npts2020

Part of the instability in the economy is the instability of energy prices. By converting to constant sources (wind, solar, tide etc.) this instability should be greatly ameliorated. Knowing your approximate energy costs five years hence would be a boon to planners.

The Chinese may be sorry they ever let "Tricky Dick" come to their country. On the other hand they will soon "own" America.

ecoli; So I can take from what you have written that the sole activities you believe government should be involved in are legislating and enforcing laws and maintaining an armed forces? I guess we will have to disagree about whether or not expanding corporate freedoms infringes on societal and individual freedoms but I can't think of any cases off hand where they do not. By your description of a free market, it seems to me that without advocating corporate anarchy, all markets are free since anyone who can meet the requirements of a particular market is free to compete in that market. I would not disagree that capitalism has been the best system for production of wealth but completely disagree with the implied premise that accumulation of wealth is the sole measure of a society or individual. If this premise were true, why would anyone post on this forum instead of doing some other activity more likely to increase their bottom line? For that matter, how many scientists have you ever met who are doing their job primarily because of the amount of money it pays relative to something else they could be doing? While there are things like philanthropy, altruism, and corporate environmentalism, they are not part of capitalism and run directly counter to what capitalism is all about. The social improvements you refer to IMO are more due to people who are not capitalists, using the capitalist system to do so. I am not so sure that your choice of living in medieval Europe or working in a sweat shop producing goods for Wal-Mart is really arguing in favor of your case, as neither seem to be an attractive option in comparison to what is possible. ParanoiA; I agree 100% that large multinational corporations are more of an impediment to progress and competition than a benefit. The problem is in deciding exactly how big is too big. IMO needing a government bailout is certainly a good indicator of being too big. jackson33; just two main points. Firstly, I do not disagree at all that state and local governments should be better than the federal government at determining the needs of their citizens. What I fail to understand about your argument is why the economy would make any distinction, whatsoever, between the levels of government doing spending on a given project? Secondly, I think most people would see a big difference between having acid rain caused by Mt. Pinatubo and acid rain caused by a power plant upwind from where they live. The difference being that one is very preventable. The debate about who gets to set limits is rather contentious, but it seems to me that allowing industries to set their own limits is a prescription for disaster, since many companies don't even live within the relatively few limits that exist now.

Blue Man Group. All I can say is they are very different.

ecoli; I am missing something in your argument. You seem to say on the one hand that strong (but appropriate) regulation is necessary to avoid the negative consequences of unfettered capitalism, yet say there is too much regulation of the market? If the market is "free" there can be no such thing as illegal behavior only immoral or unethical behavior. The problem with allowing the market to control behavior, is that it is assumed that consumers have some way of finding out how a given corporation conducts business and have the wherewithal and alternatives to act on that information. IMO you are not going to weed out corruption and cronyism simply by making the market "free". It seems to me, the real argument is about degree and areas of regulation and not whether the market should be free or not. Having said that, I would be very interested in hearing what you or others arguing that the market isn't free enough would consider to be appropriate regulation and if there is any economic activity the government should be involved in. I would argue that the fact most people in America ever improved their economic situation had more to do with fighting capitalists tooth and nail than any consequence of the way capitalism works. Also, last time I checked we still had capitalism in the U.S. yet there has been little economic improvement for those in the middle or lower classes, but a vast improvement of accumulated wealth by the richest among us. If capitalism is so good for the majority, why has this situation occurred? Even Warren Buffet has said "there is class warfare going on, and my class is winning", what do you suppose he meant by that? Expecting the political system, as is, to fix the problem is a little like giving hundreds of billions of dollars to a group of people who lost many times that amount and expecting them to now invest it wisely and pay it back. While it is possible for corporate bad actors to be convicted of crimes, it seems to be an extremely rare occurance and happens only in the most egregious of cases. ps I appreciate the constructive tone of this thread thus far as many of the topics being discussed are among the most controversial in economics.

Apparently I am not smart enough to follow a "chain of reasoning", recognize "genius", or add 1+1. I-AM-A-GENIUS, you need to check out my signature, words spoken by a true genius when it comes to using language.

I always wondered how you come up with the odds of any process occurring without fairly fully understanding that process to begin with.

Well American style socialism anyway.

ecoli; If the prices of telephone service went down because of privatization, I missed it somehow. What is it that profits incentvize? Near as I can tell it incentivizes making money (especially short term) to the exclusion of all other considerations. While the profit motive may be good for innovation, it also encourages cutting corners, creative bookkeeping, and collusion among other things. I guess I would agree capitalism works better for the citizens if only capitalists are considered to be citizens. You assume there is no way to incentivise the government to cut costs (and with the dumb-asses who vote in elections here it may well be true but that is a whole other matter) but I would argue that if executives and/or workers are given reason (proportional bonuses or some other mechanism) to do so it will happen. Good luck with the "market" keeping the worst of corporate abuse in check, you can't even get your food labelled with what is in it. Last time I can think of this being tried we had conditions like those described by Upton Sinclair in "The Jungle" and more than a few of those trying to change things murdered or beaten into submission. I am not sure what you mean by giving corporations freedoms at the expense of individual and societal freedoms being a fase dichotomy. Maybe you can give me an example or two of where we have expanded corporate freedom and not impinged on individual and collective rights. Assuming you are right that low wages and maximum employment is a good thing, why should we have a standard length of workweek, laws against children working, or allow retirement? In fact, we can go back to the good ole days of "Why hire a man for a dollar when you can hire a kid for a dime?". While I would generally agree most corporations don't need big brother watching them 24/7, there is no codified manner in which they are supposed to act. Is it really ok that the only consideration is the next quarter's bottom line? Maybe profit driven innovation only happens in a free market, but I would submit that innovation will happen regardless of the economic system. Would you claim that no innovations came from the Soviet Union or come from China, neither of which is claimed to be a capitalist country AFAIK? The corporate anarchy I am referring to is what pretty much exists today and you and some others seemingly want to expand. A good example of what I am referring to is the Enron debacle. How many people have served jail time or paid fines for that (hint all of the convictions of those still alive are under appeal)? and Enron filed for bankruptcy over 7 years ago! How long do you think it will be before Bernie Madoff (what a great name for a con man) pays any fines or goes to jail? Do you think anyone will see the inside of a courtroom over the current financial crisis where more than a few executives knew exactly what would happen eventually and didn't care so long as they weren't the ones left holding the bag? jackson33; So far as the discussion goes on this thread, it seems to me to be irrelevant whether it is the federal, state, or some other government spending money, the economic effects will be the same. For some crazy reason I believe it is my right to be able to breathe clean air and not be subject to acid rain, yet the government has told power companies it is ok to pollute the air and cause acid rain. explain to me how my rights have not been subjugated to corporations in this instance? So far as losing rights to the government and not corporate interests IMO there is very little difference between the two. For as long as I can remember (at least back to the 60's) corporations have been bribing (promising cushy jobs, donating massive amounts of campaign money, etc.) public officials to do their bidding. This has led to increase of corporate rights and decrease of personal and societal rights, the freedom to do the things you mention are all predicated on having money to do them. A person who has to worry about whether they are going to eat, pay rent, or buy their diabetes medicine this month is likely only going to be concerned about the lowest price of things and not even consider any negative aspects of the way they are purchasing something. If cheap goods is the ultimate goal, why not just go back to the days of robber barons?

Maybe, but who could say for sure? Any beings that knew enough to be able to figure out interstellar travel would likely be pretty far advanced as well in other fields I imagine.

I fail to see how changing control from an entity whose main regard in running an enterprise is the betterment of its citizens (in theory anyway), to one whose only goal is to make a profit will benefit the majority of us. Maybe someone can explain to me exactly how that works. Well, it seems to me the more "freedoms" corporations enjoy, the fewer most of the rest of us have. How is it to anyone's (other than those making money from it) benefit to allow enterprises to cause oil spills in the oceans, dump toxic chemicals into rivers and lakes, or cause acid rain? How is it to the majorities advantage to allow wages to be depressed to the point where the lowest paid workers in the world become the standard? By the standard you have stated above, the last couple of decades of the 19th century should have been among the most innovative in history, is this true (hint, try to think of major corporate advances from that time)? One of the problems with allowing corporate anarchy (or "freedom" if you prefer), is that all of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities I have ever read about in any of our republic's founding documents apply to individuals not corporations. In fact, there is nothing in them that I have ever seen that even gives a corporation a legal right to exist much less any specific rights or priveleges.

The only thing missing from that definition is the organisms.

Are you asking about memes?

Baby Astronaut; If you don't already know the answers to those questions, you do not already know everything about that dog. The point being, why ask questions of a being who you are likely to know more about than they do of themselves?

Perhaps. You have to remember, though, people who build new things are hardly "average" for their time (or probably any time for that matter). My training is in engineering but I would argue that I could build an airplane in less time and better than the Wright brothers. Not because I know more about it than they did but because I know where to get the information and what questions to answer in order to do it. The reason I would expect to be successful at the above proposition is because I realize there is a vast body of information that has accumulated since that time about what they were doing to which they had no access (it didn't exist then). IMO it is this ability to locate information and put it into a usable form that ties human knowledge together for all of us and enables faster advancement, actual understanding is less important than ability to understand.

Jackson33; I would tend to agree that massive govenment spending creates a false bottom, however, I think that applies only to things government does not normally spend money on. The price of things like roads, sewer systems, water supply pipelines, etc. are not much affected by whether the government or someone else spends the money, since it is the government that undertakes the ovewhelming majority of those sorts of expenditures anyway. I don't think individuals should be required to pay income taxes (questionably legal anyway IMO) but the companies they work for should. The reason being that the tax code is so complex that the ones who have to hire accountants anyway should just have them keep track of it all. We can argue about how that is done exactly and at what level but it would simplify things for most people and make one less thing they can get in trouble with their government over. The rest of your post seems to me like a prescription for corporate anarchy, IMO. It seems to me corporate America needs more regulation, not the indvidual citizens giving up their rights to corporations for corporate "freedom".

What I always wondered is why an alien would want to speak to a human anyway. It would be like speaking to a dog you already knew everything about, maybe an interesting communication exercise but not likely to be very enlightening and IMO hardly worth travelling interstellar distances to do, when you already have a dog in your house.

I thought it was because more ballots for Franken were challenged than for Coleman? Am I wrong about this?

Actually, I am a little surprised they even answered it.

At the rate the government is printing money this (the bold part) is a questionable proposition.

CaptainPanic; If there was an efficient nationwide transit system already, I would likely not be arguing for advancing the road technology in as sudden a change as I do. The last time I was in Europe was about 1980 and I can tell you that even then public transit there was much better than it is in most places in America today. There are some local systems that have their act together and provide good service but many do not and the national grid is pathetic for passenger travel. Also the rate of electric train use is far higher in Europe and on local American transit than for freight in the U.S. (I know there are numbers out there but I forget where I saw them). It is true that the cost of rail and interstate highway are comparable (high-speed rail is slightly more though) but I believe that by prefabricating the roadways in sections we can both significantly decrease cost, and increase speed of construction. In urban settings, any construction is going to be both disruptive and expensive so I would think the initial thrust would be to connect different city's transit systems and enable citizens in smaller communities to connect. Space for construction of merges is a problem, too, as you rightly point out. One thing about America is that our streets are mostly wider than European ones, I believe that by running vehicles (the majority anyway) more the size of a Cooper Mini than the size of a Humvee will address much of the problem along with the fact that automated vehicle don't need as much room for safety margins. We will disagree for now about the need for however many cross streets, as I have yet to do any serious consideration of the matter. Here is the link you wanted, it also has a good description of what is and isn't high-speed. Seems like it was the Japanese that did 581 kph not the Germans. The Germans were the previous record holder.

frankcox; You are correct I don't understand the arguments of creationists.....they make no sense. I recommend reading "The Great Monkey Trial" by L. Sprague Decamp. It is long but very interesting book about the "Scopes Monkey Trial" and does a very good job of describing the arguments of both sides used for the trial and giving background for each. The long and short of it is that it was impossible for John Scopes to get a fair trail in the venue he was tried, yet the majority of jurors agreed that he should never have been tried even though they convicted him (the trial was not about the truth or falsehood of evolution, it was about whether he taught it in school as a substitute teacher). BTW I can provide more evidence for evolution than you can provide for "god"

How can one argue against evolution on the one hand, then claim passing on deleterious traits is weakening the human populace on the other?

I would disagree with the notion that taxes are the final resting place for dollars. The government has never successfully run a surplus for any significant period other than to pay off a previous deficit. That means the money has to be going somewhere i.e spent on goods, services, subsidies etc. The biggest problem is that the government is fairly inept at doing it and often gets little return on its dollar. If this can be changed through better oversight and direction of funds, IMO there is no reason government spending cannot significantly help in putting our economy back to a positive direction. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged*note: The "multiplier effect" of job creation for military spending should also be true of any other kind, so really does nothing to justify spending on military over anything else

Only if they come into your house or assault you....um, well I guess you could take them quail hunting if you are the vice-president.