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.
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 wont 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
Not sure I'm tracking you, but OK.
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.
There are things I would cut as well. But flood insurance, as Farmboy eas saying earlier, it's the government or nothing. There is no private sector alternative. As for the USPS, it is an amazingly efficient organization. The market has changed, and USPS hasn't always kept up with the changes. But what it accomplishes for it's cost is a huge boon to the economy and the population of the nation.
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 Benzs 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. Dicks 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 Baltimores 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.
GM made GM. That alone tells you all you need to know. Your idea that markets inherently are competitive, that simply has never been a thing in economics. Adam Smith over 200 years ago would tell you that that would not happen.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
There's nothing in economics to suggest otherwise. Monopoly is the greatest profit that can be extracted from any industry. If you think that profit motivated people are not going to go for that, that's ridiculous.
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.
You're wrong. Why are they still asking for more deregulation if deregulation does not serve their ultimate goal?
Markets dont 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 ATLs (run by TSA) airport security to SFOs (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.
Market failure is one of the core concepts in economics. Markets fail often. Now they don't fail in all things all the time. You just cannot understand economics without accepting market failure. We can get into this if you like, but I'd rather take it out of this thread if we do.
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).
And many other things as well.
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!
How are unions powerful when labor hasn't had a raise in nearly 40 years? How are unions powerful when no pro-labor legislation has been passed in 40 years? Labor doesn't have 1% of the power in Washington that business does.
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.
You are trying to make a case that your particular circumstance is the circumstance that everyone faces.
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 Googles relaxation lobbies, have become an alternative to supplement offering workers more money to attract them to their company to work for them.
Supply and demand. For one reason or another, your employer thinks that to get what you do, it has to pay what you earn. Wages are always supply and demand. But most people cannot demand that. Otherwise they would.
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.
When there are more people looking for work then there are jobs being offered, labor as a whole does not have the choice of going elsewhere.
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.
Each of those jobs gets 100s of applicants.
Also, many universities pride themselves on their Alumni who dont 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, its US!
I am willing to bet that Harvard is proud of Mark Zuckerbergs accomplishments, even if he didnt finish his undergraduate studies there.
Sure. Some people succeed. But most don't. You cannot make the assumption that they have not in fact tried.
Here is the definition of Bureaucracy from dictionary.com:
bureaucracy
[byoo-rok-ruh-see]
noun, plural bureaucracies.
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.
Not exactly neutral....
Okay dead giveaway of your political leanings. Be sure to have your own ideas, just because Democrat leaders say something is good or right, doesnt 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
We aren't talking the past century. We are talking the past 30 years. From 1932 through about 1978 Democrats held the balance of political power in the US. Since 1980 the Republicans have. That electoral success has dragged the Democrats far to the right. But the Republicans have gone even further to the right.
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 governments 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.
The government has a lot less incentive to do many of the things you are talking about than the private sector does.
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.
Yeah, I was getting a little bit (and by a little bit I mean quite a lot) into a hyperbole.
Well, I'm not the nicest guy on the net. But when people try to respond with actual arguments, I mostly do too. It's way too easy to get into name calling, and sometimes I do. But I do try to resist at times. It depends on how much time I have, what mood you catch me in, and how well you present your case.
I cackled pretty hard when I read this. What makes you say that?
rolleyes:, I'm so effing sick of that "objection") is that private actors compete to provide the service.
