Responses to Libtarded Fools at Thomhartmann

[RDR]

Well like clockwork, the usual suspects of rodeo clowns is parading around. {Of course that will get more rodeo clowns to come out of hiding.}
While I would also question if the US is a country ruled by "capitalism" {sic}, I have no idea why AIG bonuses whether paid or not paid or paid back or not paid back has any relevance for this issue.
EHM book has no outline. It is a fictional account of one person's fairy tales he tells himself at night. He does provide plenty of talking points though and some concluding remarks on how to become a good lib-much like Thom might post as well as his mentor David Korten.

Heaven help the world when a new empire is formed. I am sure it will be a worst state than present.

godknows

[RDR]

Well like clockwork, the usual suspects of rodeo clowns is parading around. {Of course that will get more rodeo clowns to come out of hiding.}
While I would also question if the US is a country ruled by "capitalism" {sic}, I have no idea why AIG bonuses whether paid or not paid or paid back or not paid back has any relevance for this issue.
EHM book has no outline. It is a fictional account of one person's fairy tales he tells himself at night. He does provide plenty of talking points though and some concluding remarks on how to become a good lib-much like Thom might post as well as his mentor David Korten.
Heaven help the world when a new empire is formed. I am sure it will be a worst state than present.

When you get personal...that tells us that we hit a nerve. Are you calling me a rodeo clown?? Have you ever seen one?? They put their lives on the line to save the cowboys from the horns of the bulls. Scary as hell.

The AIG bonuses not being paid back goes to show how much the corporates hate America. Take our money and run. You hate people on welfare, but some multi-millionaire taking taxes payers money doesn't bother you...sounds like a good con.

Yes that nerve I call the funny bone. I just love noting the irony in how things are described by one faction versus the other.

Most certainly not calling you anything... I would not dream of "dissing" anyone here. But as they say around here, if the shoe fits, wear it.

Sure have seen a few. I am out in the west. Been to the Pendleton Roundup a few times. Have you been to it?

As far as "corporates" hating America, it must be strange that people that were paid for services rendered under contracts were then paid and decided to keep it. Heck, some do not work for AIG anymore. Does this mean that everyone that works or worked for a corporation {even if a glorified independent contractor} is a "corporate" and thus hates America? Do you think that former employees should be hunted down and made to pay back? How about if a former employer of yours decided to do the same to you?

godknows
jealousy, sounds like a good lib.

[RDR]

toothless,

Don't worry, happen to some of us.. just not me.

Right, you just contradict yourself in the same post and discuss things that you don't know anything about. That said, statistics are that you will get something correct even by random chance. Good job!

Well then he some how manages to have a real lucky streak in him or it is not statistics and just honest researching subjects. He looks into a subject thoroughly and even makes a point to see what the other side of the argument can be before he shoots off a post. Not like some here...
, toothless has a better grasp of science and shows some of his abilities here. I am not aware of any formal science background but he clearly shows a better understanding than the pseudo intellectual pedantic nihilists that haunt these boards.

godknows
by random chance we will eventually agree on a subject, but until that time...
...carry on... {stated by known nihilists}

Edit: Put back in Jeff's comments. If it was good enough for him and it was classified as "dissing" then it is good enough to quote. Might be better to keep track of who said what than to edit it arbitrarily.

[RDR]

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified."

Interviewer: This is a very disturbing quote. What do you think Obama is trying to say here?

godknows translation: I am a neocon and only the delusional libs try to overlook this simple fact. I stated it simply enough that Iraq was just mismanaged and Afghanistan was a necessary war.

Yes, and if Cindy Sheehan was against the so called "system" then why camp out on Bush's front porch? She focused all her attention on one single person for most of her campaign. Attacking an easy target instead of the system.

godknows

[RDR]

g knows wrote:
1. "Do you think that former employees should be hunted down and made to pay back?
2. How about if a former employer of yours decided to do the same to you?"

1. Yes, I believe the all corporation employees should be hunted down and made to pay the Government back, if it came out of Federal funds.

2. If I ever receive unwarranted Federal funds, the answer is "yes" to #2.

I want to apologize for hurting your feelings. Poly reprimanded me for verbally attacking you. I tried to see what I said that hurt your feelings so badly. But then decided I would send you a generalized apology for the past and whatever I say in the future that hurts your little heart.

Sorry

No need to apologize. But OK.
1. OK. Made your feelings well known, but since funds are fungible how do you figure it came out of "Federal Funds"?
2. So anytime that the government feels someone got paid too much they can easily go after them. Since any "funds" that came from the government could be stated that it went to payroll then any organization that that has dealings with the all branches of government then could crawl back monies.

Many of the people paid were expecting some of those bonuses and thus their base salaries did not reflect what they felt they deserve. The pay structures were decided before the time period in question and when the deals are renegotiated the is greatly unfair.

I could care less what you say about me. Only that if there are rules then the rules should be unbiased in applications. And that is all I expect. Did you have any posts deleted or "edited"? It is grossly unfair for those that get the punishment by having their words altered to the point of misrepresenting the original posts. Sawdust has on several occasions has had this occurred and I do not believe the moderators have a moral right to alter his posts or mine where who said what was changed.

godknows

[RDR]

I can only surmise that you have never got paid on a commission basis.

g knows wrote: "Did you have any posts deleted or "edited"?

Really bad during one of bobqwinn's threads, wasn't really my postings that were edited, but deleting others threw some of our posts askew. All comes with the territory of writing on message boards. I'd probably be kicked out of republican message boards.

Too bad republicans aren't so ready to say they were wrong about ACORN.

ACORN still sucks and your piece presents that also by saying that it lacks management experience. Oh, well so much for the rhizomes approach to management.

But back to the edited threads, sounds like that really sucked when it happened on a thread you were interested in devoting your time and energy to. Seems by your statement that whatever damage was done by others was not nearly as bad as after the "editing" to protect others. And that is my point as well as that the moderators do not have a moral right to edit and change the context. Even when deleting a post they should quote and send it to that person in the PM system. They still are the moral rights of the original poster.

godknows

[RDR]

Really? Footprint knows what goes on in Cindy's mind? Footprint sees the possibility for individual growth in another human being? Footprint hasn't judged a person who has publicly been in a position to be recorded, cherry picked, translated through our ever objective media? Someone who has possibly produced possible contradictory phrases? Footprint has not pigeonholed that person as a trivial attention seeker? Has Footprint used empathy and extended his own potential for growth to another struggling human being, someone in the same boat as all of us?

Strangely, these same questions were never raised when the person in question was Sarah Palin or Joe the Plumber or even Carrie Prejean. The last I have no real interest in and only became aware of the controversy since Olbermann has done multiple stints on her including a long one he included on the best of 2009. In that bit he claims that she violated her own free speech rights by taking the microphone off and "almost walked off the set" {sic}. Which is funny that Olbermann considers free speech as only a verbal form of communication. I suppose he never heard of silent protests. Maybe Olbermann could use some of that empathy as he appears to sorely lack it on a daily basis.

Cindy chose to be in the spotlight and in essence to become a "celebrity". The so called anti-war crowd posed for pictures as long as it served their purposes.

godknows

[RDR]

But the white honkies don't really care about that.

Who's da white honkies?

I was curious about that also especially using it twice in two paragraphs.

godknows
says his family always called those people that used that lexicon as XXXXX trash or the longer terminology of XXXXX trailer trash.

[RDR]

There are a number of movies about the expansion of corporatism. "Aliens" was about that. There was "Outland" about a corporatist mining company that treated its workers on another planet like throwaways. BTW, "Outland" is being remade. According to the director of "Alien versus Predator: Requiem" the point of the film was to examine why there was no mention of government in the movie "Alien" and how corporations were running everything. Ridley Scott on his commentary for the final cut of "Blade Runner" says that the future portrayed their is a corporate communist state. All of these are warnings but sometime inverted by some nuts as advocating such states. Some of these people even believe that Orwell was recommending a police state in "1984". I never got that from the book.

Interesting but you missed the grand illusion for XXXXX trash nihilists and that is Rollerball. They actually confuse socialist/fascist states with market economies.

I did like "Outland" a lot and enjoyed its more down to earth story lines. I just love most of Sean Connery's work anyway. I would describe it more as a "company town" and the town just happens to be in a remote section of the universe. Sean was still the "sheriff" in this far outland place as the company if they owned everything could have just fired him instead of hire some guns to go kill him. He already had a bad reputation as he was sent to a remote location even away from his family. Most of other films at the time had "aliens" as the ultimate killer of humans and this one had a tag line of something like: even in space the ultimate enemy of man is man.

The movie was just like the westerns we all grew up with including "High Noon" and "Rio Bravo", which Wiki also notes at: Outland.

Gary Arnold at the Washington Post had this to say: "In Outland, writer-director Peter Hyams has adapted the plot of High Noon to an intriguing sci-fi environment—a huge titanium mine located on Io, a volcanic moon of Jupiter. But the conventions that worked for High Noon break down in the high-tech atmosphere of Outland and the story seems trite and dinky".[4]

In the Boston Globe, Michael Blowen was more favorable: "The parallels between Outland and Fred Zinneman's 1952 western High Noon are apparent. Writer-director Peter Hyams has transported the characters and motifs from the dusty frontier town of Gary Cooper to the frontiers of space. While Hyams keeps the story barreling along, he also develops a corollary anticapitalist theme. IO is an outpost for exploitation, and it doesn't make any difference whether the miners are digging gold in the Colorado hills or titanium on Jupiter's moon, the greed of the corporate class will prevail. Outland marks the return of the classic western hero in a space helmet. His outfit has changed and his environment has expanded but he's still the same. When Connery stares down the barrel of that shotgun, you'd better smile".[5]

And Desmond Ryan at the Philadelphia Inquirer called it: "A brilliant sci-fi Western. In many ways, Hyams has made a film that is more frightening than Alien, because he surmises that space will change us very little and the real monsters we are liable to encounter will be in the next space suit.

So I find it that most movies that try to portray an anti-capitalist mentality to only lack understanding and fall into the socialist/fascist groups.

godknows

[RDR]

But the white honkies don't really care about that.

Who's da white honkies?

I was curious about that also especially using it twice in two paragraphs.
godknows
says his family always called those people that used that lexicon as XXXXX trash or the longer terminology of XXXXX trailer trash.

You lecture me and you can't stay on topic....a lot of nice people live in trailers. My Mom's friend lived in one that was bigger than some homes. I know of two people that live in trailers that have sunken living rooms with fireplaces. Some RV's cost a million. Where have you been?? The Snow Birds here in Arizona don't call them trailers, they're their mobile homes.

Not sure that I "lectured" you on staying on topic. I said that you were not a "Rodeo Clown" ...but speaking about that topic...
The trailer trash comment was meant more as a metaphor since I do not believe that they lived in trailer houses on a permanent basis. Just a mentality that permeates their ideologies.

Well, it must have been another group called ACORN that had Wade Rathke as the CEO in a hierarchical authoritarian structure much as a so called corporation as well as someone they said was his brother as CFO. Hell if we get more of these job titles as C, I might just think that they are another version of vertically integrated authoritarian hierarchical collective group called a corporation.

godknows

[RDR]

The nihilist most definitely does not speak for me. I will just have to email him to not include me in his "we".

godknows

Keep it up, and I'll request your banning. Haven't been turned down yet.

Just got the above PM from Poly. I would love to how how much contempt I have for him but let me stick to the issues at hand which are simple and not complicated. Not only does he brag about his ability to arbitrarily ban people but he refuses to even pay attention to whom my statement was directed. The total post would have been:

Celebrity culture reduces all of the famous to the same level. Fame is its own denominator. Every anecdote told about Jackson seemed to confirm that when you spend your life as a celebrity, you have no idea who you are. And yet we measure our lives by these celebrities, we seek to be like them, we emulate their look and their behavior. We escape the messiness of real life through the fantasy of their stardom. We too long to attract admiring audiences for our grand, ongoing, life movie.

The nihilist most definitely does not speak for me. I will just have to email him to not include me in his "we".

godknows
At: http://www.thomhartmann.com/board/viewt ... f=5&t=2928
Thus my quote is from the quoted passage of Chris Hedges. So even my use of nihilism is directed at Hedges and he even uses the same words in another passage of the quoted material as in:

He was infected by the moral nihilism and personal disintegration that is at the core of our corporate culture. And his fantasies of eternal youth, delusions of majesty, and desperate disfiguring quest for physical transformation, were an expression of our own yearning. He was a reflection of us in the extreme. His memorial service, a variety show with a coffin, had an average of 31.1 million television viewers. It was the final episode of the long running Michael Jackson series.

Thus why do you have someone such as this as moderator. Am I not allowed to make a post about Chris Hedges? That dissing an off site idol like hedges is now a bannable offense?

godknows
really wants to know...

[RDR]

JeffBmann: Thanks everyone for posting. Still as confusing an issue for me as ever. It seems economics is the issue of our day, and without any substantial education in the matter (I'm a psychology person by formal education), its really hard to know.... Some of the above arguments do recall to mind something Thom has said about the distribution of wealth though:

I honestly do not have much understanding of psychology.
But in economics there are some handy tools to help understand the effects of certain actions on individuals and as groups. One such tool is to consider that "incentives matter" and the reverse that "disincentives matter" also. Thus when people talk about some tax or some MANDATES then it is important to think about how the incentives will change the behavior of individuals. Economic models and economists tend to consider the consumer and most of humanity as "rational" beings. Not sure if psychology has a similar paradigm.

Take for example exorbitant rates of taxes, will create perverse incentives to avoid such confiscatory taxes. Thus more resources will be devoted to avoiding the taxes than in productive lines of production.

In the example you show is that all workers would not get above a certain point even though at those heighty regions then pay is based a lot on bonuses and outcomes that tend to be lumpy and not consistent across years. Are you considering base salary or total pay including any bonuses? I have heard plans proposed that the CEO would only get a multiple of the lowest paid worker in the work force. Thus the incentive would be just outsource all jobs except the highest and most skilled laborers.

godknows

[RDR]

Instead of "government wage controls" it would be nice if our policy makers just ceased being actively hostile to the fortunes of American workers. What can be offshored has been. For those blue collar jobs than cannot be sent to the developing world, we have had decades of open borders to bring the illegal and therefore exploitable and disposable workers here and bring down the wage levels.

godknows talks about the ratcheting up effect of an increase in the minimum wage, but what the conservatives won't acknowledge is how the effect works in reverse when illegals can be hired to fill the lowest rungs at a very low wage, which keeps pressure on unskilled and semi-skilled labor across the scale. The fact is productivity gains used to fuel wage increases for workers. Now with offshoring and illegal labor keeping wages low, productivity gains fuel profits and salaries for the top rungs. As a start, it would be incredibly useful for our opinion makers to acknowledge that simple fact so we can discuss ways to address it without risking further jobs losses in the productive industries. Instead what we have had for decades are folks like Greenspan speaking openly about the need to keep employees insecure in their jobs so they don't feel comfortable demanding higher wages. Policy makers have obliged. Witness the bipartisan support for an open border policy and increases in visas for some skilled positions.

As an aside, an interesting tidbit about China is how they have their own internally illegal workforce to serve the same role as our mostly hispanic illegals. Since it takes permission to leave the farms, and that isn't granted in sufficient numbers to fill the manufacturing slots, a great number of workers can be sent back to the farm if they complain, which is effective, apparently, in keeping complaints about working conditions to a minimum. I guess the business owners share secrets on exploiting labor and keeping wages low....

Jasper since you choose to select my name out of the group, I guess I feel compelled to respond. Instead of all the nuances of all the points, I will respond in bullet points and you can ask for clarification if any you want expanded upon.
1. According to Alan S. Blinder around 25% of present jobs can be outsourced. Will provide link if you want to read it.
2. I know of no "conservative" as for being for open borders {ie illegal aliens}. There may be some libertarian open borders supporters around but not at least the ones here especially when talking about the influx of illegal aliens.
3. Republicans seemed to try to get the wall partition strengthened but hearing the Libs talk about it seemed like they were describing fascism.
4. Yes illegal aliens can increase the supply of labor especially unskilled and thus put downward pressure on wage rates for those markets.
5. Overall immigration is a net positive for our economy and allows us to maintain the flexibility to sustain economic growth over the decades. Some very good books are written by economist Tony Killick that provide clues on how to maintain a "flexible" economy.
6. Thus from point 5, I am in support of unlimited H1B visas to the USA and expansion of this program.
7. Greenspan is also supportive of point #6, but instead of the goal being to reduce the wage gap, I fully expect that the wage gap between highly skilled/educated workers and low skill workers to stay the same or maybe increase during some of the curve.
8. Skilled labor can and does often have a synergistic quality about it. That is that it gains in output more when additional units are added. The classic example is Silicon valley.
9. What do you expect from a "managed" economy? Luckily Americans can choose to move to any state we want and choose any job we want {and an employer is willing to hire}. Just pack up the bags and headed to California myself without a job...
10. Yes, I am sure that all the business owners here called some random Chinese official and told them the plans we use here.

godknows

[RDR]

So much for giving up rhetoric???

Addressing the right: have you considered the left doesn't want to “control” you? Seriously? Liberals who want anything but love and peace and flowers for everyone all of the sudden want to take control over everything? Wake up! This is rhetoric at its finest. Liberals don't want to “control” anything. If you are dead set on your beliefs - then liberals are wishy-washy nambi-pansy tree huggers. They are nambi-pansy tree huggers feely wishy-washy types. So, why would they all of the sudden also become cold and calculating manipulators who want to take over your lives and the lives of everyone else?

Oh, I am sure you are right. Libs do not want as individuals to take over control of everything but there are few that love MAN-DATES and can't get enough of them...

But the problem is that when a Government has that much power to make us all happy has too much power to take control over every aspect of our lives. Once Government gets big enough then "rent-seeking" individuals will find places in Government that will take freedoms away. The classic example was Stalin. Without Lenin leading the way in creating a well functioning bureaucracy then his rise to power might not have been.

godknows

[RDR]

The reason I singled you out was your traditional explanation of how the minimum wage works across skill levels. Are you saying it doesn't work in reverse?

I feel flattened, er I mean flattered...I assume your question is related to point #4 which I will address below...

2. I suppose in theory GOP hacks posing as "conservatives" support border controls about like they support spending restraint and balanced budgets. They have the talking points down, it's in the execution where the problems arise, and in the execution there is NO evidence that GOP leadership has any regard for stemming the flow of illegals who dutifully fill low skill jobs at low wages with a very compliant workforce.

We do live in a liberal democracy and although what I want or anyone wants is rarely enacted we can only expect to get a close proximity to some ideals. They did expand funding for the fence but not without a lot of gnashing of teeth by Libs. there was also a matter of the immigrants voicing their concerns in the million person marches in Los Angeles for example. The GOP has a chance to woo the Hispanic vote so they have to tread lightly on this issue.

4. The minimum wage works its way up the skill and wage scale, but being able to fill jobs with low wage illegals only affects those job categories directly filled by the illegal labor?

I suppose this is your questions about reverse effects and no it does not work in reverse. First, "wages are sticky" in the downward direction. Secondly, those with higher skill levels are still paid based on marginal productivity so their wage rates are not affected by other markets directly. The power dynamics does not work in reverse.

5. I suppose there's no arguing that immigration overall is a net positive, but surely you'd agree that different levels have different impacts, and adding 10-20 (?) million or so to the lowest skill ranks out of a workforce of 150 million has a bigger impact than adding 1-2 million. And it seems to me that the direct number of illegals understates the extent that blue collar jobs have been exposed to workers willing to work for subsistence wages. For those industries that can move, the worker at that level faces a flood of illegals or the prospect of his job moving overseas. And the downward pressure on wages due to both the elimination of tariffs and an open border has resulted in median wage gains lagging productivity gains for decades.

True but I was talking about all aspects of immigration and not just low skilled jobs. And even if there is an abundance of unskilled labor that should provide incentives for Americans to increase their job skills not let that resource languish. But again there is a synergy about more laborers working and even if some are negatively affected the overall benefits to society is increased. I also think it is important to note that immigrants will tend toward areas that have the greatest needs. They allow a country to have a more flexible work force that fills in the gaps where natives are not doing as good as job filling.

10. The obviously sarcastic comment about the Chinese just echoed what the economists we talked to pointed out, which was a large supply of internally illegal labor kept a lid on wages, which was the purpose of the Chinese government keeping farm relocation permits below the level needed to fill "city" manufacturing jobs. The internally illegal (and therefore exploitable) labor market was a feature not a flaw with an express purpose of keeping wage inflation low. In my opinion, the same forces are at work here, with open borders and a large illegal force a feature, not a flaw of our economic and immigration policies.

Sounds more like the unintended consequences of MAN-DATING certain actions by individuals. The Chinese government thought that controlling the transfer of labor from rural to urban settings needed some orderly transition. Strangely I would like our immigration policy to be more orderly also by less illegal aliens and more H1B visas as well other work related visas.

There is a lot of literature on this transition from traditional forms of production to a "capitalist" system including the works of Arthur Lewis. Maybe some day we can explore that more and there already is some of that information on this forum.

BTW there are plenty of objections I have to Buchanan's piece, but I thought it would help our conversation to have a "conservative" voice that you may agree with {at least partially on these issues}. If you have time, tell me what you think of the Op-Ed?

godknows

godknows

[RDR]

Watch his avoidance of a clear statement to follow.

Your response demonstrates nothing other than an interest in theology. Like browsing the self-help aisle in Barnes & Noble. You've provided no personal insight into what would be an intensely personal, revealing journey.

Joining the Eastern church as monk is a UNIQUELY INTENSIVE commitment of a lifetime devoted to that faith. It's also a literal vow of service, after long consideration, to the certitude of it's teachings and leadership. You talk about it like a buffet line: I like this, but not that, here's some catholic stuff that's interesting...blah blah blah

There is no, and in fact there has never been, any wisdom or gravitas to your posts. There is no devotion to the "word of god" as your falsely claimed training would inherently demand and cultivate. No homilies, no quotes, no tempo of language that grows organically within a sub-culture, after YEARS of participation.

That is just part of what reveals the lie you promote about yourself.

I get that you're after having the last word, and you'll get it no doubt. You're an exhausting obsessive.

You are also a fraud.

You clearly might have a point.
Other than rhapsody of the nostalgic for monkville, we are provided little insight into the life experiences that would show imprinting of joining a collective and studying with devotion to a specific set of beliefs.

godknows
at least

[RDR]

One last comment from Jasper:

Jasper wrote:
So those indications that productivity gains of U.S. workers have become divorced from U.S. wage levels are somehow misstating the issue? Real median wages peaking in the 1970s, but loads of increases in productivity in nearly every job classification...

Because I understand the theory of marginal productivity, but when you have a pool of workers that includes the world at subsistence wages, doesn't that break down a little bit at least as far as U.S. workers go. It's not "do I hire another U.S. worker at this wage" but "do I compete for this worker in the U.S. or move the whole shebang to Vietnam where in the area a billion people are in abject poverty and will fight to work for a tenth or less the wage and 1/3 the productivity, but with no environmental costs....."

The simple fact is manufacturers aren't competing for U.S. workers, they ARE moving millions of jobs to developing countries.

BTW, I don't really see how U.S. workers can as a group increase their job skills to compete with China, for example. Their workers are also very intelligent, hard working, efficient, getting better educated and willing to work for a dollar an hour or so with no rules and companies able to spew pollution untreated into the air and water, not to mention a manipulated currency and huge government incentives for domestic chinese manufacturing, from energy to barriers to entry, etc. How does a HS graduate, the by definition half the population with below average intelligence, compete with that? Not individually - any one person can overcome great barriers - but as a population that is NOT a resident of Lake Wobegon where everyone is above average and an entrepreneur. As the stats show, they are NOT competing, which is of course the only result given the tilted playing field.

[RDR]

drc wrote:
Godknows, I am beginning to understand how your mind works, I think. You are an economist, and that is really an interesting line of work today. I have good friends who are professional economists, and we have had some really great discussions about how the theory works and where it gets in trouble. Where you measure things and deal with numerical functions, you are OK with the math. Where you do psychology and anthropology, you don't know what you are talking about most of the time and tend to want human behavior to be convenient and manageable by economic manipulations. This comes to the fore in the discussion of incentives and disincentives.

But it is also present in the reductionism of reality to an economics bottom line without adequate heuristic humility about what the exercise really teaches. When you factor out all the moral or "human" factors beyond economic interest, you wind up looking at human life through the wrong end of the telescope. It becomes symbol instead of substance or the inversion of the two. It is why one never goes into business to make money. It is why one never starts a building program or any fund-raising by asking how much money there is. If you begin with money, you will not do justice to the business plan and the product or service that is your real value. I think it is a good diagnosis for our culture of Commerce Uber Alles and the economic bottom line for morality and reality.

If you think you have the facts and that we Progressives need your correction, it is not going to work out well as a conversation. If you want to compare ideas with respect, we can do that. I want economists to be thinking today more than ever, and I want them to be doing some big-time reflection on their discipline and its performance in the modern world. I think they have had a serious theological problem and have been oblivious to the idea that they could have such a problem. This is why Pope Alan could wish away Original Sin and presume that the very talented and wise banksters would do everything rationally and morally. I could care less how expert he was with numbers. He was an idiot as a theologian, and the problem was that he was practicing religion and not "economics." They largely are doing the same thing on Wall St.

Check out David Korten and the Agenda for a New Economy. I will be glad to talk about Korten's ideas for economic realism in the future, but I really have little time for lectures from economic fundamentalists or ideological priests in secular disguise. Believe me, Monk and I are not naifs in this field. Try to listen a bit better before you preach.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2899&p=38938
drc you wrote that at: Re: Help with an economic argument? Postby drc » Thu Jan 07, 2010 10:38 pm and godknows was already banned earlier that morning. Just as I suspected you really have no idea what is going on at Thomland and you are more or less a paperweight.

godknows already spelled out that he read Korten's book and thought it was a pile of dog shit. Is that clear enough? You have no basis for your statements above so I have no reason to respond as usual on your ephemeral definitions of what people think.

godknows
Actually, I reread it again and you simply think as a theologian and nothing else helps you to explain the universe. Thus your need to define other people in that ideological confines. Pretty narrow minded as well as shallow in thinking. I simply explained what theory could help in explaining the situation and you take it as "preaching" again no preaching when you teach, right?

Anyway, you play your part as "useful idiot" quite well as you PREACH to everyone including godknows...

[RDR]

Polycarp2 wrote:
I remember the pre-S&L crises days. I owned real estate all over the place. Stuffed money into my pockets every month and showed a legal loss on every one of my properties. Needless to say, that encouraged the snapping up of more property, and quick turn-arounds to keep the "depreciation" and tax deferments going....and my purchases rose every month.

AND, excess capital sucked to the top leaves no place for it to go. Demand in the real economy declines...discouraging productive investment.

New financial instruments based on nothing get created to absorb the capital. Welcome to the meltdown. There's another one in the making.

Retired Monk
"Ideology is a disease"

[RDR]

As Values Slide, More Weigh Walking Away From Mortgages - NYTimes.com
What would you do?

Personally, I am not sure what I would do, but if corporations can walk away from bad debt (or at least expect the tax payer to bail them out) than why shouldn't an individual be able to?

[RDR]

Taking advantage of economies of scale... yes, a basic issue, drc. Here's the conundrum I see, and it's rooted in the solutions to the problems of human organization themselves:

When you say "we" you invoke a principle of coopertion. Coops do indeed solve an economy of scale problem up to a point. But move cooperatives to government and you begin to run into differences of opinion about what exactly is cooperation, and then all the rest of the complaints from differences of opinion come about. Unless you develop a pretty good proselytizing propaganda management system, the range of differences is likely to expand with population increases, and individuality is allowed free rein. Small example that triggered me off on this specific issue: If one doesn't want to participate in the "group's" notion of the "common defense" as some elites in the upper echelon of management have defined it, one may find oneself facing involuntary draft. If one exercises one's independence to resist being drafted, then... all those "legality" based force issues the libertarians, on the full range from Chomsky to Lysander Spooner, speak of come up.

So I'd suggest that with organization for economies of scale a certain organizational form comes about, a form of hierarchy with divisions of labor and positions of authority, and eventually you get to the pinnacle of authority making decisions for the good of all.

Private enterprise solves the problem of economies of scale quite logically. It circumvents to public domain with private ownership and a set of laws with a police force to make it work if anyone gets seriously out of line about who owns what, and who can say what about it. This is needed for efficiencies to take place in economies of scale. And we all know that efficiencies and profit for survival in the marketplace are mutually inclusive concepts. Name a corporation that runs as an open democracy with all participants, workers and owners, involved voicing their differences of opinion on how to do things.

Business economies of scale are authoritarian in their organizational structure. What Democracy doesn't face that same risk as it's organizational scale grows?

What a dumb-ass monkey-nerd!