'Human Nature' is different depending on the society that a person happens to have been raised in together with the intensity and type of indoctrination that person happens to have been conditioned for.

Finns, Swedes, Norwegians and Danes, for example, when faced with questions of how to respond to crime, drug abuse, economic well-being for the person and the nation, interpersonal relations, international relations, healthcare, personal ambition, meaning of life, etc, etc, etc... come up with different reactions and solutions to people from England, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Cuba, India, Africa, Venezuela, Australia, The US Personal Libertarians, US Social Libertarians, US 'Jesusland'ers, etc, etc, etc...

I've lived with, talked to, drank with, argued with and debated ex pats from around the world, from Arkansas to Tokyo, Harare to Caracas. By instinct they are very different people.

There is no one 'human nature'. The instinct of one person is likely to be very different from the instinct of the next and extremely different to someone of a different tribe, nation, race, social class or religion.

We all need to breathe the same air, aside from that every aspect of 'humanity' is controlled by our genetics, our experiences, our education and our conditioning. There are large overlaps in many areas of human experience between peoples but we are all different, thankfully... Otherwise everyone would have the same set of instincts and there would never be an evolution of ideas.

Oh, and this should be interesting to anyone interested in Fascism.

Italian Fascism

tisonlyi:

let me spare you a bit of ustwo's gloss on his own positions and give you a little summary of how they go. you can find this by scrolling up in this thread, or by looking in any number of other threads:

human nature-->capitalism-->what exists because it exists as it exists-->my position within what exists demonstrates the legitimacy of what exists-->because that order exists now, it must always have existed--->my position is therefore part of a natural order--->a natural order is an expression of human nature--->human nature-->capitalism-->what exists because it exists as it exists-->my position within what exists demonstrates the legitimacy of what exists etc etc etc

sometimes this gets supplemented with assertions about genetics, which function as essence so human beings are objects the primary function of which is to repeat the characteristics imposed on them by their essence, which basically results in a claim about human nature, at which point the circle repeats again.

it's classic petit-bourgeois reactionary stuff.
you'll see, if you haven't already.

I was posting here a long, long time ago and have come back a time or two over the years...

Mostly for the smut...

And like the smut, some things never change.

Actually, Roachboy, I would refine that a bit. It's probably beyond cavil that communism does not comport with human nature. It does not follow, however, that capitalism does comport with human nature. It only follows in certain cultures with certain premises, and even then less than completely. Getting "rule of law" straight is a really really big prerequisite to capitalism (probably the most important one), and it's quite difficult to get it right.

well, loquitor, i'd be happy to debate that with you--i think your argument about this fiction "human nature" is circular---the other about the rule of law is different, and would probably find us converging on social democracy---
but it'd definitely be a threadjack.

if i can figure out a way to frame another thread (or two, since the questions are quite different one from the other), i'll put one up--feel free to do the same.

a threadjack?

You know what, RB? I'm so sick of looking at that perpetually misused and overused F word that I'd almost welcome a threadjack.......

Actually I look at it a bit more basically.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need

This popular communist slogan really has no place in nature genetically. There isn't a single species of anything I can think of that works on this premise, and I'm talking from any kingdom of animal or plant. Even our own genes are in competition with one another for the ultimate goal of reproduction. In social animals that goal is achieved by social status, power, and whatever 'wealth' they use, normally shelter and access to food.

As I pointed out earlier the only mathematically stable system close to this would be social insect colonies or an individual body. Much like a worker bee, your body cells sacrifice their own immortality in order to produce a 1/2 related offspring.

Human nature isn't truly 'capitalistic', but capitalism itself can fit with our natures, even at the genetic level. It allows for the natural competition for greater rewards/reproductive success while at the same time, at least with democracy, creating such a large power group that the natural tendency to exploit our fellows is curbed. The rule of law as you say.

But as I say the communists don't have to take my word for it, please, go do it, and see how that shakes down :thumbsup:

Genetics are a tenuous base on which to base capitalist dogma.

I suggest that you read the works of Richard Dawkins, starting with "The Selfish Gene" - should your personally selected divine revealer of Truth with a direct connection up to the bearded guy in the clouds allow you. HUMOUR ALERT.

Also, just to make it perfectly clear, the term "selfish" is used in a very specific, non-usual manner in "The Selfish Gene". Greed-is-good, free market, laisez faire capitalism is not backed up by Biology as nature's way.

Free markets are not a corollary of genetics. (no economic, philosophical, religious or political theories are)

Specifically, Ch. 12

Well, the competitive principle doesn't always prevail and doesn't always yield optimal results - that was the main insight of John Forbes Nash and the central premise of game theory. But the basic idea that competition will usually, through the invisible hand, provide greater material good at lower cost has been proven true over and over again - subject to what I said earlier about everyone signing on to the rule of law, property rights, peaceful dispute resolution and minimum levels of trust in institutions (including but not necessarily governmental institutions - also banks, utilities, etc).

i take it that "the invisible hand" ends up being god.
there are so many problems in going from the level of metaphysical statements about the "eternal principles" that capitalism is supposed to embody to the discontinuous and problematic historical reality of capitalism as a mode of production in the actually existing world that it is hard to know where to start a transposition game. or even if its worth doing.

it simply is not the case that actually existing capitalism can be mapped onto the fantasy markets you find in adam smith--any more than actually existing america can be usefully understood as a community of yeoman farmers.
you can't get started.
it's a waste of time.

competition does not mean a single thing---read some nietzsche. if you want to fetishize an abstract notion of competition, it seems to me that you have to necessarily extend that into notions of hierarchy--so following nietzsche, there are formal/bureaucratic hierarchies that exempt agents from competition in any meaningful sense---there are economic and social hierarchies which are arbitrary relative to this idea of competition uber alles--even if actors from a seriously advantaged economic position and ones from a seriously disadvantaged one "compete" in the giant wrestling match of some "market" the folk without the arbitrary advantages--say material resources--will loose. that is about attrition and resources more often than it is about abilities or "fit"----you can go on and on with this sort of thing.

and the claim that more and cheaper goods is necessarily an index of anything beyond the availability of more and cheaper goods is a strange one. again, it takes nothing about the historical world into account. think about, say, the effects of systematic american dumping of agricultural overproduction in dairy or corn onto southern hemisphere countries in the context of structural adjustment programs---more and cheaper goods has generally meant the destruction of food self-sufficiency to the exclusive advantage of american corporate agricultural interests--if you can figure a way to equate dependency with an improvement in the quality of life, go for it: i could use a laugh.

and this is not even really STARTING to contrast the metaphysics of markets with the actually existing historical world---this is all still inside the distant world of religious faith---which are aspects of the historical world in the way that any other fiction is.

generally, the way these arguments go is the accumulation of a vast heap of "exceptions"---well this is an exception, that a distortion, that a mitigating circumstance---if only "pure competition" if only "pure" markets, everything would be hunky dory--if only these distortions would stop always everywhere happening. but you'd think this would eventually pose a problem of the argument itself, particularly when the pile of distortions and unfortunate mitigating factors is exponentially bigger than the examples of "pure" competition/markets, once the world is expanded beyond the front and back covers of "the wealth of nations"...

I already read it/them. I read the God delusion, the ancestors tail and the selfish gene, I didn't read the blind watchmaker but we are getting into redundant territory. Dawkins is funny.

He basically states what I state while trying to be a good liberal and claim we don't need to BE this way. I equate it with people trying to 'cure' homosexuality, you can't fight your genes and win in the long run.

I'd recommend the Red Queen by Matt Riddley, he puts human behavior into a genetic reproductive context quite well, something Dawkins does not want to do.

Two things, loquitur....

Consider that if, Walmart is the poster child for what "capitalism" (It's actually corporatism....look at the way Walmart enlists the state to use it's eminent domain power to help Walmart acquire store site properties when Walmart balks at prices demanded by property owners or at the stubbornness of "holdouts"....and the influence of Walmart's lobbying clout, etc....) the eventuall effect of Walmart "efficiency demands", on it's "associates" and suppliers, is that neither Walmart nor it's suppliers can "work the Walmart economic model", and compensate workers enough to enable them to shop in Walmart's stores!

Isn't that the exact opposite dynamic than the 1950's "balance" of unionism and capitalism that enabled the workers at Ford and GM who built the cars, to be able to afford to buy the cars that they built?

Didn't Henry Ford, in 1914, pay the then unheard of wage of $5.00 per day to Ford auto plant workers, calculating that this was the wage level that would permit auto assembly workers to buy the cars that they built?

....and, in your own industry, Loquitur, what percentage of the public can afford to pay for an adequate (superior to indigent legal aid criminal defense services...) criminal defense, these days? Do you think even all of the top five percent of income earners could pay the criminal defense billings from a competent attorney of a private law firm, complete with the costs of investigation, expert witnesses, etc.... these days? The OJ Simpson case is still a good example....would OJ have avoided conviction if he enjoyed the financial resources of an average income and net worth defendant in the circumstances that OJ found himself in, arrested for murdering his ex-wife, et al?

Do you suppose that lack of affordability of private criminal defense "resources' is a factor appreciably contributing to the much higher conviction rates of poorer, vs. wealthier criminal defendants?

I agree with this. Its not 100% competitiveness, that is not the best solution normally either. If that were true I should try to kill every male I come across but the genetic cost of such behavior is higher than some live and let live or cooperation. There are varying levels of this competition in the animal kingdom, all mathematically stable.

Host, people who make bad business decisions should be permitted to fail. And I'm not a big fan of corporate welfare, either - if a company can't succeed without government help, tough luck. No eminent domain, no bailouts. Don't confuse being pro-free market (which is what I am) with "pro anything a business wants."

I've litigated against Wal-Mart in the past. I won. And no, they weren't pleasant.

On your last question, Host, let me flip this around on you: I don't do criminal defense law, but consider this - I took on a lot of debt to get through law school, worked for the government at low pay after I graduated, and have 24 years of experience in a very demanding, very stressful job with very long hours, in which I have gained a fair amount of expertise and a reputation for creativity and practical problem-solving. I'm on the hook for my firm's lease and for all of the firm's employees' salaries and the firm's expenses. I get paid only if there is money left over after all the vendors and employees get paid. Is there any particular reason I should be giving my services to people who aren't willing to pay market price for them, merely because they are poor? Why aren't I entitled to the fruits of my investment, effort and creativity - and risk?

If someone gets into a criminal problem and needs a lawyer, they can have one appointed for them if they can't afford one. That's a pretty enlightened step for a society, you know, especially in light of history. But I can think of no reason that Joe Schmoe on the street should have a right to the criminal defense equivalent of me. A lawyer, yes. A top-notch lawyer? Why? We don't give poor people fancy clothes or steaks - they have to get by on basic clothes and food stamps. A lawyer should be no different. I might decide to do nice things pro bono, and occasionally I do, but that's my choice - no one has the right to my labor except me and the people who pay me. We got rid of slavery in 1863 and I don't think we should re-institute it for lawyers.

Henry Ford, by the way, was a business genius. His decision to pay good wages was the perfect example of enlightened self-interest. Most really successful business people have the insights to do things like that.

I have maintained consistently that only a foolish boss doesn't treat employees well.

As a boss I have to say Amen to that. I just gained two new employees from a local competitor, and could take his whole staff if I wanted.

You have to grease the wheel the grinds the grit.

so what you're saying, loquitor, is that because you took on debt to go to law school that therefore the american class system and all its ramifications are hunky dory? so poorer folk who find themselves in a legal conflict *deserve* lower-quality representation because you took on debt to go to law school?


and do you really think that legal representation is like meat or shoes?
i dont get it.


your argument could be turned another way: the debt accumulated to get through the american university system is coercive and one of the indices of that coercion is your acquiescence to the structure of inequality the system produces...because that debt forced you to make choices and those choices have shaped your view and so in that sense your outlook is basically a consequence of having endured the coercion that educational debt exerts on all who take it on after the fun of university is over. at the same time, because your experience is your experience, you naturalize the elements that forced your hand at critical moments--and so now you see the class structure as neutral, have a moralizing interpretation of your own trajectory (which is symmetrical with the neutralization of the class structure as political question)--with the result that you see your own services as a consumer option. like meat. or shoes.

so someone who is not you could read off from your narrative a set of reasons why the way educational debt produces consent for the existing political order--in which case, the political issue might end up being the system that relies on that debt...

loquitur, the point I am trying to persuade you to consider is that, to a greater extent even than in the area of medical treatment, the state has become the provider of criminal defense services because the "free market model", for a myriad of reasons, has priced itself out of the market of affordability of even the lower income earners in the top five percent of all American income earners.

This is fact, say....in defending against a murder charge in a criminal trial by jury. On a lower rung, I know from personal experience living in the State of NY, that even a couple both earning significantly above average cannot afford (justify?) the cost of legal representation in a complex, drawn out, divorce.

In civil law practice, especially in mundane areas like a concentration in real estate closings, even heavy reliance on the services of paralegals do not result in such services being "cheap", because, as you described, the cost of education and fixed costs of doing business are so high, especially in the pricier NY metro area.

So, can we agree that in the sectors of medical care, legal services, and in the asking price for the average home, the average income earner, unless provided by an employer subsidized benefit in addition to average income earned, cannot afford to purchase those services or that average priced house?

Isn't the consequence of the fundamentals related to the price of the average house, the core reason for the failure of Bear Stearns, the emergency FED "rate cuts", the rapid devaluation of the dollar, the killing of rate of return on middle class savings deposits?

What would have to happen to convince any promoter of capitalism that the system, going forward, is not definitely the best economic system for the majority of Americans?

Is there less "corporatism" evident today, than before this past sunday's news about the Fed's role in the nationalization of Bear Stearns? With a $30 billion loss risk mitigation guarantee extended by the Fed to JPM in exchange for it's agreeing to buy BSC for less than $250 million, didn't the Fed actually nationalize BSC?

Isn't doing something like that, a corporatist activity? Who does it benefit? Doesn't it benefit the elite at the expense of seniors seeking modest 5 percent return on savings deposits? Does it benefit the taxpayer?

<h3>Wasn't Italian fascism described by Mussolini, as "corporatism"? Why did the Fed guarantee any BSC "loss risk"? Isn't our entire system, if gains are permitted to rise to unlimited levels, but losses are stopped dead in their descent by Fed "bailout guarantees", at taxpayers' expense, closer to corporatism than they are to capitalism?</h3>

Hasn't the strength of US currency, with short term interest rates lowered by the Fed from 5.5 percent last september, to 2.25 percent, as of yesterday, been compromised in favor of shoring up the portfolios of speculators in real estate and traded securities?

<h3>Haven't the interests of less than 40 million specualtors subordinated the interests and the wealth and purchasing power of the dollar, of the other 160 million American adults, via all of the Fed's decisions since last september?</h3> What kind of a system, especially one that actually backed off on the rate of taxation on the gains of these same speculators, so blatantly puts their interests above the interests of the vast majority of us?

Not a free market, a capitalist, or a democratic system.....yet no protest that I can find......

Matt Ridley.

The son and heir of a Viscount, adulterer of science to justify and glorify much of the destruction that Thatcher wrought upon my country and a member of the board for 14 years of a company that has just been nationalised, SOCIALISM! *gasp!*, because it's management was so ludicrously inept that the contagion of runs on UK banks that his mismanagement caused (he was singled out by a parliamentary committee) could well have brought down the entire financial apparatus of the country should the strangely absent "invisible hand" have been allowed to do it's work unchecked.

Matt @ Northern Rock
The Northern Rock Debacle (bail-outs of US$60-80bn according to the Bank of England chairman, roughly a US$6000 bill for every British family)

What he knows of genetics is debatable, but what he knows of economics and morality certainly aren't.

The work of that man should be utilized to it's fullest potential in the lavatories across every nation that it is now available.

Take out the reward and 99% of the people who are 'top' will not work as hard as they do and be no longer 'top', of course the top would have to be redefined.

There is a reason soviet era doctors sucked so badly.

Debt is not the prime motivator, debt is just a function of starting from scratch. I personally am 800 thousand dollars in debt, but thats a good thing its available. Banks took a risk with me being successful, I took a risk taking the loans, the system built a new office and let me hire new people. Jobs are created, a service to the community is rendered and all works out provided I can deliver what I said I could.

I really love my job over all, I enjoy it, I don't mind going to work, its a great thing. If I had to do it all over again, and you told me from your socialist chair that I would no longer be well compensated, could not have been my own boss, and would be working 'for the people' I would not have spent 7 extra years of my life working my ass off, putting off having a family, stressing myself out, and pushing myself to be the best of the best in my field.

I have a very good friend in lawschool right now, last time I saw him it looked like he dropped 15 lbs (and he was too thin to start with) and had acne induced from stress (common side effect of stress, I got it myself in school). Hes pushing himself and putting up with a lot of crap to be a good lawyer when hes done, you have no right to his labor when hes done.

He doesn't agree with you so hes an idiot.

Thats great, you sir are a true scholar and have much to teach us.

I don't agree with Richard Dawkins (and if you read his work you would know that he does reference Ridley a number of times and not in a negative way, the worst he said is he thinks Ridley stresses the disease fighting angle of 'why sex' too strongly) politically but only on his conclusions of the data not the data itself.

Please, you are obliviously out of your depth here scientifically and are trying to play politics with science. This is more about how science affects our politics ;)

Guys, other people do not have a right to my labor other than on the terms I'm willing to provide it, period. We abolished involuntary servitude in the Thirteenth Amendment, and all the sob stories out there don't entitle anyone to force me to work for them if I don't want to.

And I'll tell you something else: I will NOT work 14 hour days and take on risks if people other than myself get to decide how I run my life. If other people want a claim on me, I'll quit this rat race and get a nice civil service job with benefits, where I won't have to make decisions, won't have responsibility, won't have stress and will have a lovely rubber stamp to mark on documents to my heart's content. I'll put my creative energies into something else.

That's structural equity, guys. You don't have a right to my brain.

ustwo: you miss the point.

the underlying claim is that there is nothing--at all--necessary or even functional about the way the american university system operates. it could be funded in an entirely different manner and would serve all the functions it claims for itself better--for example, university education could be free of charge if some of the money the americans squander on their grotesque military expenditures were redirected toward a more rational end--there could easily be stringent requirements by ability that streamed students into this or that tier of school---and if the system is about locating the most competent or promising students and streaming them toward a given profession, that function would be far BETTER served if the class position of a student's parents were minimized as a factor. i also think that educational funding should be taken away from ties to local property tax rates and distributed on a flat basis across ALL localities--for the same reason--if you want to encourage education--and NOT the reproduction of a debilitating class structure--it makes sense to create an educational system that neutralizes the effects of the parental class position in shaping access to opportunities.

this has nothing to do with making that system internally anything--i personally think that education should be more rigorous and more open than it in the main is--what this is about is eliminating arbitrary advantages that accrue to the children of the affluent simply because the parents are affluent.

it doesn't seem to me that you would WANT a real meritocracy, even at the level of the educational system. everything you argue for works against the idea that you take the notion of meritocracy seriously--you seem to think that the economic order is a reflection of that--a position which i see as surreal, unmoored from reality.

the flip of that is the simple observation that within the current. increasingly dysfunctional educational system in the states, debt is a problem and one of the results of debt is coercion and that this coercion is a political tool--it produces consent for an order that in many ways is at cross purposes with its own political claims, with its own rationale.

unless you really believe that the affluent are and should be more politically free than everybody else. which you seem to. i suspect that were you living in a system without even the pretense of a democratic system but which enabled you to feel all woozy with nationalist sentimentality at appropriate moments, you'd be fine with that.

I am only a lowly sole proprietor "trader in securities", and by night, a waiter.
The level of fiscal soundness and systemic abuses I detect, convince me that you will be "hard put" to keep your financial condition, "above water", based on what I KNOW is coming, even as I write this, to the US domestic economy.

As some of us have on the "1992 Redux" thread (namely, ace and myself...) let us agree to revisit this discussion, 12 months from today, to discuss whether you are as sanguine as you've appeared to be since making the decsion to expand your business.

You POV today is based largely on your anecdotal experience, as it will also be, one year from now.

I am not caught up in the distractions you are immersed in. I've had the experience of being a business owner with a $400 per hour "nut" to deal with....fixed costs per hour of operation, before expenses for purchases of materials and merchandise for resale, and my experience included meeting the payroll expenses of 17 employees, plus myself.

I did this for seven years, employees were paid immediately on completion of the work week, there was no "holdback", the week delay most businesses are allowed by law to delay wages paid to employees.

So much of that experience, no matter how good or able an owner/manager one actually was, seemed to owe it's success to luck and being in the right place at the right time. Selling, negotiating, employee relations, and management skills are of little consequence when an economic slowdown and credit tightening come to visit your market, always at the same time.

I had some success, "earned" profits, kept the doors open, satisfied customers, experienced almost zero employee turnover, paid off debt, invested in new equipment, and expanded into a new, complimentary line of business.

It was the loneliest time of my life, and the most all consuming. Only the "owner" can know what it's like to have that responsibility and opportunity, so Ustwo, I have some general insight into where you are now.

I don't wish you adversity or bad fortune. Anonymity allows me to speak frankly, though. My experience as a business owner made me appreciate Thoreau's observation that the farm seemed to "own" the farmer, more than the farmer owned the farm.

I can just about guarantee your that there is a once in every century "shit storm" headed at our economy. The consequences of it will profoundly alter your POV of economics and politics. Ask anyone in Japan who was an adult living there in January, 1990, through the present time.

Out of my depth? that's lovely. :orly:

You sir, are trying to tie your understanding of science to your understanding of the one true way that an economy and a society can be run.

I, sir, am trying to point out that using science - and specifically genetics and biology - to make a case for your political views is flawed at best and downright dangerous at worst. It's been tried many times, by many shades of political opinion, rarely to any good end.

...And Matt Ridley is an idiot because he and his political/economic theories and mismanagement caused the massive collapse of a major financial institution in one of the largest economies on the planet. Bravo that man. Spectacularly good job.

loquitir, and Ustwo, the thing that both of you do not yet seem to grasp, is the thing that homebuilders failed to grasp until it was too late.

Our economy is moving into a phase where, as homebuilders have found the hard way, there will be too small of a base of individuals who will likely be both willing and able to pay you for your services, to sustain your overhead and income requirements....

The time when it will happen is drawing close enough now that I can post about it without seeming like I am posting concepts most regard to be "on the fringe".

Sunday's "news" changed all that. When was the last time you can recall the Fed announcing a between FOMC meeting interest rate cut, on a sunday?

When was the last time the Fed cut the key short term interest rate, 3.25 pts. in less than 6 months? The answer to both questions is "never"!

When was the last time the Fed permitted brokerages....not banks....brokerages, to borrow funds at the Fed "discount window"....the answer is, "not since the 1930s depression".

Capisce, amici?

Host, that's my risk, isn't it? If I end up falling flat on my face, then I will have no one to blame but myself for not having the foresight to see the oncoming train wreck. And I'll deal with it when/if that happens. But let me give you a hint: knowing more than one area of law helps cushion blows like that, and practicing in a firm that has expertise in helping clients through both good times and bad also helps.

But you're right, there is risk. Big risk. And I could possibly fail, quite badly, and the govt won't bail me out. That's why I'm also entitled to the upside.

Roachboy, the fact that I took debt on to go to law school is a datum, but it's not the fulcrum of my argument. The fact that I'm a free man and can't be required to give my work away on terms I don't agree to is the fulcrum. You may have heard of the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibits involuntary servitude.

loquitor--i tried to develop the underlying argument that i was making above--i linked it to a tendency to naturalize social inequalities, which you seem to do. i wouldn't argue that it's the center of things--i just used it as data to construct a position from.

Do you own stock or bonds or other securities, loquitur? Those in the bottom 50 percent own less than 8 percent of all US stocks and bonds, it may even be less than 5 percent.

When you say that the "gov't won't bail you out".....what do you think "went down", this past sunday, and with the "stick save" by the Fed, with another huge interest rate cut, yesterday, and a 400 pts. gain in the Dow?

What the Fed is doing is "bailing out" you and the very people who you regularly bill for your professional services, and it will have the consequences of making the few dollars the "bottom half" of the popuilation have to spend, buy much, much less, as we already see at "the pump".

Is your hubris or complacency so great that you haven't realized the Fed had been busy transferring the small amount of wealth from the least of us, to the "investor class"? What do you think this is about?

Is it capitalism, or is it more appropriately described as the rule of a corporatist oligarchy?

You know, fascism is rather ill defined.

Some definitions are very strict, mentioning Italy/Germany specifically. Some mention specific policies of these governments as part of the definition. Some are more general.

One of the more general ones is this....

A social and political ideology with the primary guiding principle that the state or nation is the highest priority, rather than personal or individual freedoms.

Now...who are the supposed fascists in this thread again?

i dont know anyone, anywhere who accepts that "definition" ustwo--except perhaps yourself, and even that for purely instrumental reasons.

Ustwo, do you or your family own any securities that were artificially supported in valuation by the Fed's "prop job", of the past three days, and going back to it's interest rate reduction, "dollar killing" program, begun last september?

Have you given any thought as to who the Fed is supporting and who it is taking wealth away from? I have.......could it be....the investor class is benefiting, at the expense of the vast numbers who live "hand to mouth", paycheck to the check cashing place and then over to "the pump"?

Who do you think $3.25 per gallon motor fuel impacts more, you or you office cleaning lady? Why do you think gas is $3.25? Could it be because the dollar is impacted by the 3.25 percent express Fed interest rate cutting?

Host, you object to pension funds being protected by the government? That's who the biggest shareholders are, and that's who is getting bailed out. Pipsqueaks like me are barely a hair on the pimple on the ass of the market. Even rich people don't account for that much. It's mainly institutions, the biggest of which are the pension funds.

Roachboy, the "tendency to naturalize social inequities" that you see me doing is simply a recognition that different people are good at different things and have different priorities. One of my friends is extremely good at making money, seeing opporutnities, and he's very good at it. He's a wealthy man. I'm not nearly as focussed on money - I need to be creative - so I'm in a line of work where yes, I make a decent living, but I'll never be rich. Other people may value leisure time, or have lower risk tolerance, or avoid stress, or seek fulfillment in other ways.

There are tradeoffs everywhere, and I have enough respect for people as individuals to recognize that they are allowed to make their own choices and choose their own muse. They take the risks they find congenial, they follow the paths they find useful, and they are entitled to those. This is part of the reason why I asked in that other thread why it is that people find economic inequality so bothersome. There are plenty of inequalities between people - in terms of talent, intellect, physical abilities, attractiveness, musical talent, etc etc etc. We don't object to those. I would argue, in fact, that economic inequality is just one more kind of human diversity.

Again: I have enough respect for each individual's own sovereignty to recognize that each person is more than just the size of his/her wallet. It's not a question of someone with means being more deserving or more moral, because they're not, they're simply better at certain kinds of activities - but I think the flipside is that they are not more immoral either. And their activities do tend to benefit a lot of other people as well.

As for fascism, I find it curious that my view on economics is called right-wing, and according to the OP, tending to fascist, when my basic credo is that people should be free to follow their own paths and make their own lives as they choose -- but you and host seem to feel that my liberty and my very brain have to be put at the service and direction of others who supposedly know better than I how I should be spending my time and my money, and that the force of government should be behind that compulsion -- and that, supposedly, is enlightened and liberal.

I just don't get it. I'm a classical liberal. I don't feel a need to force other people to do things my way. But I don't want them telling me to do things their way, either.

interesting...one reason i jumped out from the education debt thing really is that i don't conflate the diversity of capabilities or talent or interests amongst populations in general with the *particular* way in which economic and cultural opportunities are distributed in the american/capitalist context. rather, i tend to see the latter as cutting across the former and imposing constraints/limitations arbitrarily--so that, say, within a particular class fraction (o why not---in bourdieu speak, the one i am of, the "dominanted fraction of the dominant class" which is the space that most folk with my educational background end up in, particularly if they also happen to consort with artist-types) you might find a particular range of capabilities and talents which have been able to achieve some degree of operational fluency (yikes) but you'd have to be kinda restricted in your view to imagine that this class fraction includes all possible folk who have or who started out having similar abilities or talents, but who--for arbitrary reasons, that is for reasons of economic position in the main--have not been able to access the background, the opportunities, the time to work with what they are able to do well and push it into new areas (new for them, new objectively, it hardly matters)--and who might not for any number of other reasons felt authorized to embark on this sort of path to begin with.

my main difference then with your position is in the relation each of us sees between a diversity of possibilities or capabilities in a population which you might think about like aristotle did, that is with economic factors excluded--so that a "good society" can be seen as one in which this diversity is able to find expression and flourish--and the capitalist mode of production, with its divisions into classes--compounded by the american-specific way of repeating this class division spatially--which is compounded by the ways in which education is funded by locality--which makes of educational opportunities the exact mirror of the class order.

i can imagine a set-up in which that correlation of educational opportunities and economic class would be reduced or eliminated, and that is what i was trying to explain above--and i got to it by taking off from your mention of debt acquired to get through law school---which (btw) i am not critical of in itself--hell, i wouldn't be playing here as i do had i not also had access to debt--but it's the idea that you have to acquire it in order to get something as basic as education that i dont agree with, that i dont understand.

so..hope this is clear.

the other riff about coercion was interesting when i started it, but i've kinda lost interest in it now, just because it seemed to lead to something more engaging. so reset. there: i pushed it.

I actually disagree that the capitalist system necessarily divides people into classes, unless you buy into the socialist/derivatively Marxian view that economic resources are destiny. There are plenty of rich boors, there are refined and cultured poor people, there are elite thinkers who make middling wages, and on and on and on. Using income to classify these people makes zero sense - it doesn't describe them and doesn't do them justice. "Class" in the economic sense often is but need not be determinative of outlook or life posture.

For instance, I consider myself to have much more in common with professors and creative types than with many of my clients. It's a matter of what sorts of things we find interesting. They drink beer and I don't - just a small datum, but it means something.

loquitur, your take on the Fed's actions since last september somehow having populist overtones is entirely opposite the information I'm sharing with you below.

I think Roosevelt described what it actually is, as reported by Time in May, 1938.

I think the vast majority of Americans would be much better off with a Fed practicing a fiscal policy that actually promoted a strong dollar, as they and Paulson claim, but that they don't fucking do....

I think the rapid short term interest rate cutting in 2001 was the single biggest catalyst for the housing valuation bubble, and now they've cut rates even faster than 2001 to 2003. I think the two espisodes of drastic rate cuts
are the biggest factor in the 68 percent decline in the dollar vs. the euro, since 2002.

I think Fed policy is intended to do what is in the best interests of the wealthiest, and what is has done to the purchasing power of the dollars is devastating economically to at least half the country's households.

I think that leaving the interest rate where it was last september, at 5.5 percent, and not allowing the four largest banks to lend up to thirty percent of their assets, (instead of the former ten percent limit) to their brokerage subsidiaries, and not nationalizing Bear Stearns last weekend, and not destroying Fannie and Freddie by forcing them to buy up hundreds of billions of dollars of MBS, would serve most of the country better than what the Fed is doing.

It should not be government policy to make it easier now to borrow. No one should take a mortgage loan until the average selling price of the average home is at a level where the average income earner can qualify for a mortgage loan by putting 20 percent "seasoned funds"....funds documented to be in an account in the applicants name for at least six months before approval of mortgage loan application, and where MTI monthly payments do not exceed 36 percent of the borrower's monthly income.

Until that is the state of things, all purchasers of homes, going forward, will likely experience home valuation depreciation. There was no sharing of profits during the price bubble phase of the 2001 to 2006, why should the losses in the collapse phase of the bubble, be put on all of us?

Why should the Fed keep weakening the dollar to perform a "prop job" for the wealthiest? Could it be that the status quo is as Roosevelt described?:
<h3>loquitur, the only thing that has changed in the last 70 years is that no US president is independent enough from the wealth and power of the wealthiest to say what Roosevelt said publicly on April 30, 1938. By that measure, we are today even closer to the fascism in the US that Roosevelt described and warned the public about.....</h3>
The Fed has assigned "NORC" to produce the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances, (It probably won't release any data on wealth distribution BEFORE the November election....):

http://www.norc.org/projects/Survey+...r+Finances.htm

Host, read the stuff you're quoting. It says something slightly but importantly different from what you're saying.

And none of this has anything to do with fascism.

loquitur, you posted this:
I have a high degree of confidence that I countered your assertion effectively with this "stuff":






<h3>Concentration of wealth and corporate control then:</h3>
<h3>Concentration of wealth and corporate control more recently:</h3>
<h3>Concentration of wealth and corporate control in our own era:</h3>
....Even your denial that my response "had anything to do with fascism". If my response was so weak, you would have taken the quote from FDR apart....
you didn't even respond to it.

You said securities ownership is diversified, I've shown persuasively that it was not.....70 years ago, nor is it now.....

So please give me a more detailed response. Was FDR wrong about what fascism is? Am I wrong maintaining that the top one percent wealthiest are still the "controlling private power" that FDR was describing? If they own two thirds of the stock and 93 percent of the bonds, as of 2004, isn't the Fed protecting their interests as it rapidly lowers interest rates and fails to promote a strong dollar?

Concentration of power is oligarchy, not fascism. Nationalistic, heavy governmental control of economic power (with or without nominal private property) and subordination of individual rights to the collective (usually the state) under a "wise" leader, usually with militaristic or expansionist tendencies, is fascism.

I didn't say stock ownership is diversified; I said it's dominated by institutions, the largest of which is pension funds. Nothing you posted is contrary to that, Host. The fact is that most of the population either directly or indirectly has a stake in healthy financial markets -- their insurance company is heavily invested, their 401(k) is too, so is their pension fund, so is their bank.

As for FDR, throwing around the word "fascism" apparently was fashionable back then. Bear in mind that the critics of the New Deal insisted it was fascistic because it involved massive governemnt control of the economy and huge infringements of property rights. So of course FDR needed his own counter-response. Rhetoric is cheap. It is now, always has been.

As I said up above with the quote from Orwell, fascism doesn't mean "things I don't like." It's a set of variously implemented principles, and the free market sure ain't one of them.

I am trying to to write and send this from the Opera mobile browser I dnloaded onto my wife's cell. Consider that in 1935 the mccormack dickstein committee report on the coup Gen Butler described in his testimony had indeed been funded and planned by the men also named in my last post. Butler the committee and the press all called it a fascist coup. All the descriptions of stock ownership i posted contradicts what you believe.

loquitur, the shame of it is, if you were not absolutley adament that you already "know what you know", you could use your above average access to research tools (such as <a href="http://law.lexisnexis.com/">lexis-nexis</a>) to "flesh out" and confirm for yourself, the information I am sharing on this forum.

<h3>1933, loquitur, just 20 Morgan partners, serving on 167 boards of major corporations</h3>....Morgan, an investment bank, a year later, implicated in a fascist coup planned against the US government, a plan that seems to have actually been financed and seriously researched and entertained:

Fast forward to just a week ago, loquitur:

The quote in the first box is from this WSJ article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1205...googlenews_wsj
Fed Races to Rescue Bear Stearns
In Bid to Steady Financial System
Storied Firm Sees
Stock Plunge 47%;
J.P. Morgan Steps In
By KATE KELLY, GREG IP and ROBIN SIDEL
March 16, 2008 9:50 a.m.

Whether you believe it or not, the concentration of ownership and control of 2/3 of all US traded stock shares and 93 percent of the bonds are, after seventy years, still owned by the wealthiest one to five percent.

The Fed demonstrated that it's priority is the major banks and brokerages, and the wealthiest folk who own them, and not the taxpayer.

The five largest brokerages all probably would have been crushed by their incestuous counterparty relationships, last friday, all insolvent, and immediate chaper 7 cases, by law, with rapid liquidation, by auction, of their assets, then the proceeds of those auctions would rapidly be dispersed to their creditors.

Instead, the Fed and Hank Paulson decided that JP Morgan would live and Bear Stearns would die.

The Fed opened the discount window to the brokerages, which are leveraged as high as 40X assets, while the banks, by law, are leveraged at 7X max. The Fed did not put the brokerages under the supervision of banking regulators, or require that they deleverage, as a condition of their discount window borrowing privileges.

Bear Stearns notified authorities on thrusday evening, March 13, that it had become insolvent, yet the SEC and NYSE allowed Bear shares to trade all day on firday the 14th.

How many rules were bent, laws violated, in the scenario I described in the preceding paragraph.

My reading brings me to the conclusion that the brokerages will use their low interest rate access to borrow money to lend at rock bottom rates as "bait" to raid clients from the brokergae divisions of the major commercial bamks.

loquitur , it is no work to dismiss all of this information, as you did with the FDR reference to fascism. The players have not changed, and the "game" has not changed in 70 years.

The difference then, though, compared to now, was FDR then vs. these two now, who should be attacking the Fed and the criminals who run Wall Street:

The Fed is now openly colluding with the criminals it was supposed to regulate, and the two presidential candidates most likley to win the presidency, instead of announcing that Wall Street crime and greed has put the currency and the entire economy on the brink, and that the people are going to go to war against Wall Street, are instead, "DARLINGS of Wall Street".

Post from the wife's cell more often...

Yes Eugenics was popular among many people in the early 1900's including many who are considered heros by their nations today, lest someone assume it is only the Nazi's and their ilk who supported such policies.

But their mistakes do not mean science has no place in understanding human behavior or what sort of political systems mesh well with what we have been evolved to do.

I would hope that the tens and perhaps 100 million killed by their own governments in the name of communism would show that regardless of what the theory behind it is, in practice it does not work well with human nature and results in the most horrific and oppressive form of government to ever blight the human race.

Perhaps Matt Ridley was not the best choice for running his fathers bank, I really haven't looked into that aspect of his life, but you on the one hand tell me to read Richard Dawkins as some authority that can teach me the folly of my ways (something you will not find in his works) and then when I mention an author who tackled this problem directly you give an ad hominem attack on the author. This author in fact contributed a chapter to one of Dawkins more recent books.

Funny how that all worked out.

Host, I do more than enough research, thank you. And I have my feet on the ground and I deal in the real world. I don't have to obsess about the things I'd like to be true but aren't.

Bottom line: if you think the economy, including asset distribution, is the same today as it was in the 1930s, you go right ahead.

ya know, loquitur, one of us is posting in an arrogant manner in these exchanges, and one in an ignorant manner. Which is which? Hint....only one party is doing all of the work to make this into the form of a continuing "discussion":

Is the distribution of debt currently, less equitable than it was in the 30s?


How about in the distribution of the profits and the losses?

loquitur, CONSIDER THAT THERE WAS NO TALK OF "CAPPING", or EVEN TAXING EXCESSIVE PROFITS DURING THE GROWTH PHASE OF THE MOST RECENT SPECULATIVE BUBBLE IN REAL ESTATE AND IN THE ISSUANCE OF THE PAPER THAT FINANCED IT:



Footnote [12], above is referenced in the highlighted area in the excerpts of the following article. Can anyone argue that the highlighted area in the 2nd NY Times article excerpt above, does not mesh well with:
<h3>What would have happened if the Fed and Treasury had not nationalized Bear Stearns, beginning on March 14, and instead stood by and watched insolvent Bear pull down it's closest counterparties,</h3> JP Morgan Chase, Lehman Bros., Merrill Lynch, and possibly Citi Group and maybe another "big four" bank?

Would the ensuing losses and liquidation auctions have been the natural reaction to the excesses that fueled the Real Estate and CDO markets? What did we get, instead, because of the Fed "prop job"?

What are the negative consequences of a period of unavailability of mortgage lending, or of the "hit" to the portfolios of the wealthy clients of the firms named above? They made obscene amounts of money as the bubble inflated, even as their income tax and inheritance tax obligations were being slashed by the conservative politicians that they financed into office.

Does it do anyone any good to be able to borrow easily now, to finance a home property purchase that will decline appreciably in value over the next several years? Will we experience 18 years of SLOW unwinding and decline, as Japan has, directly as a consequence of government interference, bailouts, and official protection of insolvent banks, disguised as "going concerns"? Isn't borrowing too much, and overleveraging, the two abuses that caused the current instability?

Isn't the cost of the government attempting to prop this mess up, too great a price for taxpayers to bear in exchange for their continued ability to borrow to buy or refinance still gorssly overpriced assets?

Isn't what happened with Bear Stearns, really about the influence of a bunch of rich pigs and their revolving door realtionships, Ruben was Treasury Sect'y and is now Citi's CEO, and Paulson was Goldman's CEO and is now Treasury Sect'y. Aren't the financial health of their wealthy friends, their actual top priority? What the fuck are they doing using OUR taxes and future debt obligations, to shore up these other corrupt Wall Street pigs?

Host, it has nothing to do with being arrogant. I just find most of your "research" irrelevant. You have an axe to grind and you do "research" to support arguments you already have in your head. Most of it has zero to do with what the actual economy looks like. I read newspapers and practice law wtih real live business people and have a pretty good idea of what is going on, and it looks nothing like what you're posting.

I don't come here to "win" arguments because there is nothing to win. This is a hobby. When it starts becoming work I'll stop posting because I have plenty of real work to do. So I'm not going to go through the Statistical Abstract of the US to "prove" what I'm saying, nor am I going to start larding my posts with long quotes from historical sources to "prove" a point that the posts don't prove. If you really think the country is run by a conspiracy of robber barons and it makes you feel better to think that, there's nothing I can say that will dissuade you because you're seriously invested in that thesis. I see from personal experience that it's not true, but you're perfectly free to believe otherwise.

loquitur, I posted the opinions above on March 3, 2007. What were you and your "real live business people" paying attention to, and predicting, 55 weeks ago?

What have all the "real live business people" on Wall Street and at C'wide's HQ in Simi, CA, been thinking and doing to get themselves in such dire straits as to whether they remain solvent? The answer is....they didn't handle "things", did they? They botched things up to the point that they have become "wards of the state"?

You've done no job of credibly discussing the points I have made....it's now degraded to what amounts to a personal attack.....the arrogance evident in your last response speaks volumes.

You are an attorney with no passion for argument. Why did you even bother to make your last post?

They (the people at Bear) made bad decisions, and a lot of them - including some people I know - are materially poorer because of it. By materially poorer, I mean that they have lost the vast bulk of their personal assets - just went poof. There were lots of people (myself included) who saw the real estate price run-up as a bubble and figured it was just a matter of time before it burst. I didn't know which sector would blow first, but it was clear something would.

I had this conversation with other lawyers and consultants numerous times in the past couple of years. I'm old enough now to have been through three shakeouts, and each one was driven by pretty much the same thing - people thinking short-term, and trading current fees for future risk. In the late 80s and early 90s it was junk bonds (and to a lesser degree, real estate); in the early 00s it was tech stocks; and now it's subprime mortgages and pooled pass-through securities.

My point is that this stuff is cyclical, and there is always a shakeout. As I said, the people I know at Bear are taking a huge hit because of this. Other people are too. The question is whether there is anything to be done about it, and I remain to be convinced that this sort of phenomenon is either repealable, or if repealable, only through heavyhandedness that will stifle economic growth (and thus should be left alone).

I made my last post because you appear to be trying to "shape the battlefield" by establishing rules for argument here that favor your method of argumentation. That's why you keep saying i haven't answered you "credibly" or am "arrogant." I have said a number of times that I respect the passion you bring to this and the amount of work that you're willing to do, but -- it is massively unfair of you to expect everyone else to either do the same or be branded "not credible." I simply don't accept that I have to do things your way in order to be credible - I have neither the hours nor the inclination to spend my time hunting around the net for articles and blog posts to throw up there. As I said, this is a hobby. If it stops being interesting and begins to be work; if it stops being an amusement and becomes a source of stress, I'm simply going to stop. And I don't accept that you have either the right or the power to prescribe for me or anyone else what is "credible" or legitimate. Different people have different approaches to things, and different ways of seeing things, and your way isn't the only credible way. If you think that's a personal attack on you, well, I don't know what to say.

Thank you, loquitur your post is sincere, too rare a thing generally around this forum. I have been trying to keep my posts OT (I mean...ON topic !)and this thread is about fascism. I thought I was making a fair attempt and I guess time will tell.

Actually this too is a genetic relatedness question.

Males in the colony will be from the outside, they are less related to the sisters than anyone else in the hive. Ant colonies are a good example for the weakness of asexual reproduction, because if any place should have it, its an insect colony.

So far there is only one 'animal' with long term asexual success, and its a bit of a mystery as to why they have it when almost every other asexual species eventually dies out.

But I digress, I think this thread is about calling people like us, you know small government, less regulation, economic freedom loving, fascists.

Ustwo, if there was to be "name" calling, directed toward you, it would be done more appropriately at the <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rubber+stamp">rubber stamp</a> thread, but as of yet, no one has authored a thread on that subject:

....and not a fucking peep out of you...

...and again, in the aftermath of what is described above, not a fucking peep out of you...

Maybe the most blatant example; a declaration by "your president", on the same day that the Wall Street bailout "Op" was going down:
Your president, the leader you have consistantly "rubber stamped" in every way, was lamenting that he would love to help bailout homeowners, but...

No terms in the weekend bailout of the criminals who caused the destablization of the "model" US economic system were too sweet, too excessive, too contrary to what Bush had said made it impossible to "bail out" homeowners:
Total hypocrisy and blatant preference toward transference of taxpayer obligated new debt to perform the bailout of the economic and politcally connected elite, which as Bush said on March 14, would do exactly what Bush said should not be done for homeowners, because:
....and not a fucking peep out of you, ever....in opposition to any of it, that I can recall, posted anywhere on this forum.

As soon as people start mentioning genetics and relating any and all of biology to politics, I believe such people should be forced to assume the voice of General Ripper:

The essence of our systems lies within the purity of our .

The whole of that beautiful line of genetic/social/political logic should be copied verbatim to the humour section.

Yes, it has a second "U".

Actually, fascism might be in the eye of the beholder. This is an interesting blog post from Shannon Love, who is one of the bloggers at the classical liberal/libertarianish site Chicago Boyz. The title is "The Left’s Deal with the Devil." His thesis probably needs to be fleshed out to be more and might be the kernel of a good doctoral dissertation were it not for the fact that it uses the "f" word. Using the "f" word makes it a bit incendiary, but that word is in the air a bit these days, so I guess he might just be responding to that. The lesson I take away from this is that it's possible to find fascistic implications in lots of things, and that the people howling loudest about fascism often have some kinds fascistic baggage in their own backyards that they don't even see because they are so intent on bludgeoning the other side.

Anyway, here is an excerpt to give you an idea:

identity politics is a huge problem.
whether you can really connect it to fascism in isolation is not obvious, however. using a factoid-level approach to mussolini is a not terribly new way to try to make this rickety equation operate--it amounts to a recapitulation of his political trajectory and a little tautology built into the sentence (identity in marx, identity in the--one-dimensional--fascim he made--the assumption, which is asserted in the sentence, not argued---is the consistency in the notion of identity across positions.)

the account of identity politics that you have here really doesn't say anything about what they are--where they come from, what they were supposed to do--but "left" identity politics--which is mostly an academic affair--was consistently pitched as an oppositional politics, emphasizing the particular AS OVER AGAINST more homogenizing patterns of solidarity building. the writer skips over or never understood that part.

so at bottom, i don't see a coherent understanding of fascism in that piece.
i see an interesting kernel of an argument about the problematic role of bourgeois conceptions of identity in mass politics--but there's so much one-dimensional stuff around it that i would think it'd require another writer to make it work.

A very quick look over what this particular person has written about on the site you mention (Chicago Boyz? Chicago school? Ultra-monetarists? LIBERAL?) reveals this little nugget of wisdom:

(link)

I would contend that far from being a candidate for the kernel of a document which should substantially add to the weight of human knowledge (doctorate), either or both of these should be treated as exactly what they are... unsubstantiated, ill thought out rants of a slightly fevered ego.

His assertions about England (unitary ethnic? he thinks all white folks are the same eh? Go to one of the other states represented in Westminster and start calling them ethnically united with the English and see how quickly your blood flows...) in particular are so insanely incorrect that it should make people question anything this chap says without a reference.

Unfortunately though, it seems like there is a pattern here. Very long chains of non sequiturs and flat out inaccuracies passed off as hardened fact which directly relate the starting point to the final conclusion in some inane, tenuous way.

Sorry. loquitur, this meme, in the first sentence of the piece that your linked to:
.... is nothing more than a contemporary conservative, disinformation "Op". If you believe it to be true, why not revise Mussolini's wiki bio, including it, citing it, and then defending it. It is a extremist description....who would have an incentive to create and distribute such a strong declaration, backed by the tenuous support of the fact that Mussolini was a socialist before, WWI, and expelled from that party. He grew up poor, one of 14 children.

Did you check for supporting sources for this?
Here is some "balance":

Host, read the flippin' post. It says Mussolini moved from socialism and developed fascism. I didn't think that was a particularly controversial historical point. The controversial point these days is how much socialism was imported into Fascist thought, and how significant the imported elements were.

But please, deal with my post instead of latching onto a peripheral point.

I think there's a misunderstanding here... Not every kind of collective effort is essentially socialist or socialist derivative in nature...

The structure of the army is highly organised, controlled with the will of the individual suppressed for the will of the authority or collective goal, objective or aim enforced through 'military discipline', conditioning reflexes, propaganda, etc.

Are armed forces expressions of socialist ideology?

I seem to remember history making extensive reference to that well-known branch of liberals and socialists, The Roman Legions.

Is it possible that, with extensive exposure to how an entire society can be mobilised for war through an armed forces model as happened in 1914-18, with many positive results in planned economic expansion, social cohesion, etc, etc, Fascists might have seen no reason to end the mobilisation?

There is no denying that socialist thinking and the 'collectivism' of the military have cross-pollinated, but to my mind at least they are nowhere near the same.

The first sentence is not a "peripheral point"....it twists a commonplace, at the time, 1914 and earlier socialist party membership and employment as a jounralist at a socialist publication, into:
...and, as I have hinted at, it is another "right centric" attempt to rewrite the actual history:


loquitur, when I heard Jonah Goldberg being interviewed about his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0385511841/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1">new book</a> on Salem Comm. radio recently, I chuckled to myself as I drove along, listening to Goldberg's points, wondering if anyone really subscribed to his upside down take of where fascism resides on the political spectrum.

I am not laughing now, because, if you believe there is some merit to Goldberg's pov, I have to accept that the REAL RIGHT, buys his lines in the latest "Mighty Wurlitzer" rendition..."fascism comes from the left", hook, line, and sinker. That is sobering, because the idea that we have any common ground becomes shakier with each new discovery of how divided our perceptions are.

If you want to read some biographies of Mussolini, go right ahead. But you'll find that he spent most of his youth as a Marxist/socialist, then decided in 1915 that Italy should get involved in WW1 - thereby switching his prior position, which got him tossed out of the socialist ranks. That switch to nationalistic ardor was the kernel for the Fascist doctrine he later developed and protected.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with the thesis of the post that I put up.

tisonlyi, your post just illustrates my point that it's possible to see fascism everywhere, if only you want to. It also means that people should be very, very, very careful about tossing the "f" word around, because almost every popular modern movement has certain elements traceable to the same roots as the fascists.

loquitor:

in terms of being careful about the usage of the term "fascism" i agree with you---earlier in this thread, i outlined a pretty comprehensive definition of the term and i don't use it unless the criteria are fulfilled.

what has happened in the thread more generally is a series of definitions, most of which are so vague as to be useless, which demonstrate the other point--which is perfectly obvious if you know the history of usage of the term "fascist"--which is that it is also a bit of invective that gets drained of any specificity and so functions basically to say "i dont like x."

what's annoying is that the actual definitions of the term that have been put up here have been fucking ignored.

i don't think anyone did it intentionally, but it is beyond irritating to find the thread at this impasse when i, for one, had actually devoted (wasted as it turns out) the time to try to put together an operational definition of the ideology.

so i see the thread as a self-fulfilling little exercise which demonstrates the persistence of the second meaning, as a bit of invective.

but that it CAN be used and IS being used in a way that drains it of content does not mean that there is no ideological signified that CAN be referenced by way of the term "fascism"--the is obviously a considerable body of scholarly work on the ideology--i know alot of that stuff--and when i use the term, i do it with that in mind. and there are close parallels between contemporary american populist conservatism and strains of ideological fascism in the france of the 1930s--poujadisme in france of the 1950s---- italian fascism in its more corporatist form--->one *can* restrict a conversation to a technical understanding of the term and demonstrate the parallels point by point.
an elegant, simply demonstration that points to ugly and disturbing conclusions it is, too.


it is also possible to dissolve this demonstration by piling up enough bullshit around the category so that the technical meanings ascribed the term by people who have actually done the work to figure out its specific ideological parameters get buried.

that is what is happening here.

it's hard not to wonder why that would be the case.

'just'

I think you can trace the roots of anything to anything else at some point... after all there is nothing new under the sun.

It follows then, that if you want to be cautious and prescriptive about the use of 'fascism', you have to be careful about 'socialism', 'communism', 'capitalism', etc.

Debasing the terms to the level of insults seems to me somewhat dangerous. Removing all serious meaning from the terminology and allowing some dangerous ideas to sneak from under the rock of the, now, epithet. As dangerous as seeking to prove that there is ONE TRUE PATH.

After all, if there was ONE TRUE PATH, what price wouldn't you pay to achieve it?

I think you know that though. it's late here. ;)

RB, I'm afraid that if you look at the historical academic literature you'll find a marked inability to provide a definition of fascism that is generally acceptable. You will find such definitions by people who have a political interest in defining the term in ways that suit them. That's why I linked the Orwell quote about fascism now being used as a general term to refer to political ideas the speaker doesn't like. I'm not quibbling right now with your definition because I'm not at the moment looking at it, though I do recall that when I read it I found parts of it too narrow and parts of it too broad.

If the definition is limited to the actual tenets of the Italian Fascist Party, that's one thing, but if it gets generalized outside that context, the task of definition becomes troublesome. Even in the Italian context, people will disagree about which aspects of Fascist rule were the ones that were truly definitive and which were incidental. For instance, the anti-Semitism was a late arrival to Italian fascism, roughly contemporaneous with the alliance with Germany - so is racial thinking and bigotry part of the definition of fascism or not? Or is it an inevitable consequence of nationalism, which is a related but distinct concept?

The word gets tossed around pretty loosely. For instance, host and will think that the Fed's bailout of Bear Stearns was fascist, and came up with some twist on the concept of "corporatism" to justify it. I can think of lots of bad ways to describe the bailout but fascist is definitely not one of them. The bailout didn't involve commandeering large businesses to the service of the government and the military. It was unwise and unduly generous to JPM, and saddled the govt with stuff it shouldn't be saddled with (to my mind, they should have let Bear file chapter 11, but that's a discussion for another day) - but it wasn't fascist. It makes some people feel better to label things they don't like "fascist." But then they shouldn't be surprised when other people use the same trick to criticize things that they like.

for what it's worth, i've spent a lot of the past 15 years working on the history of the french left. anyone, anywhere who was not liked by group or party x was fascist. so yes, i know about that.

there are a core of ideas that enable people to use the word fascism to refer to a range of political ideologies...without that the idea would have no content at all--there are obvious variations--in your second paragraph, you introduced anti-semitism knowing that it was a feature of german fascism in ways that were particular to it--had you wanted to argue the point in another way, you might have isolated the tendency to eliminate all political opposition from the left--*that* is a constant--like the notion of national destiny, the united volk, the military Mission blah blah blah.

what seems to be the real problem for you is that fascism is actually quite difficult to render entirely Other than capitalist nationalism. this was a *real* political problem for the americans by the end of world war ii--how to enframe fascism as outside the purview of a nationalism that they themselves were fully invested in. it is a variant of nationalism in the straight capitalist mode. there is no way around that.

the fact that this is the case might lead you or anyone else to want a CLEAR idea of what fascism is in order to be able to react coherently when the line that separates ordinary capiralist nationalism from it started to blur. it does not come from Elsewhere, it is not an Import, it is not Alien--it is the intensification of tendencies that are central to the ideology of nation. period. this is the "political problem" that seems to bother you.

but instead of thinking about that, you seem to prefer to play this silly game of wanting to dissolve the category fascism, as if by doing that you can wish away the fact that nationalist ideology can be dangerous.

or worse, you'd prefer to make some separation between fascism and the capitalist ideology of nation. but you can't do that, and i suspect you know as much.

......

btw: i dont agree with how host uses the term "corporatism"---i think it's a mistake. the ideology of corporatism has to do with a notion of an organic division of labor, which gets grafted onto a rightwing reading of aristotle on the one hand, and onto a basically fascist notion of nation as organic community on the other. so it's not the same thing as oligarchy (you've pointed that out before as well) nor is it the same thing as domination by trans-nationals....
but if it is a tendency that is constantly available because it is a versioning of nationalism itself,

Um, no. Classically liberal capitalism, which is what I advocate, tends to separate the government from the economy. The original sin that leads to degradation of that kind of system is the opportunism many companies partake in when they go to the government for goodies. In my perfect world the govt would tell them to get lost, for a number of reasons, which are beyond the scope of this discussion. Fascism as I understand it entails, on the economic side, commandeering the economy to achieve nationalist ends - in effect, putting national greatness ahead of normal economic functioning of the free market.

That's the reason I see little difference between socialism and fascism - whether the govt owns the production or merely controls it, splitting the goodies with its cronies, makes very little difference. Both systems foster corruption and tyranny.

Socialism does not necessarily mean that the government owns anything or everything.

It means that all is under the control of the community directly influenced by or influencing it and there are many, many ways of implementing this.

Cooperatives are one means of directly introducing socialism from within a capitalist organisation. There are many styles of these which fall under the Rochdale Principles (so named after the first truly successful cooperatives in the mid 19th century England).

Workers cooperatives are probably those which spring immediately to mind, these are more in tune with the general understanding of socialist ideology as it is widely broadcast. Direct worker control.

Consumer cooperatives' members/owners are it's consumers. The largest of these in the world happens to be based in the UK. The Co-op (wiki)

It took almost half a millenium from the emergence of the Yeoman or their ilk for the first revolutionary class to take control of the planet.

Socialism hasn't had 200 years yet, give it a chance. :thumbsup:

so loquitor, i take it you like such stalwart fellers as alfred j nock?

http://www.barefootsworld.net/nockoets0.html

more of a Hayek/Friedman kind of guy.
I promise you, I'm sane.

just checking.

Fascism was often thought of -- mostly by fascist ideologues themselves -- as the Hegelian sublation of liberal capitalism AND socialism. Right wing thinkers believed capitalism didn't work, and in the Great Depression, who could argue otherwise? Socialism was wrong, but the crisis demanded action. You could say that fascists were post-socialist, but that 'post' is there for a reason.

You should also realise that there are different types of fascists and several axes to fascist thought. There's a populist/national axis, a militarist axis, a control axis. These cut through other ideologies obliquely. Some liberals ended up as fascists. Others fight it.

Another result is that fascism itself is cut into factions. On fascism's left wing you have someone like Kita Ikki, who seems to have been genuinely interested in poverty. Interestingly, his scheme for "rebuilding" Japan inspired many of Tanaka Kakuei's pork barrel projects, projects which became the financial motor of the postwar right. On the other extreme you have the pure militarists, like the S. American fascists so popular in Washington.

This is one reason why mapping the early 20th c. terms into a one-dimensional scheme such as the neo-liberal anxiety about the state and collective action -- i'm thinking of those Chicago boyz cited above -- you end up with absurd formulations like fascist = socialist.

I'm curious what will happen with this anxiety about collective action as the neo-liberal engineered economy swirls further down the toliet.

Never mind we live in the greatest prosperity EVER in the history of mankind, its swirls down the toliet as you say because we have an approaching recession, something we have NEVER seen before!

I think you need a dose of perspective.

Ustwo, you're funny...where do you get this "stuff"? It would be soooo much easier for me to post here if I could just say anything, without anything to back it up.....like you do!

All of the following information, from a wide variety of sources, including from economist Roubini, who has correctly predicted the unfolding economic conditions, meshes. Each article reinforces the other articles.... each opinion reinforces the other opinions....all except one.

We'll revisit this post one year from today....count on it!

I thought that was the Roaring Twenties.... :orly:

Host, Baraka..... I think the two of you have fallen prey to the recency/proximity fallacy, which is that the events closest to you in time and space get used to define baselines for comparison of ongoing events to "normal." Hitting an economic rough patch is a sign of a healthy, correcting economy that is purging toxins from its system. It's roughly the same as your kid running a fever that has to run its course so that the virus can be killed off: it looks pretty worrying while it's happening, but it does pass and then the kid goes on to grow.

If you step back and look at the main indicators of material well-being, which to my mind include things like life expectancy and nutrition, we are better off now than we ever have been. Not to beat a dead horse here, but we have the richest poor people in history - our poor people are obese rather than starving. The standard of living of a middle class person in the US at the turn of the 20th century was lower than the standard of a poor person at the turn of the 21st.

This does NOT mean we live in Utopia, nor does it mean we have no economic problems, nor does it mean things can't be improved. But this notion that there is impending economic doom is simply not supported. I suspect some of it is due to the obsessive focus on income inequality and the insistence that unless everyone has the same amount of stuff, that means the people who have a bit less than others are ipso facto deemed to be miserable - which is manifestly not true, unless you think envy is a good thing.

Nope.

okay....??? Are we over reacting....I have posted quite a bit of supporting material for my opinions?
...or, are loquitur and Ustwo exhibiting indications that they are in deep denial in reaction to what is already upon us?

How can "toxins be purged", when our "national socialist" leaders have constructed a "floor" for what they claimed was a "free market"? They didn't create a ceiling, and they worked mighty hard to help those who reaped the profits of the "up move", pay the smallest percentage of taxes on their gains since....well.....since 1932!

Looks like a once in 75 years "event" to me.... the economic downturn unprecedented in the living memory of over 90 percent of the US population.....BWDIK.... I only painstakingly support everything I post, and these two guys have earned advanced degrees and are in professional practice in their respective fields....

Right now it's a prediction, Host - your opinion. We'll know in a year if you're right, won't we? I just think it's an overreaction. Not every slowdown is a cataclysm. We haven't had a cataclysm since the 1930s, and to get that one we needed a perfect storm of worldwide economic foolhardiness. But look, you might be right and I might be wrong. We'll know in a few months.

Sooner or later we may well have another great depression.

So what?

Did we have children starving to death in the streets?

Did we have millions dead?

The socialists did, be it on purpose at times in an act of genocide or just a failure of the system.

At our very worst we were still better than the alternatives.

This is not prediction, loquitur:
It is upon us....it is the same bullshit as descibed by:
...and, it didn't work last time out, because it is about creditworthiness of borrowers, and market value of collateral, not about availability of funds to borrow.....
They were not "frozen assets"....the bids for these "assets", just as now, were based on their perceived value at that moment in time. Market participants perceived that they would be worth very little, immediately or soon after they were purcahsed. The Fed is accepting shit from these criminals on wall street, and loaning them money as if they were putting up "shinola" as collateral....at 2.25 annual interest.

Here is the way it worked last time...we are fortunate to be able to see the results, in advance, of taking in the brokerage firms' "shit" at the Fed discount window, but the Fed is doing it anyway....desparate? Cornered?
...and on July 8, 1932....the Dow 30 Industrial Average <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=%5EDJI&a=06&b=8&c=1932&d=06&e=9&f=1932&g=d">closed at 41</a>....down more than 350 pts. from it's Sept., 1929 high at 393 pts.

It's a broken system, loquitur....not a prediction....a broken system now, receiving welfare from the taxpayers....first time it's happened in 77 years.
You'll come to think it's never gonna bottom, never gonna end....just as your great grandfather did, last time it happened!

Host, the fact that the Fed opened the window to inv banks for the first time since the 30s does not mean this is a repeat of the 30s in other respects. You're resting a huge inverted pyramid of inference on a data point that won't support it. We don't have Smoot-Hawley, we don't have general tightening of credit at the Fed level (we have the reverse), we don't have an industrial, hard-asset based economy anymore. There are lots of other differences, too. Remember, we have an economy of something like $18 trillion (I might be off on the number); there's a lot of room for error before things turn into a disaster.

It seems almost like you want to see an economic implosion in this country. Why? Or am I just imagining it?

Well if Ustwo says it wasn't it must be true.:rolleyes:

If you figured that out in your constant trolling, you would be a better man.

sometimes it seems like discussions become contests the point of which is to see who can say the stupidest possible thing and no-one tells me that it happens.
so plod along i do expecting that there might somewhere be an interesting debate, and then i start hitting shit like this:


no-one tells me anything...

so, hooray, comrade: a champion you are.....

a tribute:




but maybe flush with triump though you may be, you might riddle me this:

how is it that relative economic prosperity enjoyed by particular class elements/sections/fractions--however measured (and the devils in the details of course--but that would require that you read a fucking book or three...)----is anything like a measurement of the ideological characteristics of the regime that enables that prosperity?

You know roachboy if you bitched about the system less and worked with the system more you could achieve some of that relative economic prosperity, though it might cut into that reading time for those fucking books.

Seriously dude, learn to function in the system before deciding it needs to be changed.

Really I have no idea why they made you a moderator, sorry you don't like my opinions but really you go to far in your objections, your saving grace has always been how few people bother to read your disjointed posts to know how insulting you can be.

At least in the case of loquitor's post earlier, he's not using economic prosperity of a particular class as an argument for the American system. Is he?
How do you measure the ideological characteristics of a regime?

You know, your approach here is basically a smug personal attack. Roachboy's economic status isn't something that you know about, it isn't something that is your business, and it has nothing to do with the topic here.

Also, it's a lame point since you you are implying that only wealthy people know enough to have an opinion.

I'm also not surprised that you have no idea why he's a moderator. Like the above, it isn't something you know about, it isn't your business, and it has nothing to do with the topic. If you've got a problem, take it up through PM.

The US is distinguished by how remarkably unaccomplished, in areas that it's government and society should be committed to improving, actually are:

Here's Denmark's stats:



The problem is that loquitur's argument vs. the facts, is unimpressive, as is what has been accomplished in the USA, even with all of the wealth, in key areas, the US performs below a third world neighbor lacking in medical facilities equipped with state of the art technology and medicines:

Host, I take it you didn't adjust things like, for instance, the greater number of preemie kids kept alive in the US, which brings down average life expectancy? or the higher number of miles driven, which does likewise? or any number of other culturally-driven factors?

Which criteria do you deem significant? Personally, I value personal freedoms quite a bit. OF course you wont' find much of that in Cuba...........

Can you explain the "preemie kids kept alive" point, how would it lower the US live birth stats compared to Cuba and to Denmark? Shouldn't Cuba, from your POV, experience a higher percentage of infant mortality, per your question?

It doesn't though....could nutrition and access to medical care be reasons?

Which country has the screening technology to most likely "weed out" predicted defective fetuses, long before they are at the delivery stage, Cuba, or the US?

They're "free" in Mexico, and our presidents form fast friendships with Mexican presidents....here are Mexico's stats:


Your last question, loquitur, amounts to an assertion of "better dead than red", and we have debated that in other threads....

Host, the US tends for cultural reasons to have higher obesity rates and mortality from car accidents (mainly becaues we drive more). That means our health statistics are not strictly comparable to countries with greater population density because they have fewer automotive-related deaths and countries with better eating habits than Americans. That's just two factors off the top of my head. Americans also tend to insist on more drastic measures to save marginally viable babies, so the infant mortality numbers are somewhat worse in the US than in other countries. These are cultural differences, not differences in quality of health care, and they have very little to do with the government. They are a consequence primarily of the individualist culture in this country.

Your stats are interesting but you're drawing inferences that may or may not be justified. You haven't established anything about why the numbers are different, only that they are different. Beyond that you're just making assumptions. For example, in a town of Jehovah's Witnesses where they refuse blood transfusions, there are going to be more deaths of a certain type than in other places - but it won't be due to inadequate medical care in the JW town, it'll be due to the cultural difference about transfusions. In other words, you're succumbing to the same fallacy I talked about earlier, which is that you're isolating a data point and constructing a huge inverted pyramid of inference on top of it that isn't warranted.

And my other point isn't better dead than red, that is a massive misstatement. It is that you should consider carefully your romance with left-wing dictatorships. A country whose self-glorifying dictators purchase the submission and quiescence of its citizens with "free" medical care is not a model we should want to follow. Socialized services were originated by Bismarck as a way to keep the populace quiet and narcotized in order to stave off demands for democracy. Cuba is no different.

You touted the points above to make your "it's a great country, a great system" case, I assume.....

I showed you a country with just ten percent capita US GDP that must have equalled "nutirtion" experienced in the US....it had a tad lower deaths per live births stats, didn't it?

I showed you an ODC, Denmark, with 19% lower GDP per capita than in the US, that achieves dramatically lower deaths per live births than the US does.

I showed you Mexico's live birth stats....it's a free country, but you have to survive birth to "enjoy" the "freedom".

You dispell none of that with your traffic and obesity morbidity argument. Your
"better dead than red" argument, in an earlier post, as an argument against Cuba's achievements in a core quality of life area, when Mexico is pulled up alongside, is.... what it is....meaningless, just as the argument you started out with:
Denmark and Cuba put the US to shame in those categories, and Mexico's government/economic system is greatly preferred by our political and business establishment, over Cuba's...... so what does that speak to, about your standards, or the standards of our establishment?

I've made two equity options trades in the past half hour and you come at me with that "crap"? If you want to paint me as one who is having a love affair with "marxism", you need to become better acquainted with me. Can you not fathom that I can be critical (openminded?) about US failings and yet not be advocating a socialist model? I pointed out Denmark and Mexico, too. Which country, if you had a choice, would you prefer to be conceived and delivered in, if your were a fetus with a choice, in Mexico, or in Cuba....in Denmark, or in the US? Remember....again, you brought up life expectancy and nutrition, to support your argument....

Couldn't it just as easily be that I exhibit an openminded political demeanor and you come off like a predictably indoctrinated American?

host, you really don't see the mote in your own eye, do you....... Please accord me the basic respect of having my own opinions, fairly arrived at.

This discussion started because you posited that our economy sucks, we are collapsing, the depression is nigh, etc etc etc. I called bullshit so you started this diversion comparing life cycle indicators in various countries. I'm kicking myself for letting you pick out details and change the subject to the one you prefer.

No, host, I'm not playing by your rules as you try to shift the terms of discussion every time the subject gets too tough for you. You don't get to move the goalposts. Come back to what we were talking about. If you think the economy is collapsing, why are you trading options? You should be buying gold and preparing to emigrate.

Put up or shut up, host - prove that the US economy is collapsing into a depression. And I mean depression: cratering of the Dow, 25% unemployment, stuff like that. I'll wait. I had said that there is no evidence of depression and that we are materially better off than we have ever been. Your response is that other people are better by certain indicators - which is irrelevant. There is no depression on the way and we in fact are better off than we have ever been by any objective measure.

And we still have the richest poor people in the history of the world. You wanna change the topic? You still haven't explained obese poor people as a historical phenomenon.

I sold some Lehman Apr 35 put options that I bought late yesterday @ $2.60

Sold them @ $4.00 shortly after the open this AM:



All of the brokerages are "short plays", now....here's why...unprecedented since the depression....more regulation translates to bringing their leverage down to the level of the regulated banks who also get to use the Fd discount window. Banks leverage limit is 7:1, Bear and Lehman are at 30:1 .

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie...=1&sa=N&tab=wn

Brokerages can choose to stop dropping their crap collateral off at the Fed discount window in exchange for borrowed T-Bills loaned to them at the face value of the near worthless MBS they put on the FED (i.e., on the taxpayer)
....T-Bills sold into the market (short sales, since they are borrowed from the Fed...) or, if they won't accept de-leveraging, they can get along in the free market, and go BK like Bear would have without a JP Morgan fronted, Fed nationalization......

Matter of fact, Host, I just went back and looked at my first post in this subdiscussion, and it is a complete answer to what you just said:After I write something like that, and you come back extolling Cuba, I can hardly conclude anything other than that you like Cuba.

OMG I just read your last post, Host - you just said that regulation kills off wealth! That's an amazing insight!

No, loquitur, the leverage that the brokers use, kill off wealth, ala Bear !

If you are leveraged 30:1 and you experience losses of just 3.33%, you could be insolvent.... you no longer have any principle remaining in the porfolio. The next dollar lost is the dollar of the lender.... all of your portfolio is composed of debt.

If you put down 5% on a home purchase and borrow, 95%, and the home is appraised at $200k and you pay $200k, if the appraised value drops below $190K, you owe more than the house is worth, and your equity is gone, and that is an example where leverage is only 20:1.

If banks and brokerages were limited to 2:1 leverage, and all mortgage applicants were required to put a 50% downpament into their home purchase, do you suppose we would have lower, stable, home prices, and almost no foreclosures? Leverage is the cancer that makes the flood of money that bid up home prices, until they crashed, possible. Leverage does the same thing to equity markets.

This month, has our government socialized major losses, where it was previously in the process of minimizing the taxes on the profits of participants in the speuclative housing market bubble?

<h3>What do you call a political/economic system that does those two things, back to back?</h3>

Here is another explanation about leverage:

It's been a Ponzi scheme, loquitur...even the 7:1 leverage that the Fed permits the banks to max out at....is a Ponzi scheme.... It is the lack of regulation, the printing of fiat script out of thin air....fronted as "money: that permits the leveraging, that destroys wealth, the regulation is not the cause of wealth destruction.

The creation of the Fed was a deregulating mechanism, counter to the language about creation of money, specified in the constitution:

I'm sounding like Ron Paul, now, but he would refuse to socialize Bear, Lehman, and Merrill's losses, I hope.

I understand how leverage works, Host. I have a client whom it killed, whom I had to help out of a mess.

But leverage killing wealth is not what you posted:
The regulation is what's killing the wealth according to that sentence. Leverage, when used properly, can create wealth - but it's tied to risk, and sometimes risks go sour as it did with Bear. How much risk should you handle? More than regulators will let you, less than some people will want. Those who lend the money for the leverage are at risk, too - if they take the risk of lending too much, they get slammed as well. That's called a market.

The Fed keeps leverage down for entities it helps because it wants to cut its own risk. Can't blame the Fed, but that doesn't mean there is some ideal level of risk that the Fed knows and others don't. Like most bureaucrats, the Fed will choose low risk levels. That puts a ceiling on profitability, because reward follows rational risks.

Oh, and if someone is leveraged 30:1 on a large percentage of his wealth, then he's a fool and deserves to go under, right?

I'm with you that losses by people who took risks and lost shouldn't be socialized. That's what we have bankruptcy laws for.

On the scale we're talking, I don't think that level of laissez-faire can work. Smacks of schadenfreude, but with far reaching and unpredictable effects...

One can only say that the laissex-faire solution to the '29 crash didn't work out too well.

the govt's actions re the '29 crash weren't laissez faire. That's a myth.

so herbert hoover wasn't passive enough for you?

Really? How about comparing Canada and Australia then? They drive a lot in those places, too. These countries have brought down their road death rates down more than the US.

And if the Irish had had a better, more varied diet during the 19th C. fewer of them would have starved or had to emigrate. The potato famine had nothing to do with global trade, colonialism, distribution of wealth, or anything like that. It was all the fault of white trash culture. Right?

Babies are saved so infant mortality rates are worse? This makes no sense.

Or perhaps the individualist culture is a an adaptive response to the inadequacies of the American social infrastructure.


It being one of the features of a socialist society, it would be odd if Cuba didn't have socialised services.

so, come up with the numbers for Canada and Australia. I would expect that they are higher on some measures and lower on others.

On the infant mortality numbers, if you count marginally viable babies as live births, you use heroic measures to save them and a higher percentage of them die, you adversely affect the life expectancy numbers. If you don't use heroic measures and deem the extreme preemies lost causes so that they die, as in many other countries, they count as miscarriages rather than live births. That's what I was getting at. No big mystery.

guyy, I didn't understand what you were talking about with the Irish emigration and the potato famine.

And I agree that it's possible to dispute the direction of causality between culture and government, but in general, over the long term people get the government they really want. It's a revealed preference, to use the economic term.

My point about socialized services in Cuba was that those services aren't necessarily the sign of an enlightened society, given that they were originated by Bismarck as a way to keep the masses quiescent and to stave off demands for democracy.

loquitur, according to this impressively impartial study, in 2003, Cuba experienced 39.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 births, almost twice the rate of death of black American mothers, and four times the rate of white Americans.....

The thing I wonder, and I should think you would want to wonder about too, is whether or not your political attitude towards Cuba is part of a collective influence that has the literal effect of killing people.

If your political prejudices are in actuality, an avoidable outcome of your political ideology, is there a political attitude that could be more treacherous or ignorant, expecially since it's practitioners consider themselves, almost unquestionably, to embrace "reasonable" political POV?