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☖ Forums → Discussion Forum → Ladies and Gentlemen: I present to you the Ballad of Bad Politics.
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Ladies and Gentlemen: I present to you the Ballad of Bad Politics.
2013-10-06, 8:27 AM #81
lol Israel
ORJ / My Level: ORJ Temple Tournament I
2013-10-06, 8:58 AM #82
For the record, I was just poking the bear, of course US politics affect Canada.
nope.
2013-10-06, 11:48 AM #83
Originally posted by Jon`C:
Basically fascism.

I mean it sounds super bad because of all of the racism stuff, but they were generally in favor of free markets where capitalism works well, nationalizing industries where capitalism works poorly, and using generous social safety nets to ameliorate hardship rather than for the sake of egalitarianism like socialist countries. They were also enemies of finance, an industry that serves no real purpose and acts to the great detriment of any society.

Like the New Deal except with even fewer economic rents.


That sounds nice. Imagine how much better and cheaper my ISP would be if it had to compete in the free market. Imagine if health care were properly nationalized. Imagine if all the financial rentiers did stuff that benefited society (or more importantly, stopped harming it).
"it is time to get a credit card to complete my financial independance" — Tibby, Aug. 2009
2013-10-06, 11:54 AM #84
I know it sucks to be a white collar wage slave and all, but wouldn't we risk a degraded standard of living were some magical hand create a more "equitable" economic system which happened to see the citizens of the world's poorer countries as equally significant? Don't we all like our cheap stuff made in sweatshops overseas? Aren't we all tacitly complicit in this, just by going on with our lives, even if we didn't create the system??
2013-10-06, 12:03 PM #85
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2013-10-06, 12:11 PM #86
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2013-10-06, 12:15 PM #87
When did I mention leftism?

And, do you really think you wouldn't have to do more hard labor for cheap **** in a system that was truly fair?
2013-10-06, 12:25 PM #88
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2013-10-06, 12:29 PM #89
Well, then, my only contention was that you are quite the noble individual for wanting to give up your privileged status.
2013-10-06, 1:02 PM #90
So is there something stopping workers from starting a business and owning production?
Welcome to the douchebag club. We'd give you some cookies, but some douche ate all of them. -Rob
2013-10-06, 1:36 PM #91
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2013-10-06, 1:41 PM #92
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
I know it sucks to be a white collar wage slave and all, but wouldn't we risk a degraded standard of living were some magical hand create a more "equitable" economic system which happened to see the citizens of the world's poorer countries as equally significant? Don't we all like our cheap stuff made in sweatshops overseas? Aren't we all tacitly complicit in this, just by going on with our lives, even if we didn't create the system??

Egalitarianism is a non-starter.

The point of nationalizing key industries and using those industries to offer all citizens a basic lifestyle is so you can divorce employment from survival. Give people what they need to survive, and let them seek profit for luxuries. Currently the labor price elasticity of supply is ~0 which allows for some horrible abuses, especially when it's compounded by the labor market oligopsony that exists in most industries.

I still remember my first micro class. Like all western economists, my prof was an ardent supporter of the free market. So of course we learn the classic models, showing that a free market won't produce enough of a good to meet the needs of a population, it will only produce the profit-maximizing quantity. And then later she dropped the 100% employment efficiency standard and that's when I first noticed something was wrong here.
2013-10-06, 1:46 PM #93
please run for office so i can vote for you
2013-10-06, 1:57 PM #94
Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJg58uIxa34
2013-10-06, 2:02 PM #95
[QUOTE=Ivan Glasenberg]I can’t believe that Switzerland would cause such great harm to its economy. And I say that not just as the head of a company, but as a Swiss citizen.[/QUOTE]

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2013-10-06, 2:05 PM #96
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2013-10-06, 2:10 PM #97
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
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N.B. if you have heard recently about the Swiss GMI petition and got confused, the measure Ivan Glasenberg was talking about is a separate measure to limit executive pay to 12x its lowest-paid employee.

So, like, even more transparently self-serving than if he were talking about the GMI thing.

Gotta love the dig at socialism at the end tho. It's kind of swell that all of the corporate backlash against New Deal/fascist ideas is generating negative PR for socialism instead. ty basic illiteracy.
2013-10-06, 2:14 PM #98
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2013-10-06, 2:31 PM #99
One thing just came to mind: I recall that many academic neo-liberals sometimes struggle (though not all too hard) to swallow the drastic inequality generated by their beloved Laissez-faire metaphysics. In the end, they invariably make the claim that the neo-liberal 'order' has raised more people out of poverty than the "alternative".

The thing is, the "alternative" is left undefined. I would think that scholars so well versed in the idea of "opportunity cost" would know better than this??

They do seem to like black-and-white reasoning with ridiculously abstract constructs, subsequently applying their "theorems" to the real world post hoc.
2013-10-06, 2:34 PM #100
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2013-10-06, 2:38 PM #101
Growing up in lower upper middle class America, my reaction to the status quo amounted to, "it could be worse".

Unfortunately, it seems that it could also be "a lot better" if the politicians in the capital didn't also seem to live by the same dictum. Or maybe their dictum is, "if I pretend to be a Republican even harder, maybe they'll let me accomplish 1% of what I promised to??"
2013-10-06, 2:39 PM #102
Originally posted by Reid:
Technology has risen people out of poverty


Oh, but we can't let technology get the credit! It was Ronnie Reagan!
2013-10-06, 2:50 PM #103
Originally posted by Reid:
Technology has risen people out of poverty
Meanwhile IRL, an increase of productivity without a corresponding increase of demand just means widespread unemployment.
2013-10-06, 2:55 PM #104
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2013-10-06, 2:55 PM #105
I mean, basically the western view of economic growth is

  1. New technology increases productivity.
  2. ???
  3. Profit.

where apparently ??? is understood to mean "and then the laid-off workers save up their Wal-Mart salary until they can afford the things they used to make, and then demand will increase and they'll get re-hired" except by that point they are a dessicated skeleton.
2013-10-06, 2:56 PM #106
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2013-10-06, 2:59 PM #107
Actually, I'm sure Steve Jobs would have loved to cut a deal with you (though not for your kidney). It would have saved him the trouble of establishing his residence out-of state.
2013-10-06, 3:04 PM #108
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2013-10-06, 8:54 PM #109
Originally posted by Reid:
it makes no sense to have utilities be part of a market


It makes no sense for them to have monopoly either, and yet here we are.
"it is time to get a credit card to complete my financial independance" — Tibby, Aug. 2009
2013-10-06, 9:22 PM #110
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2013-10-07, 9:26 AM #111
govt, run utilities can be, and are, just as bad as private ones at times.
Welcome to the douchebag club. We'd give you some cookies, but some douche ate all of them. -Rob
2013-10-07, 9:36 AM #112
At times, yeah. Mail and public transport were both more efficient, had better (and way more frequent) service and were lots cheaper when they were still provided by the government, where I live. Not to mention healthcare.
ORJ / My Level: ORJ Temple Tournament I
2013-10-07, 9:42 AM #113
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
Epstein didn't kill himself.
2013-10-07, 12:31 PM #114
THAT SOUNDS LIEK SOCIALIST WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION TO ME YOU LIBTARD!
>>untie shoes
2013-10-07, 2:56 PM #115
Wookie?? Is that you channeling through Antony??
Welcome to the douchebag club. We'd give you some cookies, but some douche ate all of them. -Rob
2013-10-07, 10:16 PM #116


Yeah it's a shameless repost from reddit, but it seemed appropriate in this thread. (Now if only I could work this into Tibby's forum game thread...)
My favorite JKDF2 h4x:
EAH XMAS v2
MANIPULATOR GUN
EAH SMOOTH SNIPER
2013-10-08, 4:56 AM #117
Originally posted by Jon`C:
Meanwhile IRL, an increase of productivity without a corresponding increase of demand just means widespread unemployment.


It's not like you can stop technological improvement, or would particularly want to.

-Certainly it seems to me, a layperson, that an increase in productivity should result in a proportional decrease in the value of produced goods and services. It costs less per unit to make 10,000 chairs than it costs to make 1 chair, so logically (and maybe that's the keyword here) it should have a lower value.
2013-10-08, 10:59 AM #118
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2013-10-08, 1:19 PM #119
Originally posted by Reid:
No, the value of a chair is fairly constant, but you'd expect prices to drop
Only because supply increases. Except it doesn't, because oligopolies will fix production and use the productivity increase to reduce their marginal cost.
2013-10-08, 4:14 PM #120
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