Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Economic Crash??

Right, if you are going to have a centrally planned economy, you need regulators, but said regulator will always be captured, converting the economy into one of crony capitalism. Thus the answer is to abandon that approach which resulted in the need for regulators, i.e., the answer is to abandon the notion of a centrally planned economy.

I never cared for Ayn Rand because she was so incredibly psychically damaged. When she left home she never spoke to the mother again. Broke her heart. She wad a mean, vindictive, controlling utterly hypocritical woman. She hated theistic religion (but not her own religious faith of secular humanism). She thought she was much, much smarter than she actually was. In truth, she is a very minor figure in the history of philosophy and political thought. She contributed very little of substance to the canon of human knowledge. She was a crackpot in so many ways.

Yeah, all her crony capitalism advocacy is to blame.

It's complex. I'm less sure about what is essentially 'theory' than I was 5 years ago.

It is what it is and no real change is on the horizon...so, fuggit.

TRH, you have this backwards. Inflation hurts the lender, not the borrower. If the lender is payed back with inflated dollars, the purchasing power of those dollars is less then if they had not been inflated. Inflation is a tool to steal from the haves, not the have nots.

Oh there will be change!! our path is unsustainable.
My greatest fear is they will be successful in blaming capitalism, when the true villain is there socialism/liberalism/crony capitalism...

I don't like her personally, either. Regardless, her economics were sound, essentially classical free market in character.

The disturbing part of it all is,...most people are too ignorant to even have an opinion on the matter.

There's hundreds of thousands of people in the country who have nothing in their wallet but some food stamps, 14 pictures of they baby mommas, and a lottery ticket.

Good luck trying to explain the role of the Federal Reserve to them.

Too silly to comment on. I'd need to be in a far more patient mood.

Being Keynesian had nothing to do with deregulating the financial markets. He did that out of personal conviction. He sat at the right side of that lunatic and got it first hand. Don't even try to tell me that you, 50 years later, have a better grasp of her crackpot theories than someone within her inner circle. I ain't buying it Hawk.

With Randians it is never "Oh [bleep]! That didn't work at all, let's go back and rethink this." It is always "Well if you would let us put into effect ALL of our theories instead of just the ones we've tried, each and every one of which failed cataclysmically, we would all be fine! Trust us!"

What we had prior to the banking deregulation worked! It worked better than any other method that has been documented in human existence! We don't have to rely on the fevered rantings of some objectovist whackjob, we have real live hard data we can learn from.

What we need to do is repeal about a dozen 777 Cat truckloads worth of financial laws that don't have a chance in hell of working individually, let alone in conjunction with each other law, reinstate Glass-Steagall and be done with it. Forget all of this foolishness and go back to what worked.

Jeez.

Will

So true.

With Randians it is never "Oh [bleep]! That didn't work at all, let's go back and rethink this." It is always "Well if you would let us put into effect ALL of our theories instead of just the ones we've tried that failed cataclysmically we would all be fine! Trust us!" smile


You are projecting!
Thats a cornerstone of liberal philosophy "if we just do more it will work"

Deregulating an already centrally planned economy and monetary system isn't free-market capitalism (of the Randian or any other flavor) in the least. It's crony capitalism. Centrally planned economies and monetary systems must be heavily regulated, which is why they always devolve into crony capitalism. The solution is to abandon centrally planned economies and monetary systems.

Listen to him! That is exactly what he, and every other Randian, does when you explain how that foolish wench's theories helped to blow up the world economy.

"Well you need to do away with the Federal Reserve as well..."
"Well you need to do away with this or that or some other piece of legislation as well..."
"Well it would have worked if only you'd try (insert another foolish Randian pet political policy here).

This has been going on for years now after the crash they helped to cause. I don't have to put all those conditions on my recommendations, I have real life proof: They were tried and they worked spectacularly.

But of course I am an independent and don't need to protect an ideology. That makes it a lot easier to be pragmatic.

Will

I'm sorry, Penguin, but you are clearly a variety of leftist, and decidedly so. Nothing you say bears close scrutiny from an historically and/or economically informed perspective. You're smart, but garbage in = garbage out.

As A businessman, if I cheat my customers I won't be in business long. Thats the free market working!
Now if I get the state to enact legislation that protects my cheating, I can do it all I want! What part of crony capitalism don't you get?

I"d like to hear you try sometime.

My way works. End of story.

Your way? Well the stuff we tried that revoked my stuff failed and the only reasons I am getting is that we need to try more.

I'm sorry but in the real live data driven world that I live in the prudent course is to go back to what worked not to double down on a losing hand.

Glass-Steagall worked. Separating commercial banks from investment houses and insurance companies worked. Trade policy that took into account the mercantilism of other countries and protected Americans from it worked.

You can say what you want but my way worked. Your way? So far you can't say that. You can only give me excuses as to why it hasn't.

Will

Free market principles produce prosperity wherever they're tried. The closer the approximation to truly free markets, the greater has been the level of prosperity achieved.

I don't think I am not getting anything.

What I think you are missing is that in large corporations the individual can advocate looting, walk away with millions USD in personal compensation, and when the company goes TU he doesn't care. He already has his why should he?

You cannot depend on business caring about their long term reputation as a deterrent to fraud. The people who run these things get compensated well enough to not care about the long term.

I agree wholeheartedly about crony-capitalism. My point would be that by adopting Rand's idiocy you make it easier for that type of system to coalesce under the guise of deregulation and laisse faire. My take is that in this world we need to concentrate on better governance not more or less governance.

Will