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[Lagslayer]

Lagslayer: you can not rely on charity to meet all the needs of society. If you could, they would already be met. People are not perfect, and there will never be a society without greed.

But what you suggest in your last paragraph is a far harsher form of force. "Purging" people from time to time until you kill everyone who does not fit into your ideal society is far far worse than making people pay taxes.

Perhaps I should have used some different vocabulary. Please allow me to clarify.

I did not say that pure capitalism was the solution, that there should be zero redistribution via the government. I'm saying that if it isn't done very precisely and in the correct manner, that it would just create more problems and corruption than having no redistribution at all. But since there are a lot of different people in the world, no one system is going to be right for everyone, hence the inefficiencies.

I meant "purge" as removal by force, outside the normal legal system, but not necessarily by just killing them. There will be a point where the system is so corrupt that anyone new that gets elected will be unable to accomplish anything, and will likely just fall into or be forced into corruption themselves. Ultimately, the threat of force is the only thing keeping the government in line (especially if they rig the system to protect themselves from legal punishment), and everything else is a warning that we will resort to force if they don't shape up. We must be willing to follow through on this eventually or it means nothing, like MAD. It also means nothing if we jump straight to force every time. The trick is to get it to happen when appropriate, and only when appropriate.


Or would you rather we just assume the fetal position as the system in question realizes we won't really do anything in retaliation? Was every revolution where the former leaders were forcibly removed completely unjustified? Damn Libyans! Damn Americans! Damn Europeans! Damn everyone, ever!

edits: adding stuff

[ChairmanPoo]

That ain't capitalism, buddy.

Sure it is capitalism. It isn't an unfettered free market, but then again, overtime unfettered free markets stop being unfettered free markets all by themselves, anyway.

[SalmonGod]

That ain't capitalism, buddy.

Sure it is capitalism. It isn't an unfettered free market, but then again, overtime unfettered free markets stop being unfettered free markets all by themselves, anyway.

This is my view on it as well.  The free market ideal is great (like any ideal), but unsustainable.  It betrays itself by virtue of the same mechanisms that are supposed to make it work.  It can only be a temporary state.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Not if we regulate it properly. We just have to find the right balance, which will probably take us a great deal of time indeed.

[Dsarker]

Which makes it a non-free market.

[kaijyuu]

A self-proclaimed libertarian friend of mine answered that by saying "as much regulation as necessary."

And nothing else.


We don't talk politics

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Which makes it a non-free market.

It's a non-free market right now. The real free market exists in between the states of the economic corporate domination that we have now and the economic government domination that you would see in things like the USSR. A place where there is enough of the government in the economy to break apart large corporate entities before they become monolithic or politically influential, but not enough as to force everyday people out of business.

[Bauglir]

So one that isn't free. The whole point that they're trying to illustrate is that a free market is a necessarily unstable state. The stable state that most approximates a free market may be an ideal worth chasing, but attacking any system on the basis of its failing to be a free market requires a fantasy view of economics.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think that you all have a very, very strange definition of what it means for something to be free.

[kaijyuu]

IMO every economic system is unfair until we eliminate every single factor that goes into a purchase EXCEPT: 1) price, 2) quality.

Eliminating things like brand names, location, advertising, etc isn't exactly possible. Also we'd need to figure out a way to quantify quality. So, two impossibilities right there.

Thus, no system's perfect.

I think that you all have a very, very strange definition of what it means for something to be free.

Sure we know what that means? Free means you don't have to pay for anything!

...


No really, we're talking "free" as in "freedom." Regulations are, by definition, limiters of freedom. Thus any regulatory action would keep the market from being a "true" free market (also any attempt to control the market (on the part of corporations/etc) keeps it from being "free" as well, but that's beside the point).

As such, terms like "free market" suck. No market is or ever will be truly free. You can certainly call markets "free" in certain aspects, however. Free from X regulation or free from Y attempt of control. It's much more realistic to debate the values of specific regulations than claim that they're intrinsically bad or that any particular "ideal" is possible.

[Osmosis Jones]

I think that you all have a very, very strange definition of what it means for something to be free.

Free as in unconstrained?

[Duuvian]

Quick, someone come up with a way to regulate capitalism so everyone can poke holes into the idea until the bad parts are gone or at least avoidable with effort and we can consume it.

[Duuvian]

Oh hey, Barney Frank is retiring from Congress.  Thanks dude, you picked a great time.

I thought he was a very good Congressman. I could be wrong due to not reading as much as I could have but he seemed to be doing a much better job than the average lawmaker. When I saw him on TV he was sensible in times of senselessness, if you ever watched CNN back the past few years. One guy would be reading stuff he wrote last week to the witness then Barney Frank would ask some questions of the witness and get mad for good reason since the whole process was almost a mockery sometimes in that it's painful to watch if you understand what the hell they're all doing there.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wasting as much of Obama's (America's) time as possible

EDIT: oops double post

[Lagslayer]

Barny Frank certainly does not strike me as stupid, either. But considering his position, it's very hard for me to believe he did not have a huge, corrupt hand in the whole thing. He's been playing his hand very carefully, and now he's getting out before the shit hits the fan.

[nenjin]

Personally, I think we've seen what people do in a free market. They screw each other over. And it becomes a problem when they are so vital to a functioning economy that you must accept them screwing you over repeatedly because you can't do without them. And I mean, isn't that what humans do? They rise to the top, then they screw people.

So really, I don't see why we should treat the market any differently than we do any other human expression. Free warfare? Free nuclear power? We delimit our choices and alternatives everywhere because it's the smart thing to do, because we're human and we're stupid and we don't learn the things we should.

Why should our economies be any different? Maybe we won't enjoy the soaring successes of an unrestrained market, but we won't suffer the catastrophic meltdowns every 50 years either. And really, our consumption, our population growth, the damage we've done to the planet....we don't need to be doing things in excess as a species right now. I think we need to learn to accept a slightly lower quality of life so we can enjoy a higher quality of life over a longer time. And part 1 of that is saying to entrepreneurs and industry leaders that, yes, there are limits to how much money is enough money.