Planned economies will only be possible after the Singularity.

I agree with both tendmote and AlexSG on the standard of living thing. Competition is an easy and effective way of accumulating wealth, and that wealth would be easily used to improve standard of living. However, the wealth is moving up from the poor, and the ones actually competing are holding vast amounts of wealth from the majority, so the standard of living is increasing faster for the wealthy. Regulation is the only way to guarantee everyone's standard of living increases.

I don't think "guarantee" is the word you want to use. Regulation can only make sure that standards of living increase if the underlying economy is growing and new technologies are being developed. Regulation doesn't make that happen.

And even if it did, regulation can't prevent every crisis. Better economic regulation cannot stop an accidental nuclear war. Or a global pandemic.

We've been spoiled for hundreds of years thanks to the Industrial Revolution and its after effects. Things have, on balance, been getting better in every way for many generations. But you know, things got better for hundreds of years under the Roman Empire, too. And then, in the West at least, things fell apart and got worse or stagnated for a thousand years. You can point out examples like this all over the world as well. Great Zimbabwe. The Indus Valley Civilization. China again and again over its history.


Basically, I just think "guarantee" is not the word to use. We can't "guarantee" living standards will improve just because we have regulation, even if perfect philosopher-kings write and enforce the rules. Much more is at play.

@TrPrado

"the ones actually competing are holding vast amounts of wealth from the majority"
and
"Regulation is the only way to guarantee everyone's standard of living increases."

I totally agree. There definitely needs to be adequate redistribution to make sure that economic power is not overly concentrated and that most people can enjoy the benefits of innovation. A regulated, unplanned economy is best in my opinion. I'd prefer the US be more on the Scandinavian model, where people can take greater risks because there's a floor under how badly they can lose, and not suffer if they choose to invest time in adult education. But Putin33 is right, this is cuddly capitalism, and I am all for cuddly capitalism.

Invictus:
"Regulation can only make sure that standards of living increase if the underlying economy is growing and new technologies are being developed." That's kinda what I meant. I meant for emphasis to be on the word everyone because when there is an increase in the standard of living, regulation makes sure it also reaches the poorer of the regulated state.
tendmote:
The Scandinavian (or Nordic) model is really good, so is the model in Germany (social market economy, which I called socio-capitalism when I first entered the thread). These are both variations of capitalism, and regulated capitalist systems are the kind of economic systems I can enjoy the most. Though, I don't generally identify as purely capitalist because as an American living in a southern state, the word capitalism has become too heavily associated with (almost universally meant to mean around here, really) laissez-faire, which I hate.

You may as well hate woolly mammoths and trilobites as hate laissez-faire capitalism.

I very much wish it were that simple. Have you tried talking about economics in a southern state?

Laissez-faire, to the extent it ever existed, is gone. People sloppily say they want laissez-faire when they really just want freer markets.

I've heard far too much around here (where I live) that the private sector can take care of EVERY economic problem, the government shouldn't get involved in these things (or much of anything), and that anyone who disagrees isn't a capitalist. That's where I'm coming from with this.

"the private sector can take care of EVERY economic problem"

You are surrounded by idiots :-) ....... my advice, leave the country

laissez-faire may be out the window but the idea of freer markets conquering all is well entrenched in neoliberal governance. You only have to look to the banking and corporate deregulations in the US and the environmental deregulations in Canada to see how free market ideas are wrecking havoc with the system

That's because it's correct that freer markets conquer all. But free market reforms do not necessarily mean a return to the mythical, never-really-even-existed, lassiez-faire.

Chairman:
Yes, and it's pretty painful to be surrounded by people who call for mass deregulation as soon as conceivably possible (i.e. every politician in this state (Oklahoma)). It would be nice if there were more ordoliberals in the world.
Nigee: I can't take your advice right now, I'm a junior in high school. I wouldn't say that it's idiocy in general as it is a less bearable ideology. The town where I live has a less concentrated population of idiots, and I make sure not to associate with idiots. The biggest problem is that they're more vocal about their opinions than everyone else because they assume we all agree with them about these things.

As a junior in high school, you'd think all the people in your town were idiots even if they weren't.

Good ole ageist Invictus everyone.

"That's because it's correct that freer markets conquer all."

No, it leads largely to corruption and monopolization. How does anyone look at the current state of wall street and say less regulation would be beneficial is beyond me.

Who says all regulation is good? Dodd-Frank gave us boatloads of new regulation. And the result? Banks that are even more Too Big Too Fail.

no one is saying all regulation is good. Dodd-Frank is a haphazard attempt to apply to a bandaiid to a problem that's already running away. Glass-Steagall should never have been repealed in the first place.

Thinking "more regulation" is a magic bullet to fix all problems is just as silly as thinking "less regulation" is. The solution is a free market, which is completely compatible with sensible regulation (breaking monopolies, for example).

sensible regulation, you're right. But that's not what we've been seeing in North American for the past few decades. Instead we've seen regulations stricken down with nothing to replace them.

I'm not reading this entire thread, but I'll respond to the OP and the most recent posts.

Has anyone brought up Karl Polanyi (of The Great Transformation fame)? He writes that socialism is the subordination of the economy to democratic desires. It's a fairly broad definition, and I think that even John Maynard Keynes (who once wrote to Hayek to profess his ideological kinship with The Road to Serfdom) would fall under its umbrella. Nonetheless, I think he is particularly instructive here.

Polanyi is writing in response to a culture of laissez-faire that came to dominate in the latter half of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th. He criticises the goal of laissez-faire as impossible, and he writes that all attempts to implement it are doomed to fail, with harmful consequences for the people. He has lots of interesting stuff here about fictitious commodities, but I'll cut to the good stuff. He says that a true laissez-faire market society subordinates the people to the interests of property. But as a society approaches laissez-faire market levels, the people will realise what is happening and will push back away from it. This allows proponents of laissez-faire to say that it would work if only they had pushed it further, but it also stops them from going all the way. In a sense, then, Invictus is right that laissez-faire has never happened. But that's not to say it hasn't been attempted.

Now, as far as regulation goes, I think we are right to point to the "Too Big to Fail" model as a problem. When the first list of banks that were too big to fail came out, those banks all realised that they were no longer responsible for their actions; the government would always bail them out. This gave way to a series of mergers and acquisitions over the years that made them even bigger and fail-y-er.

As for Glass-Steagall, while it is often cited as a cause of the 2008 crisis, I think it's more of a sign than a cause. The Citi Group merger had already gone through; repealing Glass-Steagall was a post-hoc regulatory thing to ensure the legality of Clinton's banker buddies' actions. At any rate, I'm not convinced that more regulation will solve anything because by regulating, you give the people with the most resources at their disposal the most reason to work against what you've just done. Sooner or later, regulation will collapse; I'm sceptical that another Glass-Steagall would fix anything.

Well, that's just not true. Remember Dodd-Frank?

And again, "regulation" is not some magic bullet. In no small part, excessive regulation gave us the 1970s. Deregulation gave us the 1980s and 1990s. Excessive deregulation and then poorly designed re-regulation has given us this lost decade. It's effective policies that we need, not just MOAR GUBMINT.

Also, we're just talking about financial regulations here. Important, but hardly the entire regulatory universe.

That was for Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang.

"Now, as far as regulation goes, I think we are right to point to the "Too Big to Fail" model as a problem. When the first list of banks that were too big to fail came out, those banks all realised that they were no longer responsible for their actions; the government would always bail them out. This gave way to a series of mergers and acquisitions over the years that made them even bigger and fail-y-er. "

And that's the thing with American capitalism. The private industry gets to take all the benefits while the public has to insurance the losses. It's a runaway theft that has been enabled by the pro-business laissez-faire mentality that runs North American govts now that should have died out long ago.

"At any rate, I'm not convinced that more regulation will solve anything because by regulating, you give the people with the most resources at their disposal the most reason to work against what you've just done. Sooner or later, regulation will collapse; I'm sceptical that another Glass-Steagall would fix anything. "

You're right. Regulations are going to fail if govts allow corporations to skirt them with little to no punishment. We just came out of the largest global financial crisis and history. Where are the consequences for those who started it? One of the main causes of the crisis was certain banks getting waivers to do business which was illegal for other companies to do. It's crony capitalism which is leading us into greater inequality and instability than ever. And no one is getting reined in or punished for it.

"Well, that's just not true. Remember Dodd-Frank?"

Remember what I said about Dodd-Frank? Haphazard, a bandaid. It was a response to a crisis because the govt needed to look like it was doing something. It is not the sensible regulation we're talking about.

"And again, "regulation" is not some magic bullet."

where are you getting these words?

"In no small part, excessive regulation gave us the 1970s. Deregulation gave us the 1980s and 1990s."

this is way too broad to respond to. You're going to have to get more specific.

"Excessive deregulation and then poorly designed re-regulation has given us this lost decade. It's effective policies that we need, not just MOAR GUBMINT."

again, you're right, effective regulation. I'm glad we agree.

What does "effective regulation" look like? To me, it just sounds like a buzzword.

"Hey guys, the problem with everything we've been doing up until now is that it hasn't been effective!" Congratulations, all you've done is say that we didn't do what we wanted to. It's not a solution.

Can either of you tell me concretely what you'd like to see in "effective regulation"? And before Invictus pipes up about trust-busting and monopolies, let me say that's also not enough. What mechanisms would you put in place to realise those goals, keeping in mind that no matter what, the financiers will look for loopholes and lobby as hard as they possibly can to keep the party going?

Of course we're talking hypotheticals, because any sort of hard-nosed regulation in the current political climate is going to get pushback from the GOP and turned to loophole swiss cheese by lobbying interests because that's just how things are right now.

Barring that, effective regulation would mean that offenders are punished beyond simple wrist-slapping fines that we see today. Things like criminal offenses for top executives and dismantling of inner company practices would be a way to make sure efforts at going around loopholes wouldn't be worth taking the risk for some. Effective regulation would also be based on a meditation between corporations and consumers; I believe the Nordic model works on something like this, where rules are agreed upon by mutual bodies and merely mediated by the government. That keeps regulations from being too one sided and trying to best come out with a win-win for all sides. It would also potentially include something like a sunset clause, but instead of simply phasing out the regulation it'd be re-examined and adjusted if need be compared to past offenses or changing environments.

But I can't stress enough that regulations have to have the backing of actual consequences. Without that they're nothing. We hit corporations with fines these days that they can make back in a day or two. The govt simply has no teeth when it comes to keeping corporations in line, and giving them something that would keep private interests in line would go a long way towards correcting the greed culture that runs through much of the top earners these days.

*mediation, not meditation ofc

that's obviously just off the top of my head, I don't have the indepth policy ideas a real economist would have, and I'm sure there's a lot more specific clauses which have produced positive effects in the past that could be applied. I'd have to do some research.

"Can either of you tell me concretely what you'd like to see in "effective regulation"?"

What do you want, a white paper? I'm honest enough to say I'm not an economist and can't pretend to know what the most efficient system would be.

If this were so easy it could be explained on a forum post we'd already be living in a utopia. I just know that the lodestar should be freer markets and not letting the people who will be regulated write the regulations.

Also funny that the GOP alone gets knocked on this issue, when Wall Street gave more to Obama than either of his Republican opponents. And a Democratic Congress passed and at least theoretically wrote Dodd-Frank.