96 replies to this topic

[duke_Qa]

I find it amusing that those videos put hayek's opinions up as some rebellious anti-capitalist ideology. One might think that if you let the rich that are failing die in a horrible crash, things would improve because we got rid of the root of the problem. I'm sure you would, but the problem is that the crash would break more than those that deserve it, and those deserving it won't go down alone. I would have loved a entity that surgically removes the idiots in the system, but there is no such system around right now, and the rich can afford to protect themselves.

Also, found one nice blog post about hayek vs keynes:

From 3.00 to 4.00 in this video, there is a truly stupid attempt to paint Keynes or Keynesians as supporters of war as a method of stimulus, in the comments on the Second World War.

And the producers of this video can't even understand the nature of Western economies in WWII. Of course, the US and other nations did have huge government spending in WWII, but they also had moderate command economies in these years, with price controls and rationing. I say "moderate" because the US command economy was certainly not as extreme as that of the Soviet Union.

Other nations like the UK, Canada, and Australia also had moderate command economies during WWII.

The real lesson from WWII that is devastating to Austrian and other libertarian buffoons is that advanced capitalist nations showed that their type of command economy was extraordinarily successful – in fact they won the war for us. We owe our freedom from German and Japanese fascism to central planning of production and the way the economy was run in those years. The experience in WWII refuted the Austrian idea that government can never plan production on a large scale. If that were true, how on earth did any government produce anything in these years, let alone win the war? Of course, the WWII was a horrific disaster and any wartime economy is brutal and wasteful military spending.
[...]
Towards the end of his life, Hayek basically recanted his earlier view on the role of deflation in 1929–1933:

"There is no doubt, and in this I agree with Milton Friedman, that once the Crash had occurred, the Federal Reserve System pursued a silly deflationary policy. I am not only against inflation but I am also against deflation! So, once again, a badly programmed monetary policy prolonged the depression" (Pizano 2009: 13).

Also, I don't see why we keep bringing up these old hats when it comes to economic philosophies these days, since there have been multiple generations of new economists around since then that have updated these philosophies.

Edited by duke_Qa, 14 August 2011 - 05:22 PM.

[Námo]

... I don't see why we keep bringing up these old hats when it comes to economic philosophies these days, since there have been multiple generations of new economists around since then that have updated these philosophies.

It looks like they haven't learned much of value, though.

Those two 'old hats' are still very much epitomizing two very different lines of economic thinking, also among contemporary economists ... though a lot of them are now distancing themselves from Keynes and drifting toward Hayek.

History IS important to understand the present; you might even learn from it, and eventually don't repeat stupid mistakes from the past.

... and BTW, you often sounds like you're a disciple of Marquis de Condorcet and his idea of progress, living in the shadow of a brighter and better future. If so, I'm afraid you'll get terrible disappointed.

[duke_Qa]

I would also have claimed the economy have since the 70s been more aligned with Hayek than it has been with Keynes. Keynes usually is brought back up when things are getting worse. Trying to paint Hayek as the new savior is somewhat like trying to expand the two-term limit on American presidents.

Those that control the present control the past, those that control the past controls the future . We should absolutely reference the past, and do our best to learn from it, but its important to think about what learning is then. I got this quote that I like: "Learning doesn't occur until a behavior has changed. As long as you know something intellectually but you have yet to put it into practice, you haven't learned it at all."

The markets are in the long run been going in only one direction, and that is up. Mankind keeps inventing better computers and technology is spreading information in a incredible speed, and new machines makes primary industry production easier. I somehow doubt this economic turmoil will be the end of all of this. But I can say I'm disappointed with the western world's current progress and ideological bickering. They worry too much about increasing their own hoard and very little about progress. But I doubt they will be able to turn back time and revert us to the dark ages.

[Námo]

Those that control the present control the past, those that control the past controls the future .

I was not referring to 'control'; I'll leave that for those progressives who want to rewrite history, like in 1984.

The markets are in the long run been going in only one direction, and that is up. Mankind keeps inventing better computers and technology is spreading information in a incredible speed, and new machines makes primary industry production easier. I somehow doubt this economic turmoil will be the end of all of this.

Limited resources.

[duke_Qa]

As if progressives would have a bigger interest in rewriting history than conservatives or reactionaries. Progression usually leads to further analysis and discussion of events in the past, subjective or not, but the other ideologies are more interested in mystification and romanticizing the past for their own ends.


Fusion and recycling would be the answer to most of those problems. As long as we have cheap enough energy around we can recycle most of the stuff we've ever used on this planet. and if we play our cards right we can get hands on some off-planet resources within a century or two.

[Námo]

... found one nice blog post about hayek vs keynes:

From 3.00 to 4.00 in this video, there is a truly stupid attempt to paint Keynes or Keynesians as supporters of war as a method of stimulus, in the comments on the Second World War.

...

From Zero Hedge today:

Military Keynesianism Gone Haywire: Paul Krugman Pines For World War ... Based On Ginned-Up Reasons

As I have repeatedly documented, influential Americans are lobbying for war in order to save the American economy - what is often called "military Keynesianism".

For the first couple of years that I wrote on this topic, commenters more or less said, "That's crazy, no one is calling for war to stimulate the economy".

When allegations surfaced that Rand Corporation was lobbying the Pentagon to start a war to save the economy, Washington Post hack David Broder started promoting war as an economic panacea, and former Goldman Sachs analyst Charles Nenner and economist Marc Faber started predicting a major war, people started paying more attention.

And well-known economist and writer Paul Krugman has argued for years that World War II is what got us out of the Great Depression.

For example, Krugman writes today in the New York Times:

World War II is the great natural experiment in the effects of large increases in government spending, and as such has always served as an important positive example for those of us who favor an activist approach to a depressed economy.

But Sunday, Krugman went over-the-top by more or less calling for a major war ... and manufacturing a false justification for starting one, if need be:

If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better.

There was a Twilight Zone episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time ... we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtdnZnizh6U

This statement is disturbing for two reasons.

First, many economists have demonstrated that - contrary to commonly-accepted myth - war is actually bad for the economy.

And the following statement by Mr. Krugman implies - whether intentional or not - the use of hanky panky to justify military spending:

And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better.

Doesn't Mr. Krugman know that governments from around the world have admitted that they carried out "false flag" attacks in order to justify their aims? See this and this.

How can he be so irresponsible to publicly pine for all-out war based upon ginned-up reasons?

Postscript: There have been Internet rumors floating around for years that the government was planning to use a "faked alien invasion" to justify a power grab by the government. I have no idea whether or not that rumor has any truth, and it is irrelevant for the purposes of this post.

The New York Times and Paul Krugman are definitely some of those 'progressive' liberals supporting the Obama administration's quest for stimulus a la Keynes to solve the US recession.

Edited by Námo, 16 August 2011 - 10:48 AM.

[Allathar]

Recent news: the Dutch parliament is planning on supporting the idea of increasing the power of the ECB. The EU, despite being the cause of this crisis, will be given more power instead of less.

Seems like it's now up to the Germans to counter the further installment of the EUSSR.

[Námo]

Driving the Debt Van across the American Continent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5yxFtTwDcc

[Pasidon]

Yikes... VAT some-what works in modern days, but I can't imagine it being sustained through the decades.

[duke_Qa]

And that debt van thingie casually forgets that when you have started a economic recession, income from taxes collapse because businesses are trying to hibernate through the bad times, causing massive loss of income for any government. The economic turmoil we are seeing right now is caused directly by the lack of tax money that they had access to earlier, because the government gets more cash when the good times are flowing.

And I would have guessed the core philosophy of Keynes is that if the government is not getting cash from taxes because of economic turmoil, then the last thing you want to do is cut the spending of the government because that would shrivel up one of the last few courageous sources of investment cash, instantly causing a major economic depression. It might be good to get rid of those fat cats that have caused the situation to begin with, but it does throw the baby out with the bathwater, causing decades worth of delays in progress for a better tomorrow.

To put it back in that road-trip metaphor, they should have taken inspiration from those Speed movies, where the car you are driving has a bomb and a speed limit you can't go under because it will go boom

On the topic of war, I have some doubts that any half-cooked politicians would be able to embrace another modern war in the style of Afganistan/Iraq, two of the biggest expenses the USA has ever seen. If you want a economic boost out of war you have to at least go directly for the resource occupation and start pumping whatever you can out of whatever spot you've occupied. But that wouldn't work so well for us these days.

If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better.

also, he isn't really talking about war, he is talking about re-jigging a nation's economy for some massive project that takes precedence over economic worries, which would have worked for me. "The Fusion project" would have been an excellent excuse to re-jig most of the western world economy to achieve, a Manhattan project of our times.

[Námo]

On the long-term dangers of deficit spending, Obama says adding $4 trillion to debt is unpatriotic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kuTG19Cu_Q

Bush increased the debt by $4 trillion in eight years. At the end of Obama's first term he will have increased the debt by double that amount, in only half the time.

[duke_Qa]

As mentioned, Bush managed to do that in a time of economic progress. It's quite pathetic when you think about it that way...

If people were paying more attention they would have cut back in the good times and spent in the bad, the main reason we in Scandinavia are still comparatively safe from the horrors around us.

Edited by duke_Qa, 25 August 2011 - 08:01 AM.

[Námo]

Was that an excuse for Obummer going on a socialist spending spree, at a time when the US needs anything but that ??

[Beowulf]

No. But sitting on your ass while accomplishing nothing isn't very effective either. While Obama's plans aren't exactly panning out exactly as planned, he at least tried to do some good even if it was viciously fought.

[duke_Qa]

Was that an excuse for Obummer going on a socialist spending spree, at a time when the US needs anything but that ??

I don't see the attempts at keeping the nr1 economic powerhouse afloat as "socialistic". And even if you can argue that they are, would it be better to collapse and bring the world into a massive economic depression? Libertarians and other conservatives seems to think of these kind of emergency solutions as the greater of two evils, no matter if its obvious that it isn't.

As Beowulf said, sitting on your arse doing nothing is what idiots would do. There are always someone pulling the strings behind the market, so why should not governments, that we actually have elected and usually have nobler goals in mind, do the same? if you are being hounded by a pack of wolves you don't lie down to die.


Edit: He still is a pretty good speaker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I2gl149nwQ

Edited by duke_Qa, 26 August 2011 - 09:04 AM.

[duke_Qa]

Figured a small bump was in order once I found this article.


Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult by: Mike Lofgren

Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.
But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.

[...]
The only thing that can keep the Senate functioning is collegiality and good faith. During periods of political consensus, for instance, the World War II and early post-war eras, the Senate was a "high functioning" institution: filibusters were rare and the body was legislatively productive. Now, one can no more picture the current Senate producing the original Medicare Act than the old Supreme Soviet having legislated the Bill of Rights.

Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

[...]

"Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."

Long article, but it seems to be very well-written. I really hope we get to see a schism in the republican ranks soon, so the political system of the US doesn't collapse or worse.

hehe. this also sums up one logic:

By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

It is indeed a very nice catch22 they got going there. Get voted in to reduce "big-government" incompetence, do their worst once they get in there to support their philosophy that big government is corrupt. I usually am careful with the word treason, but that seems to be very close to it.

Edited by duke_Qa, 12 September 2011 - 03:43 PM.

[Elvenlord]

Great find. I found it rather insightful.