NP: No gov't; best gov't..from John Lanchester LRoB

[Paul Mackin]

On 9/7/2011 12:49 AM, Richard Fiero wrote:
> Paul, I am a big fan of markets as long as supply and demand does not 
> become unhinged as they are now. A look at the volatility of food and 
> energy prices can show that they are not obeying such a thing. Big 
> pension fund money is used to bid up the price of oil which is counter 
> to the interests of the pension plan members. The Saudis need $100 a 
> barrel oil in order to buy off the younger generation so they won't 
> join into the Arab Spring. I worked for Perot Systems in the 
> implementation of the California Energy Exchange and the in-house 
> management system where every little pig farmer who turned pig waste 
> into electricity could be managed. Written in Visual Basic to run on 
> Win98 of all things. The CalTech economist claimed it was a 
> bullet-proof double auction market.  That's until George W. Bush's pal 
> "Kenny Boy" Lay's smart traders gamed it for $4Bil. It was only when 
> the country boy Dave Freeman fixed the problem that television sets, 
> air conditioners and iron lungs stopped groaning to a halt in 
> mid-August due to fictitious energy shortages. There are a lot of more 
> recent market failures.

Richard, I didn't mean to come across as a fan of unregulated markets or 
as a market system worshiper.  Enron should have been not only regulated 
but shut down as the criminal operation it was long before it imploded 
on its own.  Deregulation under Bush was in general a disaster. My 
defense of the Austrian economists was meant to be minimal.   I 
misunderstood what Mark was talking about, which his later post 
clarified for me.

P
>
>
> Paul Mackin wrote:
>> On 9/6/2011 3:38 PM, Richard Fiero wrote:
>>> Paul Mackin wrote:
>>>> On 9/5/2011 10:07 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>>>> Since other reads are faltering, maybe we all ought to read some good
>>>>> n-fic along the financial lines so many have been talking about...
>>>>>
>>>>> I did a bit of 'refutational' reading a while back with Von 
>>>>> Mises'--grandaddy
>>>>> of all of them there Viennese witchdoctors--Human Action......it 
>>>>> was easier
>>>>> than I thought to show-up his supposed premisses and first 
>>>>> principles, if I say
>>>>> so myself, and I have to, since i had no one to challenge me and 
>>>>> don't know how delusional
>>>>> I was....
>>>>
>>>> Well, the very fact you're considering the possibility means you're 
>>>> not delusional.
>>>>
>>>> But, practically no one is totally wrong about everything.
>>>>
>>>> No matter how problematic it is, the market system at least has  a 
>>>> mechanism for setting prices and allocating resources, while the 
>>>> socialist system must rely on central planning, which is even more 
>>>> problematic.
>>>>
>>>> Too bad everything's not as free as cyberspace, although THAT 
>>>> unlimited resource does produce a lot of clutter.
>>>>
>>>> P
>>>
>>> Certainly von Mises and Hayek are an ideology without evidence.
>>
>> They may be almost medieval  in not bothering about empirical evidence.
>> Doesn't Austrian School mean NOT German? Nevertheless deductive 
>> reasoning does have its uses.  It just isn't enough by itself. But if 
>> A, therefore B is still a necessary, if not sufficient, way to reason.
>>
>>> If one doesn't like central planning, then Mexico may be one's 
>>> favored model. Otherwise Brazil and China might be examples of 
>>> successful economies.
>>
>> Brazil has a moderately free market economy and a huge stock market.
>> China has free markets.  They operate however at the pleasure of the 
>> Party.  I'm betting the market will win.
>>
>>> The US which is becoming a right-to-work state may consider Canada a 
>>> better model. Canada has a higher standard of living than the US. 
>>> Its citizens pay their takes and get far more services than US 
>>> citizens and US non-citizens that form its permanent working 
>>> non-voting underclass.
>>
>> True but both economies are very market oriented. Social programs 
>> much less so for Canada and everyone but the Republicans think that 
>> is a good idea.
>>
>>> It's very important that US citizens vote their interests in spite 
>>> of our dumbed-down news reporting.
>>
>> If only. But the point is,  von Mises et al were not incorrect in 
>> emphasizing the flaws in socialist economics.
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>>>
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