"Freedom" thread or something

JJLehto wrote: rogerthat wrote: There is a theory that US and West European economies have reached saturation and financial engineering in the 80s onwards was just a way to keep things going.  I don't know how far it is true.  But I have observed that from 2008 onwards, our big firms have started preferring Koreans even for fairly high tech capital equipment.  They only buy from Germans or French when they don't have options from Korea.  Koreans are very aggressive and bid for huge projects at ridiculously low prices and THEN work out how they can make it profitable!  It seems that the only way out is either a massive productivity jump for US/West Europe or a massive wage cut.  But the export market for your machines is going to get more and more restricted in future at existing prices.   Of course the US is mainly a service economy now, and I think many western countries are? Sans Germany and Japan though we've already discussed how you can't export forever, as China is realizing. I've said before while I get the benefits of open trade, it does seem to be a double edged sword that can bring downsides.   What exactly is meant by saturation? It does seem reasonable to me that we all have just "maxed out", done all we can, made all we can, and now are a finance driven service economy based on internal consumption. The natural process. I guess only problem with that is, this happened before in the 1920s and the US did bounce back.   I read a book by Eric Janszen that did indeed claim we pretty much need a new new deal, maybe not in the FDR sense but that the gov needs to basically jump start things and bring the productivity jump. Hit the reset button and do it again better. IDK how realistic this is but he did claim there's plenty the US can still produce, and there's always stuff to do, so we can find a way to bring a productivity jump. Since wage cut seems unacceptable.

Edited by rogerthat - November 22 2013 at 10:23

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=1

timothy leary wrote: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=1 article on prisons and the drug war

Capitalism, as implied in its very name, leads to accumulation of capital, which in itself is not bad and it's the tool to, in theory, generate wealth outwards. But accumulation of capital leads to power. And though government doesn't help as it basically colludes with that power, I'm almost certain that, left to its own devices, this accumulated power/capital would have nothing better to do than create other forms and instruments of generating more and more capital but without generating outward wealth, as it has happened in the US for quite a while now.

Maybe we have to go back to bartering.

JJLehto wrote: I can't say that I find the argument convincing at all really. The analysis like most that come to similar results is just incomplete. It really ignores the issue of time preference most obviously which, although the school is riddled with faults, flaws, and wackjobs, is a really important contribution of austrian theory. I'm not sure how the 20s and the present era don't qualify as periods of big government.

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Depending on how my day goes I would like to write something relatively lengthy.

I don't know. The regulation of the banking industry in those respective decades was pretty disastrous so I'm not sure I agree with your point.

Neither do I. But that doesn't invalidate all of the work they've done. Their ultimate downfall is their total refusal to treat economics as a physical science, which is strange because part of their great strength was acknowledging that economics is not a physical science.

The Pope won't be coming to this thread to show support anytime soon.

^Agreed, but I've come to realize private charity never was and never will be enough. 

I look at it this way: people are more individualistic, more "I"-oriented than in the past. Yes, there are awesome acts of generosity happening every day but on a very limited level or when a disaster happens. You have said it would take a lot of time for a change of mindset to occur, IF it occurs in the right (in this case, generosity) direction. People can't wait two generations. Sadly, there's only one institution with the size and power to try and reach those who need help and only one way to fund it.

The T wrote: ^Agreed, but I've come to realize private charity never was and never will be enough.

And not to be a dick, but I think it's pretty naive (or hidden agenda-d) to think it would be.

Especially since, far as I know from being a student of history, there has always been unemployment and significant underclass, even in the magical late 1800s when there was no CB, no gov welfare and little gov at all. I say with good confidence unemployment and low wages are part of capitalism, which is why I found wanting to remove all welfare like many want is naive, biased or worse...just cruel.

Of course I'm getting into this school of thought which theorizes how unemployment need NOT be part of capitalism...that full employment can be achieved without inflation (which is the main issue with "too much" employment) and avoiding other issues usually brought up.

Another factor is of course fear that with no unvoluntarily unemployed workers will gain too much confidence but IDK if it's really like that anymore.