How to cut $600+ billion from the budget

Exactly, which is what I've been saying all along. Creating jobs is not always a good thing.

 

99% of individuals will just go away?

 

99% of individuals malinvest to the point of insolvency without government intervention in the credit markets ? Interesting. ........Where do you get your stats ?

 

WTF are you talking about. I'm about to fuking ignore you.

 

Creating government jobs is rarely a good thing.

 

The difference between market-based organizations and the state is that the former are competitive while the latter is monopolistic. The competitive mechanism of the market punishes organizations that engage in inefficient activities in terms of meeting the demands of consumers. I don't know what you mean by "rip customers off" and would need to see an example.

Let the market decide that. A central planner doesn't have the competence to do so.

 

A private sector that makes a policy of either 1) filling worthless jobs or 2) knowingly rips off their customers won't be around very long unless they have co-opted government into forcefully suppressing competition.

 

The actions outlined in the first post are absolutely the frist steps to be taken.

You really cannot address entitlements or defense when there is so much underbrush obscuring the real scene.

 

Both can be monopolistic. Ever heard of Standard Oil? Do you really think consumers know what they want or need? About half of all businesses fail, and a lot of them would not exist without some government services such as roads and loans. Half of businesses failing doesn't seem very efficient to me. Businesses also don't like to conduct a lot of basic research. An example of ripping customers off is companies that do surveys. A bank recently started a service charge and conducted surveys. They should already know that customers will not like it. Instead of paying companies to do the surveys for them, they can use the money to get rid of the service charge. The people doing the surveys are not producing anything, but are employed to take one group of people's money and give it to another.

I don't think individuals or businesses have the competence to efficiently run the economy. You can't prove that every central planner is incompetent just like I can't prove every market based system is incompetent.

 

That is why they rip off their customers in subtle ways. Maybe they will agree with other major companies to all raise their prices and lower wages. It depends on what you mean by worthless jobs. Some companies exist to take money away from people. Look at casinos and cash advance places. People are stupid enough to use their loans at high interest or to think that they will actually win at casinos. It is well worth it for those companies to hire employees to take other people's money. Some of those people spending money at casinos don't have much money, and if they don't get help, crime rates will go up. Busch, Harrahs, and Camel have knowingly ripped off customers, and they have been around for years.

 

Standard Oil wasn't a true monopoly. It just had a very large market share for a period of time. It was open to competition and, in fact, its market share had been on the decline long before it was broken up as a monopoly at the behest of its chief competitor.

Do you think some politician knows what I, a consumer, "really" wants better than I do?

I seems efficient to me. It's called creative destructive. We can only know what works and what doesn't through such trial and error. The very inefficiency of the state lies in the fact that its programs can't fail, no matter how poor they are satisfying consumers.

First you say that businesses don't like to conduct basic research. Then you complain about a business dedicated to doing basic research. I am confused.

I can't prove that there are no blue horses, and I can't prove that there has never been a competent central planner. But I can use logic to show that monopolies tend toward inefficiency.

 

I agree that government spending needs to be reduced dramatically, but if there is any economically beneficial thing that the government could do, it'd be aiding in (economically viable) degrees such as engineering and skilled trades. And also domestic defense.

 

They usually do. But the thing is, a monopoly can occur via government force or via "private" (however you define "private") company bottling up a valuable physical resource.

 

Real research, not that survey crap. Isn't a democracy supposed to help that? If you're not happy with who is currently in office, don't vote for them. It's the same trial and error, is it not? And if you have the right politician, yes, I think that politician knows what the people want better than the people themselves.

 

If this is your definition of a monopoly, almost anything is a monopoly because every individual thing is unique. So if I own a particular copy of Oliver Twist, I have a monopoly on that particular copy of Oliver Twist.

 

No, "democracy," even if there were such a thing and it wasn't all a lot of hokum, is not the same thing as competition in the marketplace. For one thing, it's a collectivized "decision" rather than an individual decision, so my vote doesn't actually have any effect whatsoever.

For another thing, in the marketplace, the person chooses what to buy, pays for it, and receives the service individually. With the state, on the other hand, it's divided up into three separate actions of separate groups that aren't even necessarily the same people: the voters choose what to buy, the taxpayers pay for it, and the recipients on the service receive the service. This is not even counting the fact that foreigners (through war) and future generations (through the national debt) are directly harmed by this even though they don't vote at all.

For yet another thing, the services of the state are all absurdly packaged together. When you vote for president, you vote for one guy to make decisions involving the military, education, medical care, scientific research, transportation, and million other things. Do you think anyone's going to vote for one guy over the other because they think he'll manage the FCC efficiently?

No, it's totally, totally different.

What right politician is that and how would you recognize him? That politician doesn't exit unless you're thinking of electing God president.

 

That's a mafia-style way of escaping the point, lol. You know what I meant. The truth is that monopolies aren't ever "natural", it's just that sometimes some entities have the force/power to defend having 100% or nearly 100% of something physical..or in some cases, intellectual/ideological.

However, "private" sector monopolies over anything don't usually happen unless people are either too stupid and/or too repressed to form labor unions.