Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[zabu of nΩd]

OMGFUCKINGCONSERVATIVESARRRRGGGSOWRONGABOUTEVERYTHINGHATEREPUBLICANPARTYWANTOKILLBUSHEVENTHOUGHHESNOLONGERPRESIDENTRAAAAARRAAAGHAHFHAHA

You done?

 

[Cythraul]

I would love to see as much congressional intervention in monetary policy as possible.

You can't possibly be serious unless you have no clue what you're talking about. A supposedly "independent" Fed can't even get monetary policy right (well, our central bank turns out to be one of the better ones, believe it or not.) So, you want the economic illiterates in Congress intervening in monetary policy? I'm all for knowing what goes on at the Fed, but it seems crazy to let monetary policy be dictated by a bunch of people who can't even get their social engineering schemes right.

 

[Dak]

U.S. Constitution - Article 1 Section 8
Article 1 - The Legislative Branch
Section 8 - Powers of Congress

<<Back | Table of Contents | Next>>

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

Letting a private entity control the monetary system is putting a literal fox in the national wealth "henhouse", as history has shown.

 

[Einherjar86]

Cythraul's post looks like it'll take a good deal of time on my part to respond to, so I'll start with Einherjer:



I find this post a little confusing, but I'll do my best to address your points:

I think I understand what you're talking about regarding people and their ideals, but just because we would prefer to see the world a certain way doesn't mean we are justified in holding completely delusional fantasies about how the world works "on paper". This is where idealism becomes, well, stupidity frankly. I would say that any mature human being can recognise that there are merits to others' worldviews in addition to their own, and that there is often room for compromise that can bring together the best (or better) of both worlds, even if there will always be subjective disagreement over where to draw the line between one side and the other. I already gave an example of this when I talked about coming up with a set of standard criteria for which activities society considers 'too dangerous' to be legal.

At any rate, I don't think I have to remind you that virtually every law that exists today is the product of an ideal or some compromise of multiple ideals, so there are clearly practical applications of ideals. There is no need for you, Cythraul or any of us to be abandoning the prospect of a sound and pragmatic code of law just because not everyone in the society bound by that law shares the exact same worldview.

I agree with a lot of what you say; but I still so often find debates of this type tedious and futile, primarily because people base their identity on the ideals they maintain. This, in turn, leads us to question whether any system is truly "right" in an objective sense.

When I posted that last big post, I was venting frustration over the fact that this country (and world) is so divided primarily because people are too stubborn and self-centered to dissociate themselves from their ideals and realize that there is a middle ground. We've become a society that understands itself in terms of winning and losing, triumph and loss.

Anyway, it isn't pointless to argue, I know that. Sorry about those tantrums.

 

[Matt]

You done?

NO

Also, Cyth, I just want massive amounts of regulation. I'm not informed enough to know who is supposed to do it.

 

[Dak]

A Dire Assessment of the US economic and by proxy political state

 

[Dak]

On a side note, did you get around to reading any of the stuff I linked to you?

Edit: Also:

UK police to use spy drones

But the UK is one of the freest countries on earth.

And the US is next: NY Times

 

[The Ozzman]

You can't possibly be serious unless you have no clue what you're talking about. A supposedly "independent" Fed can't even get monetary policy right (well, our central bank turns out to be one of the better ones, believe it or not.) So, you want the economic illiterates in Congress intervening in monetary policy? I'm all for knowing what goes on at the Fed, but it seems crazy to let monetary policy be dictated by a bunch of people who can't even get their social engineering schemes right.

I am buying you a few pitchers of beer at MDF.

NO

Also, Cyth, I just want massive amounts of regulation. I'm not informed enough to know who is supposed to do it.

So you don't want a free market or the ability to start up your own business without tons of red tape?

 

[Dak]

There is a difference between free markets/enterprise and Congress setting monetary policy.

 

[The Ozzman]

Well, Congress setting monetary policy is pretty much the only way to not have a roller coaster type system like we do now (and not have a flawed reserve system)

I hope that's what you're meaning?

 

[Dak]

Exactly. There is monetary policy and then there is freedom to operate your business. A business providing a constructive service or production. Banks acting as extensions of the Fed are neither.

Edit: International free trade (from a US position) needs to be killed as well. You can't have a "Free market" across different rule/monetary systems. It's extremely destructive for an advanced nation as evidenced by what is going on now.

"Multinational corporations" rape third world countries for production(and therefore profits) due to lack of government control and citizen protection and rake in the profits selling to the debtor countries who can currently afford it.

By taking a more "isolationist" approach, you protect the jobs in the country (production) and keep a stable economy.

Giving corporations free reign to run in and out of the country has caused way more damage to our economy through job loss than any immigration problems.

 

[The Ozzman]

Regarding isolationist policy, what about the theory of comparative and absolute advantage and how it relates to trade?

 

[Dak]

Can you be more specific?

Right now what is occuring (and I got to see this first hand during my truck driving stint) is that Company A, which was manufacturing, assembling, distributing, and selling in the US has slowly outsourced manufacturing to a third world country to take advantage of sweatshop labor, then has it shipped in bulk to Mexico for assembly, and then distributes it into the US for retail.

A economic system is a loop system. Wealth flows in a circle (and of course credit injection from central banks increases the amount, or saving decreases the amount in flow). What international trade is causing is not only expanding the loop out of the country, it also is ever decreasing the amount of money cycling through the system as it piles up at the top of the corporate ladder. The money piling up at the top is the difference in wages paid to third world workers vs protected workers in developed countries.

This not only syphones wealth out of the developed countries, it directly funnels the majority of it straight into the pockets of the corporate and bankster heads.

Any reinvestment by corporations will be into manufacturing bases. So what has happened since the free trade agreements were signed in the last couple of decades is the US and Europe being bled dry by corporations under the noble sounding banner of "free trade". The "Rust belt" has actually dried up. Stuff is still being produced, it is just being produced outside the US, but the people in the US have run out of wages, savings, and credit to buy. The same amount of money (actually tons more) are out there, it has just been sucked up to the top.

The end result would be all nations at "2nd world status" and a ultra rich international corporate oligarchy. Of course, globalist think tanks have been pushing this agenda for years knowing that global trade will eventually demand global governance.

I have left out what I consider some obvious details to the whole thing (explaining the rest of the whole wealth cycle/breakdown theory), but any intelligent person should get the picture.

 

[The Ozzman]

I'm saying that, according to the theory of comparative advantage, if one country can manufacture, say, 5 bushels of wheat for the same amount of material it takes to produce 3 sheaths of corn and another can manufacture 5 sheaths of corn with the same energy it takes to produce 3 bushels of wheat, why would it be bad to trade 5 bushels of wheat for 5 sheaths of corn? If a country doesn't have an absolute advantage (that is, they are able to produce everything without a deficit of sorts), then what's the problem with trade?

I think what I'm talking about is a very primitive and theoretical way of how trade works

In economics, the law of comparative advantage refers to the ability of a party (an individual, a firm, or a country) to produce a particular good or service at a lower opportunity cost than another party. It is the ability to produce a product most efficiently given all the other products that could be produced.[1][2] It can be contrasted with absolute advantage which refers to the ability of a party to produce a particular good at a lower absolute cost than another.

This says why trade with other nations is good on a very basic level. I understand what you're trying to say, but totally shutting ourselves off from other nations really won't help us much if we can't find goods at a cheaper cost to us.

 

[Dak]

The US has the resources to be self-sustaining outside of *some* luxury items.

We currently cannot have a comparative or absolute advantage (in general) with third world nations due to difference in currency values and labor costs.

It is an "unfair playing field", and good "protectionist" policies do exactly as they are labeled. Protect the local manufacturing base.

The more you produce, and the more efficiently, the better for the local/national economy. While in the short run, it may seem more advantageous to import for cheaper, this destroys long term purchasing power. Importing should only be done when A: The work force is short-handed. B. During the transitional phase to beginning/streamlining internal production C. The raw materials are entirely unavailable or overpriced.

Also, you are referring to nation to nation trading. In the current "Free market" model, you don't have nations exchanging different types of wealth at an even exchange, you have a transfer of goods from plant to market, and a transfer of money into corporate pockets, with a small trickle down to the workers. These workers in turn do not make enough to keep the system running at a "Developed" level, while the developed nations eventually lose enough production power to also lose the purchasing power to continue being "developed".

I should have said "protectionism" as opposed to "isolationism".

 

[Dak]

Deficit Report highlights Obama's challenge

Curb non security, non-"entitlement" domestic spending, saving a few billion per year out of a 1.5+ trillion dollar deficit. Band-aid on a sucking chest wound.

Removing all our globally flung military assets should save well over 1.5 trillion in the long run. International base maintenance is killing our budget.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I agree with a lot of what you say; but I still so often find debates of this type tedious and futile, primarily because people base their identity on the ideals they maintain. This, in turn, leads us to question whether any system is truly "right" in an objective sense.

Nothing wrong with questioning that, but just because morality and philosophy aren't always objective doesn't mean we can't make policy decisions based on subjective intuitions.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I framed it as an either/or issue because the two intuitions seem to me hard to reconcile in a non-arbitrary way. The two intuitions roughly track the distinction between consequentialism and deontology, I think. Those two forms of ethical reasoning seem to me incommensurable. So, for instance, if I employ deontological reasoning in my ethical thinking, it is hard to see how I could also allow consequentialistic reasoning into my ethical thinking in a non-arbitrary, principled way. Of course, you could just take a view that focuses solely on well-being (which is a consequentialistic view) and put autonomy under the category of that which constitutes or contributes to well-being. That seems perfectly intelligible to me, and I think that is probably your view, but the problem that remains is that you need to find a non-arbitrary, principled way of assigning weights to autonomy and other kinds of well-being in specific cases. I don't see an obvious way to do that.

I think that you may very well hold the view that on one side there is this impractical libertarianism which does not tend to contribute to human well-being and on the other side there is this non-libertarianism which is pragmatic and focuses on what is good for people. I honestly think that is a false dichotomy. I actually think there are good reasons for thinking that adopting a broadly libertarian framework in matters of policy would contribute optimally to human well-being over time. It goes well beyond pure philosophy and involves lots of economics and social theorizing. A nice book on the subject you might want to take a look at is Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility by David Schmidtz and Robert Goodin (David Schmidtz actually taught at my alma mater and is a fucking smart dude.) Schmidtz defends a broadly libertarian view whereas Goodin defends a non-libertarian view supportive of the welfare state. Check it out.

Looks like I'll have to educate myself a little better before I can really do this debate with you then. I'd actually love to read a book on this topic, not just because it's an interesting one but because it'll give us something to discuss while we hang out in Baltimore this May. I will do my best to read Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility before then.

In the mean time, maybe you could explain this consequentialism vs. deontology thing to me a bit. Are you basically saying social welfare-ism is an example of the consequences of a policy being the only guiding basis of a policy decision, whereas libertarianism disregards any possible consequences in favor of a static/absolute set of principles? I find this deontology thing very confusing, as it seems to me that the only reason we would ever have laws or any sort of ethical policies is because we believe the results of those laws/policies will justify them.

The only way I can imagine arriving at a static/absolute set of moral principles is by "proving" them with empirical evidence of the real-world results of following those principles. Until we can more or less scientifically reproduce the desired results from a moral policy (i.e. by social experimentation via a set of autonomous political territories), I seriously doubt we could know for sure that any moral principle is as sound as we hope it is.

 

[Dak]

The problem with "subjective intuitions" is that they usually vary from person to person.

We both look at seat belts as a generally good thing.

You say "It's good enough for everyone to have to wear it by law."
I say "Sure it's good, but it's none of your business whether I wear it or not". And it isn't.My wearing or not wearing a seatbelt does not endanger you on the road that we share.

We both (I assume) would agree that texting while driving is dangerous.

You would say "It's bad enough that no one should be allowed to do it by law."
I would say " I agree, it's a danger to everyone on the road".

Having things and using things in ways that do not endanger others should never be unlawful IE: If I had a million guns and a million rounds of ammo next door to you but we are friends, are you in danger? No.

If someone owns a cell phone, but never texts (or calls to be extra safe) while driving, are they a danger on the road? No (at least not for that reason).


Edit: Post jumped.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

And the US is next: NY Times

Police drones would actually be a great thing to have imo, if they weren't used in an abusive way. In order for them to be used ethically I think they would have to give the public access to the video streams from the drones (except when it comes to raids and other police operations requiring an element of surprise, in which case they should require some kind of warrant to be used without public access for specific instances), that way the police and government personnel themselves are just as accountable for their actions as the general public is. Not gonna happen of course, but I just wanted to point out that drones could theoretically be done right.