The I's have it

[Pangloss]

The Democrats are interested in passing Wall Street reform and the Republicans are not. The Democrats are actually concerned about preventing a financial crisis from happening again. The Republicans are not.

 

Well I guess you've answered my question, if you interpret that question as asking how voting Democrat 100% of the time will advance one of the two equally viable economic theories over the other one.

 

 

Also as I noted before, I voted for a Republican candidate this election because I liked him more than his Democratic counterpart.

 

Okay. So how are you different from other Americans looking at their own candidates? Why are you making an informed decision to vote for a Republican over a Democrat, but they are being mislead by Fox News?

[bascule]

Well I guess you've answered my question, if you interpret that question as asking how voting Democrat 100% of the time will advance one of the two equally viable economic theories over the other one.

 

"Two equally viable economic theories" is a false dichotomy. In fact offhand I can't even tell what two economic theories you're referring to. That said I want to speak specifically to Greenspan's monetarism.

 

The financial crisis empirically proved Brooksley Born right and proved Greenspan wrong. Greenspan even admitted as much. Monetarism is predicated on the idea that corporations are completely rational and will always act in their own self-interest. The financial crisis proved that, like people, corporations can get too greedy, take too much risk, and may not even know how much risk they're taking. The Republicans don't seem to care and are happy with business as usual on Wall Street. The Democrats believe more regulation of Wall Street is needed to prevent another financial crisis.

 

One of these parties learned from past mistakes. The other did not. That said, I am somewhat unhappy with the Democrats for ramming through healthcare reform before addressing increased Wall Street regulation, or rather, undoing detrimental deregulation. Entities like Citigroup should not be allowed to exist, and at the very least, they should not be allowed to trade in risky and hard-to-comprehend derivatives like CDOs.

 

Okay. So how are you different from other Americans looking at their own candidates? Why are you making an informed decision to vote for a Republican over a Democrat, but they are being mislead by Fox News?

 

I made an informed decision. There are people who make informed decision when voting predominantly for Republicans too. Those people are generally quite rich and selfish and are acting in their own self-interest. I believe the majority of people who vote Republican are uninformed and vote against their own self-interest while convincing themselves they're doing the opposite.

Edited November 5, 2010 by bascule

[Pangloss]

I think I'll just leave it at that, except to say that I think I know you well enough to know that if it does turn out that Republicans have learned from their mistakes, then you'll support their actions. I may not share your political leanings but I think you're a fair person.

[JohnB]

lemur, I take your points, but we see things differently. There are other options for decentralised government than just the "Republic", which also have their own inbuilt checks and balances. I live in a Federation which is a "Constitutional Monarchy". When the various colonies decided to combine and form the single nation known as Australia, the powers of the different levels of government were very strictly defined. Things that pertained to the good of the nation as a whole became the responsibility of the Federal govt (say Customs and Excise) and the States gave up their individual rights in this area. Other things were deemed the responsibility of the individual States and the Federal govt doesn't get a say in the matter. "Republic" is not the only way to do what your system does.

 

In many ways it's the balance of "Authority" and "Responsibility". If something that effects the nation as a whole is going to be the responsibility of the Federal govt, then they are required to have the authority to do something about it. On a larger scale it is exactly the same thing that allows a State legislature to override a local council. In many cases in the US it appears that you want to have the Federal govt to be responsible, but are unwilling to grant them the authority required. This is an untenable situation.

 

Something that you might want to consider. Your Constitution can be changed by your governments, ours must be changed by a direct Referendum of the people. The Federal govt cannot assume any power that is not explicitly granted them under the Constitution without asking for and gaining the direct permission of the Australian people.

 

Being five or six times the size of the UK, just the state of Texas is bigger than Australia, California has more people than Canada, and like two and a half times the size of the Netherlands.

(Emphasis mine.)

 

Demosthenes, get thee to an Atlas.

 

If you are talking about the lower 48 States, then the US is about the same size as Australia. (7,680,577 v 7,692,024 square km) Texas would rank as our 6th largest State and with an area of 678,051 sqare km would fit 2.5 times into my home State of Queensland (1,730,648 squre km) and nearly 4 times into Western Australia, our biggest State. Our smallest State, Tasmania is bigger than every US State from Florida on down in the area rankings. The cattle property "Victoria River Downs" at its peak was bigger than Maryland and roughly half the size of Virginia. The current largest, "Anna Creek" is some 2,000 square km larger than Conneticut.

 

Each of our States have local govt areas called "Shires", run by a City or Shire Council. The Shire of East Pilbara in Western Australia is bigger than every US State except for California, Texas and Alaska. The Barkly Shire in the Northern Territory would rank as your 5th largest State, being slightly smaller than Montana. Please, when it comes to "sheer size", we know a fair bit more about that than your govt does.

 

People are another matter. East Pilbara has a population of 7,500 and Barkly has an estimated population of about 8,100. It's population densities like that which make getting good medical care to these regions very hard.