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MitchMan
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How you balance things in general has always been a problem. The current economic system we have now is filled with many elements and variables that
are always and constantly being balanced. That is what governance and legislation is all about. Our state and federal governments are always passing
new laws on an ongoing perpetual basis.
What you have to understand is that many things in life are constantly in flux and are all works in progress (always have been), e.g., your personal
relationships (especially with spouses), international geopolitics, how you raise your kids, how politics is being affected with and by social media,
how we deal with the environment, one's own personal finances, civil rights, etc., etc., etc. Your life and mine and everyone else's lives are filled
with things that are constantly works in progress. Our state, local and federal governments are all works in progress; always have been and will
continue to be works in progress.
Barry, if you are thinking that what I propose "must be a system in perfect balance" or it has no validity, then, just about every facet of our lives
has no validity such as our spousal relationships, our local, state and federal government, the way you and I have brought up our respective children,
even our Constitutional federal government has no validity (you know, there are 27 Constitutional Amendments with more always being contemplated).
The way you maintain as best a balance as possible is the same way we attempt to balance all things of importance. You do it as best you can,
constantly monitoring and looking to make changes that improve things and fix other things. That's what politics, Congress and the Supreme Court are
all about. The good news is that technology, information gathering, and intelligence is what this country possesses in great amounts together with
being an open society with a free press.
Keep in mind that I am not proposing a government run system in its entirety. I propose effective, proportional, necessary, enlightened level of
government regulation where appropriate where the true interest of people of this country is the priority which was set out by the founding fathers.
I think market based capitalism should flourish where it is appropriate in as many places as possible; but even that takes a "balanced" level of
regulation to sustain itself otherwise you would get over run by monopolies, high prices, devastation to the environment and public health, and
complete unfair inequitable thrashing and exploitation of us consumers and much increased disparity of wealth and income beyond our current record
breaking levels.
Our current system has yielded a USA that has the worst disparity of wealth in the world among advanced countries, not to mention falling comparisons
to those other countries with regard to infant mortality, life spans, lack of upward financial mobility, education levels, and excessive healthcare
costs for much less coverage. If you are worried about "balance" as you mentioned above, you should be worried about that imbalance, Barry. I know I
am.
You know, that since the election of Reagan, disparity started its steep climb together with household debt and stagnation of income for the bottom
98%, and what is worse, this disparity has squeezed the middle class making it smaller and the ranks of the poor larger while the few at the top are
becoming even fewer and ever more rich than ever before. If you want to focus attention on a destructive imbalance that is not in the true interest
of the people at large, focus on that.
DavidK, are you finished with your copy of Mein Kampf yet? If so, you might consider reading some other things that will help you understand
something about economics, such as Wealth of Nations. You really should broaden your horizons beyond FOX news and Rick Santelli, that way you will be
able to engage in a real discussion instead of your being limited to drive-by regurgitated skin headed one liners.
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David K
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Private Enterprise (business/ corporations) survive or grow because the PEOPLE vote for them when they ELECT to buy their product or service. It is
wanted or needed or they are out of business. Competition forces fair pricing and improvements.
Socialism (government controlled business) survives at the whim of the political party in control and has no fair competition or need to improve or
show a profit. It simply exists on the backs of taxpayers who have no say in how the government program operates, except by waiting (years sometimes)
for an election to end the corruption of an over-reaching government. The government makes up laws to keep their programs going without any need for
them to show any success at what they were purported to accomplish.
The government has limited duties per our constitution:
To Protect the people from force or fraud.
To only do the things required that the private citizens/ businesses are not able to do.
The people should be in control and the free market puts the people in power.
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Barry A.
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Quote: Originally posted by David K  | Private Enterprise (business/ corporations) survive or grow because the PEOPLE vote for them when they ELECT to buy their product or service. It is
wanted or needed or they are out of business. Competition forces fair pricing and improvements.
Socialism (government controlled business) survives at the whim of the political party in control and has no fair competition or need to improve or
show a profit. It simply exists on the backs of taxpayers who have no say in how the government program operates, except by waiting (years sometimes)
for an election to end the corruption of an over-reaching government. The government makes up laws to keep their programs going without any need for
them to show any success at what they were purported to accomplish.
The government has limited duties per our constitution:
To Protect the people from force or fraud.
To only do the things required that the private citizens/ businesses are not able to do.
The people should be in control and the free market puts the people in power. |
Yep, you are right, and PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY exercised by all citizens able, in all ways available, is the only real lasting answer to a successful
Free society. Well said, David. It's always worked for me.
On edit: PS---"Rick Santelli" is one of my heroes, MitchMan, along with Larry Kudlow, Art Laffer, and the late Jack Kemp.
[Edited on 4-11-2017 by Barry A.]
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MitchMan
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Private Enterprise (business/ corporations) survive or grow because the PEOPLE vote for them when they ELECT to buy their product or service. It is
wanted or needed or they are out of business. Competition forces fair pricing and improvements.
David K, your statements are overwrought and replete with unrealistic simplistic blind optimism and gross oversimplification and, therefore, naiveté.
Naiveté means blind unreasonable, illogical optimism. That’s you.
The case you are trying to build here falls completely apart if your free market assumptions don’t hold. Private enterprises don’t always grow
even if people want or need their product. Often a big business will use monopolistic undercut pricing to ruin and eliminate the competition of the
company ‘in a free market’ that initially had lower prices and a better product. Microsoft did that over and over again. Pharma companies have
paid what is tantamount to a bribery fee to competing drug manufacturers to refrain from producing a generic drug whose patent has expired so that the
bribery paying patent holding company can continue to grossly over charge consumers (higher price, David K). That’s not an example of the
“market” prevailing to lower prices and produce an improvement. Regulations had to be passed and enforced to prevent that kind of behavior; it
wasn’t the market that prevents that behavior. Yet again, another failure of the market that you blithely adore.
The foundation for your argument assumes ‘ever present’ competition forces prevail across the board. You do know that big companies use
monopolistic pressure to successfully suppress competition all the time, every day, everywhere, right? You do know why we have Anti Trust laws,
right? I ask that because your blind assumption of the workings of the market place as the foundation to your argument does not reflect cognizance of
the inherent failings in a free market.
Another huge factor as to why your simplistic naïve over reaching foundational statements above fall apart in reality is a thing called
“asymmetries of information”, that is, the markets are almost always much less than perfect because one party in a transaction knows something
that the other party doesn’t know. This destroys competition, destroys the ability of consumers’ ability to buy what they really want and need.
This immensely erodes the foundation of your argument and is the reason that capitalist markets are indeed much, much less than perfect. And, every
time an imperfection in the market occurs, that thwarts the ability of the market to do the things you say it does, e.g., lead to growth of private
enterprise, consumers buying (voting) for the things they need and want, competition lowering prices and improving products.
Another example, big oil companies and tobacco companies and furniture and clothing manufacturers have successfully used misinformation campaigns to
dupe the public into buying their products by withholding information on the damage that their products are actually doing to their consumers and to
the public.
A Nobel Prize was awarded for discovery of the ever-present existence of “asymmetries of information” in the capitalist market place, thus
illuminating the major failures and shortcomings of any and all free markets.
I don’t know why you juxtapose your naïve incomplete understanding of capitalism and the market place with socialism. No one here, certainly not
me, is promoting a complete implementation of socialism. David K, you are fighting a windmill, notwithstanding your complete misrepresentation of
socialism.
There are different types of socialism and different types and manners of its implementations. Your rant makes no such distinctions but incorrectly
implies one monolithic form only. What your portrayal of socialism actually does is disclose your ‘political’ view of socialism as seen thru a
FOX news filter. You really have to rid yourself of the adolescent back woods notion that ‘government’ is this boogey man that operates
independent of the people like a virulent strain of cancer that has no cure.
To illustrate your convoluted understanding of things, on the one hand you portray socialism in a democratic government where the controlling
political party perpetuates this imagined socialistic system. If you have political parties then there is always the eventuality that the minority
party becomes the controlling party with the ability to modifying the supposed ‘runaway’ socialism). You assume perpetual governmental corruption
and over reaching even though your example takes place in a democracy where regimes can change at any time. You blindly rely on the “VOTE” of
people buying products but you obviously don’t rely on the vote of the people in a democracy?
The point is that there are very good things in an economy based on market based capitalism. It has many, many great attributes. Socialism has some
very great attributes as well. The goal should be to draw from both where appropriate and modify from each where appropriate and combine the two
where appropriate in our democracy so that our society can optimally benefit from all those things that work. The fact of the matter is that we
already many elements in our current government that are socialistic. Any and all governments are themselves a socialistic institution. The armed
forces is socialistic. Our judicial system and legislative system is socialistic, local, state and federal. Our federal interstate system is
socialistic. Our federalist republic government is itself a socialistic institution as set out by our Constitution.
BTW, The governments duty per the Constitution is to “protect the people from injustice”. The governments goal per the Constitution is to do what
is in the ‘true interest of the community”. Furthermore, you are 180 degrees completely wrong about a free market putting people in power. An
unregulated unfettered laissez-faire completely free market subjugates people to the certain tyranny by the few at the top in proportion to the degree
of such market freedom. Virtually all economists and political scientists have said that for decades. Your blind faith and inarticulation, David K,
has led you down a rabbit hole. Barry A., don’t follow him; it will only confound the folly. Santelli, Kemp, and Kudlow are not economists.
Concerning economics, they are only pundits. Kemp’s only degree is in physical education. Laffer, while he is an economist, is not any where near
belonging to the pantheon of nationally or internationally recognized authorities; actually, regarded more like a pundit than economist.
[Edited on 4-12-2017 by MitchMan]
[Edited on 4-12-2017 by MitchMan]
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David K
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Mitch... the examples of free enterprise fail you give in the opening reply are ALL DUE TO GOVERNMENT activity, meddling, and not true free
enterprise. That government activity is why the higher price or why there is no competition. It is pure BS when the government uses such tactics and
it screws the consumers!
America is a constitutional-representative republic, not a democracy (democracy means mob rule, after all). A republic is a government of laws, where
the minority (or everyone) has rights protected by laws and the simple majority can't suddenly usher in the latest fad idea with an election.
The rest of you post seems to be a presumption that you actually know me or what TV shows I watch. I don't presume to know you, nor claim you are
glued to MSNBC, CNN, or the other Fake News (LOL) programs. Let's not get personal, there's no need.
No form of socialism can be fair to all the people whereas a constitutional republic is. We can keep it fair and honest through elections (the
democratic part) to choose our representatives, who make the laws. It's the best there is for a country like ours... a country where people from other
places risk their lives to live in. How bad can it be?
Have a nice day!
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BajaTed
Senior Nomad
Posts: 859
Registered: 5-2-2010
Location: Bajamar
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Sorry about my spanglish
back at you
fibuck yibou tiboo 
Es Todo Bueno
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chuckie
Elite Nomad
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Location: Kansas Prairies
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I bet your mommy taught you to talk like that...
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chuckie
Elite Nomad
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That's Turd talk..take out the" ib's" and it translates to Hi Mom..
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BajaTed
Senior Nomad
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Busted,
In high school, there was no internet. 
Back to the OP
BBC world news today says that Mexico is 3rd most violent place in the world.
BTW Who are 1# and 2#?
Es Todo Bueno
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