Ilikemustard
New Member
Well sure, we can look at resources that are "in between", and only partially socialized, i.e subsidized. Like food in Egypt, which ended up low in supply and high in price, and is blamed for sparking the riots in Egypt.AdmiralPeacock said:You're larbouring under the delusion that it's either A> Free Market or B> Socialism. One or the other. That's simply not representative of reality.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/High-Food-Prices-Helped-Spark-Egypt-Protests-116170879.html
"price controls or food subsidies, which are expensive and bad for the economy in the long run"
Or you can look at the partially free healthcare market in the USA, which is heavily subsidized, and doing incredibly poorly.
Or food dumping in Africa and other areas by the USA and others in the form of "foreign aid". All it does is put farmers out of jobs and wreck the economy, whilst making Africans dependent on foreign aid in the same way a fed bird becomes dependent on the person feeding it.
Or the airline industry.
Um, can you find me a nation without any social services? No, you can only measure the amount of money spent on social services as a percentage of GDP. And even then it's not exactly a relevant statistic in relation to HDI, as obviously a nation with a high GDP per capita that spends more on social services as a percentage of GDP is going to have a higher HDI than a nation with a low GDP per capita that spends very little on social services as a percentage of GDP, regardless of the economic growth of each nation. You can compare two nations with similar GDP per capita statistics, but looking at a list of nations by GDP per capita and a list of nations by HDI shows this to be a mixed result, as the USA and Norway are almost identical in GDP per capita and HDI, despite the fact that (from the statistics that I can find) the USA spends only 14.8% of its GDP on welfare whilst Norway spends 23.9% of its GDP on welfare.AdmiralPeacock said:it's objectively true that a nations with social services have a higher standard of living than nations without social services
You can, however, look at a state that has transitioned from high welfare to low welfare. Somalia is an excellent example, as it went from high welfare to almost no welfare during its period of statelessness, and experienced increases in standards of living.
http://namcub.accela-labs.com/pdf/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf
The word experienced is past tense. Regardless this is a matter of miscommunication and isn't relevant.AdmiralPeacock said:Perhaps you should be more careful with the tenses then. "Nations like China, while having their heart in the right place and trying to socialise food so that the poorest can eat the same meal as the rich, experienced famine. " I accept that you might have meant a past tense, but you didn't even imply one.
I am not arguing against communists (as if communism is the only political stance that advocates socialization of resources?), I am arguing in favour of total economic freedom. Which you are arguing against. Or did I misinterpret your multiple arguments in favour of state regulation and state control of the economy?AdmiralPeacock said:Likewise - you just strawman my arguments (i.e. arguing against communists for some stupid reason)
Yeah, I know you're not arguing against all freedoms. Have you considered that maybe you're misinterpreting my argument, though? I'm saying that the more free a resource becomes economically, the more growth it experiences, as well as experiencing lower prices. This doesn't mean that I think you want communism. It means I believe economic freedom should not be in some grey area between communism and absolute freedom, which you seem to want.
Oh ho ho, that is rich. If there is anything pretentious about my comments it was simply an act of returning the favour.AdmiralPeacock said:Here's another questionable debate strategy - Fuck you and your pretentious ass.
I mean, do you honestly believe these remarks of yours are not pretentious?
AdmiralPeacock said:DUH! I swear you're a fucking moron
AdmiralPeacock said:You're grasping at straws now.
AdmiralPeacock said:You're right your logic here is no existence - good thing you said it and not me.
AdmiralPeacock said:expand your field of experience
AdmiralPeacock said:The irony is that delicious
AdmiralPeacock said:Heh, yeah... what is the name of this imaginary world you live in called?
AdmiralPeacock said:One of the few worthwhile to creep out of Ayn Rand's cake hole
AdmiralPeacock said:Heh, the ultimate irony here is you mini-anarchists, anarchists and like hold Individualism in such high regard; but I swear you all sound so similar as to basically be Borg.
AdmiralPeacock said:Or are you one of those NWO retards?
AdmiralPeacock said:you failed to understand my point... unsurprisingly.
AdmiralPeacock said:I know it stings, but take consolation with the fact that hippy fucktards that employ the argument for nature fallacy to criticize modern life are just as owned.
AdmiralPeacock said:Yeah yeah there's a difference... just like there's a difference between being stabbed in the liver and being stabbed in the heart.
This old gem.AdmiralPeacock said:By "Better source" you mean a Conservative circle jerk... errr I mean Think Tank.
AdmiralPeacock said:heh, you've yet to come close to establishing things. So far you've basically said, "State bad, private good... [insert some inane crap] and because I say so".
Lol?AdmiralPeacock said:your arguments can be boiled down to a kind of quasi-juvenile interpretation of inherent social obligation which is evident in the language you use
This one is particularly annoying, and not just because you refer to me along with my "ilk" as if we are evil fiends, but because I know your definition of my "ilk" would include everyone to the right side of the political spectrum, including conservatives.AdmiralPeacock said:Fuck you
Annnnd here is where it all started.AdmiralPeacock said:you or your ilk
AdmiralPeacock said:Another conservative that can not look beyond their own self righteousness to present has "pinko commies" another ridiculous strawman of a generalized image of the left. Joy!
I honestly tried to be polite. Honestly. Clearly though you're a deluded hypocrite of the most monstrous kind, and far too ignorant of it.
Oh, and "fuck you" isn't an argument.
Well you've seemed to miss the fact that enforced intellectual property law is regulation.AdmiralPeacock said:http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/press ... rices-poor
It focuses on the debate on how to get quality medicines into poorer countries (tighter quality regulation vs enforced intellectual property laws) - but the fact there are substandard medicines in such abundance in these countries without any real regulation is my point.
The funny thing is though, the entire article goes on about "poor countries" and "rich countries" whilst rarely even naming a country. Indeed, this quote:
"studies indicate that in some countries as much as 44 per cent of certain types of medicines, such as anti-malarials, are substandard"
is exceptionally hilarious, as it refers to 'some countries' without actually naming any of them, and does not even give a source for the studies. I mean seriously?
Um, ok? This just gives a few statistics about the sales of herbal medicines, and gives no information on the statistics of counterfeit herbal medicines, the statistics of dangerous herbal medicines, or the statistics of people injured by herbal medicines. So what is the point of this?AdmiralPeacock said:http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs134/en/
Briefly talks about Herbal Medicine and the safety issues.
In the paragraph about "Safety, effectiveness and quality", they even admitted they don't know much about herbal medicine.
Awesome. I'm not watching an hour long lecture, though.AdmiralPeacock said:History of US Food Regulation - Food Toxicology - Instructor: Gregory Mà¶ller, Ph.D. - University of Idaho
Lecture outline http://www.agls.uidaho.edu/foodtox/lect ... utline.pdf
http://www.agls.uidaho.edu/foodtox/lect ... cture2.htm
Since this source doesn't list what the journalists discovered about the marketplace, or what made the meat-packing industry nauseating, I can't exactly form a counter-argument to this.AdmiralPeacock said:FDA History - Part I
The 1906 Food and Drugs Act and Its Enforcement
http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/Hi ... 054819.htm
"While Wiley was stumping for a law, muckraking journalists such as Samuel Hopkins Adams exposed in vivid detail the hazards of the marketplace. In fact, the nauseating condition of the meat-packing industry that Upton Sinclair captured in The Jungle was the final precipitating force behind both a meat inspection law and a comprehensive food and drug law"
Yeah, and no one is forcing those children to work. They can quit at any time. Which is the most obvious flaw in the statement "children wasting their bodies and souls".AdmiralPeacock said:Edwin Markham children in Bondage (1914)
http://www.sjsu.edu/reading/markham.htm#Children
The authors begin by noting that the 1900 Census indicated that about 2 million children were wage earners. Markham wrote 11 of the chapters including the ones that detailed the nature of the work children were engaged in including working in glass factories, sweatshops, coal mines, the tobacco industry, canneries, street peddling, and holiday workers making decorations and boxing gift items. In Chapter VI (p. 122), Markham comments on the holiday related work some children were engaged in:
"Three months before Christmas the smaller confectionary establishments call in troops of little children and begin full work and overtime work, making ready for the brave pomp of the holidays. There must be preparation of the bulging paper sack and the swollen tarlatan bag of the Christmas tree, for the bottle of straited sticks, and the pudgy "sucker" with its noble lasting quality. Tons upon tons of candy must be prepared for the holiday markets. What irony of civilization is this - one band of children wasting their bodies and souls to make a little joy for the rest? What sardonic mind conceived the caricature of justice, this burlesque of life?""
You're ignoring the benefits though. Many children aren't as intelligent as the people on this board, and do not benefit from education. They are better off learning from a direct experience in the workforce than learning math that they will never make use of.
Yeah, a lot of the world lives in poverty, I know. And I blame it on states funneling wealth to the elite through carefully designed regulations.My solution is removing the state. I also believe those envious of the USA are living in poverty simply because their state was far too restrictive on the economy, while the USA enjoyed economic freedom and thus prospered. Not because the free market somehow destroyed their lives.AdmiralPeacock said:Henry Demarest Lloyd
wealth against commonwealth
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=w1E ... &q&f=false
http://www.newgenevacenter.org/06_Histo ... wealth.htm
Jacob Riis
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890)
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=szi ... &q&f=false
You've seemed to ignore my proposed situation of dealing with injury sustained through free trade, also known as property aggression. If you are injured from something you've bought, you can sue the distributor using a court. This will ensure businesses have incentive not to harm their customers, or destroy their property via oil mining, etc. This is also coupled with points I've already made about competition - Businesses don't want to lose customers. And I also talked about a system of 'before-the-fact' regulation that Gnug was talking about in this thread.AdmiralPeacock said:FDA History - Part I
The 1906 Food and Drugs Act and Its Enforcement
http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/Hi ... 054819.htm
"While Wiley was stumping for a law, muckraking journalists such as Samuel Hopkins Adams exposed in vivid detail the hazards of the marketplace. In fact, the nauseating condition of the meat-packing industry that Upton Sinclair captured in The Jungle was the final precipitating force behind both a meat inspection law and a comprehensive food and drug law"
Upton Sinclair
The Jungle
http://www.online-literature.com/upton_sinclair/jungle/
http://forums.leagueofreason.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=6547
You can choose not to buy a product unless it has been inspected by a trusted inspection firm and has the inspection firm's watermark placed on it. This does not inhibit freedom of course, harmful substances such as alcohol and cigarettes could still be sold without the seller being at risk of being sued, they could simply have their customer sign a contract of some sort, so that the customer acknowledges they face risk of injury.
You see, my system places absolute control in the hands of the buyer. The state does not interfere in their exchange.
I didn't. Except for the lecture.AdmiralPeacock said:Ignore these all you want.
No, I already told you why they have more incentive to undercut the rest of the cartel, because it means they can steal the market.AdmiralPeacock said:They hold together in the cartel because it is in their best interest to.
This is not creative. This argument has been made before. I already knew about this argument. You're assuming that undercutting the new competition occurs only for a brief period. Do you think that new competition just stops appearing after the first try? New competition is going to be constantly coming, every time new competition is put out of business by the cartel it gives newer competition even more incentive to enter the market, as they will know that the cartel has been weakened due to running at a loss to undercut the previous competition. No matter how big a cartel is it cannot run at a loss indefinitely. And of course, if they're undercutting new competition the whole time, their cartel is no longer a problem, is it?AdmiralPeacock said:If that is the only way you can think of it, you're without creativity - as I said, the companies that form cartels are usually the largest of the industry (or at least the local market) and can absorb the loses need to undercut the new competition
How much do you want to bet that your two big grocery stores are given subsidies and economic protection from the government, just like the airlines? Of course I don't actually know whether they are, I don't even know what your local grocery stores are. But I feel confident enough to bet on it.AdmiralPeacock said:Example, you have two big grocery stores in a shopping centre
So? So? Did you ignore everything I just said? Yeah, they compete against each other on an international market. Only the number of competitors is tremendously reduced due to regulations and economic protection, and you completely ignored my statement about flight route rights. Yeah, they are competing, but only if the states they fly between let them compete! Even if I was a multi-billionaire, I could not set up an airline business and enter the market in an attempt to undercut the existing airlines and steal their profits, because I likely would not be allowed to. I would simply not be given rights to fly along flight routes. Did you read that source I gave on Air France? EasyJet wanted to come in and compete, they wanted to try and offer the french a better service, but the french government did not allow EasyJet to! It's as simple as that!AdmiralPeacock said:So? They compete against each other - there is still a market on an international scale.
So, your criticism is not a criticism of the free market at all, which is why it is irrelevant. Can you demonstrate to me why the airline industry is indeed a free market? Can you demonstrate why it is as competitive as, say, the software industry (which is one of the more free areas of the market)?
Oh, you.AdmiralPeacock said:Fuck you again