Conservative view of government.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:46 pm

JoeOh wrote:Msimon, You mean our entire economy should be based on boom and bust cycles?? :shock:

And you would prefer an economy based on guns and enforcers?

You know Mao was right. Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.

So how many guns do you want pointed at your head? How many guns do you want to point at others? Just how much political power can you stand?

The USSR had an economy based on enforcers. The promises of the USSR were much more attractive than the promises of a sink or swim economy. And yet the sink or swim economy produced much better results for the poor than the attractive promises of the USSR.

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Yes. I would take a boom and bust economy growing at an average of 10% a year over an economy growing at 3% a year with hordes of enforcers.

And you will note that even with all the enforcers the boom/bust cycle has not been repealed.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyameric ... /text.html

There will always - in the long run - be revolts against excessive numbers of enforcers. What you propose is a recipe for civil war. It could be a cold civil war. None the less governments that go that route always fall. One way or another.

In the USSR it got you two cultures. The public culture of lies and the private culture of truth. A bad deal.

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Hayek explained in The Road To Serfdom why what you propose can't work. No planner can account for the desires of 300 million people.

What you propose is that everyone should have enough to eat. What I propose is that everyone should have what they want to eat.

How in the heck can some planner figure out the desires of 300 million?

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A while back some geniuses in Congress decided on a yacht tax. At a modest 10% rate. What happened? Yacht building is no longer done in the USA. All those formerly employed in yacht building were thrown out of work. And the tax? It didn't produce much revenue (if you count the workers who lost jobs the revenue was negative).

Punishing the rich winds up punishing the poor.

For the sake of the poor you would reduce us all to slavery. Not a bargain I'm willing to accept.

Think of it this way. If the welfare culture had been abolished in 1959 we would currently have an economy 25X larger. Would the poor be better or worse off in a 25X larger economy?

kunkmiester · Post by **kunkmiester** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:49 pm

The boom and bust cycles are a result of the "monetary policy" inflicted on us by the fed reserve(which is neither). Get rid of that, and the cycles smooth out a bit, and localize.

The problems are stockholders who can't see the long view, CEOs and such that have limited accountability, and government favoring certain companies. It's not the "military-industrial" complex you need to worry about, it's the "corporate-Congress" complex.

I think we can all agree that it's impossible for the gov to satisfy everyone, so instead, the government needs to get out of everything.

JoeOh · Post by **JoeOh** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:05 pm

Wow you conservatives are obsessed with guns. Guns this and guns that.

The problem with boom and bust is the inherent lack of stability and now you want that instability to be main driving force of the economy. Sounds like a bad deal if you have nothing to fall back on.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:05 pm

JoeOh wrote:Ohh please, Conservatives are just as thieving too. Even more so with off-shore tax havens and the erosion of the American dream for the average worker.

Nice try-

Your regarding peoples attempts to keep their own money as thieving says more about your manner of thinking than theirs.

IT IS NOT YOUR MONEY!

It is no different ethically from handing a robber your wallet and refusing to tell him about your money belt.

JoeOh · Post by **JoeOh** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:13 pm

Diogenes wrote:
JoeOh wrote:Ohh please, Conservatives are just as thieving too. Even more so with off-shore tax havens and the erosion of the American dream for the average worker.

Nice try-

Your regarding peoples attempts to keep their own money as thieving says more about your manner of thinking than theirs.

IT IS NOT YOUR MONEY!

It is no different ethically from handing a robber your wallet and refusing to tell him about your money belt.

I never said that liberals were perfect either. There is stealing on both sides. I'm just pointing out that conservatives are no better yet they tout the wonders of conservatism.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:16 pm

JoeOh wrote:No, you're to easy. If we eliminate all the income taxes, the ones that have the money will have even more money (and horde it) and those with far less will now have no social safety-nets to fall back on. Instead they'll just starve to death in the cold. The homelessness rate will skyrocket.

Conservative ideals fail becuase people are inherently imperfect. They lie, cheat and steal to get what they want. Only a few people are "truly" honest. The system is complicated because human nature is complicated. No way around it.

Conservatism only works for those who already have everything while liberalism protects those who have little or nothing to protect them from those who would otherwise run them over with impunity.

I started off with nothing. I'm doing decently now, but I had to work harder and smarter than others to get what i've got. And every time I got a buck ahead, here comes the government demanding that I give them a large chunk of what I earned by the sweat of my brow and risk to my life. There are many times I just turn down work because I don't want to deal with the tax issues.

Conservatism recognizes that people will consume free lunches until they are helpless. As Walter Williams put it,
Down in Florida he noticed a sign next to a beach. "Do not Feed the Dolphins. It makes them helpless and reliant on people." He commented that it was odd that people could be so sensible when it comes to dolphins, but so dumb when it comes to people.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:20 pm

JoeOh wrote:I didn't say all conservatives are liars, cheats, and thieves. I just said most. I hope you really are one of the honest ones.

Unlike most conservatives I don't deal in absolutes.

That sounds like an absolute to me. Apart from that, how is it that you know so many conservatives that you can say Most are liars cheats and thieves?

JoeOh wrote: And I don't need a gun to get my point across.

Yes you do. You just keep it in government hands.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:25 pm

JoeOh wrote:Wow you conservatives are obsessed with guns. Guns this and guns that.

The problem with boom and bust is the inherent lack of stability and now you want that instability to be main driving force of the economy. Sounds like a bad deal if you have nothing to fall back on.

If you have nothing to fall back on, how much money did you spend on having fun?

My FIRST order of business (when I was 16) was to start saving money to have something to fall back on. Only a fool thinks that his job is forever, or that nothing bad or unpredictable will ever happen to him.

The fool parties, and buys stuff he doesn't really need, saves nothing, spends everything. You know, like the current government.

If you have nothing to fall back on, then you need to look in the mirror for the person to blame.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:32 pm

JoeOh wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
JoeOh wrote:Ohh please, Conservatives are just as thieving too. Even more so with off-shore tax havens and the erosion of the American dream for the average worker.

Nice try-

Your regarding peoples attempts to keep their own money as thieving says more about your manner of thinking than theirs.

IT IS NOT YOUR MONEY!

It is no different ethically from handing a robber your wallet and refusing to tell him about your money belt.
I never said that liberals were perfect either. There is stealing on both sides. I'm just pointing out that conservatives are no better yet they tout the wonders of conservatism.

I perceive that you are young and inexperienced. Do you support yourself? Do you pay your own bills? Do you work?

You speak as though you've never done any of these things.

I think it was Churchill that said, "If you are not Liberal when you are young, then you have no heart. If you are not conservative when you are old, you have no brain."

JoeOh · Post by **JoeOh** » Mon Dec 28, 2009 9:41 pm

How is saying that most, not all is an absolute???

And again, just cause you may need to have gun doesn't mean that I do.

Also, as far as "saving money" to fall back on, that's getting harder to do b/c the not-so-permanent jobs that people have pay *just enough* for them to maybe pay the bills let alone.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:00 am

kunkmiester wrote:The boom and bust cycles are a result of the "monetary policy" inflicted on us by the fed reserve(which is neither). Get rid of that, and the cycles smooth out a bit, and localize.

The problems are stockholders who can't see the long view, CEOs and such that have limited accountability, and government favoring certain companies. It's not the "military-industrial" complex you need to worry about, it's the "corporate-Congress" complex.

I think we can all agree that it's impossible for the gov to satisfy everyone, so instead, the government needs to get out of everything.

Please explain tulip mania. No Federal Reserve in Holland at the time. Oscillations are caused by high gain systems with sufficiently long lags. This is something not taught in economics (pity) but on a blog frequented by engineers you are expected to be at least minimally up on control theory. May I suggest:

Control Loop Tuning

Which provides a good overview with practical examples. It is especially good with what causes oscillations.

Short run thinking is based on the simple fact that if you do not take care of the short run you will not be around for the long run.

Think of it in terms of subsistence agriculture. It matters not how big your harvest will be if you do not have enough food to get you to the harvest.

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Boom/bust:

High gain in economic systems means high profit. If the profits are really high resources will be over allocated to the high profit area.

The dot com era was caused by the extraordinary demand for bandwidth. It was doubling every six months. And the industry kept up. Then demand slacked and there was a six month overhang of production which took two years to work off. What did the consumer get out of it? Once the dust had settled - much lower prices for bandwidth. I pay $40 dollars a month for 250 GB (maximum) of bandwidth delivered at a six T1 rate (Comcast).

Every one knew that at some point the doubling rate had to decline. The trouble is no one knew when. In the mean time the focus was on keeping up with demand. The industry actually did an outstanding job over all.

The same thing happened in the 20s with the extraordinary increases in agricultural productivity. Every farmer was going to get rich. Most of them went broke. As did the banks that financed them. And the funny thing is that it was all based on rational decisions. i.e. if I can double my productivity at today's prices.....

It will happen again. If Polywell works I would expect a similar overbuild. What will humans get out of it? Cheap power - the key to civilization.

Or look at electronics. The world way overbuilt semi-conductor Fabs. China was going to be a big player in that area. If Taiwan could do it why not China? Instead China is shutting down Fabs.

And planners? They have a worse record than markets in adjusting supply to demand.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:34 am

And again, just cause you may need to have gun doesn't mean that I do.

Of course you don't need a gun. You can contract the work out to government. And when the government overbuilds you can claim you didn't know. Very convenient.

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." - Margret Thatcher

The problem I see is that socialist prefer to avoid facing the essence of their system:

Taxation Is Theft

Is some taxation necessary? Yes. It should be kept to an absolute minimum. For one thing we know for sure is that there is an optimum level of taxation. I can give a mathematical proof.

At 0% taxation the revenues are zero. At 100% taxation the revenues are zero (who wants to be a slave?). That says that at some point in the curve the slope will be zero - maximum revenue happens at that point. Empirical evidence says that the point is at around 20%. If government wants much greater revenue at some point in the future the rate should be below 20%.

And who does the system disproportionately steal from? The poor it claims to be helping. And much of the theft is invisible - foregone productivity, foregone wages etc.

Fortunately for those who would look we have (had) the USSR as an example.

Humans work to maximize their income (generally). If the government take is too great people will look to find ways to avoid the taxes. When you see a lot of that going on in an economy it is a sure sign that taxes are too high. Tax havens are very useful because they help provide that feedback. They should not be decried. They should be applauded.

Government is at its core a criminal enterprise.

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... prise.html

They have a license to steal. George Washington understood that:

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Geo. Washington

We have forgotten the old lessons. It is costing us. And the costs are rising. Not to worry. Humans have almost always taken the road of hard lessons. We will come out of it smarter. Until the next generation succumbs to the promises of utopia i.e. with sufficient theft most all of us can be better off.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:46 am

Also, as far as "saving money" to fall back on, that's getting harder to do b/c the not-so-permanent jobs that people have pay *just enough* for them to maybe pay the bills let alone.

If you want jobs to pay more you need a faster growing economy......

kunkmiester · Post by **kunkmiester** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:59 am

does the existence of natural "bubbles" discredit concern over artificial ones? Imagine if a similar relative amount of credit--available due to the fed--had been poured into the tulip mania, and the gov had bailed out the biggest actors only. Think it'd be better?

Letting the market set interest rates shortens your lag time, instead of self-adjusting, the system has to wait until the fed adjusts(should have been done early in the housing bubble, to keep the bursting small scale).

choff · Post by **choff** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 5:12 am

In my country Conservative and Liberal have slightly different connotations than the U.S. Basically, the Canadian Liberals ruled for decades on the principle of the 9 to 5 job, as in 9 men robbing 5 men.

They had a very simple equation for staying in power under Trudeau and Cretien. Take tax money out of Western Canada where only 1/4 of the voters live, then spend it all in Central Canada where 60% of the voters live. If anyone in Western Canada complained about non federal spending out west, denounce them as racists, rednecks, seperatists and bigots.

I'll give you an example from the 90's anyone can appreciate. An expansion was being contemplated at the TRIUMPH/Nordion research center in Vancouver. Seven outside countries were willing to put up 1/3 of the cost, the Provincial government another 1/3. All that was required was for the Fed's to put up the final 1/3, some $500 million.

From the national capital the cry went out, "Why are we spending money in British Columbia?" We didn't get the money and the deal collapsed, though I think they got private funding later.

To make it up to offended western Canadians, the federal Liberal government announced they would provide $500 million for a sewage treatment plant so that Vancouver wouldn't dump raw effluent into the Fraser river.

The next day, the federal environment minister, in a move widely praised by greenies, announced he was fining Vancouver $500 million for dumping raw sewage in the Fraser.