accepted. we're going to have to suspend elections for a while so i can sort a few things out.

I'll buy you a machine gun.

Entire thread TL;DR. Deemed irrelevant.

As an objective marxist, i'm going to give gay the edge here.

I'd disagree.

GayThe example you’ve just given shows us that protectionist and state subsidised market economies were able to out produce feudal ones.
Seriously, this is what every economist professor has to teach undergrads because they don't understand comparative advantage. First of all, protectionism is just retarded. It basically means privileged people in Country X force people around them to subsidize their industry. Or in other words, people living in some arbitrary range around them (determined by the national border) are not allowed to buy goods from further away just because they might face competition (in many cases this is not absolute prohibtion but subsidies which just has the same effect but to less degree). For example EU farm subsidies and agricultural tariffs make it impossible for African farmers to compete against the European agricultural industry, which one of the many reasons Africa is poor. Comparative advantage shows how everyone will be better off if there is free trade instead of protectionism. The thought before comparative advantage was that "exports" are bad, which is part of mercantilism, which itself is just basically creatonism of economics.

GayThis has nothing to say about Marxism and whether or not a socialist government could or could not have produced comparable results.
GayOr at least no more a defence than me claiming that the “Communist” States would’ve overcome their supply problems given enough time. And indeed they probably would have.
Yet in the human history, they have practically never done that. Look no further than Korea. North Korea's gross domestic product per capita is about 1/35th of the South korea. The whole country is so unproductive that it depends on South's food aid. How many decades or centuries are they going to have to suffer?

But historical examples are historical examples. For real analysis you need economic theory. The importance of prices in allocating resources has been understood by modern economists, because people respond to incentives and prices transmit information. I'm sorry but why do you think you know this better than economists? You are no better than some american conservatives who are doing some DIY climate science, thinking they got it all figured out, stating "there is no climate change".

GayIt’s also pretty ironic that you’re using the ownership of a computer and use of the internet as emblematic of free market superiority, when they were produced by the public sector.
Incorrect. Not single person or entity made a computer. Like anything invented, millions of people had to co-operate for it to happen. Inventions are about small steps. You can read about history of computing, it evolved from applied mathematics, went to mechanical computing. Nazis were involved, companies were involved. It wasn't like first we were throwing each other with dirt, and then we got Intel Xeon's.

GayBefore, of course, allowing the publically funded research to be turned over to capitalists to make private profit out of it.
So they should have kept it hidden or what? Or are you saying that if the government (or maybe some other capitalist?) invents a thing, others are not allowed to use it? (which are patents, which are stupid) So basically, after electricity was invented, we should have shot the person who improved on the idea, and invented AC for more efficient transfer? Or companies who made small innovations on power transformers, cables and generators should have not done those things?

Or are you advocating for royalties also known as patents? Now you start to sound like corporatist. Patents are just massive economic rent seeking. Wright Brothers didn't invent the aeroplane. Many others were twiddling with the idea, they just improved on the wing, then demanded US government buys their plane, and kept sueing everyone else after that for years. In the end american planes were so backward that US had to buy their planes from France, and US suspended aviation patents for the world war. There're strong economic arguments against patents; two economists: Levin and Boldrin have made a book out of it.

As far as Internet goes, it didn't come out of thin air either. There are two parts of this argument:

First part is that there would have not been Internet without the government (otherwise, what's the point). Now is that plausible? That is like saying that if it weren't for the Wright brothers we wouldn't have got aeoroplanes. I don't think so. After computing started to evolve, and quality-adjusted prices started to drop (thanks to increase in productivity), it wasn't just government who was connecting computers. In fact lots of companies were having networking solutions, but they were very different from each other. Internet was just a standard model for packet-switching network with several layers, like Intel made Universal Serial Bus and several motherboard companies worked together and formed ATX standard. Or it could have happened by people working voluntarily together like open source communities, who have made the most popular HTTP server: Apache HTTPD.

Then there is second part. Inventing a thing like Internet or aeroplane does not automatically mean we're downloading movies on 8Mbit connection and flying safely in 5000km. Wrights' aeroplane was just a toy for all practical purposes, it took decades of innovation and increase in productivity to make feasible transportation; small steps. Those who improve on the idea, gain extra profits. Microsoft didn't invent GUI either, but it made the idea of GUI useful. Apple didn't invent the MP3 player either, but it made innovations in that area which made MP3 players popular. Market innovation brought down the quality-inflation-adjusted prices of processors massively down (several thousand percent), increased the propagation speed of networks and so on. This was necessary to make things like Internet possible. The idea of OSI model or TCP/IP-mode lin 1960s was useless because computers were simply too expensive. If I had a time-machine and went back to early 1800s, I could explain them the idea of an iPhone or Internet. Would do they anything with it? No. The societies back then were horribly poor and capital was primitive. It took two hundred years of increase in productivity to bring the purchasing power for the average people to be able to buy personal computers, and generally build massive amounts of Internet capital (routers, cables etc.).

GayThis isn’t a response to my point, which was explaining why the totalitarian results of supposed Marxist revolutions of old shouldn’t be assumed likely to occur in a current Western Democracy.
Well I didn't say it happens everytime, or that it would happen in the West. I said that it has happened in the past. If we had 100 Nazi states, surely not all of them would go to war or do all the horrible things that German nazis did, but saying that the ideology is not to blame for most of the consequences of those states, is imo. misleading.

GayTo respond to what you’ve said though: How on earth do you get from people complaining about repressive internet censorship to violent revolutions against a form of government power that seeks to mitigate the excesses of private power? The left is actually able to distinguish these different types of “control” unlike you
First of all, you can make all exquisite poems about different "powers" but when you use the monopoly of force, also known as the government, you will have economic consequences. To analyze these affects, you need economic theory.

If you are going to prohibit trade, you are going to have to give government lots more control. How are they going to track private transactions unless they are allowed to spy on your home?

GayAs for the government appropriating all your property; who is going to have their car/home taken away by the government? The answer is people who have about 5 of each. Good luck to your counter revolution if that’s who composes your ranks.
If I took your (let's assume average UK wage) and redistributed it to all people in the world who are more than 5 times poorer than you, how would you think? For example in US, the poorest percentile were richer than 70% of world's population richer than richest 5% of Indians and several dozen times richer than most of the people in developing countries.

In fact redistribution is very inefficient. Let's take Bangladesh for example. If we redistributed their national GDP equally among them, their median daily wage would rise to 4$. Such a redistribution would probably halt all economic growth and possibly cause a recession.

What you fail to realize is that there is always a trade-off with taxing becaus it hurts incentives. The less there is capital accumulation and investment, the less there is economic growth, also known as increase in productivity. This comes from standard growth models. If you tax a person 100% over some margin, then he has no incentives to do any more work. If you tax him 50%, the effect is still strong but to lesser degree. Also higher the taxes, the more there is black job market, and more the government tends to spy on private transactions.

GayWhat right does the state have to implement the myriad laws restricting liberty that we need in order for modern day capitalist systems to function?
Simple property rights are enough. It is the politicians and special interests who want all kinds of laws to fine tune the economy et cetera.

GayYou’ve responded to my question asking you to clarify your position with a video that doesn’t directly seem to address what we we’re discussing. Can you elaborate on what you think’s particularly relevant here please. (I watched from 15:00 onwards)
I was merely pointing out that a KGB agent who lived throught communism saw lots of naïve marxists getting brainwashed and then getting shot by their own people. Those marxists just gave the government (bureaucrauts) all private property and power, and thought it would turn out fine, but like Lord Acton said.

Lord ActonPower tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

GayWhat right do you have to appropriate land for private ownership? What right do you have to appropriate this planets’ resources for private usage?
There will always be "private usage", only individuals can consume, not societies. I don't have a smart moral philosophy why private property is allowed more than say private discussion without government permission. I suppose I could quote Hoppe's discourse ethics but imo. thats just even relevant. I don't have ultimate reason why homosexuality should be allowed, abortion should be allowed, or why I should be allowed to own a car or a home. I just think there are some unalienable rights. I want to own my home and my car. I don't want anyone to use them without my permission. If you think I don't have that right, and some complete stranger bureaucrat (completely uncorrupt of course, not looking for his own interests) can have the right to decide how my home or car is used then fine, I cba. to debate about it with you.

Usually to answer those kind of questions we can use consequential ethics. For example if command economy leads to mass famines and grinding poverty, I don't accept it. Such a question is a scientific question and has been answered by economists.

Bold TextEven if the peoples of Africa had had, in recent decades, a real opportunity to achieve similar rates of economic growth as the developed countries, achieving such growth could not have helped them reduce their initial 30:1 disadvantage in per capita income.
Incorrect. Hong kong started somewhere near African development levels in 1950 (below some African countries) and reached the GDP per capita levels of its former host nation, United Kingdom.

GayAs nourishing as it is listening to someone justify children starving to death and dying from something as curable as diarrhea because the nation they happen to have been born in lacks a sufficiently high iq average to merit ethical consideration, it’s not actually a defence of the status quo.
Stop puttning words into my mouth. I'm not "defending" status quo neither am I "justifying their deaths". I'm stating that if the society is in order, you can reach high level of without any extra support. If you think Africa needs more redistribution (development aid) to fix their societies either withing or externally, then fine its your opinion. What is the debate here?

The fact I (or any medical doctors for that matter) do not have a complete cure to AIDS does not mean I’m trying “justify” their deaths. It is one thing to realize there is a problem and another to offer a solution. I wish mere gesture of empathy solves world’s problems but it doesn’t. It probably gets you a lot of voters, like Tom here.

GayLike just about every prominent pro free market economist in the Anglosphere. And would you like to tell us what the Austrian solution to the issue of the whole CDO fraud thing is? Perhaps a dose of deregula…. Wait a second!
GayI’m saying mainstream economists thought that the economy was fine, despite the fact that it was riding on a bubble created by people lending money they didn’t have, to people who couldn’t pay it back.
Yes, there're all kinds of well reasoned opinions by different economists how much financial regulation there needs to be. But that doesn't make marxist economics really any better. You are like saying that because modern medicine does not have a cure to AIDS or some pandemic, homeopathy is just alright. If you think CDO's are the only reason for the crisis, you really are not on the field. All I know for certain is that the issue is incredibly complex and very credentialed academics can have have different opinions on what went wrong. Economists do not agree on the causes, and even less on cures (I mean even if we banned CDOs or whatever right now, the next economic will completely different like in the past they have).

Yes, Keynesians (left-wing economists) thought they had stopped business cycles in 1960's but were quickly proven wrong by stagflation. Economists who think they have stopped all business cycles are delusional. Also economists certainly know that you can create business cycle both by private or public means, history is full of examples of both.

GayAnd just to be clear here, the onus on you isn’t to show that government can be AS inefficient as xyz company, it is to show that it is more so to such a degree that allowing such wealth to be distributed into the hands of those who don’t need it is of such a net benefit to society, that it outweighs any wealth lost through alleged government inefficiency.
First of all, the onus isn't for me to show anything. Really if you come around with your own climate stats and DIY research, if you think its my job to prove climate change is happening, you are delusional.

And second of all, I wish there was some formula to show this, but unfortunately there is not. However I'll give you a more practical example. The world had suffered of famines and incredible low living standards for aeons (thousands of years). It wasn't government who eradicted famines. It was the private market which increased the productivity in agriculture making food affordable to everyone. In 1800's it took the whole family to work to just feed them, nevermind own computers. Nowadays food costs about 10% of average income, and would probably cost less if Africans could fairly compete like I explained before. Agricultural subsidies not only increase the price of food they also keep a lot of people poor.

Emergent order is a very, very powerful phenomenon. Take the most far-fetched example: our language. No government bureaucraut designed that yet its very complex (I know this because I'm doing language-related programming in my undergrad thesis, something Chomsky area). Language evolved by people who wanted to communicate with each other. No government bureaucraut designed ENSL. It was formed voluntarily by people who wanted to play NS together competitively.

Market economy is exactly the same thing. It was formed by people who wanted voluntarily trade their property with each other. First they started with some basic barter like simple items (clothes, ornaments) for food, then using some intermediary such as money, finally evolving into a complex market economy.

The reason market economy is so efficient, is because there're practically infinite ways to reach infinite ends and prices provide incentives to take use make the best use of the information available. Take the mouse in your hand, there's not a single person on this world who could have done it. To make the plastic you needed a factory, to make the factory you need steel, to make the steel you need mining refinery, to make a refinery you needed design for example by software, to make software, you need computers, to make computers you need silicon, to make silicon et cetera. The market economy is incredibly complex not only in size but in time. All this emerged spontaenously by humans wanting to interact with each other, nobody designed that.

F.A. HayekThe curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

The Fatal Conceit

GayAnd thus the golden road to progress begins. Except that in the real world it doesn’t.
Well first of all, the increase in productivity has been massive. The living standars in Western societies, even with their burdernsome governments (or welfare states), is just amazing compared to anything in human history. The living standards are 100-150 times higher than they were before Indsturial Revolution. There is not even a scientific debate here. The increase in agircultural productivity is just massive.

GayIn the real world we have cartels, marketing budgets (in itself a horrendous waste of resources, but also having the undesirable effect of meeting its goal, which is to get us to waste money on useless fucking shit), repeated research by competing companies, and short term profit seeking resulting in all manner of negative consequences. And then when it comes to the important stuff, the stuff that needs a more dedicated investor with principles beyond making a quick return on their profit…. Well… We have the state sector for that don’t we.
Yet South Korean citizens are about 35 times richer than their North counterparts.

A lot of things can be said about cartels. Believe it or not, this is also a scientific question and the answers to that have not been found by either me or you, but by economists. There are some economists who think we fixing MS monopoly browser or media player market will be achieved by forcing MS to release an OS without a browser, a special product nobody bought, what a waste. Internetional competition means usually the profit margins hardly ever go above 30%, usually they hover below 10%.

Thanks to ads, for example Google can provide otherwise free services, but if people like you got into power they probably couldn't. You can start by banning political advertisements first.

Value investing is probably the biggest investing form, for example Warren Buffett has recommended value investing always more than short-term investing. In fact lots of savings accounts have 3, 5 or 10 year limits. For example my grandfather and uncle has bought forest that is going to pay off in maybe 20-30 years.

GayI’m saying mainstream economists thought that the economy was fine, despite the fact that it was riding on a bubble created by people lending money they didn’t have, to people who couldn’t pay it back.
First of all, it wasn't just "mainstream" economists, it was a lot of people. In fact, a lot of people had to believe in the bubble, or it would have not happened. In fact the people who really predicted the crisis are very few and far between. Talk is cheap, but the people who actually put their money where their mouth is, are few. You could have made massive profits by long-term shorting. I doubt you were one of them.

I have made money by forecasting stock drops, and it takes foresight.

GayThe reason you aren’t going to win every argument concerning pub/pro play, is because pub players have a really good argument, which is that allowing high skill benefits can completely break pub games and make the game hugely unenjoyable for those who aren’t willing to dedicate hundreds of hours of game time to a computer game.
True, this is a value question. There will always be preferences underneath, it is unavoidable. Yet on average competitive players have better educated opinions because they understand mechanics of the system. For example I might have an opinion that SC2 is too hard to learn (I don't but thats not the point), but I realize I do not have competence to start stating what skills and mechanics should be in the game or not, because my innocent-sounding suggestions could break very meaningful skills in high-level games. However luckily I am free to decide whether I like the game by buying or not buying it, instead of being forced to support SC2 if it were government subsidized game. If it were government-subsidized game, we would endlessly be debating how hard it should be instead of voting with our wallets. This happens with almost all "common goods"; when there is not a private owner, the usage of resource becomes a quarrel. It is also known as the tragedy of the commons.

I am not saying all public player opinions are bad like not all medical advice from amateurs is bad, but on the average experts have better educated opinions even if they disagree on values. The contrast is of course much bigger in medicine but this is just to illustrate the point.

GayI’m talking about game theory and such being used as fundamental axioms from which deductive statements about economic reality can (allegedly) be derived.
This is not really true, because game theory is not used as some sort of axioms; it is used usually to conduct analysis on the subject. Especially in macroeconomics, it is more about building models that fit to the data (kind of like climate science), this is inductive science. Naturally lots of classical economists (like Austrians) had a beef with this because building mathematical models to describe human behaviour can really make a lot of misplaced conclusions, instead insisting that conomic analysis should be derived from axioms such as marginal utility which describe human nature or reality, using deductive statements from valid premises.

GayYou’ve responded to my question asking you to clarify your position with a video that doesn’t directly seem to address what we we’re discussing. Can you elaborate on what you think’s particularly relevant here please. (I watched from 15:00 onwards)
He is a person who defected from Soviet Union, he saw the massive brain-washing going on. He saw lots of marxists being taught and then shot in Vietnam or whatever.

GayThere are obvious reasons why this doesn’t actually happen, whether it be overt corruption through campaign funding for politicians by the financial sector, or less overt corruption such as acquiescing to the business press agenda (Or specific interests i.e. Murdoch). But much more importantly is the simple fact that the political elite are ideologically beholden to whatever the academic consensus is. As you already stated, Marxism isn’t a part of the academic world anymore. And as such it isn’t a part of the political world. This isn’t a validation of the academic consensus, as you just suggested, but merely a reflection of it.
Economists both left and right (ie. Gregory Mankiw and Paul Krugman) have spoken for free tade, yet political leaders seem to do what they want. Economists have near consensus on some issues like price controls and free trade but that doesn't reflect the actual policies necessarily. Economists have very strong agreements against agricultural subsidies, yet they have been here for 200 years in almost. Democracy responds to incentives. You give voters what they want, and they vote you. Economics be damned. This is known as the area of public choice theory.

GayRich countries cut their tariffs by less in the Uruguay Round than poor ones did. Since then, they have found new ways to close their markets, notably by imposing anti-dumping duties on imports they deem ‘unfairly cheap.’ Rich countries are particularly protectionist in many of the sectors where developing countries are best able to compete, such as agriculture, textiles, and clothing. As a result, according to a new study by Thomas Hertel, of Purdue University, and Will Martin, of the World Bank, rich countries’ average tariffs on manufacturing imports from poor countries are four times higher than those on imports from other rich countries. This imposes a big burden on poor countries. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that they could export $700 billion more a year by 2005 if rich countries did more to open their markets. Poor countries are also hobbled by a lack of know-how. Many had little understanding of what they signed up to in the Uruguay Round. That ignorance is now costing them dear. Michael Finger of the World Bank and Philip Schuler of the University of Maryland estimate that implementing commitments to improve trade procedures and establish technical and intellectual-property standards can cost more than a year’s development budget for the poorest countries. Moreover, in those areas where poor countries could benefit from world trade rules, they are often unable to do so. … Of the WTO’s 134 members, 29 do not even have missions at its headquarters in Geneva. Many more can barely afford to bring cases to the WTO.15
I don't know where you took this from, but I agree completely, there should be no tariffs or any other kind of protectionism. Special interests like agricultural groups and other industries just leech special privileges from EU and governments. Atleast on national level, international competition forces them to change their policies. This is why I'm against EU. I'm for decentralization of power, both with free markets but also in political systems. When the decision power is taken away from citizens to some federal agencies, citizens practically lose the little political power they had. There'll be no end to regulation when it is coming from EU. The political class in Brussels does whatever it wants.

So yes I perhaps misstataed before that Africa's situation is only because of their domestic policies. It is not, EU's etc. subsidies play a role but naturally you still need to have your economy in order.

GaySo I’m the one asking unreasonable explanations from you? You started off by offering as a justification for your conflation, AN ENTIRE BOOK. I then asked you to respond to one, specific criticism, to which you’re now suggesting is a ridiculously unreasonable thing to do and that a sensible response is to suggest that I should respond to every criticism ever made about the topics of Marxism, Communism, and Socialism.
Fine I'll respond to your criticism. I was just kind of annoyed by previous replies which seemed like you wanted to find just any possible counter-argument and paste it there without having any will to seek the truth in the first place.

First of all, that book contains famines and atrocities. Market economy does not cause any of these even though it is certainly possibly to run a more or less free market economy and dictators or political parties do whatever they like (like in China). Economic freedom tends to increase individual and political freedom as living standards rise and improved access to technology allows access to information (Internet, books et cetera) but it is not a pre-requisite for a market economy. Most western countries are completely free of any of these listed horrors in the Black Book of Communism. They're strongly correllated with communists states.

But what was wrong with your criticism (which is by Noam Chomsky, no surprise there) ? It tried to make a comparison between (the lack of) health care in India and China in 1980's. First of all India was horribly poor in 1960's (like Europe in 1800's), the povery rate has been dropping and market reforms were made in 1980's. But the Black Book of Communism wasn't counting deaths due to health care or life expectancy. Even if North Koreans wouldn't suffer from famines (like they do now), their living standards are horrible and life expectancy is way below South Korea or any western countries. If we would integrate the area of life expectancy or somehow other way calculate the sum suffering of communistic countries, the death toll could go anywhere to hundreds of millions (which could possibly be compared to those of market economies). The book didn't do that. Just like Chernobyl, the immediate deaths were about 60, but the cancer etc. problems puts the figure on thousands. Even with the best intentions and intellectual honesty, calculating these numbers is very difficult because cancers and other health problems are not earmarked with "caused by Chernobyl".


GayYou might find your “takes a whole page” response requirements might abate somewhat if you manage to get over analogising every fucking thing in the world with the pains of justifying bhop to people with a social life. But seeing as you can’t stop making the analogy I might as well respond to it:

....

No, it’s not overrated, it’s the only way you actually convince people of things.
You really think debate is going to convince creationists of their stupid ideas? We can debate all we want, but sad truth is just some people are not either capable or willing to understand valid arguments. Some people know more about world mechanics than others. Not everyone can be Einstein or Friedman. A lot of political questions are scientific in nature. Unlike you may think, most scientific research is done by peer-reviewed publishing not by debate by laymen.

Or put it in other words. The reason I am not debating a theoretical physicist on theoretical physics, claiming to know better, is because I know fuck-all about theoretical physics (I know enough a lot of physics, for a science minor, but criticizing the whole academia would require deep mathematics and physics understanding, and peer-reviewed publications wouldn't hurt either).

GaySo I guess a more accurate statement for you originally to have made would have been something like: “Debate is a good way to learn, but now that I know everything, having to debate with people who disagree with me is overrated because they have a habit of not agreeing with me despite the fact that I know I’m right”
If you are interested in learning, I suggest you read some economics textbook. I would recommend G. Mankiw's books, but there is plenty to choose from. Catch me on sometimes and I can probably find you a book that fits your needs.

GayInform us that you are in fact an anarcho capitalist so that we can end the discussion with you safely labelled as insane.
Inform that you in fact a marxist so that we can end the discussion with you safely labelled as insane. See what I did there.

I'm not even an anarcho-capitalist, but atleast they can have the luxury of doubt. A lot of arguments for ancap can be made from basic economics to game theory, and to few historical examples (such as Not so Wild Wild West, a period which had only a single documented bank robbery!) World is however full of failed communist states.

I'm really doing this debate for the fun of it. The truth is that socialism is so inefficient that international competition is going to make sure even if we ever end up with any socialist experiment in the West, it is going to very short-lived. Most communist states have collapsed and are likely to collapse by themselves. Besides, the legacy of communism makes sure it is not going to happen. You can go on to East-Europe to educate them about the wonders of the socialist experiment.

ohmy.

jiriki, your over simplified bs is literally PAINFUL to read, it makes me want to hurt you, a lot.

LEARN SOMETHING

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

I really can't even start to discuss your views on the soviet union as a communist state. You know stalin kept having his engineers punished for doing what he ordered them to do? And was sending trains up and down the country just to satisfy statistics? You think this is in line with marxism?...

Yeah, all people who have debated on this forums with you Tom know how rational your thought process is. Fana has got his fair share, so have I. This is why I don't debate with you anymore.

haha so i can contend your arguments but you can't contend mine, whilst you still assume you're correct? Ever considered that you're the irrational one here?

I mean come one! Who thinks africa has had the same opportunity for economic growth as hong kong?.. Who could even imagine such a fallacy? *rolleyes* Africa definitely have china next to them too, isn't that right jiriki? Ahhh, people talking out of their ass is so painful to watch, especially when it bleeds!

I like how you're completely ignoring my wiki article as it contradicts your points... let me guess, i wrote the wiki article with my unusual rationality?

'jiriki'Personal attack

Yeh well I bummed your mum twice last night.

TomYeh well I bummed your mum twice last night.
I wrote a lengthy post, you reply by saying "oversimplified bullshit" and add some pseudo personal threat, how is that not a personal attack?

TomI mean come one! Who thinks africa has had the same opportunity for economic growth as hong kong?.. Who could even imagine such a fallacy? *rolleyes* Africa definitely have china next to them too, isn't that right jiriki?

Hong Kong had practically no natural resources so yes it completely contradicts your article. What it had was enormous amounts of economic freedom (more by accident though). Historical examples are historical, for real analysis you need economic theory. Saying like "hey Norway had lots of oil, so economic growth depends on natural resources" does not make for a scientific argument.

Many arab countries in Middle East have lots of oil too but their economic policies are a disaster, and the oil only benefits the sheiks.

TomAhhh, people talking out of their ass is so painful to watch, especially when it bleeds!
Personal attack.

'jiriki'Yeah, all people who have debated on this forums with you Tom know how rational your thought process is.


WAIT WAIT, WHAT? rational, thinking, lump? ok stop it right here jiriki immiediately

'jiriki'
I wrote a lengthy post, you reply by saying "oversimplified bullshit" and add some pseudo personal threat, how is that not a personal attack?
Your big lengthy post was a reply to gay, not me. And yes, you have oversimplified enormous amounts of information. Like comparing the economic situations of Africa and Hong Kong.
Saying oversimplified bullshit isn't a personal attack, it's an attack at what you just wrote, not once did i say anything about YOU, like you seem to think is fine when replying to me, kinda childish really.
'jiriki'
Hong Kong had practically no natural resources so yes it completely contradicts your article. What it had was enormous amounts of economic freedom (more by accident though). Historical examples are historical, for real analysis you need economic theory. Saying like "hey Norway had lots of oil, so economic growth depends on natural resources" does not make for a scientific argument.
My article was a response to your belief that economic justice happens around the world due to phenomena such as comparative advantage. I thought that was obvious as the two clearly contradict each other.

No, Hong Kong were next to China, China had a big development troubles in the 60s and most business in China turned to Hong Kong as it had much more labour on offer. When you get a sudden demand for your exports and local competition goes down the pan, economic growth is obviously going to improve. You don't need a masters in economics to see that, it's blatantly obvious.

This is completely different to Africa. The western world or (free market) often exploits African resources and has been doing for centuries. Oil companies have made tonnes of broken promises for healthcare and community services in Africa that have just died out, hell, there's even reports of gunned attacks on locals in the quest for gaining control over African resources. My argument is that a free capitalist market is very focused on unquestioned growth, this leads to exploitation of natural resources. It makes 'economic' sense to shit on countries with an abundance of the vital resources supporting your lifestyle so that the lifestyle avoids threat.

You can quantify just about any statement with science, noway having lots of oil is of course one of the reasons their GDP is high; I don't see how you can refute that purely because it hasn't been quantified. No1 ever said a 'just because' example, if anyone has been making 'linear logic' statements, its you!

'jiriki'
Many arab countries in Middle East have lots of oil too but their economic policies are a disaster, and the oil only benefits the sheiks.
But the highest 'gdp' is in Qatar and you like to use GDP as a measure of success. Yes, there's a lot of poverty and exploitation in the middle east, you think this is all done by their local authorities, you're saying it has nothing to do with the western markets? PAH!

'jiriki'
Personal attack.
Well yeh, throw a punch at me and expect fist coming for you.

'jiriki'Fana has got his fair share
Yo, what the. Keep me out of this clusterfuck please.

Tomhaha so i can contend your arguments but you can't contend mine, whilst you still assume you're correct? Ever considered that you're the irrational one here?
First time I saw your post I just saw a text "oversimplified BS" and pseudothreat, and I replied likewise. Don't try to be smart here.

TomYour big lengthy post was a reply to gay, not me. And yes, you have oversimplified enormous amounts of information. Like comparing the economic situations of Africa and Hong Kong.
No. What I said was that Hong Kong is an example of what free trade does to an open economy. It had no trade barriers, no tariffs, non-existent bureaucracy, low taxes and small government (until recently) and was the fastest growing economy in Asia for very long time. It has been ranked as the free'est economy in the world for decades. It is is no coincidence these correllate because lots of the causations come from textbook macro. It also didn't receive foreign aid and had practically no natural resources.

Africa however was an counter-example of a whole continent full of countries who have received trillions of dollars of foreign aid yet they're very poor compared to Western Countries except South Africa. That is not proof that foreign aid may not work (even though numerous economists have spoken against it) but should atleast give a general idea.

TomMy article was a response to your belief that economic justice happens around the world due to phenomena such as comparative advantage. I thought that was obvious as the two clearly contradict each other.
You are mixing apples and oranges here. Economic justice, whatever you mean with that, does not happen because of comparative advantage. Learn something!

GayNo, Hong Kong were next to China, China had a big development troubles in the 60s and most business in China turned to Hong Kong as it had much more labour on offer. When you get a sudden demand for your exports and local competition goes down the pan, economic growth is obviously going to improve. You don't need a masters in economics to see that, it's blatantly obvious.
According to which economist? And no, very few things in economics are blatantly obvious. Least of all macro which is completely shattered. And no, having extra labour available does not mean automatic growth, there're plenty of countries with lots of idle labour and not even comparable growth.

TomThis is completely different to Africa. The western world or (free market) often exploits African resources and has been doing for centuries.
Yes several governments have invaded African countries, I never approved this. I don't like governments generally at all.

Companies invest in Africa which is just good for the continent. Yes some companies break laws and whatever, and should be prosecuted like all other criminal activity. I am not against this, what is the problem?

TomOil companies have made tonnes of broken promises for healthcare and community services in Africa that have just died out, hell, there's even reports of gunned attacks on locals in the quest for gaining control over African resources.
Oil companies are not in the business for local communities health neither here or Africa. And what you mean 'quest for gaining control over African resources', do you mean that some company goes to build up a factory in Africa, then gets robbed by the locals and is somehow the villain for defending its property?

Oh, there was a certain African guy who took all white land back and redistributed it among the natives. Guess who?

TomWell yeh, throw a punch at me and expect fist coming for you.
And who started this discussion by saying you want to hurt me again?

TomBut the highest 'gdp' is in Qatar and you like to use GDP as a measure of success.
GDP is horribly flawed measure even with economic standards, yet economists generally agree its the best of worst options. Atleast it is mostly value-free.

TomYes, there's a lot of poverty and exploitation in the middle east, you think this is all done by their local authorities, you're saying it has nothing to do with the western markets? PAH!
Why are the western markets to blame?

FanaYo, what the. Keep me out of this clusterfuck please.
You enjoy debating with lump? I always got the impression that you debating lump was like someone trying to bang a head to a wall or talking to a kitchen table. Maybe it is just my imagination.

First time I saw your post I just saw a text "oversimplified BS" and pseudothreat, and I replied likewise. Don't try to be smart here.

Oh please, I said your oversimplifications made me wanna hurt you; I never said anything about actually hurting you, it was an expression of anger not a 'pseudo' threat. You know, emotions? Or does robot jiriki not compute such information without a neuroscience on hand to quote from? *rolleyes*

No. What I said was that Hong Kong is an example of what free trade does to an open economy. It had no trade barriers, no tariffs, non-existent bureaucracy, low taxes and small government (until recently) and was the fastest growing economy in Asia for very long time. It has been ranked as the free'est economy in the world for decades. It is is no coincidence these correllate because lots of the causations come from textbook macro. It also didn't receive foreign aid and had practically no natural resources.

Ok, my bad, misread you; I thought you were justifying the markets abuse of developed countries by using Hong Kong as a one off example. A quick google has pointed out that Hong Kong has been supporting one of the worst Gini-coefficients in asia until recently, it's still far behind the UK and no way should the UK be taken as a beacon for success by any means :S But yes, it is a very rare situation for a country and has done very well as an economy.

Africa however was an counter-example of a whole continent full of countries who have received trillions of dollars of foreign aid yet they're very poor compared to Western Countries except South Africa. That is not proof that foreign aid may not work (even though numerous economists have spoken against it) but should atleast give a general idea.

I'd say that the exploitation of locals to gain access to resources by corporations has had a major part in the poverty in Africa. Many others would agree, pretty sure I can find some quotes from Africans. I guess they don't know what they're on about though as they have no economics education...

You are mixing apples and oranges here. Economic justice, whatever you mean with that, does not happen because of comparative advantage. Learn something!

Economic justice, well your overall argument seems to follow that capitalism is doing more justice to the world than communism or any form of socialism ever could. And you said the raison d'etre for economics was the 'comparative advantage'. So that would lead me to put the two together, comparative advantage being the reason for economic justice from capitalism. I was disputing this with my article. Seems apples and oranges are both fruit~~~

According to which economist? And no, very few things in economics are blatantly obvious. Least of all macro which is completely shattered. And no, having extra labour available does not mean automatic growth, there're plenty of countries with lots of idle labour and not even comparable growth.

Let me get this straight, you're saying that when a company has an abundance of labour available to utilize, and then there's a sudden demand in the use of this labour for exports; that it isn't expected that the economy will grow? It's fairly just, common sense, that when you buy a product or service lots from a company/country, they will get more capital. You know, give someone some money, they'll have more money... Many things in economics ARE blatantly obvious, if you'd like me to list them I will.

This ties pretty closely to all the times the UK got pulled out of economic troubles post WWII, we threw loads of money into the system to help our economy grow. Hell, it may have led to insane inflation and then, well, Thatcher, but still, those thrusts of money definitely produced economic growth when they happened, we sustained the economy for something like 20 years by doing shit like that. Shame we couldn't keep our exports, (seems the local competition had something to play here as they kept stealing our car exports! :P). When you compare this to Hong Kong whose local competition was little to none at the time of their growth, surely you'd expect even more growth than in the UK's situations. (Plural, it happened many times)

I never said 'idle' labour, no idea where you got that from, that's almost the opposite of what I said.

Companies invest in Africa which is just good for the continent. Yes some companies break laws and whatever, and should be prosecuted like all other criminal activity. I am not against this, what is the problem?

No, the companies don't even know they're doing it, they outsource to 'cheap deals' in Africa that are ran by exploitation. It's a result of the need to be competitive. Many companies DO bias government decisions as they realize the implications of having certain companies invest in them, the companies even offer to build healthcare facilities for local residents and then bail out on the plans shortly after 'sealing the deal' and gaining control of resources.

The point is, just as you can abuse a socialist ideology, you can also massively abuse a capitalist ideology. The inherent nature of a competitive capitalist economy really gives a lot of reason for lesser developed countries to get any exports they can, just look at cocaine in south America!

Yes I realize that any sort of application of globalization knowledge would discourage these exploitations but that's just not what happens, companies and governments often exploit as it makes more immediate sense, economically.

Oil companies are not in the business for local communities health neither here or Africa. And what you mean 'quest for gaining control over African resources', do you mean that some company goes to build up a factory in Africa, then gets robbed by the locals and is somehow the villain for defending its property?

hey, i never said the oil companies are working in healthcare, they simply plan and promise things such as hospitals to local economies if they supply so much oil and what not. Then, shit on the locals because it makes most economic sense for them to shit. They don't get robbed, they just stop development at the first sign of trouble... and it's Africa, the place with horrible poverty, of course there's always going to be a risk of locals trying to take opportunities to survive, surely they'd realize this before making the promises!

Oh, there was a certain African guy who took all white land back and redistributed it among the natives. Guess who?

I know of a woman who did that, Grand Nanny of Nanny Toon, it's called Jamaica! :P

And who started this discussion by saying you want to hurt me again?

Hey, it was a reply to your post that made me quite angry! I never said I'd hurt you, just that I wanted to, like I wanted to rape Kate Witney when I was going through school, never would, I have no intention to go to jail. Never wanted to do something but had no intentions of doing it?..

GDP is [a] horribly flawed measure

Glad we agree on something.

Why are the western markets to blame?

Hey now, I wouldn't say anything specific was 'to blame', I would say that western markets have very much contributed towards the poverty and exploitation of the middle east. Hey, you think that the US would have gone to Iraq and shot down so many innocent civilians (with no real evidence for their claims) with no involvement from the western markets? Psshh, the markets there have been borrowing from Japan for years and Japan have been abusing their neighboring countries whilst being seriously hard working... Western markets get themselves in enough troubles and often pass their problems down the line in the hunt for cheaper resources (oil) to sustain the constantly increasing standard of life people have come to expect from capitalism.

PS. I'm pretty sure I've derailed this debate between you and gay to an extreme now with my pessimistic views of capitalism, so feel free to ignore it and just keep on the conversation with you two, I enjoy reading it. Don't get me wrong, i think capitalism was the best solution until about 15 years ago, no socialism could've really worked before then, we simply didn't have the science.

PPS. I can't remember ever debating with Fana?

Fuck, I'm getting pulled in to the essay tennis >_<

Look there's only one ideology now: never stop domining by whatever means necessary



DEBATE OVER

I'm gay.

edit: I'll respond in a bit

jiriki
Seriously, this is what every economist professor has to teach undergrads because they don't understand comparative advantage. First of all, protectionism is just retarded. It basically means privileged people in Country X force people around them to subsidize their industry. Or in other words, people living in some arbitrary range around them (determined by the national border) are not allowed to buy goods from further away just because they might face competition (in many cases this is not absolute prohibtion but subsidies which just has the same effect but to less degree). For example EU farm subsidies and agricultural tariffs make it impossible for African farmers to compete against the European agricultural industry, which one of the many reasons Africa is poor. Comparative advantage shows how everyone will be better off if there is free trade instead of protectionism. The thought before comparative advantage was that "exports" are bad, which is part of mercantilism, which itself is just basically creatonism of economics.

You're not responding to a case for protectionism. I only mentioned that those markets were protectionist because you were putting their success forward as an example of laissez faire conquest. I wasn’t advocating them. The crucial point I made is that the distinction you were making was between (protectionist) markets and feudalism. NOT a Marxist/socialist economy. No one’s arguing for feudalism here.


jiriki
Yet in the human history, they have practically never done that. Look no further than Korea. North Korea's gross domestic product per capita is about 1/35th of the South korea. The whole country is so unproductive that it depends on South's food aid. How many decades or centuries are they going to have to suffer?

North Korea actually had better standards of living than South Korea until about 40 years ago, at which point improvements to efficiency (replacement of labour with capital goods, like a gang of workmen with pickaxes being replaced by one workman with a pneumatic drill) overcame them. Rather than pneumatic drill factories, the Koreans were building tank factories. The reason why, Jiriki, is because they feared that the US was going to invade them.


jiriki
But historical examples are historical examples. For real analysis you need economic theory. The importance of prices in allocating resources has been understood by modern economists, because people respond to incentives and prices transmit information. I'm sorry but why do you think you know this better than economists? You are no better than some american conservatives who are doing some DIY climate science, thinking they got it all figured out, stating "there is no climate change".

Well one reason is that the “modern economists” that you like turn out not to be the only economists in existence. Some other economists think that "the market" is a model/construct that represents only demand that is backed by money - if people demand something and don't have the money to be able to bid on it against others who do have money, driving up prices, the price mechanism will never reflect that demand. Production is geared towards profit rather than demand, so people without money will not have their needs met. The fact that one of your heroes, Hayek, actually advocated progressive taxation partly because of this principle unfortunately appears to have escaped elucidation for you on whatever shitty Austrian blogs you read.

The reason why I have a pretty healthy dose of scepticism regarding popular views amongst establishment economists is because a lot of them are, if not outright corrupt, pretty overly enamoured by the idea of promulgating views that will gain them tenure/a pay check
You can read about some of it here - http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Inequality-Thomas-Byrne-Edsall/dp/0393302504/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305477365&sr=1-3
Or, if watching the facial contortions of liars is your thing, this film has some fun interviews- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_%28film%29

It might also be worth pointing out that Austrian economics (let alone anarcho capitalism) is widely considered bunk by mainstream economists. So maybe you’d like offer your own response as to why you don’t just kneel to the consensus.

jiriki
Incorrect. Not single person or entity made a computer. Like anything invented, millions of people had to co-operate for it to happen. Inventions are about small steps. You can read about history of computing, it evolved from applied mathematics, went to mechanical computing. Nazis were involved, companies were involved. It wasn't like first we were throwing each other with dirt, and then we got Intel Xeon's.


Don't be stupid. I didn't say the current Intel production line was created by the public sector, I said computers and the internet were. The fact that the private research was then turned over to private companies to refine specific products (and of course make genuine progress) is no more interesting than pointing out that the government believes in the market. The fact is that massive, massive funding of computer research during (and after) WW2 produced a knowledge base conducive to private investment. To quote the quickest source I could come up with – “Computers were a brand new industry in the 1940s. Developing new computer systems was too risky for private funding, given the long development process, the high costs, and the uncertainty of achieving a successful product” - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mwwAAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (page 41)

This of course is but one example where the private sector is left inadequate when our destination is progress. The reason why is because for the capitalist, progress is incidental; it’s profit that is desired. When a society needs infrastructure, services and innovations that don’t provide an immediately obvious return on investment, the capitalist is no where to be seen.

But it’s not just schools, railways, roads, hospitals, firemen, policemen, the courts; it’s also the projects that offer humanity a real road forward. Think of the human genome project, nuclear fusion and the LHC.. Who on earth in the private sector would have funded these initiatives, the fruits of which are yet to be fully realised. The answer is no one.

And by the way (perhaps this mistake shouldn’t be a particularly big surprise given that you already think Communism and Fascism are essentially the same things, but just to let you know… ) the Nazi party wasn’t a company, it was a government.



jiriki So they should have kept it hidden or what? Or are you saying that if the government (or maybe some other capitalist?) invents a thing, others are not allowed to use it? (which are patents, which are stupid) So basically, after electricity was invented, we should have shot the person who improved on the idea, and invented AC for more efficient transfer? Or companies who made small innovations on power transformers, cables and generators should have not done those things?

You’re projecting problems that manifest in capitalist economies. Why on earth would a Marxist or socialist government deign “others not be allowed to use it” with regards to a new technology in order to protect private rent seeking? The whole point is that if some genius constructs a generator with an incredible energy coefficient, the state would appropriate it and put it into mass production in order for the whole of society to reap the rewards. Rent seeking and the co-opting of the state by private power is a problem for capitalist economies and in particular capitalist economies with a weak state, not Marxist ones.


jiriki
Or are you advocating for royalties also known as patents? Now you start to sound like corporatist. Patents are just massive economic rent seeking. Wright Brothers didn't invent the aeroplane. Many others were twiddling with the idea, they just improved on the wing, then demanded US government buys their plane, and kept sueing everyone else after that for years. In the end american planes were so backward that US had to buy their planes from France, and US suspended aviation patents for the world war. There're strong economic arguments against patents; two economists: Levin and Boldrin have made a book out of it.

My above response is basically the same for this (obviously I don’t support them, quite how you made that jump I have no idea), but I’d just like to point out how devastating this is for the argument of superior productivity within the private sector. What kind of effect do you think the dissolution of patents would have on private investment?



jiriki Well I didn't say it happens everytime, or that it would happen in the West. I said that it has happened in the past.

You were quite clearly suggesting that in view of historical examples, that such a polity was undesirable. The fact you didn’t explicitly use the words “every time” or “West” doesn’t really detract from that fact.

jiriki
If you are going to prohibit trade, you are going to have to give government lots more control. How are they going to track private transactions unless they are allowed to spy on your home?

If you mean how is the government going to track someone doing some covert plumbing jobs for a few extra pounds on the side then no, it’s not something I care about and you’d struggle pretty hard to find any Marxists who advocate a stasi 2.0 in regards to blunting inevitable black market activity. I’m not particularly worried about giving the government power to monitor transactions within certain limits though, because I’m also not worried about creating large elected and bureaucratic watchdogs and constitutional rights to ensure that any abuse of power is stifled.



jiriki
If I took your (let's assume average UK wage) and redistributed it to all people in the world who are more than 5 times poorer than you, how would you think?
I would think “oh look it’s social justice” and then probably feel rather bummed out at becoming poor. I’m not arguing that rich people would enjoy having their wealth redistributed; I’m saying it’s the right thing to do.


jirkiIn fact redistribution is very inefficient…..

What you fail to realize is that there is always a trade-off with taxing becaus it hurts incentives. The less there is capital accumulation and investment, the less there is economic growth, also known as increase in productivity. This comes from standard growth models. If you tax a person 100% over some margin, then he has no incentives to do any more work. If you tax him 50%, the effect is still strong but to lesser degree. Also higher the taxes, the more there is black job market, and more the government tends to spy on private transactions.

This is a generalized argument that has nothing to do with the point that you quoted. You also didn’t respond to where I said - “No you don’t remove THE incentives to produce these innovations, you remove THAT incentive to produce the innovation. I know you obviously disagree with this, but I think bureaucrats are motivated pretty well when given the freedom to improve the world (in as far as their department affects it) to the best of their ability. But assuming that isn’t the case, and that we need to motivate innovation solely through self interest, then introduce something akin to the Free Market Drug Act bill in America, with government corporations set up in competition with each other; failing corporations being folded and new ones set up in their place. You can use internal market forces without having to create billionaires.” - Which is the relevant tangent here.




jiriki
Simple property rights are enough. It is the politicians and special interests who want all kinds of laws to fine tune the economy et cetera.

Wait a second I thought you said you weren’t an ancap? If you are then can you say so and if you aren’t then can you answer this question properly please.



jirikiThere will always be "private usage", only individuals can consume, not societies.

This is tautological and doesn’t respond to my point that no one inherently owns property or resources on this planet; meaning that if you use them privately, then you are in effect guilty of the same imposition you identified with regard to government preventing others from setting up rival internet services (the idea of any private network actually being able to set up a better service than what the state could produce is laughable by the way). Put simply, when you take land or use a resource, you are saying “you can’t use this” to someone, the same way a state would be taking internet services from capitalists would be saying “I think it’s time we started running this a bit better and you stopped bleeding the poor to fund your car collection, dickface”




jiriki
Usually to answer those kind of questions we can use consequential ethics. For example if command economy leads to mass famines and grinding poverty, I don't accept it.

Well that’s funny because the only ethical principle you’ve so far professed axiomatic is the deontological right to private property.



jiriki
Such a question is a scientific question and has been answered by economists.

Hearing this from someone who subscribes to an economic theory that outright rejects empirical falsification is pretty lol. Even if we were talking about the conclusions of economists who don’t subscribe to the Austrian rubbish, the appellation of “science” to their theories is the science of sociology and history, not the science of chemistry and physics.


jiriki Incorrect. Hong kong started somewhere near African development levels in 1950 (below some African countries) and reached the GDP per capita levels of its former host nation, United Kingdom.

Hong Kong owes its success to being a tax haven protectorate of a world spanning empire. Comparing it to actual nation-states with geopolitical concerns and economies geared towards resource extraction is dumb.

Stop puttning words into my mouth. I'm not "defending" status quo neither am I "justifying their deaths". […]

You were quite clearly trying to justify Africa’s impoverishment in terms of their intellectual failings. Maybe you thought such an argument should have been read as a defence of eating chocolate cake, but given the context of the remark being made as a reply to my allegation that capitalism exploits the impoverished and that our wealth is essentially built on it, I think my interpretation probably falls a little short of “putting words in your mouth”. Feel free to elaborate on exactly why you started talking about African IQ levels though Jiriki.

jirki
If you think CDO's are the only reason for the crisis, you really are not on the field. All I know for certain is that the issue is incredibly complex and very credentialed academics can have have different opinions on what went wrong. Economists do not agree on the causes, and even less on cures (I mean even if we banned CDOs or whatever right now, the next economic will completely different like in the past they have).

Of course I don’t think CDOs were the only reason for the crisis you clown. Marxist thought is a fucking laundry list of exactly why systemic problems in capitalist economies will lead to crises like this. But the IMMEDIATE reason the economy tanked is indeed because of CDOs. Now can you please produce the comedy routine I requested in my last post, which is for you to describe what the Austrian solution to the CDO problem would be.


jiriki First of all, the onus isn't for me to show anything. Really if you come around with your own climate stats and DIY research, if you think its my job to prove climate change is happening, you are delusional.

We weren’t discussing who had the burden of evidence, we were just exchanging case studies in the effectiveness of public Vs private management. The point I was making was that putting forward your case examples as as good as public ones isn’t good enough. You need to show that they’re better, for the reasons I gave in my last post.

jiriki
And second of all, I wish there was some formula to show this, but unfortunately there is not. However I'll give you a more practical example.[…]

As fun as it would be asking you to elaborate on just what grounds you were ascribing the ENTIRE OF HUMAN PROGRESS since 1800 to the “free market”, you’re going off on a completely irrelevant tangent here. Equating feudal age government achievements with the potential of modern day Marxist/socialist ones is the equivalent of me equating current day laissez faire markets with stone age communities that lacked any formal government. i.e it’s fucking stupid.

jiriki Emergent order is a very, very powerful phenomenon. Take the most far-fetched example: our language. No government bureaucraut designed that yet its very complex (I know this because I'm doing language-related programming in my undergrad thesis, something Chomsky area). Language evolved by people who wanted to communicate with each other.

And have you yet concluded in your thesis whether or not we have reached the “optimal” language? The fact we have more than one language would probably be a pretty quick route to suggesting that we haven’t. We have reached a sufficient language that allows us to run the society we live in, but that’s not what the hardline free marketeer needs to show emergent order results in. They don’t need to show that the markets are “quite good” at self regulating; they need to show that they’re perfect. For this to actually be the case, you need omnipotent, totally rational actors who act purely out of self interest and in a world with access to all information at all times so that their God brains can compute exactly what actions to take. That is the world where it would seem plausible to suggest that an “emergent order” would result in an optimal outcome. We don’t live in that world.


jiriki
A lot of things can be said about cartels. Believe it or not, this is also a scientific question and the answers to that have not been found by either me or you, but by economists. There are some economists who think we fixing MS monopoly browser or media player market will be achieved by forcing MS to release an OS without a browser, a special product nobody bought, what a waste. Internetional competition means usually the profit margins hardly ever go above 30%, usually they hover below 10%.

Thanks to ads, for example Google can provide otherwise free services, but if people like you got into power they probably couldn't.


If people like you got into power google wouldn't exist because Microsoft would have obliterated any competition by not allowing anything they deemed a possible threat to run on windows.
Then I guess we could talk about the billion other examples where a market leader could essentially monopolise a sector by using the numerous adavantages such a position endows a company with (and i mean the advantages outside of state manipulation) and how your political ideology would be left standing there saying "don't worry mate, the market will work it out soon enough, just you wait!!"

jiriki
This happens with almost all "common goods"; when there is not a private owner, the usage of resource becomes a quarrel. It is also known as the tragedy of the commons.

Also known as the thought experiment that demonstrates how private companies will rape the world (commons) into oblivion despite the fact that they will burn along with the rest of us. You keep bringing up climate change, so maybe you’d like to explain how your ideal neo mad max society would deal with companies who appear to be killing our planet yet don’t want to stop doing it. Is environmental regulatory legislation somehow preventing the CEOs of polluting companies realising the effects of what they're doing? Would ending environmental legislation sudenly result in these compines suddenly deciding that actually yes, ending pollution would be a good idea?
The actual reason why these companies continue to pollute despite it being bad for everyone is because to the institutionalised capitalist, things like world destruction are considered "externalities", their primary concern is producing good figures for the next quarter. It's the government that has the foresight, will, and mandate to make sure such "externalities" like starvation and environmental destruction are actually dealt with.



jiriki This is not really true, because game theory is not used as some sort of axioms; it is used usually to conduct analysis on the subject. Especially in macroeconomics, it is more about building models that fit to the data (kind of like climate science), this is inductive science. Naturally lots of classical economists (like Austrians) had a beef with this because building mathematical models to describe human behaviour can really make a lot of misplaced conclusions, instead insisting that conomic analysis should be derived from axioms such as marginal utility which describe human nature or reality, using deductive statements from valid premises.

It’s axiomatic in the sense that you consider it the correct method to analyse data. The fundamental axioms concerning the data (how humans act) that you feed into that analysis was described below that paragraph, which you didn’t respond to:
“Markets have all the information that governments have in the same sense that the universe has all the information that the government has. The problem is that the market isn’t an agency that regulates in any meaningful sense. IF individuals were rational (they aren’t, not even in a nominal sense), and IF they were solely motivated by self interest (they aren’t), and IF they were omniscient (they aren’t), then the notion of the markets creating a truer democracy than elected politicians could ever achieve might become something other than a very, very depressing fetish of rich elites and useful idiots.”



jiriki
Economists both left and right (ie. Gregory Mankiw and Paul Krugman) have spoken for free tade, yet political leaders seem to do what they want. Economists have near consensus on some issues like price controls and free trade but that doesn't reflect the actual policies necessarily. Economists have very strong agreements against agricultural subsidies, yet they have been here for 200 years in almost. Democracy responds to incentives.

I’ve already said that the state is hugely affected by private power, but there’s also the fact that while just about every mainstream politician espouses neo liberal mantra, a lot of them know that outsourcing jobs to China isn’t actually a good idea.


jiriki
You give voters what they want, and they vote you. Economics be damned. This is known as the area of public choice theory.

Ah yes, another piece of game theory that assumes everyone to literally be a psychopath. Great. Out of interest, why do you think there exist fringe parties? Given that people in those parties know they essentially stand 0% chance of getting elected?



jiriki
So yes I perhaps misstataed before that Africa's situation is only because of their domestic policies. It is not, EU's etc.

So what you actually mean is that because you’ve managed to cram part of the capitalist driven exploitation of Africa into the “government did it!!!!!” paradigm, that you’ll now let them off the hook for just having a low IQ. Good thing this doesn’t come off as you being a dogmatically ideological retard or anything.






jirikiFirst of all, that book contains famines and atrocities. Market economy does not cause any of these.

You have literally never read a book by anyone other than a right wing fanatic, have you. I’ve actually already given you a specific example not just of famine under a market system, but one that actually demonstrated a state response was superior in dealing with it ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bihar_famine_of_1873%E2%80%9374
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%9378 )

As for the “no atrocities”. Is this a joke? The colonization of Africa? India? Latin America? Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan?
Wait let me guess…. Capitalist doctrine doesn’t explicitly state that you should invade other countries in order to create markets and ensure supplies of essential resources. Maybe you should actually try and answer the first point I made in my last post this time – “Sorry but the status quo is the manifest realisation of implementing a capitalist system in the real world. Remember that argument? It’s your one.”



jiriki
But what was wrong with your criticism (which is by Noam Chomsky, no surprise there) ? It tried to make a comparison between (the lack of) health care in India and China in 1980's. First of all India was horribly poor in 1960's (like Europe in 1800's), the povery rate has been dropping and market reforms were made in 1980's. But the Black Book of Communism wasn't counting deaths due to health care or life expectancy.

India was horribly poor in the 1960’s? We’re comparing it to China. China was ranked #88 globally per capita compared to India at #90 in 1960. Not a particularly compelling statistic for your argument is it. But yeah I know the book wasn’t counting deaths caused by not providing medical care for poor people. That’s rather the point, isn’t it; that deaths caused by a capitalist system just aren’t counted.

To quote Chomsky directly:

"Like others, Ryan reasonably selects as Exhibit A of the criminal indictment the Chinese famines of 1958-61, with a death toll of 25-40 million, he reports, a sizeable chunk of the 100 million corpses the "recording angels" attribute to "Communism" (whatever that is, but let us use the conventional term). The terrible atrocity fully merits the harsh condemnation it has received for many years, renewed here. It is, furthermore, proper to attribute the famine to Communism. That conclusion was established most authoritatively in the work of economist Amartya Sen, whose comparison of the Chinese famine to the record of democratic India received particular attention when he won the Nobel Prize a few years ago. Writing in the early 1980s, Sen observed that India had suffered no such famine. He attributed the India-China difference to India's "political system of adversarial journalism and opposition," while in contrast, China's totalitarian regime suffered from "misinformation" that undercut a serious response, and there was "little political pressure" from opposition groups and an informed public (Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, Hunger and Public Action, 1989; they estimate deaths at 16.5 to 29.5 million).

The example stands as a dramatic "criminal indictment" of totalitarian Communism, exactly as Ryan writes. But before closing the book on the indictment we might want to turn to the other half of Sen's India-China comparison, which somehow never seems to surface despite the emphasis Sen placed on it. He observes that India and China had "similarities that were quite striking" when development planning began 50 years ago, including death rates. "But there is little doubt that as far as morbidity, mortality and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India" (in education and other social indicators as well). He estimates the excess of mortality in India over China to be close to 4 million a year: "India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame," 1958-1961 (Dreze and Sen).

In both cases, the outcomes have to do with the "ideological predispositions" of the political systems: for China, relatively equitable distribution of medical resources, including rural health services, and public distribution of food, all lacking in India. This was before 1979, when "the downward trend in mortality [in China] has been at least halted, and possibly reversed," thanks to the market reforms instituted that year.

Overcoming amnesia, suppose we now apply the methodology of the Black Book and its reviewers to the full story, not just the doctrinally acceptable half. We therefore conclude that in India the democratic capitalist "experiment" since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of the "colossal, wholly failed...experiment" of Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, tens of millions more since, in India alone. The "criminal indictment" of the "democratic capitalist experiment" becomes harsher still if we turn to its effects after the fall of Communism: millions of corpses in Russia, to take one case, as Russia followed the confident prescription of the World Bank that "Countries that liberalise rapidly and extensively turn around more quickly [than those that do not]," returning to something like what it had been before World War I, a picture familiar throughout the "third world." But "you can't make an omelette without broken eggs," as Stalin would have said. The indictment becomes far harsher if we consider these vast areas that remained under Western tutelage, yielding a truly "colossal" record of skeletons and "absolutely futile, pointless and inexplicable suffering" (Ryan). The indictment takes on further force when we add to the account the countries devastated by the direct assaults of Western power, and its clients, during the same years."


The stuff about debating being “overrated” and NS/starcraft is rambling nonsense and I’m not going to respond to it because this post is far too big as it is and these tangents aren’t at all interesting or important. I’ve also left out some of your really irritating habitual recycling of generalised points (like the end of your post)

Wrong.

But let me just rephrase your intelligent response.

Gaywhatever shitty Austrian blogs you read.

who don’t subscribe to the Austrian rubbish

""whatever shitty Marxist people you read

who don't subcribe to the Marxist rubbish

I'll respond in a bit!

Value judgements are value judgements. Great work jiriki.

Take your time with the response, some of your arguments are barely coherent and you tend to go off the point extolling the virtues of "hey a market is really great because oh look competition!!" when it has next to no relevance to the precise point being discussed.

Here is why you two discuss this on the forum instead of steamfriends or TeamSpeak or anything like that .

You both know shit about the topic so you need the time to google and wikipedia your answer .. FFS noone cares anymore .. everyone can sound smart with the internet .. if you want to have this discussion have it like men in REAL TIME ! ... YOU ARE JUST EMBARASSING YOURSELVES !

And dont you dare ever say anything bad about Austria again ;DD !!

EisteeYou both know shit about the topic so you need the time to google and wikipedia your answer .. FFS noone cares anymore .. everyone can sound smart with the internet .. if you want to have this discussion have it like men in REAL TIME ! ... YOU ARE JUST EMBARASSING YOURSELVES !
Yes. Its not me who is against economic academia, Gay thinks he has it all figured out.

And no I don't have perfect information. If he comes up with an argument related to India in 1870, how the fuck do you expect me to know every single detail in this world by heart.

Maybe you could use google to find out how to make a post without smileys that make you sound like a 12 year old.

edit: this was directed at eistee

jirikiYes. Its not me who is against economic academia, Gay thinks he has it all figured out.

As I already said, the Austrian school (let alone ancap) is considered rubbish in mainstream academia. hth.

so your argument is that i used one smile at the end ..

Wow i think you could not have proven me more right !

Thx for being here enjoy your pointless talk !

For your information the smiley was there to make me sound a little nicer about the austrian comments .. and it did not have any meaning for the rest of the post!

Greets 8) ! 8P ! XDD !

Well jiriki why even discuss then when the chosen stuff is obviously not from his mind .. i dont see the point in arguin with the internet ! .. as i have proven you can find anything on the internet even prove that 1 = 2 ..

How does me calling your constant use of smileys annoying validate your argument that you only "really" win an argument if it's conducted in real time?