Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[AdrienIer]

I mean, sure, you can talk about bureaucracy being inefficient, and the market being a valuable coordinating mechanism that passes information about needs and abilities, ensuring that labour is allocated exactly where it's demanded

You can talk about it, but why would you say false things ?

Who would decide how many houses to build, and of what type? How many competing designs would they try? How would they know which design actually fulfills the people's needs best? What space would be left for a person that doesn't care much about housing, and is prepared to live almost in a capsule, as long as he can go out and socialize in as expensive places as he can afford? It's even worse with clothing -- what clothes, how many, which colors, who gets to call all these production shots?

The market is highly innefficient. Your projection of the market may be great, but the market's obsession with short term, short sighted money making is its greatest flaw. Add to that the market's prejudice against certain population (because the market is just the aggregate of the people working in a certain field, and those people have prejudices of their own), and you get the current situation which does not, cannot self regulate.

The bottomline is that the world as it is broadly works. It works exactly because of, not in spite, the market. We know that because for the longest time in human history there were no markets, and we know exactly the effects of that.

For the longest time in human history there was little technological advance, and devastating wars all the time. The existence of a free market has nothing to do with a society becoming more prosperous

People who get badly done in this system exist, but they are relatively few.

In what world do you live in ? Even if you only count them in the west there are like tens of millions of people badly done by the system.

[Bacchus]

For the longest time in human history there was little technological advance, and devastating wars all the time. The existence of a free market has nothing to do with a society becoming more prosperous

It does, and you can actually see it in data by comparing similar societies which moved towards market liberalization at different speeds.

In fact, the effect is so strong that there is not an unreasonable argument that technological advances 'stick' to the systems of productions only under free market conditions. Newton, Boyle and Pascal published everything that's needed for a steam engine, and indeed the steam engines were developed right there and then, at the end of the seventeenth century. Similarly, the Bessemer process, or something similar to it, was available to Europeans already at that time (by importation from Japan, interestingly enough). You would be very hard pressed to find any major technological advance that could possibly account for the growth of prosperity in the first half of the 19th century. Electrical engineering would be your best bet, but comes too late, and in a production context mostly used for lighting until the very end of 19th century. Conversely, it is a patent fact that the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century was an enormous event with direct technological consequences, which, by your account, should have translated to prosperity -- it didn't, not for over a century. But this is a more tenuous thesis than a more general link between markets and prosperity, that is just not in question if you know your data.

In what world do you live in ? Even if you only count them in the west there are like tens of millions of people badly done by the system.

Indeed, so around 10%. 15%, maybe 20% in countries where the issue is really bad. It is a real problem, but it is a problem of the minority, and is much better solved by adjustments to the system, than it's replacement.

But I'm actually pretty certain, as of now, that the West is fully on the road to embracing some sort of socialism. Which I guess is fair enough, you need to try it, before you really know how bad it is. Too bad I'm going to have to live through that period, and too bad you can't learn from the foolishness of others. What's funny is that there is absolutely no disagreement whatsoever among people who actually study economics that the market, in general, works. Even Piketty says: "It’s easier for my generation to reopen the issue of inequality dynamics under capitalism, because I take for granted that private property is part of the solution" -- the thing is, the non-economists listen to critiques that come from within economics, and take them to be for what they are not. Piketty knows the market works, he also wants some intervention into it, but as a corrective intervention into what is, fundamentally, a functioning system. But AdrienIer would discard even that, now the market doesn't work at all, and has nothing to do with prosperity! I mean, seriously, write to Piketty, he answers e-mails, ask him this question directly.

[AdrienIer]

The 17th century was a century of conservatism (for the most part), without a drive to transform society by using the new technologies. It was also a century of war. The post-napoleonic europe on the other hand was rather war-less between the great powers (until the rise of Prussia created new conflicts). It's not a coincidence that the countries that waged large scale wars during that era (russia and the Ottomans) started lagging behind the others.
The rise of a free market during that time is a consequence of the growing prosperity and of the new opportunities available.

Let's go with 15% of people having it really bad. 25% having it bad, but manageable. 20% having it ok, and the rest benefiting from a free market by going from rich to even richer (on different scales). I think that's under the actual numbers (I think about 10% of the population really prospers, and at most 20% does pretty good), but it still means that it's not a "problem of the minority", but a large scale problem.

It's not that the market doesn't work at all. Clearly we're not starving. But is that the only goal ? The market is not efficient. A free market is very inefficient. A controlled market would probably be a lot better, and other solutions might arise as well. I'm willing to try to make the system better. Why aren't you ?

Also you might want to state what you mean by "embracing some sort of socialism". The social-democrats haven't made their countries wasteland, and many countries have implemented what I would call socialist policies with success. Or are you talking about Communism/Marxism ?

[Bacchus]

What I wrote about the market was written in the first place in response to Mr Cairo. He explicitly advocated removing the market entirely, as a 'middleman' that has no value. I don't know what the hell you read into my comments, but clearly not anything to do with the discussion we were having. I said nothing about the market being 'efficient', whatever that means, nothing about to what extent and whether it should be regulated, I made no argument for a radical free-marketeerism. All I said is that the market, as an overall approach, solves a problem that the government, as an overall approach, is ill-suited to solve. Mr Cairo explicitly advocated for a command economy in basic goods, not a controlled market in them.

The discussion of whether the market can be made better by regulation is an entirely separate discussion, which rests on the assumption that the market is actually doing something broadly useful. From your comments it's pretty evident you still underestimate exactly how broadly useful that is or why. The difference between a system based on voluntary exchange and a system based on command is absolutely massive, and voluntary exchange, in itself, is a massive driver of prosperity. It is totally worth understanding why that is, because without that understanding it's pretty futile trying to come up with ways of controlling exchange that would make anyone better.

Your estimates I would say are completely off. By your account, the median Frenchman has it 'ok'. You have no idea what kind of luxury you live in, and it's clear this is not a discussion worth pursuing, we just come from completely different worlds (and I'm very happy that you come from that different world, I'm just sad your underappreciation of how astonishingly wealthy you are might lead you to throw it away). Could life be even better? Sure. But if you refuse to acknowledge how great it is, and how it got that way, you are not likely to promote any further betterment.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I am loathe to blanket describe the market as "efficient" or "inefficient", they tend to excel at optimizing goals towards a particular set of metrics. Even if the outcome is inimical to human existence. You know how transhumanists handwring about AI forming a paperclip optimizer? Such a system already exists: the corporation exists to generate shareholder value, and discard externalities onto everyone else.

Markets are a valuable tool that has to be tamed, and that's where the principals of democracy and socialism come in.

[Tasunke]

No, actually Libshits ruined South Africa. It was running smoothly in its Apartheid state. It wasn't "Blacks" that ruined Apartheid, it was western Libshits and local libshits ... largely economic and diplomatic sanctions et al in an attempt to 'end Apartheid' ... and when the nation was ruined, the local libshits ran away instead of sticking around to see the wage of their own sins ... (sins of arrogance, et al)

I don't get why you are so 1 dimensional on this.

fookin yikes

I assume Tasunke posted that and didn't realize that you get an e-mail as soon as the post is made... 

Nah, that was a DM, but it was his right to post it. Israeli Apartheid is no less justified than South African Apartheid ... only now, the treatment of White Afrikaaners by the Bantu is global historical justification for a White 'Israel/Ethnostate'.

From what I have seen, at least of the ideological sort, is that after bleeding heart liberals inherently break a nation, either A) they leave, or B) are in firm self denial until suffering some sort of fatality from the 'South African treatment'.

Tasunke... what are you saying here?  I've read this post a couple times now and am still unsure what point you're trying to make.  The part about "bleeding heart liberals" inherently "break[ing] a nation" and then leaving is nonsense on its face, but the rest is just confusing.  

The loudest agitators for the end of Apartheid fled the nation after handing the reigns over to Nelson Mandela. Millions of Californians are leaving California, all the liberal whites that started the liberal policies in Minneapolis, Detroit, and Chicago generally either left the city or left areas where their 'grand policies' were at work because "clearly living alongside the fruits of their labor is beneath them." In the American examples, it is a case of Blue cities gutting themselves and then the citizens spreading out to other cities and states, like a virus. I'm not sure which parts you find confusing tbh, could you specify?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Yooo Tasunke you're fucking stupid, the big cities are growing as they attract high income earners, which is a whole nother can of worms as they gentrify neighborhoods and force out previous residents.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Person 1: "There are fundamental flaws in the free market."

Person 2: "There are flaws, which can be mitigated using good governance and progressive policies."

Person 3: "Good governance is difficult, and there lie contradictions in the ability to represent a variety of interest groups."

Person 4: "The Jews are trying to sabotage the nation."

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Apologies to Bacchus for calling him stupid, the Ipecac/Tasunke tag-team has snatched up the crown and lapped the competition.

[T-hawk]

Nicolae, speaking as a moderator, please lay off the ad-hominem insults.  Calling someone stupid isn't an argument.  There's some leeway that comes with a "Heated Arguing Warning" but there's still some standard of civil decorum.

Speaking as a debate participant, I'm somewhat confused by Tasunke's arguments too, but see no need to hurl insults in response. That elites flee after integration is certainly a possibility, though I'd want to see some supporting evidence. From what I've read, the California exodus is more conservatives fleeing the liberal madness.