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-- The Revolution of 1917, American-Style
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Originally posted by gallantrybot I'd attribute that more to American ingenuity and entrepreneurialism than anything else.

and what about the rest of the advanced world?

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Originally posted by gallantrybot I'd attribute that more to American ingenuity and entrepreneurialism than anything else.

That system is what makes "American ingenuity" and "entrepreneurism" possible.

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Anyway, have you ever heard of Henry Hazlitt?

Yes I have.

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Originally posted by Krypton That system is what makes "American ingenuity" and "entrepreneurism" possible. Yes I have.

Although I'm sure it's subjective, I beg to differ.

IMO, it's the freedom to strike out on your own without unnecessary hindrances like the maze of red tape that our increasingly inefficient and bureaucratic government throws at us just to get a permit to wipe your nose.

At least that's how it worked for many of my ancestors who didn't have the luxury of easy credit.

I haven't read it yet but I've heard that Hazlitt's book From Bretton Woods to World Inflation is really something of a gem.

I just pulled this off of mises.org:

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Henry Hazlitt was a leading editorialist for the New York Times from 1934 until 1946. His career at the paper, however, abruptly ended because of the articles collected in this book. He closely covered the Keynesian-inspired Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, He wrote that the attempt to fix exchange rates and peg world currencies to the dollar which in turn was fixed to gold would not and could not last.. Hazlitt saw that this was not a real gold standard but a complete fake. It did not offer convertibility in a manner that would instill monetary discipline. It trusted governments to maintain a sound money policy with no means of guaranteeing that they would do so. He said, then, that this was not a viable system, and predicted its complete breakdown in time. Instead, he urged that every country be responsible for the soundness of its own currency. Only that system would produce stability of over time. He said that the result of trusting governments and tying their fates together would be inflation and the collapse of what remained of sound money. It's hard to imagine that such truth-telling thoughts on monetary systems would have appeared as New York Times editorials � not op-eds but the actual editorial position of the paper itself Sadly, it didn't last. Tremendous pressure was applied to the New York Times to stop opposing the agreement. Hazlitt would not give in, and kept writing and calling it as he saw it. No one could refute him. In the end, of course, he was pushed out, and the paper reversed its stance. But who was right? Hazlitt of course! The purpose of this book, then, is to memorialize his brilliance and document the fact that Hazlitt was correct in every detail. At the suggestion of Hazlitt himself, this book was put together by George Koether, who worked in the archives for months to gather all the documentation of how this great journalist of liberty went about his work. It includes a detailed narration by Koether himself. It ends with a wonderful epilogue written in 1983. Hazlitt urges an end to inflation by a simple step: stop inflating! He furthers urges the establishment of a genuine gold dollar. Hazlitt finishes with an intriguing suggestion: "We could of course return to a merely private gold standard, but this is likely to happen only by default, when the paper dollar has become worthless, and millions of Americans have been ruined."

Edit: Here's a man who's scared for our country,
who knows exactly what he's talking about :

quote:

Originally posted by gallantrybot Although I'm sure it's subjective, I beg to differ. IMO, it's the freedom to strike out on your own without unnecessary hindrances like the maze of red tape that our increasingly inefficient and bureaucratic government throws at us just to get a permit to wipe your nose.

No no, it's not subjective. It's fact that system you rail against all the time has brought millions out of poverty and led to markets which are up 7 out of every 10 years. That's fact; not subjective. Red tape? That's ridiculous. You can go to legalzoom.com right now and start a business for less than $300. And you attribute all this to...lol...American ingenuity and entrepreneurship? PKC asked you, "and what about the rest of the advanced world?" and you had nothing to say. Has it sunk in what I said? The system you'r always railing against is the very system which enables entrepreneurship.

As for Hazlitt, who advocates...lol...an end to inflation......and a gold standard...I have read his economic philosophy and I'd have to say it's nonsense. Governments are held to account because they can be voted out of office. SURPRISE! A gold standard did not and does not guarantee sound fiscal policy and to believe so is fallacious at best.

Oh man, I want to read this thread but no time right now!

This book compares the current US to the Soviet example post '89:

Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects (Paperback)

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN and what about the rest of the advanced world?

Typical non-American... thinking the rest of the world actually matters.

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Originally posted by Moral Hazard Typical non-American... thinking the rest of the world actually matters.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt Or we need to let people face the consequences of their actions when they leverage 50:1 and lose everything. We need to allow them to fail for a change..and not prop them up endlessly at taxpayer expense. We need to be AGAINST bailouts philosophically don't we krypt? As a person who studies markets, I hope you recognize this now. The prospect of failure removes "moral hazard" and makes that sort of reckless behavior much less appealing on a risk/reward basis. When failure is a real option and the treasury/fed are not implicitly guaranteeing that companies won't be allowed to fail, they will tend to be more thoughtful in their decision making. "Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. Bankruptcies and losses, even the threat of bankruptcy, concentrate the mind on prudent behavior." - Alan H. Meltzer

I think the difficulty with this is that it just plain went on to long without any failures.

I'm not a fan of the bailouts in general but I'm hard pressed to say just let everyone fail.

What I find strinking is thinking what could be done with the type of money they are throwing at banks. Imagine 1 billion invested in the arts, 1 billion invested in small business, 1 billion invested in sports leagues, 1 billion in free tuitions? These numbers are rounding errors on the bailouts interest and yet these comunities could do so much more with the money, creating actual things and jobs, not just pushing money back and forth.

The difficulty with complaining is keeping it on target. The billionair business men, even Bill Gates, I don't have a problem with as the croney style 'management' 'executives' and 'investors'. I'd even say that sports stars and rock stars deserve thier money more then a lot of people, at least they know how to leverage supply and demand.

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Originally posted by Krypton What's anti-market is allowing that very market to collapse into total financial meltdown, and drag everyone else along with it.

A bit of a technicality but I'm a stickler for this one. You can't really be for or against the market or 'markets'.

Markets exist, they are.

Markets aren't an ideology, free markets are.

It isn't the market that would collapse, it is finance that would collapse. The market would still exist. You could hold as much stock as you want it's just that it might be worth nothing because no one wants it.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN i can't believe you're in here repeating the same tripe after occrider handed you your arse, capitalizt.

link please

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Originally posted by Joss Weatherby Way to go guys... turn a thread about something cool like bloody revolution into an economics debate... Nerds.

Are you serrious? Do you know what starts bloody revolutions? Do you realize how not fun bloody revolutions are or how the current conditions seem to point to bloody revolutions occuring some time soon ....

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