Oh good I was starting to worry. 
So now that your mind is at rest, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.
We’ll see. Apparently things will have to get worse for that to happen. People will have to organize in a way that gets the message across clearly. Even when that happens the expression of will of the people has to result in lasting institutional change. Large scale changes like that are rare.
Amen. 
Totally agree. And remember, I’m just describing a best case scenario. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Right now, that kind of activism is not a prevailing energy here in America.
[b]Worldwide stock market increased 4% in the last week or so. This is equivalent to 4 trillion dollars more of value present in the private corporation system worldwide. You can pay 40 million free salaries of 10,000 dollars a year (considered the highest range of salary in 90% of the world) for 10 years just with that small stock value increase. That is how jobs are created, that is how an unmet need (cheap rents, free health care and free salaries) is met. Not with the BS of “productive” work or new businesses creating jobs.
Exactly what unmet need produced 4 trillion dollars of worth out of nothing ? What new industry has been created, what new innovation or breakthrough has been created to increase corporate wealth by so much ? Did you notice anything getting better in the world in the last few days ? No, it is just money those 10 million or so rich thieves in the world rob from the poor, as usual, and tell the poor and unemployed they are not “productive”, they are not in “productive jobs”, they don’t “innovate”, they don’t have the right “skill set”, and so on.
What a bunch of BS is this “unmet need” crap: it is not your local barber that will create jobs and unmet need, it is huge government programs, like millions of skyscrapers and 100 of rockets to manned missions to Mars that will create real demand and real jobs by the millions. Just like wars create jobs by the millions.
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What amazes me is how totally stupid, idiotic and clueless the western countries are (USA, EU and JAPAN): the solutions to the economy are so simple it is laughable and the Chinese are simply applying it: create the jobs by the millions, build skyscrapers, factories, colleges, get people a salary and get them occupied, end of story. But we in the west have this idiotic “moralistic” view of work having to be “productive”, “valuable”, etc. all abstract concepts that mean nothing. We have to have inequality for a minority to feel superior to a majority of slobs, we need all these mental creations and justifications, we need profits (money creating more money out of nothing: or was that out of cheap labor somewhere in the world?) another insane mental creation, etc.
A communist dictatorship, like China, can care less, THEY JUST DO IT, build factories, produce anything and everything you can, give free health care, free salaries, etc. Who cares if there is inequality there too, of course there is, there will always be, but it is totally irrelevant.
We need huge government programs, or else we will end up creating jobs through wars.
How do you explain the difference between the (relative) prosperity of the Chinese people today, and their near-starvation in the '50s, '60s and '70s? They were under a communist dictatorship then and now. They built factories and produced things then and now.
What changed?
An unknown number of things changed between then and now, such as technology, globalization, the continued growth of the world economy as a whole, and so many other factors that it would take an encyclopedia and tens of economic and sociological researchers to explain.
The main point, is that they are not tied down to some abstract ideology, some idea of work and jobs and profits and all kinds of imaginary crap: they use all kinds of systems, public or private, export to rich countries, have “inefficient” state companies, use entrepreneurs whenever and wherever useful, etc. A very mixed system, and even most of the west is quite mixed.
So there is no one system or magic bullet for the economy, you use all kinds of systems all together, all mixed, who cares: I am all for the small businesses creating jobs, but also for large public programs hiring millions if the small startups can’t pull it off. And then maybe the cycle repeats, small guys hire, governments don’t need to hire so much until the next time, etc.
But all the economists are brainwashed with this one track mind, this only model, productivity, startups, innovation, etc. which is just a fairyland in their minds.
Just go out and build billions of skyscrapers, billions of Man trips to Mars and Venus, etc.
Only one thing changed - government let go (a little) of the economy. Humans are amazing. Just give them an opportunity, even a limited one, and they thrive. They innovate, take advantage of opportunities, come up with millions of different ideas.
There isn’t a single example of a freed market that didn’t do well. There isn’t a single example of a centrally-planned one that did.
You are suggesting huge government projects (in addition to allowing some private initiative). How will we feed the workers in those projects? How will we provide them with clothes, shelter and other goods and services they would require?
The goods and services people want have to be produced. Free markets allocate production to meet people’s needs and wants. Arbitrary government project waste people’s efforts without producing what they actually want. The result - Soviet-style prosperity.
One theory in an article I posted here is that the Soviet Union collapsed and went publicly capitalist. sott.net/articles/show/21736 … -Elections
Remember that corporations that outsource can now get labor for virtually nothing or close to nothing in India and China without having to worry about unions, quality control, or environmental protections. They don’t have to worry about protests or strikes. They can move around at will or whim.
Many people in America have not come to terms with this new reality, that corporate fiefdoms are not bounded by locality any more and they have the ability to control governments and laws which now work as their puppets. The police and paramilitaries work for them, too, and they have at their disposal weapons and tactics that quell dissent and protest most effectively. Here I’m tallking both about real, on the ground weaponry, and also electronic weaponry, along with infiltration and agent provacateur tactics.
Totally false. Compare India that has been operating exactly as you say, free market, little government intervention, no laws, no environmental laws, no unions, etc. Totally free and capitalistic and is still amongst the poorest in the world. Their standard of living is not even 1/10 that of China that is a government managed economy with some free markets. Then you have the really free markets of African nations like Somalia, Ethiopia, those are the freest on earth and are starving.
India is much closer to your crappy - imaginary fairy tale model with “millions of ideas” (totally insane, an economy only really needs just a few basic things, the rest are optionals like movies, TV, video games, iphones, etc.), it is poor will remain much poorer than China that has highways, high speed trains, infrastructure, skyscrapers, etc.
All large infrastructure projects need large organizations and corporations, it doesn’t even matter if public or private. Big corporations, like in the USA (look at health care) have a fist strong hold on the economy just like big governments. Free yourself from the ideology, we need mixed systems with a bit of everything.
“Free market” is just a euphemism for a globally controlled corporatism interested only in exploitation for profit. What is actually meant by “free” is the uninhibited and free ability for the rich and corporate to operate without regulations or laws in place that would provide protections for lives, safety, labor and the environment.
Hey fcktard, aswipe, moron, f*ckweed, I said any combination of private - public, any amount of either as long as it works. There are a million combinations between government jobs and private jobs, some places more, some less, in some time interval more private, and in another more government, any combination is good. We need a great mix of all kinds of systems, so don’t put words in my mouth and go back and read all those threads I wrote and all of them on this site. There are 100 pages probably, get educated, moron.
India’s GDP per capital (PPP) is just under one half of China’s, not 10%.
India is a democracy, with strong unions, protectionism and layers of stifling bureaucratic controls. China is not a democracy, but does allow a much greater degree of economic freedom. If the contrast between the two countries shows anything, it is that economic freedom is more important than political freedom in securing quick rise in standard of living.
What you have in most African countries is government-run-amok. It takes many hours and days to cross a single border within Africa. Bureaucracy bordering on (and often way over the border of) kleptocracy. All funded, by the way, by “foreign aid”.
I will repeat my challenge every time. Give me a single example of free market failure. One example. Please. In anticipation, let me address two supposedly-free-markets to show how unfree they really are.
You mentioned the US health market. The problem there is mainly the “3rd party payer” system in which most people don’t pay out-of-pocket for medical services. The “3rd party payer” is caused by the distortion in the tax system that makes employer-provided insurance tax deductible. It pays to have comprehensive “insurance” which really becomes pre-paid services. In turn, “3rd party payer” causes rapid escalation of cost because people don’t care how much the services they consume cost. No wonder. Add to that the fact that 50% of medical expenses are paid directly by government (Medicaid, Medicare, VA), that government regulations are everywhere, from professional licensing through mandatory insurance coverage to the FDA, and any semblance of “free market” disappears. US health market is crony capitalism at its worst.
The other is the recent financial crisis. The crisis was caused by a combination of artificially-low interest rates (from the Fed=government) and moral hazard. Without them, the bubble wouldn’t have been inflated as it was, and, were it not for moral hazard, investors would have done their job to monitor the financial health of the banks.
Free marketism by its nature is doomed to failure. It provides huge short term profits for the few, and leaves the rest of the world living in a nuclear winter, so to speak. Considering the amount of chaos and destruction free marketism leaves in its wake, I think we can count in foreseeable years the amount of time left for the existence of all large life forms.
Yes, there are many different combinations. I still maintain (probably because I am such a moron 
) that the less government involvement in the economy, the better the results. Without exception.
Free market does destroy things. It is part of the process of “Creative Destruction” in which less efficient, less desired production avenues are destroyed to make room for more efficient, more desired ones. For example, whole factories dedicated to producing typewriters had to be destroyed. Similarly, while in the past, 80% of the American workforce was dedicated to food production, now the number is more like 2% (from memory - exact numbers may differ, but the principle remains). Clearly, a huge number of family farms had to be “destroyed”.
Without that “destruction” we would have technological and economic stagnation.
Is that what you had in mind? Or can you otherwise give me concrete examples of “chaos and destruction” left behind “free marketism”?
I read the article, and found myself agreeing with much (though not all) of it.
Much like the writer of the article, I am concerned about crony-capitalism - the symbiotic relation between government and business (I would include labour unions too). As long as government is powerful, there is no way to prevent politically-powerful special interests from trying to use it to advance their interests. Big business is not the only politically-powerful part of society. Organized labour is also one.
In any event, many people, the writers of the article included, confuse the evils business-dominated government with the benefits of government-free business.
Another important point not mentioned is that the biggest winners of outsourcing are the American consumers. Competition (such as the fierce price competition between Walmart, Target and other discounters) brings higher-quality and, mainly, lower-priced products to every American.
Two hundred years ago people revolted against automation, fearing for their jobs and livelihood. Had we listened to them then, we would still be using pre-industrial-revolution technology. If reason prevails, the next generation will be as grateful for the great advances in efficiency and productivity associated with outsourcing as we are for the past advances enabled by automation and technology.
The US has fallen behind other developed nations in terms of the widening income gap. The wealth gap cannot be explained away by a lack of education or skills. It’s caused by changes in taxation and public policy, particularly regarding the financial markets, which have favored the wealthy at the expense of others. The sources of American economic inequality are largely political. There have been a series of deliberate political decisions to shape markets in ways that benefit the already-privileged at the expense of a largely unaware public.