I don't think Conservatives or Progressives correctly understand economics

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by kazenatsu, Aug 16, 2018.

  1. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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  2. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    Agreed, but that doesn't change the fact that there are sufficient resources to build the solar, wind and hydro capacity needed to power the world; and once built, the "fuel' for these plants (sunlight, wind and gravity) is free and unlimited (not finite). Unlike fossil fuels which are indeed a finite resource, apart from the fact their utilisation is often responsible for poisoning the environment.

    True, but that's not a problem - currently the number of unemployed man-hours on the planet is astronomical, so much so you could almost regard the available labour supply as unlimited (despite the almost infinite amount of useful work needing to be done) - and that is a problem!
    And contrary to your comments, education mainly consumes time, and the now very real capacity to connect everyone with digital fibre optic technology would ensure costs of delivery of education to all become small in relation to the overall economy, not to mention the benefits of free public education (funded by govt money printing authorised by a world bank)


    True, but the globe is nowhere near that capacity (except in a potential climate catastrophe); the problem today is often one of over production and govts. needing to artificially restrict supply in order to maintain prices, ensuring starvation among those who cannot pay the high prices. Btw, population growth slows as living standards rise, so poverty alleviation is a necessary policy to achieve a sustainable population.

    True, but once again, world production of minerals is nowhere near capacity. And once everyone is housed, fed and clothed decently, and a sustainable population is established, the demands on mineral resources will plummet.

    Addressed above.
     
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  3. Baff

    Baff Well-Known Member

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    Yes, you can divert production from one thing to another.
    What you can't do, is create more production by printing money. That doesn't work.

    Unemployed man hours.
    In the US and the UK we currently have something we call "full employment".

    You can always enslave foreign people of course. Socialists like a bit of slavery.


    Word of warning.
    Socialism has a habit of not managing production well.
    Centralised production has a habit of not recognising the best allocation of resources.
    For that we use " the market".
    The free market.

    This better provides the optimum use of resources as per human requirements.

    Attempts to predict these outcomes by single individuals or even minority groups of individuals, tends towards economic collapse. Historically speaking.
    I'm sure you are going to be the one to break that trend however.




     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2018
  4. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    There's no such beast as the free market. There is free market economics, but that's just about coercing the inefficiency of neoliberalism. The market is also consistent with non-capitalist outcomes. Market Socialism - the clue is in the title!
     
  5. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Where have you seen socialism (worker ownership and control of production)?
     
  6. james M

    james M Banned

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    You won't see it although all 150 million companies in the world are free to switch to it but don't because its such an idiotic idea. Workers don't go to Harvard Business School so would have no idea how to control a company.
     
  7. james M

    james M Banned

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    free market is when you survive by being most efficient in the world! Being efficient with resources is how you get rich!
     
  8. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    You can"t even refer to the grandfather of fascism, Pareto. Every credible economist in the world acknowledges that the first best in welfare economics is unachievable. We are therefore in the world of the second best, where Pareto Efficiency is unachievable and adding distortions such as tax are often efficiency improving.
     
  9. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    Well... we agree on that.

    [It would be good of course to divert production from the military industrial complex (recall Eisenhower's image of "humanity hanging on a cross of iron") and the fossil fuel industry, for starters, but the politics of that are....dreadful].

    Depends on how its done.

    (Assuming a functioning economy operating with the usual c.5% unemployment rate (more on this below), displaying the usual effects of entrenched poverty associated with the c.10% poverty rate that is common in first world economies).

    Judicious money printing, by government, to soak up un/underemployment through creating employment in socially useful activity that has minimal call on real physical resources and would therefore not create any excess demand for scarce physical resources in the economy.
    Education itself is an example, but an even simpler example (for the less skilled/less capable) is employing people to pick up rubbish in public places (and even private where asked for), and paying them a living wage. The consequent elimination of the poverty associated with always inadequate welfare payments would have untold personal and social benefits.

    You call it full employment, but that is a cruel fiction of course. Real un+underemployment rates are above 10%, which, combined with inadequate minimum wages, explains the usual poverty rate of c.10% - meaning a permanent depression in a segment of the population.

    [btw, your slogan in tiny print there - with the usual crap about 'socialism' - is ironic, when Trump is indeed attempting to export poverty to foreigners, with his 'America First' policy - we win, you lose].


    Here we go - the usual crap about "socialism".

    As another member has already commented: "there is no such beast as a free market" - a good characterisation, because what we have is certainly like a raging beast, indifferent to the well being of the participants (whether willing or unwilling) in the market.

    Are you kidding.... or blind, or something?


    History certainly needs to be heeded, and learnt from..... but you are obviously choosing to look only at those aspects of history that confirm your view of the world.

    The goal: universal above poverty-level participation in the economy, with sufficient and just access to the world's vast resources.
    (Note: not the same as the dreaded bogeyman 'equality of outcome').

    I see James has joined the discussion.

    "free market is when you survive by being most efficient in the world! Being efficient with resources is how you get rich!"

    That's right. That's why 10 people now have as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity (over three billion people, with a billion in absolute poverty.....)
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2018
  10. Baff

    Baff Well-Known Member

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    Doesn't work sorry.
    Taking resources away from the most productive people in society and attributing them to the least productive people in society results in a drop in production.
    Every time.




    And no I'm not kidding or blind.
    Free market principles effect the most efficient distribution of labour and goods.
    That's why over a period of many millennia in many different societies, it has Darwinianly evolved to be the dominant method.

    Welcome to the history of the human race.


    People always know better, and yet they never do.

    The reason for this is simple.
    If you think you understand every facet of the economy, you don't.
    You aren't the smartest guy in the world, you are just another dumbfuck.

    It's too big and too complex a system for you to understand let alone manage.
    Instead of one or two human minds powerfully processing to resolve these issues,
    instead of hundreds or thousands of centrally controlling minds dedicated to this issue...

    We have billions of minds micromanaging every tiny facet of it.
    Far greater computational power.
    And the correct understanding of the individuals value system at the point of contact.
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2018
  11. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    You don't know if it will work or not.

    I'm examining controlled money printing, not "taking resources away from the most productive people".

    Explain how public funding of employment for un/under-employed people, as explained, operating alongside the current blind, competitive, neoliberal markets, takes resources away from "productive people".

    Before I deal with the rest of your post.

    Thanks.
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2018
  12. Baff

    Baff Well-Known Member

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    Of course I know it doesn't work.
    Did you think this has never before been tried.

    There are untaken jobs in the economy already.
    We have full employment.

    It could work if you used slavery, like socialists do. Forced people to work against their wills.
    I'm not up for it. I prefer to kill socialists.
    So it won't work because I won't allow it.



    Money printing and paying the unemployed is taking resources from the most productive people, the employed, and then giving it to the unemployed.

    The more productively employed you are the more money you have. The more money printing redistributes resources from you to the unemployed it is given to. The least productive of all of us.

    Might as well give Zimbabwe farms to non farmers and expect the same amount of food to be produced.
    We know the results of centralised wealth redistribution.
    We know.
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2018
  13. james M

    james M Banned

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    stealing at gun point to make liberal leeches even more dependent adds efficiency?? How??
     
  14. james M

    james M Banned

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    to public fund you must take funds or resources away from productive people at gunpoint.
     
  15. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Nothing to do with liberalism, or your silly understanding of liberalism. It's a simple reference to the theory of the second best. Look it up!
     
  16. james M

    james M Banned

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    If they don't deserve their wealth people should not buy their products to make them wealthy. Their wealth is symbol of their service to others and should be encouraged. if you can make and sell anything that they will freely buy to improve their lives it is your Christian duty to do so and help them. Do you understand?
     
  17. james M

    james M Banned

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    whats to look up?? first best is capitalist distribution. Do you understand?
     
  18. james M

    james M Banned

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    China is getting there rapidly now that they have switched to Republican capitalism. Its been in all the papers. Do you understand?
     
  19. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    The first best needs perfect competition. Any market failure and we are in second best territory.

    Basic economics.
     
  20. james M

    james M Banned

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    what is best example of market failure? This should be super easy question for you!!
     
  21. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    Happens all the time in essentials

    Food: bountiful harvests, resulting in prices falling below cost of production; the producers can't service their debts and are ruined.
    Market distorting subsidies to maintain employment in wealthy countries, denying markets to even more efficient producers in poor countries.

    Energy: cartels manipulate prices to maximise their profits, to the detriment of consumers.

    As we are discovering, energy should be under the control of a central global authority, which would enable free, clean, sustainable energy to be supplied to the world forever (since sunshine is free), after a one-off diversion of resources (whose quantum is infinitesimally small in comparison with available resources) to cover, eg, the Sahara and other deserts with solar farms.
     
  22. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    You didn't explain how public sector employment of labour, not required or not able to compete in the private sector, diverts resources from the private sector.

    In our present time with rapidly advancing AI (automation) and IT (enabling unlimited efficient global communication)?

    No it hasn't been tried before, because our time has not existed before....

    Correct. And better public education, funded by money printing not requiring students to take on massive debt, would go a long way to overcoming that situation. (The major resource 'consumed' by education is time, because it's simply the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student).

    Nonsense. I have already commented this "full employment" fiction.

    Here we go - all the usual crap about socialism...

    Note: I'm not wishing to take your money, as explained, I want to print the damn stuff....and who said anything about forcing people to work? Everyone wants to work, for a living wage.



    This is what I asked you to explain. You failed to do so. (Note: we are not giving money to the unemployed, we are creating socially useful employment not motivated by the system of monetary profit and competition in the private sector)

    Still struggling with an explanation I see.....

    (btw a cleaner is as significant a cog in the productive process as anyone else).

    Zimbabwe: I have already commented on that - the land was stolen without compensation.
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2018
  23. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    Yes, and obviously a little too rapidly for Trump and co, who wish to reverse the process......do you understand?
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2018
  24. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Best example? You want me to cheer failure? Weird attitude!

    Take any assumption of perfect competition. Realise its irrelevance. Realise the first best is unachievable.

    Examples: perfect knowledge (ludicrous, with asymmetric information ensuring adverse selection and moral hazard problems); price taking behaviour (ludicrous, with market power ensuring oligopolistic control over prices); wage taking behaviour (ludicrous, with job search ensuring monopsonistic power is the norm)
     
  25. Baff

    Baff Well-Known Member

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    And you think when you print money, that the existing owners of money are compensated?
    They aren't.

    Printing money takes value from all existing money.

    Total resources = x.

    Value of Dollar = x/ total number of dollars.

    Add more Dollars and the value of each Dollar is reduced.

    When you print new money you take from those who already have it.



    You don't seem to have grasped that printing money adds no extra resources into the economy.
    No wealth is added.
    You add money but no wealth. This devalues all money.

    Those people who had money when you printed, lose their money's redeemable value, and those you give the printed money to, gain it.

    It is a redistribution of wealth.
    It comes from one person and goes to another.



    Any time you take a man off one job, to work on another, you have diverted resources. Public to private, private to public. Whatever.
    Until you can start printing workers too, printing money doesn't help.

    You are totally failing to get your head around the concept that money is not wealth.
    It is a trade good. A medium of exchange.
    You can't eat it, wear, sleep under it, drive it or **** it.
    It won't fix your roof, it won't drive you to anywhere.

    All you can do with it is trade it for stuff that will.

    So if you print more, the amount of stuff you can trade it for remains unchanged.
    Instead of creating new resources to allocate, you have simply changed the monetary value of existing resources and their ownership.

    So you give resources to people who have no idea how to use them.
    Just like giving farms did in Zimbabwe.
    And you take resources from those people with a track record of being able to use them well. Just like taking farms in Zimbabwe did.

    And while this was not smart for the people of Zimbabwe it was real smart for the people getting the farms.


    If you are able to accept this and move on, I'm happy to go on and discuss with you further.
    Otherwise this has become a circular discussion and it's time to withdraw.
    I apologise to you for net being able to explain it well to you, and wish you luck in finding a better instructor.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2018

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