of production, services, and businesses. It has nothing to do with personal income, which still exists in socialist nations to varying extents.

Were it not for their lack of social liberty it wouldn't be a half bad place to live, give it 20 years and it'll probably be pretty decent in terms of social and economic liberty.

I'm sure China will be a very nice place to live.
I'm also sure that the economy will still be more socialist than ours will be.

Government would be 10x better if it weren't so damn corrupt - thanks to those with money and power buying politicians who are elected on fantastic fantasy voodoo economics where republicans think cutting taxes and deregulations mean more freedom and more money and democrats are too spineless to have their own ideas.

No, they're just BOTH keynseians. That's the only fantasy voodoo economics here.

I can't even begin to tell you how much I don't care about economic theory.
The arguement is retarded and neither theory has utterly destroyed a first-world nation to my knowledge that wasn't also attributed to other major factors that have anything to do with the economic system chosen.

The more power the government has in terms of regulations the more opportunities there are for them to be corrupted and for that corruption to have impact.

The amount of regulations and restrictions have clearly been irrelevant in terms of a company's ability to corrupt what they need to corrupt to maximize the control they have over their slice of the economy.

And like fuck the republicans deregulate. They aren't as bad as the dems but they still do it.

Yes, like fuck they do. They have. They will. They've been singing this shit for more than ten years about how there is too much regulation on the market and it needs to be stopped and all that BS.

Really, the only amusing thing is the absolute lack of reason any of you display when arguing for big government. In a religious debate you'd be posting facts and trains of though and making arguments with established premises and reasons, when it comes to politics and economics it's just "Waaah waaah ceo totalitarian no prosperity corruption corruption!"

Posts where I have to do research take time and religious-oriented ones are interestingly less difficult to work on because scientific facts are vastly less debatable than political points.
Another major point of difficulty is that we both know that if I don't watch my sources, a political debate will much more quickly turn into an arguement over policial bias in the sources brought up.
Further, I have done so before and when I have those arguements abruptly ended after the post in which I did. One of which involved teacher's salary and another with this topic and there was a third I don't remember as well. It may have been an economics arguement with you or someone else, but I stopped because there was a long video involved from a boring-ass lecture about something I could care less about other than the novelty of making fun of the idea of going back to the gold standard.
Finally, I'm not arguing for big government or total socialism or communism or anything like that. Governments that become too powerful are the things of science fiction nightmare scenarios where lives, from birth to death, are given for the state and freedoms are at the whim of the state and its leaders. What you need to understand is that human nature doesn't reverse to goodness when small/low/zero governance is applied. People are smart and when they have too much power, they will take advantage of it. They always have and they always will. When a government can't intercede on the behalf of its citizenry, you get things like big oil being able to set their prices however they want. Health Insurance companies able to set their own prices and reject people for needing a life-saving treatment. Railroad companies able to extort customers because they're the only trains in town. Airlines with the ability to molest you and your family legally and store naked pictures of you. You get people working nearly endless days in unsafe conditions to go home and eat unsafe foods and operate faulty and dangerous products because there are no standards whatsoever that they can't control. Regardless of who is doing it, it's always the powerful taking advantage of the powerless.
Neither of these things result in a livable society. What I believe in is medium government. Government should be powerful enough to protect its citizens and afford them the freest and healthiest life possible.
Neither big government nor small government would allow the kind of personal liberty affordable to those in a medium government society.

I've provided plenty of reasons for my arguements - even if they were simply stated reasons of what I think and without links but what reason do you have for

1)

1. Less government = less legislation and bureaucracy = more liberty.

or
2)

Hong Kong and Beijing are amongst the most capitalist cities in the world.

or
3)

Great, that's why you need someone who spends less than they gather in tax revenue to develop a surplus to maintain all of the things deemed important and maintain a fixed supply of money so in a few generations everything you saved isn't worth 1/4 of what it should have been thereby creating the need for the ponzy-scheme called social security

or
4)

All CEOs produce supply, supply is contingent upon demand. The consumer holds the demand. It's the ultimate balanced system of checks and balances. Unlike a government dictators there is nothing stopping a new (or a thousand) CEO('s) from stepping up and catering to the demand.

1) is total bullshit for the reasons I stated and linked earlier in this post.
2) I honestly don't know much about Hong Kong. I'm aware it's a free market economy in some respect because that's what the CIA factbook stated, but beyond that I have no idea and I don't have the hours of time I need to read up on Hong Kong's economy in any detail. China does not have a market that is more free than hours or France's or anyone else's. They're heading toward a free market society from the previous position of "total economic control" and have been loosening their collective belts ever since.
However, it is plainly obvious that the Chinese government still exerts much more control over their economy than most of the rest of the world does and they still have numerous state-owned enterprises, unlike the US and European nations.
3) This doesn't even have a point in relationship with your post beyond a baseless assertion about social security based on what I can only assume is ignorance or kool-aid fed to you by people who obviously hate social security.
4) covered earlier

So yes, yes, I bitch about corruption and going (apparently) "Waaah waaah ceo totalitarian no prosperity corruption corruption!" but I stated my premise, gave my reasons, and when pushed, I can provide facts and figures when necessary, despite being more difficult to do and I can still continue to do so.

[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.

[Ashendant]

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.

Yes they can create demand, and use their power so they remove the competition, so the citizen doesn't have any choice but to buy from their incredibly high prices

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.

And health is in the need for safety just like law and order.

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.

Yes it's old, but it still applies

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.

So it's justified when it's for law and order but unjustified when it's for health, isn't both of these about safety?

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.

Bullshit that will never work because what people are willing to give is not enough to full fill the demand

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.

Nope nothing to do with obesity and it's deathsU.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world, report says

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).

Values are different in different places

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.

A free market is to me a market that has enough regulation to avoid "cheating" and Monopolies

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.

That's not a very good example is it

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.

Governements are not infallible o they should stop doing the same mistake over and over again

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

They decriminalized the personal possession of drugs for enough 10 days doses, and instead of sending these people to jail, they gave them a social worker, a legal counsellor, and health inspector, to help them with either the treatement and gave their options, allowing the police to track the dealers more effectively and high criminals, the results was a decrease of drug consume to one of the lowest of the modern world(i think), spared a lot of wasted cash, the amount of people seeking treatment doubled, and the spread of aids got cut to half, it's best if you read it because i might have mistakes

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.

That logic is dumb, subsidising industry and creating economic booms doesn't need to be big...

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.

Those are bad lobbylists, a good company needs good system, lobbylists are there to make sure the government knows how law will punish their companies, and give suggestions, a good lobbylist is preventive, a bad one is a active one

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.

Health is a need of the citizen

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.

And i consider Safety and Survival a basic need so why don't you?

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.

Neither is weed a Safety or Survival Need

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.

I consider my fellow citizen my responsibility as a citizen of my country, as my contribution to society, if you don't then it's your problem and your screwed morality code that your cash is your cash.

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

What part of it is fraudelent?

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.

Actually in some countries they did cause the industrial revolution, germany was this example, the government made a leap of faith and now their one of the most successful Industry machines in the world, only recently did china overtake them

Space programs are another example, no company could bear the costs of running a successful governmental space agency

[RedEyedInnovator]

Economic X axis -2.25
Social Y axis -9.04

[Cosmic Ape]

Economic Left/Right: -4.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.28



Libertarian Left.