too much of ghosts many incohesive arguments seem to be based on theory, now that i go back and read them over, there's nothing wrong with theory in general, but these are real problems, and i can't wait 'till you see the day that regulation works out well, it's coming

"Of course, ghost. I am waiting to see evidence. I see claims and such, but no proof. I guess that, since I am not an economist, I may be wrong. But I just don't think so. Maybe you are right. But, without dismantling the entire US economic system and starting over, we have to work with the system we have."

This seems to argue that we cannot change something because if we did we would have to change something.

"regulation is necessary to some degree to prevent monopolies from forming."

Monopolies cannot be formed and taken advantage of within a free market to nearly the degree that they formed and assisted by governments, otto. I would cite public choice theory (Mark Pennington gives an excellent overview here: http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/educational/watch/v1348852T8xNSCrE) as evidence against the claim that market failure can be solved by government.

I am not claiming that because regulation caused this recession, we shouldn't have regulation. I am arguing that regulation caused this recession, not free markets, and I am separately arguing that free markets work, and government intervention does not.

government regulation does not equal government assistance. you are mixing arguments as you just stated, which dilutes the impact of your main argument whichever it is.

Theory is awesome. But, in the end, it is just theory.

bbdaniels, it doesn't tell us anything. If the SEC doesn't do their job and someone gets away trillions of dollars of securities fraud, NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW ABOUT IT. We only hear about the ones they catch and publicize. The ones that get away, or are caught and released with a quiet wrist-slap, we never know about and never will.

bb- yes, what you said is true. I am not an economist by any means, but having a stable currency internally seems like a stabilizing force in of itself. When interactions with others comes into play too much is left ambiguous, even if operating on one world currency. Good night all, I hope to stab you all soon!

bbdaniels, surely the single currency would mean that in times of crisis, local areas cannot have the devaluation of local currencies that makes them competitive in export markets again? This is one of the major arguments against the Euro.

btw, I'm located in London, so it really is late for me.

"too much of ghosts many incohesive arguments seem to be based on theory, now that i go back and read them over, there's nothing wrong with theory in general, but these are real problems, and i can't wait 'till you see the day that regulation works out well, it's coming"

Well, if the theory is sound, it should work in practice (otherwise you are misunderstanding the concept of a theory). And I have used evidence and examples as well as theory, but in the argument about general principles, the examples are less critical than the reasoning (hence the fallacy of refuting the example, duh!), so in the debate we are having, I've focused on the theory.

Not to mention I'm not sitting on a mountain of data.

and how does this relate to Obama's speech?

I don't think any of us are ghost.

"government regulation does not equal government assistance. you are mixing arguments as you just stated, which dilutes the impact of your main argument whichever it is."

I never got the memo about only having one point in every argument, sorry.

"government regulation does not equal government assistance"

Agreed, but any regulation inevitably will reduce market size and cause artificial scarcity, that is, regulation will always inadvertently tend towards creating a monopoly power. And that is before we consider that once we accept the principle of intervention, the lobbies will inevitably hi-jack the process for the big businesses who want a monopoly power.

what if it increases market size?

For the record TGM "isn't sure that" in a world without policemen there would be crime (especially if the alternative is him making an exception to his black and white libertarianism)

which is why i said: and how does this relate to Obama's speech. like i said false dualism, find the grey area. life is not black and white

Sorry edited my above post slightly, didn't realize how fast the posts are coming here :o

Am I seeing things, or did kestasjk's post change? I saw one thing, refreshed, and then it changed. Not all of it, but the last half.

What? Kestas, as you fully know, that is a total misrepresentation of my position. There is a difference between banks doing what is actively harmful to themselves without regulation and a thief, for instance.

I still fail to be convinced that the government can interfere with the economy successfully because:
- They lack the necessary knowledge about the economy to know where to act.
- The effects of any government action on the economy are totally unpredictable.
- The principle of government action in the economy will result in hijacking by lobbies of corporations looking to reduce competition in the markets.

Didn't know that could be done.

Kestas alone can edit posts (anyone's actually).

I really have to sleep, so this is my last post of tonight.

Anyone up for a game? 5 min, WTA, anon? Or anything like that?

Wow, 230 posts in less than 5 hours. Have we set a record?

maybe. tolstoy i really hope your financial system improves, i feel sorry for you, i really do. economics unfortunately doesn't take into account human conditions very well, it's just a cold heartless system for making money that loves you one minute and leaves you for dead the next (capitalism that is) there are very few ways to quickly fix capitalism when it experiences a period of recession. only time will tell if regulation helps

> Kestas, as you fully know, that is a total misrepresentation of my position
I wasn't claiming to be representing your position, just bringing up a statement from a prior argument to show the lengths you'll go to deny something which goes against your ideology. The last thing I want is to get involved in the actual "debate" again, that goes nowhere

Anyway I wish this thread could stay more on the original topic, going off on a tangent is okay but when that tangent is repeated fairly often because a few people enjoy it it makes the forum a bit less diverse I think

"Forgive my bluntness, but anyone who says an economic catastrophe has been averted is full of shit and/or working a government job where they don't have to worry about getting laid off or taking a pay cut (everyone I know who works in the private sector has had to face one or the other in the last 18 months). Unemployment in my county is well over 20% right now and still rising, and home prices have fallen 40-70% over the last two years. There are so many properties the banks have foreclosed on that they've given up on trying to sell any of them.

As for the DJIA, it means nothing as an economic indicator. It's still up almost 300% over the last twenty years. What does that mean exactly? Does anyone really believe the average American is 300% wealthier than he was twenty years ago? I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't know anyone whose standard of living today is higher than their parents' at the same age. DJIA stock prices are all about speculation and price manipulation; it's not a real predictor of economic well-being."

Tolstoy, you'll forgive my bluntness as well:

What was coming WAS averted. Conditions are bad, and unemployment is a lagging indicator (as I think was said in the video as well), but they could have been much worse were there no actions taken. The conditions you described are unfortunate and we are all feeling effects of the recession, but I didn't hear you describing people standing in soup lines and sleeping on the street, growing their own food and sweeping streets for pay. Things could most certainly have been much worse. People are losing their homes and jobs but not their lives.

I am now joining this argument.
@Thucy: What was coming was not averted, just delayed. Eventually the effects of the stimulus will run out, and we'll be back where we started. And it will most likely be worse than it would have been because the government will be farther in debt.

That's simply not true man. At least not according to Keynes, who frankly, was right.

It's not a zero sum game.

Oh man, when I saw the title of this thread, I thought kestas was going to Barack Roll everybody. [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDOsLnJTAo4 ]

It was all good fun. I think.

yeah it was, congrats jim on your live game win against me. much better than last time. Keynes was right about a lot of stuff, i agree with his theory on economics. Onamata- we will have new jobs created from the stimulus and new industries as well, just wait and see

Keynesian economics doesn't work. The problem is that, rather than actually increase the amount of demand etc.etc. it just causes inflation and/or changes the economy so that some areas are over-demanded by government decree, whilst others are under-demanded because the people have been taxed (either by printing money or directly).

Thus you don't actually get any increase in production, so you cannot get an increase in the size of the economy. That is why modern Keynesians rely on 'sticky prices'. Better explanations that mine can be found- there was a good brief explanation by Madsen Pirie which I would link to if the adamsmith institute site wasn't down atm.