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There was much rejoicing when Maradon! said this:
The Economist isn't a liberal rag, but academic economists these days are generally fed a strict diet of keynesian theory.

This is all well and good if you consider keynesian economics valid and ignore the fact that it's been a disaster every time it's been applied, and even managed to perpetuate the great depression nine years longer than it needed to last.

Unlike Keynes, though, most rational people consider prosperity to be the proper end of an economic system, and not forced social equalization, aka "fairness".

In short, a great many people call themselves economists and hold economics degrees when they are not economists at all, but social workers. The idea that Obama would be "good" for the economy depends on your idea of "good". If destroying industry and giving handouts to special interest groups is your idea of good, then even I do not disagree that Obama would be good for the economy.

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I wish you would stop parading this around. Even if this is true (it isn't; and I know because I have direct contact with the professors in the Economics and Finance departments), you're hardly any better. All you do is parade around your brand of economics and deride what you perceive as Keynesian economics.

If you want to perpetuate your brand of political philosophy that is fine. But stop acting like you understand economics because you simply don't. Every time you try and post your (or the pundits you listen to) opinions about economics you get it wrong. Even the basic fundamental parts upon which there is little to no disagreement you get wrong.

What is more frustrating is that whenever you're called out on it you ignore it, perhaps because you don't understand it or you're willfully ignorant. The blatantly anti-intellectual bullshit you parade around is sickening. Having a specialized understanding of an area (like economics) isn't to be derided; often you will get insights and answers to problems that are too difficult to solve without some specialized help.

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Noxhil thought this was the Ricky Martin Fan Club Forum and wrote:
I wish you would stop parading this around. Even if this is true (it isn't; and I know because I have direct contact with the professors in the Economics and Finance departments), you're hardly any better. All you do is parade around your brand of economics and deride what you perceive as Keynesian economics.

If you want to perpetuate your brand of political philosophy that is fine. But stop acting like you understand economics because you simply don't. Every time you try and post your (or the pundits you listen to) opinions about economics you get it wrong. Even the basic fundamental parts upon which there is little to no disagreement you get wrong.

What is more frustrating is that whenever you're called out on it you ignore it, perhaps because you don't understand it or you're willfully ignorant. The blatantly anti-intellectual bullshit you parade around is sickening. Having a specialized understanding of an area (like economics) isn't to be derided; often you will get insights and answers to problems that are too difficult to solve without some specialized help.

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Here's a help in arguing, explain why he is wrong, don't just say he is. Don't take the Bloodsage way out.

Humanity isn't about rolling over and letting whatever is natural take place, it's about engineering sustainable progress. This is why Keynesian economics pulled the United States out of the Depression, not extend it, and also why a libertarian doctrine (essentially true conservatism refusing progress) is one of the most assholish practices alive.

Supply side economics - Adam Smith economics, Thomas Jefferson economics - actually has been given a fair shake several times, always with the same basic result: Unmitigated success, frequently despite massive blunders in other areas of policy.

Augusto Pinochet was a bloodthirsty dictator who had no deeper understanding of free markets than as a tool to achieve power. It succeeded, turning Chile into an economic powerhouse, driving unemployment under 5% and GDP growth almost into the double digits. This despite the fact that he remained a totalitarian and essentially a fascist.

"The Celtic Tiger" in modern day Ireland, the period between 1990 and today, turned Ireland from one of the poorest european nations into one of the wealthiest, and can be attributed entirely to supply side economics.

Even China's growth in the past decade is the result of them embracing free markets and allowing people to get rich. They still pay lip service to communism, but like Pinochet they can't deny the generative power of free markets.

A nation's level of prosperity depends almost entirely upon the extent to which they embrace supply side economics.

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Noxhiling:
I wish you would stop parading this around. Even if this is true (it isn't; and I know because I have direct contact with the professors in the Economics and Finance departments), you're hardly any better. All you do is parade around your brand of economics and deride what you perceive as Keynesian economics.

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You do this every time I say something you don't like about economics. Remember the time I said investment in fuel efficient cars would naturally increase with rising fuel prices, and you told me "Markets don't work that way!" and I called you stupid?

And now we have $4 a gallon gas, the SUV market is dead, The Volt is on the way, Honda is bringing back the Insight, and dozens of other hybrids are on the plate for the next few years.

You didn't back up anything you said then, either.

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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Steven Steve who doth quote:
Haha Maradon you penis, one of the reasons for the Great Depression was your precious private enterprises creating a happy fantasy land (much like you) in the market and having their bubbles burst. When these businesses realized that the banks were doomed they fired everyone all over the place, which created a high-price and low-income environment where aggregate demand was low. The only way to raise it again was through Keynesian principles (e.g. through social works) rather than just doing the "right" thing and letting lords and ladies sit around in their mansions while 99% of the nation died.

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Check your history chief. The crash of 1929 was a confluence of a number of things, a bubble was only one of them. There was also a natural market correction involved, droughts, syndicates manipulating the market, and tons of other things.

The crash of 1929 had global repercussions, and the less developed a nation was the bigger they were hit. It created a worldwide recession that lasted... one year everywhere that had a market, except in America.

Long after Europe and every other affected nation was back on the road to prosperity, America was still floundering. America even had a second crash in 1933 that pressed unemployment rates even higher.

FDR's policies directly created the great depression, and Keynes was the intellectual justification for them. Public works like the TVA stamped out healthy utilities businesses that, alone, could have brought the country out of recession. Incessant meddling created paralyzing uncertainty. Crushing the producer to get at the product created no products.

I posted the audiobook for The Forgotten Man in the MP3 thread. Give it a shot. The book doesn't ask you to trust it, it's exhaustively sourced.

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Humanity isn't about rolling over and letting whatever is natural take place, it's about engineering sustainable progress. This is why Keynesian economics pulled the United States out of the Depression, not extend it, and also why a libertarian doctrine (essentially true conservatism refusing progress) is one of the most assholish practices alive.

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Humanity isn't about living under tyranny, it's not about a central planner pointing a gun at everybody and telling them what to do. That's the core of keynesism and every other form of socialism. Even if human beings could ever be happy as serfs (which they can't) no central planner can ever know more than everyone, which is why the most successful social construct is individual liberty. Individual liberty is mutually incompatible with keynesism.

Libertarianism is about getting out of the way of progress. Keynesism is about putting progress in a box and never feeding it.

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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Steven Steve who doth quote:
It's "Keynesianism", ha ha, and observance of societal good has always been the point of civilization rather than individual liberty. Otherwise, I'd be sitting on a pile of bodies, jewels, and women now and there's nothing people like you would ever be able to do about it. For your own sake, stick to building total utility rather than your own.

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The observance of individual good is the observance of societal good, you can't have the latter without the former.

Shitting on the individual just creates a whole lot of shit upon individuals, even if you had a good reason to do it.

Keynesism works just as well, just like Marxianism could work too.

"Don't worry guys, it'll be fine in the long run." *counts cash*

Oh no?

Here is the world in a Classical system

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x--Steven SteveO-('-'Q) :
And conversely, shitting on all individuals (by adhering strictly to Classical principles, for example) is the same as shitting on each individual.

"Don't worry guys, it'll be fine in the long run." *counts cash*

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Steve, you really don't seem to have a very good idea of what free market economics is.

It's not a choice between allowing government to rape everyone and allowing a business to rape everyone - that would be two different kinds of keynesism, the only difference would be the location of the central planner. If a businessman is allowed to become a controlling authority, no liberty is gained.

Rather, it's a choice between an ideology which penalizes the sources of wealth in an economy and rewards sources of demand, and an ideology which removes obstruction from the sources of wealth, allowing them to reward sources of demand on their own.

If I were to run an economy, it would be mostly an open market of course, and probably with less regulation than the United States.

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Maradon! said this about your mom:
You do this every time I say something you don't like about economics. Remember the time I said investment in fuel efficient cars would naturally increase with rising fuel prices, and you told me "Markets don't work that way!" and I called you stupid?

And now we have $4 a gallon gas, the SUV market is dead, The Volt is on the way, Honda is bringing back the Insight, and dozens of other hybrids are on the plate for the next few years.

You didn't back up anything you said then, either.

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No you didn't understand then as you don't understand now. Here is the full quote instead of misrepresenting what you said. (my response was in bold)

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Maradon! stopped beating up furries long enough to write:

As oil demand falls - which is to say, as it becomes more and more economical for people to abandon their cars, take public transportation, or move into the city - oil prices will remain mostly stable, although a deal higher than they are today because today we behave as if oil is infinite. Demand will recede as decreasing supply drives costs up. This isn't how markets function. The demand for oil products isn't ever going to fall, in fact the global market will likely see continuing increases in demand. What happens is that supply is reduced which leads to higher prices and a lower amount of transactions. Current developed countries will see less oil, but the world will want to consume more petroleum and petroleum-based products.

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Thanks for finding an example of you not understanding the basics. I explained that higher prices will not result in a lower demand for oil except in the very long run.

An interesting result is that oil prices haven't ballooned up as much as we all suspected. There's a variety of reasons but it's not worth analyzing them here.

Here's some more of what you posted-

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We'll see a spike once oil companies are reduced to processing shale oil, which is drastically more expensive to refine but abundant enough to last us for a century or more even at our present rate of consumption. This spike will probably destroy demand, and shift it over almost entirely onto other energy sources, of which there will be a great deal because by then the alternative energy market will be enormous.

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I'll say it again- price will never affect demand. What is going to affect the demand for oil is people gradually shifting over to processes and items that use less oil so they will desire less of it. Of course the other side of the coin is the rest of the world will start consuming more oil as they bring their societies into the 21st century.

Price is going to affect how much people can consume, but that is a very different thing than demand.

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Maradon! had this to say about Knight Rider:
Bioshock was basically libertarian pornography

Plus mutant horrors, but those are not endemic to libertarianism

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Rapture was working fine until grandmas started smuggling in bibles.

Skaw fucked around with this message on 10-05-2008 at 12:18 AM.