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02-18-2013 #41
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Re: Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?
So government can print as much money as it likes, with no ill effects?
Good grief. Doing my damndest to avoid an ad hominem reply, and realising that I'll probably regret asking you this, but, um, have you considered why, if your proposition is correct, your government doesn't just print enough money to make you all billionaires?
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02-18-2013 #42
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Re: Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?
Free market capitalism is a liberation ideology? Er, is that a bad thing thing?
But ok, I'll bite. You think we're like the IRA or the PLO, and we believe once our enemy disappears all will be well. Not at all. As I wrote in an earlier thread, I don't dismiss the concerns of social democrats, I merely say that their (your?) cure is worse than the disease. And as for the comparison with a dreaming Trot, I suspect you're confusing the well-known inability of communists to agree on how to implement Marx's vision. Granted, there are disagreements between libertarians, but most of us either fall into the category of anarcho-capitalists or minarchists, and within those two brackets, we are generally agreed on the big things, in terms of practical constitutional and political arrangements. But that is not the same thing as being unable to describe how the world would be different were people freer. Indeed, in terms of mass population predictions, unpredictability is intrinsic to greater freedom. Jolly good, I say. Yes, there are predictions I'd venture, and maybe will if I have the time, but the absence of planning for entire populations necessarily makes such predictions speculative.
As to your claims about Greece, you'll have to refer me to a link in support of them. Otherwise I'll admit to being brainwashed by TV footage of general strikes, with petrol bombs being thrown and policemens' heads being cracked. Oh, and weren't some bank employees arsoned to death? Or were they merely Indian?
The stuff about Nazis and pissing is baby talk. And the Idaho senator seems rather to have missed the point about Rand's teachings.
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02-18-2013 #43
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Re: Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?
We don't strive for efficiency, we strive for freedom. Efficiency is a by-product, a secondary effect. That's the difference between, say, a Randian and a Hayekian. It's because we value freedom above wealth, because wealth is acquired but freedom inheres to us, that we accept financial losers in a free society are more desirable than slaves in a wealthy society. And I think most of us have greater faith in the willingness and ability of man, left unmolested, to tend to his own needs than is suggested by your label of 'pessimistic' which, it seems to me, is more properly applied
to those schools of thought emphasising man's helplessness in the face of the universe.
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02-18-2013 #44
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Re: Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?
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02-18-2013 #45
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02-18-2013 #46
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02-18-2013 #47
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Re: Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?
In engines, motors, any system designed to perform repeatable cycles, including market systems, regulators are required to make systematic corrections on each cycle ad infinitum in order to maintain a proper balance of feedback and control.
Absolute freedom is absolute anarchy. Real and useful freedoms can only exist within a context of social restraints.
2 out of 2 members liked this post.Last edited by trish; 02-18-2013 at 05:32 PM.
"...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.
"...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.
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02-18-2013 #48
Re: Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?
The current horsemeat scandal in Europe shows the need for proper regulation of business. Without that what might they try to get away with.
And regulation of the sales of weapons to terrorist groups? Not for the free market dreamers.
That way madness and the law of the jungle lies.
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02-18-2013 #49
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Re: Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?
Um, "The Government knew last summer that a sudden ban on cheap British beef and lamb meant it was “inevitable” that unlawful meat would be imported from Europe. " (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/p...cle3687703.ece).
In other words, regulation caused the problem. Now more regulation is demanded to solve it.
There's no need to regulate sales of weapons to terrorists: a gun seller who sells a gun to a man whom he knows or suspects will use it for causing harm is aiding and abetting that terrorist and therefore already subject to the criminal law.
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02-18-2013 #50
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Re: Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?
If the thermostat in your home malfunctions, you have it adjusted or replaced. You don't remove all thermostats from every home. Similarly with governors on steam engines and other sorts of regulators. Proper tuning and proper calibration keeps systems balanced and running smooth. A poorly regulated engine won't run at all.
A person who is not afforded the economic opportunity to succeed, lacks the freedom to succeed.
"...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.
"...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.
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