abskebabs

I recently wrote a blog article on toobigtobail.com on hr 1207 and the current defence of the Federal Reserve's supposed independence. I was just wondering what people's opinions of it and the issue would be. The article is the most recent entry, written as a response to the previous article on the issue. I was hoping people would like to discuss it.

I couldn't resist:

Indeed, I though I was the only one with my mouth watering! Makes me think what deep fried Gulab Jamun would taste like, maybe with ice cream and cola on top.......

I did originally write it for my University newspaper, but they rejected it unfortunately, for being too long and "too technical":-(. I tried very hard to make it simple and understandable, so I was distressed by that assessment, and I admit it is long because I tried to cover a lot, and though I tried to make it succinct; I felt any shorter would have made it incomplete.

I quite liked these:

Hi everybody. I just came across an article I wrote a while back in January on the Economic Recession. I went into explaining causes and economic phenomena rather than just chronicling events. I hope you guys like it. ecom1[1].doc

Fair enough, it may take quite long to read through, I just thought it would be worthwhile providing a link to literature on the subject. Is there also a forum rule against doing that? I'll take note of this for the future.

I'm guessing you've not heard of MK ULTRA... As for the moon walk, you have a point. Although, I think MJ's was far more cost effective. Analogies are never perfect.

Mostly because Cartels lobbied for their creation in the first place, as they were not able to keep monopoly prices in a competitive environment. Just read any of the work of Dominick T. Armentano, Harold Demsetz and Thomas DiLorenzo on the subject. As for OPEC, the process that led to its creaton is a little more complicated, some of which the following paper attempts to address: http://mises.org/journals/scholar/Bradley.pdf Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I don't believe that is the case either. Recent work by Walter Block blows the lid on this myth both theoretically and historically: http://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf

At the time of his death I couldn't help but feel MJ's demise was metaphoric of America's; drugged up, insecure and full of debt.

The basis of your entire argument is based on the repeated assertion of the existence of so-called natural monopolies. I am not only convinced these have never existed in the sense that monopoly prices can be achieved, but I don't think they can ever exist in any sustainable way. in turn, the only real monopolies that have ever existed are the franchise monopolies given by government privelige that you are defending. You have presented absolutely no evidence to support your argument apart from your remarks that the truth of your assertion is simply self-evident, and I do not see how this is justified either. For a little elucidation on the matter I recommend the following: http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/R92_3.pdf

As it involves the same kind of reasoning, I guess you would probably say everybody would be paid nothing without minimium wages, instead of their marginal productivity, because of the undefeatable domiant power the capitalists have over the labourers. Or the monopoly power of horse drawn cart companies would be so impossibly large that people would still have to resort to such primitive transportation. The point I'm making is simple. Without external interference in the contracts individuals can make and the services they acquire, opportunites for monopoly pricing would be unstable. If some company is charging unreasonable prices for a service or is not giving consumers the requested service then this creates an arbitrage opportunity which another can fill profitably, due to the price difference or poor quality of the product, even investing in the necessary infrastructure to make such a service possible. If it is not profitable to engage in this venture, then it probably means the other company already is charging the most competitive price. Indeed, I enquired about this issue and some of the points you've raised on another forum, and I gained some interesting insights into how a private system could work. Wondered what your thoughts would be on this: "Someone who purchases a residence and is concerned about water will probably want a guarantee from the water company that water will be provided at a certain price for a certain period of time. Or, the people a neighborhood or town that share the same pipe network could set up a system whereby different water providers input enough water into the pipes to serve the individuals who decide to patronize them (this is even easier with electricity). The point is that people are going to want some control the price of water before they move in anywhere. A maliciously monopolistic water company will simply drive people out of the neighborhood and cause property values to fall, so the market will favor solutions that prevent this from occurring." Needless to say, despite the government monopoly, I've already thought of various private solutions to get around this problem of mandatory medication... Maybe I become an exploiting capitalist still>!

Murray Rothbard provided an interesting article on this subject before his death. I thought people might be interested in reading: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch59.html

I'm not arguing there are not entry barriers ultimately due to scarcity of land and factors of production, I'm saying that government involvement produces artificial barriers that do not serve the interests of the consumer. Also, in the UK electricity and gas has been privatised for a long time. http://www.hkdf.org/newsarticles.asp?show=newsarticles&newsarticle=86 http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/faculty/newbery/files/iaee.pdf http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000009265_3980513111839 Now I'm not saying these are not regulated, unfortunately this intereference plagues almost every sector of the economy; just the government does not directly control the provision of these services.

Despite your attempt to apply a kind of emotional argument to this, I don't think you can, and you clearly have not justified how you classify water or any other good as an a priori monopoly good. Water is a monopoly because it is a good whose provision is controlled by governments who set impossible entrance barriers for competition. This situation would break down and cease to exist without their intervention. I don't deny you could have a private "monopoly", in the sense of one company owning a large market share of the provision of goods for a certain industry. This would only occur with them satisfying the wants of the consumers most staisfactorily and efficiently. If they departed from this they would have to be prepared to pay the price of losing market share. I have only 1 gas pipe supplying my house. I have only 1 powerline supplying my house. Neither of the services supplied by these are provisioned by government controlled monopolies. Indeed in terms of essential goods, you could advocate the same for food. The Soviet Union had a burea for food. It no doubt contributed to the poor service and lags suffered by consumers of that nation. It was also exteremely unresponsive to the wants and needs of consumers, something that I don't think is much improved by a system of political privelige "regulated" by democracy. The government is the kind of entity that will break your leg, give you a crutch and say: "Look you can't live without me!"

As you said yourself, they are given contracts by your government, not by you, hence you have little say in the matter. So you are correct that in the current situation your "power" as a consumer is lessened. A non-intervened market economy is not perfect, but at least there is consumer sovereignty and choice, creating a strong incentive for providers to be sensitive to the concerns and wants of the consumers. It's not "perfect"(I think perfect competition models are pure bull), and you do not have an infinite number of choices of providers. However, it is much better than the indirect contractual system through the political apparatus that you are defending. An understanding of incentives should help you realise why politicians often display rent seeking behaviour, with alterior motives, and hence are a poor means for providing the end for individuals to receive the best product I'm sure you would not argue the case against this for any other industry that is not government run, like cars(apart from the US:-p), or Internet service providers. So it's puzzling to me why you seem to fail to understand how greater consumer sovereignty would help in this case. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Indeed, this is a typical tragedy of the commons scenario. Waste is treated as a "public good", with municipal governments taking over waste management; albeit with the added caveat they are often so inept that they'll need to hire a company to do the collection. If water and waste were not public goods, then polution would be a violation of property rights issue. Hence, companies would have to negotiated with private landowners to take the waste they produce, and would likely have to pay a high price for this service to compensate for the opportunity costs and disutillity for the landowner. This would provide a disincentive for prolific waste production, and an incentive for an improvement of positive technological and capital accumulation in this area; all communicated clearly through the structure of the price system. It would simply not be profitable to pollute. However, under our current scenario, these companies do not have to pay a contractor or take care of this waste for themselves. In fact, doing what they do costs them nothing! If waste and water are publically managed then they cannot be sued for violating property. Hence we have a tragedy of the commons where our current system ACTUALLY ENCOURAGES prolific waste production. No amount of crying senselessly about evil capitalists will ever solve this problem, we need to get to its root.

I guess I ought to make my position clearer. I did think about placing this thread in politics, though decided not as I was more interested in learning about the medical risks. I used to have a higher opinion of democracy, yet nowadays I feel it is a highly overrated panacea, that can and has violated the very rights, freedoms and liberties we hold dear(at least some of us). So I would rather opt for any system in which these can be upheld. A democratic republic where the powers of government would be severely limted constitutionally would be far better, much like the US originally was. On the other hand I have much sympathy with anarchocapitalism. At the moment the system is far more akin to 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. I understand these are commercial organisations that work on behalf of governments on behalf of the people, though I see this intermediary role as redundant and dangerous in the sense it can be hijacked by powerful special interests at the expense of the little guy, the consumer. I think the only thing "consumer protection" regulations do is protect established businesses from competition by raising the entry barrier for new competitors in terms of establishment costs and red tape. Protecting and establishing monopolies assigned by poloitical individuals is contrary to consumer interests, it does not serve them. If water companies did a bad job directly serving the consumer, they would be boycotted, simple as that.

No, that's a false comparison, as murderers violate the individual and property rights of other individuals(unless you're assuming the state somewhow owns people's bodies).

Yes, thanks for providing the report, they do add that 99.9% of it has less than 0.2mg/L, and they never add fluoride to the water. Interesting the WHO is recommending a raised level from 0.5mg-1mg/L. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Thanks for the sources, and I appreciate the biting irony of your above comment considering our exchanges on another thread.

I can't agree with you more on an individual basis. Yet as you've mentioned at best the interests of one group are damaged for another.This kind of problem would not arise in a system of private proerty rights and an unhampered market economy, as people's choice on the matter would not be limited to a single vote for a political candidate every 4 years.

You are correct, monopoly power over one commodity is not absoloute, even the commoditiy must ultimately compete with others, hence if people are not satisfied with the water service provided by the political authorities they may opt to purchase bottled water from a private source. Yet the fact that the state owns a large part of the areas and the infrastructure from which water could be accessed has no doubt impeded the formation of a private sector in drinking water. I would advocate privatisation here. Indeed, I never claimed ownership would allow me to violate the property rights of others. As for zoning violations, I don't believe economically or morally there are any grounds for central planning whether it comes to setting interest rates, "planning" development or running the "commanding heights" of the economy. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I live in Yorkshire during the holidays so it's not a worry for now, as the supply here is not fluoridated to my knowledge. Indeed I need to do some more reading on the health aspects of this. I know it can be a cause of Fluorosis. I also know water often naturally contains fluoride in it anyway, but I'm not sure if the WHO recommend concentration is safe. In any case I'll check it out, and as I pointed out earlier I'd be grateful for literature on the subject.

So you accept limiting the choice and violating the property rights(in case they try to set up an alternative to the government water service) of the minority who disagree? How very democratic! Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Would you mind providing links to papers supporting your conclusions?

This is a subject that has recently concerned me. From my perspective, I do not believe governments have any right to force people to take medication from a service they have a monopoly on. This is regardless of the possible danges and benefits associated with the use of this. The purpose of this thread is to help get a few answers to the following questions from forum members: 1. In your assessment are there any medical benefits from fluoridation of water? 2. Are there dangers involved with fluoridating the water supply? 3. Do the dangers outweigh the benefits or vice versa? 4. In your own point of view, should the fluoridation by enforced mandate of our political authorities be allowed? Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the wikipedia article link, I probably should have realised there'd be one but I must admit it was quite enlightening. I think the comments about distressed cells using light as a signalling mechanism reveal the problems with a signalling hypothesis, when we can already largely explain the phenomenona along the lines you've mentioned above as: I'm tempted to sift through Fritz Albert Popp's papers myself to figure out the chaff from the wheat in this. I guess as a physicist, there's a temptation to see if any good can be done with that trusty old hammer:D.

Interesting, I have a friend who is interested in "Econophysics", and what you have said very much reminds me of the somewhat uncritical approach many physicists in that field take towards Economics. Do you think it's a case of: "When you have your favourite hammer every problem looks like a nail?"