Topic: A Resource Based Economy - page 80. (Read 288348 times)

I would say trade is about fulfilling one's needs for things that one can't produce himself, "but that's just me.  And the rest of the world."

Trade is about ruggedness and self-reliance

Meh.  I would say that money is all about trade, but that's just me.  And the rest of the world.

Sorry, sorry, money is about ruggedness and self-reliance.

This is why I don't take you seriously.  Well, a lot of it.

Here you go throwing that capital word around again. What form of capital is it that you think that China or whomever cannot do without that only western society can provide?


whoas really? How about South Korea and Japan? Were they under US rule until very recently? Or did they advance into the information age at pretty much the exact same time as western society?


So every tax is hidden because the government no longer knocks on your door for property taxes. Got it.


I am not looking for anything specific. I want to know what you think the beneficence of less taxation is, since this is apparently the side effect of "sound" money. Apparently it's ruggedness and self-reliance. Strange how those don't seem to be economic-related virtues yet money is all about economics.

"They" refers back to the previously used noun, in this case "everyone", for small values of everyone, meaning "the bulk of the people" or "society".  Regarding Keynes and Austrians, I think they are both wrong in general, mostly in the sense that they have convinced themselves that they know things that they don't really know.

I think that they most of the cheap labor parts of the world would be for a much rougher ride than the west if ties were severed.  Their economies are geared towards trade, not domestic needs, and I don't think they have the capital to change direction as easily as we could.  It would be bad, but my stone age comment was more hyperbole than a specific prediction.

You keep saying that I'm being condescending by pointing out the lack of accumulated capital in those parts of the world.  In my view, the lack of capital is not a moral issue, and I don't consider them morally inferior for it.  For it to be condescension to point that out, one would need to hold that lack of development is a moral issue.

P.S.  Hong Kong was under British rule until very recently.  Great example of local development.

How are payroll taxes and VAT not hidden?  Payroll taxes are money that is gone before you possess it.  It isn't something you have and then get taken away, it is just a number on the stub.  The emotional attachment is different, even if you are intellectually aware of them.  VAT is hidden by being rolled into the prices of things.

People act on the superficial all the time.  Many people are uneasily content paying their 50%+ taxes, because they are distributed and hidden.  If 100% of that money came into their hands, and then more than half was removed by force, there would be much more pressure from the people to reduce them, which is essentially the same thing as pressure to reduce the size of government.  I'm not sure which specific beneficial effects you are looking for me to list.  Do you want me to say that people with smaller governments are more rugged and self reliant?  I think that they are, and I think that those are virtues.

I don't care if you take me seriously at all.  I sure don't take you seriously.  Want to answer the questions in that last paragraph that you skipped?

Judging by the fact that we had to spend $700 billion to bail them out in order to avoid a complete catastrophe of Great Depression proportions (70%+ unemployment rate, etc), I guess yes?

My original reply was to grondilu implying that anyone who wants a better society is a communist. And flat out stating that to do so would be stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, yet when as it comes to production, society clearly runs on the opposite. It is such a narrow world-view, and on a board all about fixing one of the biggest problems of society (the broken system of money). It aggravates the shit out of me because it seems to make it obvious to me that people like bitcoin only because they think it will make them one of the wealth-stealers, and that's ok.


Sounds like you almost accept the Keynesian view of what causes the business cycle. The austrians think it's all about money and specifically credit. I dunno, it's hard to say when you blame it on "they".


You believe that asia or whatever outsourced areas are incapable of providing for society without "capital investment". Yet, as we have seen, this is usually a much stronger effect of things like communism and a lack of democracy on their society rather than a lack of investment from western countries. You seem to imply that they would be incapable of doing such things on their own, even though, say, Hong Kong flies completely in the face of this argument. You asked the question if insufficient capital was a moral issue. I don't even know what that is supposed to mean. I certainly did not say it.


lol how are payroll taxes and VAT hidden? I didn't say that hidden taxes didn't imply more taxes, I implied that unhiding them would just cause a rise in the obvious ones. You think government will be defunded, but you just assume this to be true without any evidence. And you never answered what the result would be. Not even the hope of smaller government. Change in taxation is not a change in society, it's a change in taxation. What beneficial effects are you hoping for? Do you see that I am trying to get at the root, not the superficial?


Am I supposed to take you seriously at all?

I would say that they make mistakes, and if they are slow to accept and correct their mistakes, the correction can be harsh.  If we use government to actively avoid having to face that correction, it will be even more harsh when it hits.

Capital is not money.  Nothing I said in that section was about money.  And again, you are the one saying that lack of invested capital is a moral issue.  Calling someone immature is only condescension if you believe that it is immoral to be young.

If you don't think that hidden taxes = more taxes, I doubt that I'll be able to convince you.  It seems like a pretty obvious thing, considering that every government everywhere throughout history has tried to hide taxes from the taxed.  Inflation, payroll withholdings, VAT, etc...

I don't care about the distribution of wealth because I don't know what the "right" distribution should be.

Please tell me, with as much precision as you can muster, that percentage of new income should have gone to the top 1%.  Heh, I find it funny that the article doesn't say top 1% by what measure.  Height?  Popularity?  Before you linked it, did you bother clicking through to the study itself to see what the author was talking about?  Or did you just start frothing at the mouth at the inequality that you didn't understand?

Yup. You have some good points, but you need to tone it down. Even Marx (at times) said the Capitalist is in an unenviable position in our system (probably he was wrong about this too, though). Also, as grondilu said, what you're talking about is only some part of the picture. It probably dominates your view because it's the most comprehensible part, as it at least includes some kind of planning.

Economy is a hugely complicated system that no one really understands. It's not even entirely clear what it comprises. It's true that rich get richer as a rough generalization, but it's almost certainly not about the abstract top-down "economic system" that the world supposedly adheres to.

In other words, you won't be able to invent some planned system that will make power foci go away. Doesn't matter whether you try to drive money or even private property out. Power focus might be impossible to get rid of even with a bottom up revolution, unless we somehow reach a state of Deleuzian body without organs, which isn't at all desirable for any of us.

What does this have to do with the business cycle then? Everybody up and down the line of production just has a mass bout of stupidity every now and then? This is just a natural side effect of capitalism?


LOL here you go defending the production of money. You claimed they'd be "back in the stone age by Friday" without western investment. Do you not realize how condescending that is? Would Americans be "back in the stone age" without Wall Street?


And what does making taxes explicit do other than raise the number of complaints about taxation? What does this solve? What would you like it to solve? Making taxes explicit is not some recipe for reduced taxation, after all.


Obviously. I'm quite sure the lords and landowners of feudalism had no problem with it either. Note that I said "distributed more equally" not "distributed equally". Do you get the difference? You know that that "distribution" does not mean "taxing and handing out equally", right? Why don't you give a fuck about the distribution of wealth? You are perfectly content with the situation of the homeless and those that live in poverty? It's their fault, right? It's totally sane that 93% of the new income in the economy in 2009-2010 went to the top 1%, right? Even though a significant portion of those people were heavily involved in the massive economic collapse? All you care about is explicit taxes, after all.

As Mises wrote:


Additional articulation is that sound money protects against confiscation through inflation which is a form of taxation without representation.

Or as Alan Greenspan wrote in 1966:

The only point you've made here is mine.  You produce something that is not directly valuable to you, and then you trade it to someone else to whom it is more valuable than anything else you could have made, and in return they give you something that is more valuable to you than the effort you put into producing that thing for them.


Are you saying that insufficient capital investment is a moral issue?  That pointing it out is the same as calling them inferior people?

Yes, I say that sound money is beneficial.  The primary benefit is de-funding governments by making taxes explicit.  I don't really give a fuck about the distribution of wealth, and find the notion of equality in such a thing nonsensical.

Did you forget about the value of trade? Economics 101. Trade costs little to nothing yet it increases the wealth of both parties to it.


Oh hey look the condescension of billions of people. Not at all unlike the mentality of Wall Street.

What is the result, in your opinion, of "sound money"? Is it beneficial to society? If so, what benefits will society reap? Will wealth be distributed more equally? Will government have less power? What is the result that you clamor for yet scoff at when I mention the inefficiency of society? I am intensely curious.

 to Etlase2: I was responding to earlier in this fast rolling thread about different society models.

You can only claim a stacked deck, if the game has rules! If laws against financial crimes and corruption are part of that rulebook you also have a wish for fairness. What is cheating? Can you in earnest claim that your scale of fairness would not shift if your "situation" was different? The 95% in Wall Street are the card stacking 20% of the western world to protest, if the Occupy movement takes off in the 3'rd world.

note: Hungry African boy with billboard: "Regulate Guy Fawkes now!".

A Society is the sum of the more or less free wills. The inertia of society is hard to influence, also for governments, global corporations or the Illuminati, take your pick.

The important point to teach yourself is not to give in to peer pressure because of your urge to feel part of a group or society. (Just had a talk earlier today about that with my oldest daughter). Whenever I feel discredited by the state, ex wife or my bank. I walk outside at night and stare at the stars and remind myself that this is the ultimate reality I'm living in. My preconception of being controlled by others or a group, is only an evolutionary programmed illusion from the forests, and in reality, I can choose to feel just as free as I choose to feel. Of cause, when I get back inside, The phone might confront me with the lesser kind of reality, but I know that all the abusive relations I engage in, are a result of a consenting compromise on my behalf from which I also benefit. I simply have to view society in general the same way. If you forget that your chain has no lock and only respond to external demands and expect your masters to be just and reward you if you do what they demand , you are truly a slave of your own mind. I don't say that mass manipulation doesn't exist and our genetics are not exploited by the fewer, but you are not being controlled by anybody, you might have been led to believe that you are, but you are not.

Ignorant?  Are you sure you know what that word means?  I'll give you a hint, it does not mean "disagrees with me".  I kinda suspect that I can guess like 75% of your "side", or more, but I disagree with most of it.  Also, a thing does not qualify as "problems with society" or "something wrong with the system" just because you say so.

What is unnatural about a society being unable to afford that which it produces?  Try this on.  If merely producing something is as valuable as the product produced, wouldn't it make more sense to produce something else instead?  Something that is worth more than the value of the effort that went into production maybe?  Isn't that the whole point of production?

They would be back in the stone age by Friday, I suspect.  We'd be fine.  Ask yourself why they are in such fierce competition to be our "bitches".

P.S.  Study Chomsky.  He is much better at making this sort of nonsense sound good.

This is true, but off topic.

Because through your ignorance you think that the sides are actually reversed and things like welfare cloud this massive disconnect. Or, at least, that's the best I can gather from LOL.


Political activism does not write laws, money writes laws. Political activism very, very rarely gets politicians elected; money gets politicians elected. "You and me" are a big part of the problem because most of "you and me" are completely uneducated as to what the problem is. So a "LOL" comment when I point out an incredible and simple societal disconnect in the "wealthiest country in the world" leads me to believe that you are totally cool with being uneducated as to what the problems with society are. I am not saying that the food that should be thrown out should be given away for free, I am saying that the fact that such a stupid side-effect of this economy exists means there is something wrong with the system. 99% of the 99% of OWS didn't even know what the fuck the problem is, just that there is a problem.


What is natural about a society being unable to afford that which it produces?


The question was not who benefits, the question was how long would the collapse take when they decide to stop being the bitches of western society? They are going to eventually wake up and realize that producing money does not produce wealth, but producing money is the majority of what western society does. It is not a sustainable enterprise when there are no more people to walk over.

First you say that "the entire economy of the world is based around stealing from the poor", and now you say it affects the whole world economy.  Please clarify, because to me, this is not the same thing at all.

To me it seems that what you wanted to say is that there is a minority class whose economic activity is based on stealing from the poor in the whole world.    There is some truth in that.  This minority takes a bit from a lot of people.

But what you actually wrote was kind of reversed:  you said that the entire world economy is based on stealing from the poor.  This is silly.

I was comparing to the worldwide drug market.  And those derivatives are, by definition, based on other financial instruments, which can very well be "real" economic assets, with real economic activities behind, with real workers and production and so on.  So I'm not sure it makes your point.  It's probably quite a complicated subject anyway.