Cutlass! Sorry I took so long. Hygro and the rest, I am sorry I am not responding to your posts. I promise I am not ignoring your comments.
In a democracy, most people have a vote. You may be able to compel your will on your children. And maybe there's even a good reason for you to do so. But on the scale of nations, the most certain way to make a nation fail is for an elite minority to impose their will on the majority.
What works is distributing power as widely as possible. What does not work is concentrating power only in the elite.
Yeah, you missed the point of my analogy here, and thus you went off on a topic that I completely agree with you on. I was not talking about compelling my kids to take showers because my better half and I believe is good for them, I merely trying to educate them on how to take care of themselves, because they are only under my roof temporarily. Once they are on their own, I won’t be around (or call them up) to force them to take their showers. That is why free education (free as in freedom, not free as in no cost) that is not government funded, is important.
It behooves individuals to educate themselves on what is right and makes sense for their wellbeing and society will benefit, with the caveat that so long as they are not militant about it and force people to do things their way of course…
See, this just isn't true. It can be made to be true. And a primary goal of conservative politics in the US today is to make it true. But it was not true in the US before the election of Reagan. And even then it has only become dominantly true since the election of GW Bush. Now there are many things that the government should be leaving to the market.
I will refer you to my list of cuts, and take a look at the piss poor job the government has done running the TSA, Federal Flood Insurance, and the USPS, to just name a small few.
But there is an even larger number of things that only the government can do well. You only have Ford, Dodge, Toyota, Nissan and Volkswagen competing for your business because government made that happen. Government prevented those companies from all merging into one company. Competitive markets are an absolutely wonderful thing. But markets do not inherently compete. They have to be made to compete. They will not do so, left to their own devices. Not competing is always more profitable than competing. And because of that, private market actors will always seek a means of not competing.
I dare you to go to an economics professor at your local university and propose this idea. Government does not make capitalism happen. When it trieds to establish markets, they fail. Case in point, our government built a Farmers Market in Iraq, and it currently sits vacant. Unless you make the argument that once it gets out of the way, capitalism takes off and free markets happen, I will buy that. On government preventing the merger of multinational auto companies, I need you to show me citiations, documentation or some unbiased source. Because it does not compute. I seriously doubt that a Japanese company, a German company and an American company all wanted to merge. This is not a new solar system where large bodies of matter coalesce to form planets.
Case in point, Daimler-Benz (Mercedes Benz) and Chrysler merged. Benz thought they saw an opportunity to expand their market share in the United States by acquiring Chrysler. This turned out to be a horrible investment and they divested themselves from Chrysler rather quickly and alarmed the federal government. It really damaged Benz’s reputation when the deficiencies of Chrysler were bleeding into Mercedes Benz. Chrysler was once again on its own. The company got in so much trouble, that it almost threw the towel in, but the US Government swooped in and bailed them out and basically coerced (behind closed doors) for Fiat to acquire Chrysler. So what the government did in this case, is actually the opposite of your argument. This was also facilitated by a Democrat President, not G-Dubiya. Why did the government bail them out and not let them fail like Saturn? Because of the UNIONS! Who would have lost many members and influence if Chrysler went away. Those workers would have found work as the market would fill the void, either by expansion of the other companies, or new ones being founded. But with that, the unions run the risk of not being certified or losing members to competing unions.
Markets do inherently compete. Government did not force Steve Jobs to compete with Bill Gates, Albertsons to compete with Safeway or HEB, or Shell to compete with Exxon. Dick’s Sporting Goods and Academy Sports and Outdoors were not created by the government to prevent Sports Authority from monopolizing the sporting goods market. And Adidas has never attempted a takeover of Nike and I am willing to bet you a beer that Baltimore’s very own Under Armour was not mandated by Congress. The bank bailout only made the big banks stronger and nearly impossible for smaller and startup banks to even compete. And I can tell you that my brother never got a letter from his congressman asking him to start any of his ventures.
You have a lot of research ahead of yourself on how free markets and industrialization really work.
Now, again, we have a political problem here: The problem is that exact same politicians who are most forceful in saying that the government is the problem, and we need to get the government out of the way, are the exact same politicians who's bread and butter is crony capitalism. That is, the most corrupt politicians in Washington are the ones who are the most voracious in their attacks on the government.
Why is that true? Because deregulation is the Holy Grail of crony capitalism. Nothing government does benefits crony capitalism more than deregulation and cutting taxes.
That statement is false. And I say false in the fact that ONLY those who are the most voracious in their attacks on the government are the most corrupt. They are all at fault on varying degrees. Government Regulation is the primary culprit for the creation of crony capitalism, not deregulation. It creates unintended interest groups and force companies to get in bed with lobbyists and politicians. Case in point, Clean Energy initiatives by the President and Congress. This is already long so I will let you do your homework on that case.
It is a fundamental failure to understand markets that if you think an outcome is good, that the market will provide it. Markets do not work that way. And it is a fundamental failure to understand both markets, and the interactions of markets and government, to think that when market's fail to have the outcome you desire, that it was government that caused it.
Market failure is a real thing, and it has nothing to do with government being in the way of the market.
What you have to understand is the profit motive. You see, your view of the economy only works if the profit motive does not exist. If there is a profit motive, then the markets will not do these things. And that can be seen everywhere that you look at any segment of the economy.
Markets don’t fail, companies do. And when they do they are replaced if the need for that product or service is there. Pan Am and Eastern Airlines failed. Southwest and JetBlue among others emerged, and Continental, American, Delta and others filled the void left by those failed airlines. Some even purchased some of their assets they felt they could put to better use.
Profit motive is a beautiful thing. It is what drives progress and innovation. Without it, we would not have laptops, bottled water, light bulbs, railroads, shoes that you can go run marathons with, pouches to stick your cell phone in, tires that have grip in inclement weather, airplanes that can make non stop flights from Dallas to Istanbul. Markets punish those who violate its trust. If you go eat at a restaurant, that is unclean and gets people sick, you will punish them by avoiding them and going next door instead. They miss out on revenue and eventually close their doors, because they did not want to invest in a better washing machine or find a better food supplier. When you take out that incentive, you create scarcities and long lines at airport security. Compare ATL’s (run by TSA) airport security to SFO’s (run by a private company, exempt from TSA). You will be shocked, to say the least. DFW has been begging the government to let them get a private company to run their security. They have not even responded to them in FOUR YEARS!
What intuition tempts us to believe: Bussinesses Only care about the bottom line, so consumers need protection – government regulation.
What reality taught me: Reputation, not regulation, protects consumers better.
The US economy, always, from day one, has been a public-private partnership. And that is true in every nation that is not dirt poor. And that has been true throughout history.
The government built the roads and canals, the markets flourished taking advantage of them.
You may want to refer to my earlier posts where I mention things government should do: i.e. Roads (canals fall under the same category as roads, since it is also an infrastructure improvement).
The need for unions has never been greater. Unions lost their bargaining power in the 70s and 80s.
I practically fell out of my chair when I read this. If you learned this in class, I would ask for my money back.
Unions are incredibly powerful. There is no lobbying group in Washington more powerful than unions. They practically chose the democratic candidates! That is how much influence they have!
Labor hasn't had a raise since. If labor's wage gains had remained constant over the past 35 years as it was the previous 35 years, labor would be making 70% higher real wages today. And the economy would have grown faster as well, so the entire nation would be wealthier.
A labor wages is a price for work done by an individual. Prices fluctuate depending on supply and demand of a particular skill. So inherently your theory is not plausible. Ask a business or economics professor.
The fact that labor has not has a raise is completely false. Since I graduated college earlier this century, I have raised my wages, on my own, without help of any union representative, by no less than 466.67%! I even recently got a raise and a bonus! And I am not a member of a union. How did that happen, without a union? A little bit of elbow grease, brow sweat and motivation to profit from my skills I developed growing up. Thanks to that I was able to afford to propose to my better half in Paris under the Eiffel Tower (because nobody else in history had done that, right?
) Also considering how my friends, coworkers, and public figures such as Mark Cuban, Will Smith and Russell Wilson are doing, I am far from the exception.
What a person earns has very little to do with the value of what they produce. What a person earns is related only to their ability to bargain for higher pay. Yet the bargaining power of labor is trivial compared to the bargaining power of employers. The extremely uneven power relationship is what makes unions irreplaceable. If government is not backing labor to increase it's bargaining power, labor will be constantly worse off over time. That is, until you hit a floor of bare subsistence. And even then, markets kill labor in job lots, just to keep the price of it down.
Then why have companies been willing to pay me more money? Considering my past and present employers’ success, stupidity is clearly not a factor.
If you underpay and overwork, your workers will leave. They will even quit with no other job lined up. When that happens, your product or service will lose quality. Benefits exist because of government restrictions mainly caused by unions. Benefits, from healthcare to Google’s relaxation lobbies, have become an alternative to supplement offering workers more money to attract them to their company to work for them.
You see, that is the difference: Labor is coerced into taking a bad bargain, because the alternative is death. Management is not coerced into taking a bad bargain, because the alternative is, at worst, a slightly lower rate of profit.
Unions can be coerced because they cannot pick up their toys and go play elsewhere. They have to play ball with that employer. Employees on the other hand can quit and take their talents elsewhere. They can even develop new skills and change industries altogether. We the People have the power of choice! Do not let government and unions take that away.
At my employer, we had a union decertify because the workers wanted it and they even admitted that the wages, benefits and conditions were better than they could off. The union lasted only a year and a half under us. We acquired a division from another company and thus we inherited the union from them. The decertification vote was a landslide.
Markets simply do not work like this. There has never been, there never will be, as many jobs as there are people looking for those jobs. Supply always exceeds demand. Basic economics tells you that when supply exceeds demand, prices will be bid down.
Have you seen how many vacancies and job reqs are on job boards like Monster.com? And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Also, many universities pride themselves on their Alumni who don’t just find a job, but create their own! I have a friend who I never thought he wanted to start his own company. But after college he found a need for college students to be able to purchase quality business suits at inexpensive prices. Needless to say he makes way more money than I do now. But it is stories like him that make America great. America is not just a country, it’s US!
I am willing to bet that Harvard is proud of Mark Zuckerberg’s accomplishments, even if he didn’t finish his undergraduate studies there.
You hire someone to do a job, then you have to organize the work. So bureaucracy. If you don't do that at all, then crony capitalism wins, and the economy becomes poorer and poorer and poorer.
Here is the definition of “Bureaucracy” from dictionary.com:
bu•reauc•ra•cy
[byoo-rok-ruh-see]
noun, plural bu•reauc•ra•cies.
1. government by many bureaus, administrators, and petty officials.
2. the body of officials and administrators, especially of a government or government department.
3. excessive multiplication of, and concentration of power in, administrative bureaus or administrators.
4. administration characterized by excessive red tape and routine.
The GOP electoral success has gotten the Democrats to move far to the right on a great many issues. The greater importance of big money in elections has also moved Democrats far to the right on economic issues. So, no, they are not innocent. But their movement is a reaction to other factors. They are the followers here, not the leaders, in going in the wrong direction.
Okay dead giveaway of your political leanings. Be sure to have your own ideas, just because Democrat leaders say something is good or right, doesn’t necessarily mean it is true. But back to your point Democrats are just as at fault. As a matter of fact, since World War 1, Democrats have actually had more electoral success than Republicans. The GOP is too centrist now and as you can see it causing Republicans to fracture: The rise of the Tea Party, Libertarians increasingly distancing themselves from the GOP, and increased number of voters identifying themselves as “Independents”
It isn't big government which has created this. It is big money which has created this. It's taken a long time for big money to corrupt the government to the point that it has..
I think I am going to run with the intuition/reality series:
What Intuition tempts us to believe:
Government officials act with the public good at heart.
What reality has taught me:
Government officials act in their self-interest just like the rest of us. But when THEY do, it is a bigger problem because government’s customers, you, me, Farm Boy, Hygro, CFC, cannot take their business elsewhere.
You are starting to get into a chicken and egg thing. The mere existence of government and the ability to impose laws (through the legislative branch) with force (with the executive branch) and punish for non compliance with forfeiture of liberty (by the judicial branch) attracts those with money to help shape the rules and laws so that they are not adversely affected and possibly benefit from it.
You make a case for your ideas. I don't think you're right on most of it. But I give you credit for taking the time to making the case. Most people don't do that.
You too! The best part about it is that you are not shutting down by calling me names or sticking your head in the sand. I also (obviously) disagree with your ideas, but I am all in favor of you having them and being able to express them.
I'm not sure that it's true that they are all cowards. Certainly many of them are. But don't discount the extent to which many of them are acting in a politically rational manner. They are pursuing, not just the goal of cutting the budget, but also the goal of hurting their political opponents to the greatest extent possible while they are doing so.
After all, they have to get elected to pursue their agenda. Getting elected means doing all you can so that the other guy is not elected.
Yeah, I was getting a little bit (and by a little bit I mean quite a lot) into a hyperbole.
