So, the UN finally admits it's Capitalism not welfare that is ending poverty!

[theVOID]

China, at least, may not be the shining beacon you were hoping for.

Are you genuinely ignorant of my political philosophies or do you really think that pointing out how badly government interference butchers the supply/demand signals is going to be some kind of revelation to a free-market capitalist?

No, I'm just trying to point out what a bad example China is when you are patting your pet economic philosophy on it's head. The rest of your examples stand fine on their own as far as I know.

Are you fucking kidding me? My political philosophy is free market capitalism and social individualism, neither of those are present in China! They range from Democratic capitalism with a good degree of economic but little social freedom in regions like Shanghai to a fiercely controlled and state monopolised socialism with little to no private enterprise in the provinces - It's no damn surprise that in the less controlled regions there is a far higher standard of living compared to the provinces - that is why China is a good case study for looking at different economic systems inside the same culture.

And despite their largely phony GDP figures China is still moving up on the GPI and HDI metrics, that means that despite their tainted market and depressed currency the standard of living is objectively rising and rising faster in the regions with more economic freedom! Look at the USA, their GDP is increasing (mostly due to government spending and printing money) while moving down the GPI and HDI metrics! That is why GDP is a bullshit figure for societal health.

You know Void, I gotta take up issue with your definition of socialism.

Kelly-Moore Paints is a paint manufacturing company in the US. It is currently one of the fastest growing heavy hitters of US manufacturing, and is postulated by many to be a model for revitalizing US manufacturing.

It is also the largest employee owned business in the country.

Is that not socialist?

Not my definition buddy, it's how socialism has been understood for the bulk of it's history.

That company might be a damn good example of why average people should invest capital in the private sector (something that I have been advocating for a long time, especially in regards to the currently mandatory state-run retirement savings) but NO, it is not "socialist" because they are not the state! Socialism and Communism are government mandated and enforced, a socialist nation takes ownership either of the profits for redistribution or by mandating the allocation of shares. A business that gives their employees shares or employees who buy into a business are good examples of capitalists! They are allocating capital rather than consuming their wages to see a return in investment - I am 100% behind that model.

Seriously Syn, how did you even for a second conceive of socialism without a state? Socialism is a political ideology, a company owned by employees, either by paying a percent of wages as shares (something that has largely been outlawed by states around the world) or encouraging employees to buy into the business (which gives them incentive to increase productivity) is not a political organisation!

How would we maintain a system of government like this? How do you keep out the elements of "industrial interest"?

By giving the government absolutely no power over the allocation of capital. If the government simply doesn't have the authority to command taxpayer resources that it can allocate to various industries in the form of subsidies, give tax breaks to preferred industries or impose taxes on foreign competitors then the industry has absolutely ZERO incentive to corrupt the politicians. The minuet some political goon manages to sell the public some far-fetched promises under the guise of the common good (all for the purpose of buying votes) then the door becomes wide open for motivated organisations to corrupt the political system to give themselves an advantage over their competition and allow them access to public funds.

Technically yes, but that's not the type of socialism that makes him foam at the mouth.

Oh, so that kelly-moore is a government is it?

Socialism is a POLITICAL ideology. A business owned by employers is no more socialist than a business owned by one person or an organisation run by donations!

Pay the regulators enough that bribes & kickbacks would be an insult?

Find some of those "20% people" that won't steal no matter what & hire them?

Start handing out corporate death penalties for companies that try to engage in regulatory capture.

Or how about; Let the people spend THEIR OWN MONEY and stay the fuck out of other people's business.

Bet the residents of Somalia are really celebrating this news! So good they probably will forget about starving now!
The capitalist miracle is about to save them......not!

Oh for fucks sake, can you go back and LOOK at the data before you start crapping on the keyboard? Nations with a larger private sector more effectively reduce poverty compared to nations with larger wealth redistribution, both foreign and domestic - This is paramount to statistical fact, so much so that the notoriously anti-capitalist UN had to admit they were WRONG.

Perhaps if there was more industry in somalia these people could have real jobs, rather than selling fish scraps from a bucket in the markets - Oh, but don't worry, Somalia are getting $1 a day donations from some fat-fuck westerners who will happily not eat a bag of chips to help out but will bitch and moan as soon as someone wants to open a factory there! And do I really need to remind you that Somalia is one of the single most totalitarian nations on the face of this earth?

You honestly could not have picked a worse example aside from North Korea.

[theVOID]

Technically yes, but that's not the type of socialism that makes him foam at the mouth.

I don't care. If he is going to be hyper technical on us about Capitalism, I am going to be hyper technical on "socialism".

I'm for neither -isms. I think either -ism left alone is damaging and it takes pieces of both to construct a well functioning society.

As a person with an avid interest in computer science and physics you of all people should understand why I take such effort to be as concise as possible in my use of terms - Having well defined terms is essential in having a coherent and productive discussion.

And I was NOT being hyper technical about Capitalism, I specifically stated I was taking about Capitalism in general terms and that there was no clear distinction between any two flavours, rather they represent more of an overall way a system based on private ownership of the means of production can be structured - It's frankly the only way that we can be clear about what exactly is being addressed so we don't end up talking past each other.

If you don't like the way I define socialism please state the general philosophy in in your own terms and I will address that, then we can see clearly on which specific ideas we really disagree. And, just to clarify, you consider yourself a progressive correct? Would you not agree that the progressive political philosophy is largely a system of democratic capitalism with minimum state ownership save for that deemed to meet some necessary conditions? And do you consider the general progressive philosophy as socialist?

Also, if you're not going to use the term Socialism to describe a political philosophy then can we use a different label for what you are talking about?

Here in the US it is capitalism that is causing poverty.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blog..._blog.html

A study by the Pew Research Center released Tuesday shows that the ecoonomic downturn has caused the wealth gaps between whites and minorities to grow wider than they have been in a quarter-century.

A New York Times story published Monday found that employers are now excluding the unemployed from their applicant pool.

Both reports are bad news. But the wealth gap findings are alarming in that they suggest that the economic downturn could have erased 25 years of progress.

Fear not, Adrian and Void....your rich pals keep getting richer.

Hi Glenn Left!

Can you please explain to me how you can take an article about economic downturn and the gap between whites and minorities widening and then spin it into ideological propaganda?

It even gives the fucking reason for the disparity! "many whites derive their wealth from stocks and retirement accounts, while minority families are mostly invested in their homes and have seen the housing market fall out from under them" Yeah, the housing asset bubble burst, credit tightened, teaser interest rates expired, job losses occurred, demand for goods and services fell, the currency and wages of people are being devalued and the CPI is rising! Why? Because your government, in order to create economic growth to stimulate it's way out of the NASDAQ bubble, suppressed interest rates introducing more liquidity into the lending pool resulting in banks having more capital to allocate meaning they lend money to people who they would otherwise not have and therefore need to lower their lending standards! Then your government goes and subsidies home purchases further lowering the lending standards, then they guarantee the loans and limit the liabilities of lenders which even further reduces lending standards! What do you get? A boom in the sub prime mortgage market than flows into the entire mortgage market, rapidly appreciating home prices, a boom in demand for related industries, people who invest their time in training in these industries, a misallocation of capital investment away from the productive sector and into the housing market and service sector! Then it goes tits up, everyone scrambles to recover their investments, teaser interest rates expire, interest payments increase, jobs are lost, all the people who were fooled into investing their capital in the housing market are fucked especially those who got into the game late, the banks who invested in housing lose a fuckload of their wealth and need a big old pile of cash from their buddies in the government who don't actually have any money so they need to borrow it but the lack of confident lenders means your reserve bank has to pull money out of their asses to buy treasuries in turn leading to a depreciating dollar causing a fall in real wages for those people who still have jobs and making it even harder to live on an unemployment benefit as the CPI skyrockets!

And who's to blame for all of this? Nazi's right Glenn? It's those free market Nazis! Lets just ignore the fact that it was the proponents of the free market and the Austrian school of economics who saw the fucking thing coming, who were laughed at by all the liberal and conservative economists on TV when they told people to get the fuck OUT of housing, who were giving speeches to the Mortgage Bankers Association warning them of the mess they were about to cause, the people who were themselves not profiting from the housing market and the exact people who would NEVER have enacted the policies that caused this fucking mess to begin with!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

And no shit people want to hire those in jobs, especially given that basically the entire industry in response to the bursting asset bubble has seen a lull in demand for goods and services and have made redundant what are generally the least reliable and productive workers! I'm going to be looking for a PHP programmer soon to do some work on a client's site that is beyond my technical abilities making contracting a more cost-effective option, of course I'm going to hire someone/firm that is currently working in the industry over someone who was recently laid off by the business while other people kept their employment, it tells me that the people who were laid off are more likely to be the least efficient/capable/reliable and seeing as I don't have anywhere near the resources to to really thoroughly look into their work history and references I'm going to go with statistics!

And 25 years of progress? Between whites and minorities sure, but in terms of the rich-poor gap no, that has been widening consistently since your nation went full scale Keynesian in the 70's. Contrary to that is the economic liberalisation that occurred in NZ, we have seen the exact opposite effect which is in stark contrast to your conclusion!

[leo-rcc]

[theVOID]

Oh yeah, who cares about data when you've got a generic talking point!

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, taking issue regarding subsidies. If government did not have this power then what would we use instead to prevent the sorts of situations where the market has proven to be ineffective in the past? More acutely, that correction could not be allowed to determine it's own pace due to potential cost of human life (or quality of human life). That's one of the fuzzy areas for me that immediately springs to mind.

(Not implying that there isn't a way, I just haven't heard a decent plan yet from the libertarian camp on this)

[Anomalocaris]

China, at least, may not be the shining beacon you were hoping for.

It is nontheless a shining beacon of economic policy over aid whatever its blemishes.

In 1980, Chinese GDP was three times that of all of subsaharan on PPP basis. 90% of Chinese lived in abject medievel rural destitution comparable to sub-Saharan Africa. The other 10% lived a barely modern urban existence comparable to the slums of Manila or Mexico city. The only thing China had on Africa in 1980 was a generally higher standard of education and a government interested in tapping people's innate capitalist drive to create wealth.

According to UN aid agency, between 1980 and 2010, Sub-Saharan africa received 16 times more relief, development aid and grants per capital than China.

Yet today Chinese GDP is 20 times that of all of subsaharan Africa on a PPP basis. In that same period, China managed to lift 500 million, a population approximately the same as sub-Saharan africa, all the way to existence that would be considered middle-class even by developed world.

Even if China's recent growth is overblown, what is certain is the infrastructural and productivity foundations of a middle-class existence for 500 million people is now there. Even if Chinese economy were to hit serious skids, those 500 million people with a first world education, the training and the facilities to produce everything from financial services, to ipads, to 3-D TVs, to manned space capsules and stealth fighters are not falling all the way back to sub-saharan povery. There is rock hard wealth and capital creation underneath any accused blemish.

In 1980, it's not clear if many subsaharan africans would trade his Africa income for the income of the average Chinese. Today, after receiving 16 times as much aid as China did, one would truly be blind to not see that your average subsaharan africa would trade his income for just a fraction of the income of the average Chinese in a heartbeat.

[theVOID]

Well, taking issue regarding subsidies. If government did not have this power then what would we use instead to prevent the sorts of situations where the market has proven to be ineffective in the past? More acutely, that correction could not be allowed to determine it's own pace due to potential cost of human life (or quality of human life). That's one of the fuzzy areas for me that immediately springs to mind.

(Not implying that there isn't a way, I just haven't heard a decent plan yet from the libertarian camp on this)

Can you give a more specific example? I can't really respond to vague hypotheticals.

China, at least, may not be the shining beacon you were hoping for.

It is nontheless a shining beacon of economic policy over aid whatever its blemishes.

In 1980, Chinese GDP was three times that of all of subsaharan on PPP basis. 90% of Chinese lived in abject medievel rural destitution comparable to sub-Saharan Africa. The other 10% lived a barely modern urban existence comparable to the slums of Manila or Mexico city. The only thing China had on Africa in 1980 was a generally higher standard of education and a government interested in tapping people's innate capitalist drive to create wealth.

According to UN aid agency, between 1980 and 2010, Sub-Saharan africa received 16 times more relief, development aid and grants per capital than China.

Yet today Chinese GDP is 20 times that of all of subsaharan Africa on a PPP basis. In that same period, China managed to lift 500 million, a population approximately the same as sub-Saharan africa, all the way to existence that would be considered middle-class even by developed world.

Even if China's recent growth is overblown, what is certain is the infrastructural and productivity foundations of a middle-class existence for 500 million people is now there. Even if Chinese economy were to hit serious skids, those 500 million people with a first world education, the training and the facilities to produce everything from financial services, to ipads, to 3-D TVs, to manned space capsules and stealth fighters are not falling all the way back to sub-saharan povery. There is rock hard wealth and capital creation underneath any accused blemish.

In 1980, it's not clear if many subsaharan africans would trade his Africa income for the income of the average Chinese. Today, after receiving 16 times as much aid as China did, one would truly be blind to not see that your average subsaharan africa would trade his income for just a fraction of the income of the average Chinese in a heartbeat.

Absolutely. In short, Capital investment > Aid.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm not sure what you mean by vague hyp. We have a fairly exhaustive amount of agricultural subsidies, used for various reasons, three of which being to "normalize" production, the prevent shortages in staple food crops, and to artificially reduce the price of food to make it more available to the consumer (though we still have welfare programs to help families reach this lowered bar). What would the libertarian response to the amount of power and authority of government in agriculture be? I'm not arguing that the ag subsidies aren't a mess, but they do address concerns which are very real.

My issue regarding subsidies is that its very easy to criticize the program on ideological grounds, but if one really wanted to remove that type of government interference there has to be some plan to achieve the benefits that the current system provides to us all.

[theVOID]

I'm not sure what you mean by vague hyp

You didn't give an example or explain why we would need subsidies (because that changes the outlook) and what the consequence of not having them would be and the means by which the consequence would impact the economy. Without that there really isn't much I can say, I would have to assume far too much of your position.

We have a fairly exhaustive amount of agricultural subsidies, used for various reasons, three of which being to "normalize" production, the prevent shortages in staple food crops, and to artificially reduce the price of food to make it more available to the consumer (though we still have welfare programs to help families reach this lowered bar). What would the libertarian response to the amount of power and authority of government in agriculture be? I'm not arguing that the ag subsidies aren't a mess, but they do address concerns which are very real. My issue regarding subsidies is that its very easy to criticize the program on ideological grounds, but if one really wanted to remove that type of government interference there has to be some plan to achieve the benefits that the current system provides to us all.

None. No subsidies for anything. If the state subsidises an industry and gives them money then I guarantee you any business interested in the subsidy are going to need a certification or endorsement from the regulators but the way these licenses are set up makes it extremely difficult for effective competition, especially on the small scale as local producers will eventually be written out of the market because the compliance and licensing costs, as well as the inevitable vast subsidies for "innovation" that they don't receive that puts them at an enormous disadvantage, then you have the allocation of capital towards industries that have some agenda backed by the government, people see it as a scenario where their investment will rarely fail because of the cash revenues being pumped in at the expense of taxpayers, this is what makes the companies extraordinarily rich. The consequence of the latter scenario that is of most concern is the lack of capital available for competitors, especially local producers. Who the fuck would buy into a local farm to help them expand their productive capacity when there is a massive highly profitable tax-payer subsidies leviathan to throw cash at?

The solutions I would advocate to the problem vary depending on; (i) The cause of the food shortage, (ii) the current price of the crop(s) in short supply, (iii) possible domestic alternative crops (iiii) suitability of any import alternatives.

So again, you'll need to be more specific.

[The Grand Nudger]

Heres a specific example of a subsidy. In the US, Grain crops receive the highest level of subsidies, so we'll use them.

The subsidies they receive are essentially price floors, ensuring the farmer that if there is a glut of grain, he will not be driven into poverty with his lost investment. The reason that we give these subsidies, is that before we did so, farmers planted whatever was most likely to be profitable, creating shortages of staple foods during times like the Great Depression (and even during years of relative prosperity). I'm not asking you to solve the worlds ag problems, just wondering what a libertarian government could do in this regard, in theory.

I suppose I'm challenging the implied statement that government is not capable, or should not be capable of of leveraging its ability and authority in increasing the quality of life for all involved. I used ag subsidies because they're close to home for me and I view them as vital to our way of life. What does libertarianism have to offer in an arena like this, where the ideology is directly opposed to any action that the government might take?

If you can point me to some sources that touch on this even, it's an honest question. I was telling some guys in chat earlier I hadn't voted since '01 and I'm shopping for a party..lol.