Repubs party platform: comittee to eval return to gold std and audit fed

[Gumby]

Pointed Stick,

I agree with you. Keep in mind that Economic Democracy is not supposed to be capitalism. It's post-capitalism. It's really just an exercise in economics-fiction. Every economics framework is vulnerable to corruption.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-capitalism

Post-capitalism refers to any hypothetical future economic system that is to supersede capitalism as the dominant form of economic organization.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-capitalism

So, it's kind of like imagining what a science-fiction economics framework might look like. For instance Stark Trek economics looks nothing like capitalism.

Capitalism is great if you're lucky enough to succeed. But, it's not so great for the bottom of the barrel. Most post capitalistic frameworks are about giving everyone a fair shot. Capitalism tends to favor the top of the heap.

"The laws of capitalism, which are blind and are invisible to ordinary people, act upon the individual without he or she being aware of it. One sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon ahead. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller — whether or not it is true — about the possibilities of individual success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly.... It is a contest among wolves. One can win only at the cost of the failure of others." —  Che Guevara

Anyway, there are many post capitalism systems to choose from.

[Pointedstick]

Capitalism is great if you're lucky enough to succeed. But, it's not so great for the bottom of the barrel. Most post capitalistic frameworks are about giving everyone a fair shot. Capitalism tends to favor the top of the heap.

I just can't agree. You make it sound as though success is based on luck alone, or in large part. This just hasn't been my experience at all, and I would guess if you asked around among the folks who have "succeeded", you might find that a lot of them started out pretty close to the bottom themselves. My uncle, for example, began life in urban poverty with a single mother who was always cycling through new abusive boyfriends. He didn't go to private school or have a wealthy father to grease the wheels for him. But he never let it get him down, did well in school, got a scholarship to Brown, became a doctor, and now owns a biotech startup. My family is full of stories like this, and I suspect many of us have similar ones in our own personal histories or among our friends and families.

It's not just about luck. Luck plays a part, as it always does, but success in capitalism is really about optimism, perseverance, hard work! If you've got those traits, it's hard to fail, and if you do, it's hard to stay down for long. You might say that in fact capitalism discriminates against the pessimists, the apathetic, and the slothful--but then again that's true of life in general, no matter what economic system you use the government to impose.

Most of the communists' critiques of capitalism never made sense to me. How is capitalism a contest among wolves? One person's economic success doesn't require the failure of everyone around them! You just need to look around you every second of every day as you go about your business to refute this one for yourself. When you purchase a product, who are you oppressing? When you create a product for others to purchase, who are you oppressing? When you sell a good to someone else for a profit to yourself, who are you oppressing? When you decide to sell your labor power to another, who are you oppressing?

There are plenty of real critiques you can make, among which is one one that resonates with me personally: the Marxist assertion that increasingly specialized, mechanized (and now, increasingly virtualized) labor is alienating us from the human desire to craft things with your bare hands. But let's not pretend that everyone who's managed to purchase a nice house for his family and accumulate a large sum in his 401k has somehow oppressed the people around him. Thinking like that serves no purpose other than to foment jealousy and envy.

[Gumby]

I just can't agree. You make it sound as though success is based on luck alone, or in large part. This just hasn't been my experience at all, and I would guess if you asked around among the folks who have "succeeded", you might find that a lot of them started out pretty close to the bottom themselves. My uncle, for example, began life in urban poverty with a single mother who was always cycling through new abusive boyfriends. He didn't go to private school or have a wealthy father to grease the wheels for him. But he never let it get him down, did well in school, got a scholarship to Brown, became a doctor, and now owns a biotech startup. My family is full of stories like this, and I suspect many of us have similar ones in our own personal histories or among our friends and families.

Please. That's an extraordinary example of perseverance. The average person in America does not become a doctor and own a biotech startup. The average person has a lot of debt and an average job that makes it difficult to pay down debt.

How is capitalism a contest among wolves? One person's economic success doesn't require the failure of everyone around them!

In our debt-based society, all money comes from debt — overwhelmingly from private credit. Therefore, one person's riches comes from the debt of others.

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[Pointedstick]

You're right, it was an extraordinary example of perseverance. But my point was that he had the opportunity, just like anybody has the opportunity to do something similar if they want to. Perhaps an "average" person wouldn't take advantage of those opportunities, but an average person's average job still affords them a level of luxury that's unparalleled in human history. Let's not take what we have for granted here what embracing capitalism has allowed us to produce for each other. Average people have easy and cheap food and water, long-range personal transportation, pocket global telecommunications, computers that can increase the impact of our labor a thousandfold, appliances that make a mockery of difficult household chores, wondrous medical technology, and so on and so forth. None of these people oppressed their neighbors when they purchased those amazing luxuries. If they went into debt to purchase them, that was their decision, the way it was my decision when I decided to finance my education with debt. Nobody forced me or them to make those decisions, and nobody oppressed us in the process, nor did we oppress others in the process. Who am I to say they made a bad decision, any more then they should say that I made one?

[Gumby]

You're right, it was an extraordinary example of perseverance. But my point was that he had the opportunity, just like anybody has the opportunity to do something similar if they want to.

Yes, everyone has the opportunity and only a few are able to climb out of debt by convincing others to go into debt. In a debt-based society, there can be no other way.

I never said capitalism was a failure or didn't produce an impressive society. (Capitalism is awesome!) All I'm saying is that the winners in capitalism get to the top on the backs of the average person. In a debt-based society, the rich could not be rich without the average person being in debt. That's where the money comes from.

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Besides, when a family has risen to the top of the heap, it's less likely to lose its wealth in our society. The rich have access to better education and inherited wealth. That's a huge advantage in a debt-based society.

[craigr]

I don't believe people on this forum are quoting two bit communist thugs like Che Guevara. I've been to a lot of countries and invariably the ones with free market systems are so far advanced over those that are corrupt egalitarian Utopias that it is hard to put into words.

Yes there is luck in business, just as there is luck walking to work you don't get hit by a bus. But at the same time there is a ton of work and a ton of personal risk on the part of the owners. The average wage earner does not know these things. They safely pick up their check and go home. They do not understand what is really involved to go out and start a business. That's fine of course if they are happy. But do not pass judgment on those that have provided just about every technologically advancement and convenience you take for granted. I cannot recall a single product I ever used from the former Soviet Union. Nor can I think of any from China before their reforms a couple decades ago. It was only free market reforms in those places that have elevated their standard of living.

Nobody makes another take on debt. But without access to debt many ventures will fail. Debt is a powerful tool and needs to be respected and used properly.

[Pointedstick]

I cannot recall a single product I ever used from the former Soviet Union.

I can: the AK-47! 

[Gumby]

Nobody makes another take on debt. But without access to debt many ventures will fail. Debt is a powerful tool and needs to be respected and used properly.

You're missing the point. The point is that, in a debt-based society, the rich could not be rich without the majority of the people going into debt. There can be no other way. In a sense, the rich must convince the masses to go into debt in order to be rich.

[craigr]

Nobody makes another take on debt. But without access to debt many ventures will fail. Debt is a powerful tool and needs to be respected and used properly.

You're missing the point. The point is that, in a debt-based society, the rich could not be rich without the majority of the people going into debt. There can be no other way. In a sense, the rich must convince the masses to go into debt in order to be rich.

Who is making them go into debt? Nobody is making someone take on debt they don't want to get into. So you are only blaming the guy with the pursestrings (who took risks to earn the money to loan). But there is another person involved taking the money to use for whatever purpose. Are they not culpable as well if they use it unwisely?

[Pointedstick]

Nobody makes another take on debt. But without access to debt many ventures will fail. Debt is a powerful tool and needs to be respected and used properly.

You're missing the point. The point is that, in a debt-based society, the rich could not be rich without the majority of the people going into debt. There can be no other way. In a sense, the rich must convince the masses to go into debt in order to be rich.

Besides what craigr said, is that even true? What about if the rich keep their wealth entirely in treasury bonds? Then the only people they've convinced to go into debt was the U.S. government, which was going to do it anyway. And as MMR teaches us, the debt isn't designed to be paid back so it's not like the interest payments are a crushing burden on society. Every "average" person could be debt-free in that scenario.

[Gumby]

Nobody makes another take on debt. But without access to debt many ventures will fail. Debt is a powerful tool and needs to be respected and used properly.

You're missing the point. The point is that, in a debt-based society, the rich could not be rich without the majority of the people going into debt. There can be no other way. In a sense, the rich must convince the masses to go into debt in order to be rich.

Who is making them go into debt? Nobody is making someone take on debt they don't want to get into. So you are only blaming the guy with the pursestrings (who took risks to earn the money to loan). But there is another person involved taking the money to use for whatever purpose. Are they not culpable as well if they use it unwisely?

Huh? In a debt-based society, money would not exist without debt. Therefore, when an entrepreneur goes into business, he must take out a loan to start his business. But, in order for him to stay in business, he must convince others to go into debt in order for him to receive any money, pay back his loan, and turn a profit.

All money comes from debt in a debt-based society.

This isn't about pointing fingers. But, the fact of the matter is that if people in a society want a home, a car, some food, some clothing, the population must go into debt, on a macro level, to buy those things.

[craigr]

I cannot recall a single product I ever used from the former Soviet Union.

I can: the AK-47! 

Yeah and it's actually horribly designed ergonomics! The safety requires you to remove your hand from the firing position to manipulate. The bolt is on the same side and likewise needs to move your firing grip. It's inaccurate. The magazine is a tilt lock that is hard to change rapidly. The forward grip is wood and pinned with metal. When you shoot it too hard the metal pin burns your forward grip hand! It's way overrated.  :D

[Pointedstick]

Yeah and it's actually horribly designed ergonomics! The safety requires you to remove your hand from the firing position to manipulate. The bolt is on the same side and likewise needs to move your firing grip. It's inaccurate. The magazine is a tilt lock that is hard to change rapidly. The forward grip is wood and pinned with metal. When you shoot it too hard the metal pin burns your forward grip hand! It's way overrated. 

Okay, you win this round. How about the SKS then? 

[Gumby]

Nobody makes another take on debt. But without access to debt many ventures will fail. Debt is a powerful tool and needs to be respected and used properly.

You're missing the point. The point is that, in a debt-based society, the rich could not be rich without the majority of the people going into debt. There can be no other way. In a sense, the rich must convince the masses to go into debt in order to be rich.

Besides what craigr said, is that even true?

Yes, it is true. Where do you think the majority of our money supply comes from? Most of it comes from private credit.

What about if the rich keep their wealth entirely in treasury bonds?

It doesn't make a difference because the rich became wealthy by convincing other people to go into debt. I'm not passing judgement. Just stating a monetary fact. Once again, in a debt-based society money comes from debt. There can be no other way.

And as MMR teaches us, the debt isn't designed to be paid back so it's not like the interest payments are a crushing burden on society. Every "average" person could be debt-free in that scenario.

I suppose some people get rich by convincing the government to go into debt. But the top 0.1% also have a knack for convincing the middle class to pay more taxes in order to "lower the national debt".

[Gumby]

Btw... While it seems like I'm railing on the rich for bamboozling the majority of the population into going into debt. I'm not. The rich just figured out a way to succeed in our debt-based society. My main focus is to criticize debt-based money. It would be much more fair if some debt-free money was available for most Americans.

[craigr]

It would be much more fair if some debt-free money was available for most Americans.

Gold?

[MediumTex]

I cannot recall a single product I ever used from the former Soviet Union.

I can: the AK-47! 

Yeah and it's actually horribly designed ergonomics! The safety requires you to remove your hand from the firing position to manipulate. The bolt is on the same side and likewise needs to move your firing grip. It's inaccurate. The magazine is a tilt lock that is hard to change rapidly. The forward grip is wood and pinned with metal. When you shoot it too hard the metal pin burns your forward grip hand! It's way overrated.  :D

It's very easy to understand the differences between the U.S. and Russia if you hold an AR-15 in your hands and then hold and AK-47-type rifle in your hands.

The differences between the two weapons are enormous.

The AK-47 has always just felt like a piece of junk to me, no matter how well it's supposed to work in the field.  I've always thought that one of the reasons it is so popular around the world is simply because other better weapons are either not available or they are too expensive.

[Gumby]

It would be much more fair if some debt-free money was available for most Americans.

Gold?

Sure. If the government handed out gold to every American each year (or even once) — with no strings attached — that would be fair. But, that's never happened so far (unless you count people who found free gold during the Gold Rush). Historically, Gold has been used to get non gold holders to go into debt.

But, just so we are clear. Gold wouldn't be debt free if the population had to go into debt in order to purchase it or borrow it. If the government just handed out some gold to everyone — with no strings attached — that would be debt-free money, and very fair.

[Pointedstick]

It's very easy to understand the differences between the U.S. and Russia if you hold an AR-15 in your hands and then hold and AK-47-type rifle in your hands.

The differences between the two weapons are enormous.

The AK-47 has always just felt like a piece of junk to me, no matter how well it's supposed to work in the field.  I've always thought that one of the reasons it is so popular around the world is simply because other better weapons are either not available or they are too expensive.

I actually agree, and there are many reasons why I have an AR-15 and not a Romanian AK (ammo cost isn't one of them ). But there sure are a lot of people who swear by their AKs! Here in the USA, I think a lot of the appeal is the fantasy of being able to run over it with a truck or use the bolt carrier as a hammer or something in an SHTF scenario.

[craigr]

But, just so we are clear. Gold wouldn't be debt free if the population had to go into debt in order to purchase it or borrow it. If the government just handed out some gold to everyone — with no strings attached — that would be debt-free money, and very fair.

I thought people exchanged their labor producing something. Gold just made the exchange more liquid between parties. If someone produced fruit for gold then their only "debt" was the time it took them to grow the crop. Etc. We should not mix up fundamental issues here and ignore that ultimately it's human productive capacity underneath it all that makes value.

[craigr]

It's very easy to understand the differences between the U.S. and Russia if you hold an AR-15 in your hands and then hold and AK-47-type rifle in your hands.

The differences between the two weapons are enormous.

The AK-47 has always just felt like a piece of junk to me, no matter how well it's supposed to work in the field.  I've always thought that one of the reasons it is so popular around the world is simply because other better weapons are either not available or they are too expensive.

I actually agree, and there are many reasons why I have an AR-15 and not a Romanian AK (ammo cost isn't one of them ). But there sure are a lot of people who swear by their AKs! Here in the USA, I think a lot of the appeal is the fantasy of being able to run over it with a truck or use the bolt carrier as a hammer or something in an SHTF scenario.

Thing is I've known more AK-47s to break than ARs. Many of them are very poorly made and QC is shoddy. The ARs can be bought in Milspec components and are reliable and accurate. They are more consistently made and parts are generally very good quality.

With that said, I think the M1A beats them both in terms of ruggedness and power. Although admittedly the M1A has the ergonomic similarities to the AK in terms of bolt and magazine manipulation. However I will forgive it simply because it's very reliable, very accurate and shoots a powerful rifle round with excellent maximum effective range.

[TBV]

• Judging from the language used to describe debt-based monetary systems, it sounds as if everyone but a select class of plutocrats is a prisoner to debt.  The wealthy are somehow aloof from it all, as newborns free of original sin.  Doesn't sound like any entrepreneur I ever heard of.  In fact, guys like Donald Trump are as famous for being in debt as they are for being wealthy.
  
  Besides, after all is said and done, I am unpersuaded by the main social credit argument that, due to interest and payments for materials, total money made available via production as wages, dividends, etc is insufficient to buy the totality of stuff produced.  The back and forth over this subject since the 30's doesn't inspire hope that adherents are any more willing to relent now than they were then.  For example, the debate over the lesson(s) to be learned from the famous baby-sitting scrip experiment seems never-ending.  Observations like this can also be directed against the Austrians, but at least they leave me with fewer questions.  Such as....
  
  • I may be missing something, but the usual social credit money shortage scenario seems no  different than  saying that, in the aggregate, all products offered by businessmen who borrow X amount of money and then sell products for a total price of X+1 (to make a profit) can't be bought since no one has been afforded enough money to meet their price.  How is the return claimed by the entrepreneur any different really than that claimed by the banker?
  • If debt-based money leads to an absence of buying power which condemns us all to deflationary spirals, then why is the history of the last 100 years been one of fairly steady, if sometimes mild, inflation?
  • If deflation is so fatal to prosperity, why has no causal link been found between deflation and depressions?http://minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr331.pdf
  • If all that were required was to match the money supply to aggregate production, how does anyone know what the price of anything should be, what should be produced, or how much?
  • If consumer choice is controlling, then what if consumers insist on buying hula hoops and cocaine?  Do they still get a national dividend for that?
  • If citizens barter or decline to buy what's produced, won't this complicate government calculations regarding base money and the overall money supply?
  • If citizens lose confidence in the scrip/currency/credits distributed, what recourse do they have?  Isn't social credit based on a legal tender monopoly?
  • If working capital is made available to enterprises by technocrats on the basis of which enterprises are profitable, how does one keep from funding solvent but plodding dinosaurs instead of shaky but promising start-ups?
  • If, as is often suggested, profit is allowed, just not too much, how can a small enterprise with a competitive advantage hope to prevail against second-rate but more established competitors? (Without big profit margins, firms like Apple might never have scaled up to a competitive size.)  And how is excess profit to be avoided, if all consumers and enterprises get the benefit of a national dividend?

[stone]

Pointed Stick

from: Gumby on Today at 06:03:48 PM
Capitalism is great if you're lucky enough to succeed. But, it's not so great for the bottom of the barrel. Most post capitalistic frameworks are about giving everyone a fair shot. Capitalism tends to favor the top of the heap.
I just can't agree. You make it sound as though success is based on luck alone, or in large part. This just hasn't been my experience at all, and I would guess if you asked around among the folks who have "succeeded", you might find that a lot of them started out pretty close to the bottom themselves. My uncle, for example, began life in urban poverty with a single mother who was always cycling through new abusive boyfriends. He didn't go to private school or have a wealthy father to grease the wheels for him. But he never let it get him down, did well in school, got a scholarship to Brown, became a doctor, and now owns a biotech startup. My family is full of stories like this, and I suspect many of us have similar ones in our own personal histories or among our friends and families.

Pointed Stick, I totally agree with you BUT I think it is vital to draw a distinction between free market capitalism where financial power is somewhat dispersed versus free market capitalism where it no longer is. After WWII, the system had been rebooted by all of the waste and destruction of war. That set the scene for the enormous achievement since WWII including your uncle. BUT the system is in a state of flux. It is transitioning from that into being an oligarchy/feudal system entirely different from the post WWII system. IMO changing tax to being an asset tax would help to keep a free market capitalist system in that "freshly rebooted" productive stage of the "capitalist life cycle".
In that "gold island" fable I put earlier in this thread, things would have initially worked fine for decades wouldn't they if instead of just ten "goldbringers" coming with the gold, half the colonists had come with gold. Then people such as your uncle who had just there own talents to fall back on would have found ready customers/employers/sponsers. Once the economy has "evolved" to having all financial power being in the hands of a handful of people, then things collapse.

As an aside, of course even in the worst systems a few individuals will do well despite every barrier put in their way. I know someone who came from a family persecuted in Mao's China. He was sent away from his parents to work as a forced agricultural laborer when he was still a child. He bought smuggled maths text books on the black market and taught himself maths and is now a maths Prof. I don't think his example shows the virtues of a system such as Mao's China.

[stone]

Perhaps this is a European vs American perspective thing, but here in the USA, families that pass their homes down through the generations tend to be indigenous, poor, or middle class and not the rich elites, who are generally buying and selling multiple houses all over the place. In America, we don't really have the phenomenon of an aristocratic elite tending their 40,000 sqft ancestral mansions with adjoining 5,000 acre hunting grounds and farmlands. It just doesn't happen here.

That may be, stone, why you're seeing pushback from us Americans against your proposed asset tax that doesn't exempt homes and land. You see it as a feature in that the rich can't hoard too many real assets without the tax forcing them to "repatriate" 5% of the value of the wealth every year. But we don't really have that problem in the USA, and so we see the creation of a new problem in that under this tax system, the poor won't generally be able to pay the taxes on top of their other income (which right now is often effectively tax-free) and so will wind up without real assets, or will have entered into equity withdrawal agreement with banks. That part is actually sort of ironic to me, since you seem generally distrustful of banks, but your solution to what poor people with assets should do basically involves a complicated financial transaction with a bank that involves the (rich) bank eventually possessing the asset.

Pointed Stick, when you describe an American person as having labour of "zero marginal productivity" and that person's ancestral adobe home in the New Mexico back woods as being immensely valuable, I think it is vital to realize just how much both things are an artifact of our screwed up system. Whether someone's labour is hotly in demand or of  "zero marginal productivity" generally says much more about the economic situation than about them. I agree that if you were to rank everyones "productivity" in terms of best person to most useless person then the rank order says a lot about the individual BUT whether only 1% have  "zero marginal productivity" or whether 99% have "zero marginal productivity" is down to how dispersed financial power is through the economy and how confident people are about the future. Consider again Finland versus Latvia. They are countries in the same part of the world with the same sort of natural resources and educated populations. In Finland everyone has a well paid job. In Latvia there is mass unemployment and so mass emigration. If all of those unemployed Latvians have "zero marginal productivity" due to their personal failings then how come they out compete British job seekers when they migrate to the UK? In that "gold island" fable earlier in this thread, all of the colonists apart from the "gold bringers" had "zero marginal productivity" because there was no financial demand for goods and services. If you consider a population of people all of whom supposidly have "zero marginal productivity" and give them purchasing power, then that will create demand for goods and services that they themselves are capable of providing and that pulls them out of being of "zero marginal productivity".

Similarly the ancestral adobe home is only an immensely expensive asset because it has become a sink for asset price inflation. That value is entirely nebulous. In Japan commercial property in the Tokyo financial district is now worth 1% of what it was. That illustrates just how much real estate values reflect how much banks lend against real estate rather than some intrinsic value of the real estate. The ancestral adobe home is only very expensive because it is seen as a way to salt away wealth or even better as a vehicle to ride the wave of asset price inflation. Under an asset tax system, rich people would be protecting their wealth by trying to create productive enterprises that generated a cash flow with which to pay the asset tax. Rich people would no longer be trying to protect their wealth by bidding up the price of ancient adobe homes.

[chrish]

As an aside, of course even in the worst systems a few individuals will do well despite every barrier put in their way. I know someone who came from a family persecuted in Mao's China. He was sent away from his parents to work as a forced agricultural laborer when he was still a child. He bought smuggled maths text books on the black market and taught himself maths and is now a maths Prof. I don't think his example shows the virtues of a system such as Mao's China.

Exactly - I'm not a very good runner, but give me enough of a head start and I will finish ahead of 99% of people. Just because Usain Bolt still beats me doesn't mean I didn't have a massive advantage over everyone else.

This is the issue I have with the libertarian ideal of a zero tax, minimal government system - it would be great if everyone started off equal, but the fact of the matter is that they don't, and even if they did, I still think you'd end up with either feudalism or revolution within 2-3 generations as the "winners" from the first generation pass on a massive advantage to their offspring.

This is emphatically NOT an argument for communism; I just don't see what's wrong with introducing some level of wealth redistribution into a capitalist society. Pointed Stick, to take the example of your uncle, did he not benefit from an education funded initially by the state? If his poverty stricken single mother had had to pay for a high school education herself then none of his later achievments would have been been possible would they? This is not to denigrate his achievments in any way, he sounds like a very talented and hard working guy.