Laundering $800 Mil in Drug $, How Did HSBC Execs Avoid Jail?

[hippifried]

Talking about thought being involved, have you given any to my question?

What question? You don't really expect me to dig through all your off topic blatherings in order to find a question mark, do ya? You & your antisocial church of the fuck everybody else just aren't interesting enough to exert any effort trying to be a mindreader. Got a question? Ask it. I'm sure it won't be hard to find a 4 year old who can explain the stupidity of your demigod.

[trish]

In my post #85 I already mentioned the necessity for checks, balances, oversight and persistent monitoring that is inherent in all significant systems composed of human beings. In that same post you may remember that my approval of government monopolies was contingent on a number of factors...implementation being one of them. Once again, in any system, human or otherwise, regulators will fail. That doesn't prove they aren't necessary. Indeed Von Neumann and Morganstern have demonstrated to near mathematical certainty the necessity of regulatory devices in market systems. Similarly government programs fail and even governments fail. Even democratic ones. That doesn't prove that government programs (such as the NHS) nor that democratic governments should not exist.

[an8150]

In my post #85 I already mentioned the necessity for checks, balances, oversight and persistent monitoring that is inherent in all significant systems composed of human beings. In that same post you may remember that my approval of government monopolies was contingent on a number of factors...implementation being one of them. Once again, in any system, human or otherwise, regulators will fail. That doesn't prove they aren't necessary. Indeed Von Neumann and Morganstern have demonstrated to near mathematical certainty the necessity of regulatory devices in market systems. Similarly government programs fail and even governments fail. Even democratic ones. That doesn't prove that government programs (such as the NHS) nor that democratic governments should not exist.

Ho, boy. trish, the blood and treasure that has been expended on getting the NHS right. Now there's a religion we Brits almost all get behind. Except those of kneeling at the Randian altar, of course.

I wonder if a private company could have survived if it had done what the angels of the NHS did in Staffordshire. Just kidding, I don't really.

[an8150]

What question? You don't really expect me to dig through all your off topic blatherings in order to find a question mark, do ya? You & your antisocial church of the fuck everybody else just aren't interesting enough to exert any effort trying to be a mindreader. Got a question? Ask it. I'm sure it won't be hard to find a 4 year old who can explain the stupidity of your demigod.

And here was my question: "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? "

Which was in response to your comment, "As for the ability to afford all this mythical "government largesse": All monies are coined by the state, & always have been. Money is merely an artificial concept to simplify barter. Nowadays it's nothing but numbers in a ledger, with a little bit of pocket change. We can crunch the numbers & afford anything we want. That's WE. Collectively."


I don't enjoy tormenting you because you're extremely stupid, I enjoy it because you're a boor.

[trish]

Ho, boy. trish, the blood and treasure that has been expended on getting the NHS right. Now there's a religion we Brits almost all get behind. Except those of kneeling at the Randian altar, of course.

I wonder if a private company could have survived if it had done what the angels of the NHS did in Staffordshire. Just kidding, I don't really.

Of course they would have survived. Bhopal, for just one example.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=an8150;1279748]
but I don't see why your descriptions of Bedouin, etc. are any closer to the State of Nature - the natural condition of mankind, as you put it - than are mine. They're just different ways that different societies developed. So when you say that 'communism is the natural condition of mankind', I take you to mean that in the State of Nature everything is held in common. I agree that there are societies where that has happened, but I cannot see why that is any more natural a development upon climbing out of the primordial sludge than Ugg deciding that the frog he found is his. Take another example: studies of very young children suggesting that they sometimes share when there is no obvious gain to them in doing so. On the other hand, any parent of young children has witnessed in them the urge to acquire and to accumulate. I'd suggest that urge is even stronger where fundamentals such as hunger are at stake: if Ugg reckons he'll starve if he shares even a morsel with Grunt, then Grunt is on his own. A little further down the evolutionary tree, Ugg might start to consider the benefit to him of delaying satisfaction of his hunger by giving Grunt some frog, in return for Grunt's assistance slaying a sabre-tooth tiger. A primitive trade, if you will. Or maybe they'll Bedouin it up, who knows? ]

--You don't seem to be following my argument, in which the invention of private property as the foundation of modern socio-economic relations is an historical development. Within that concept are modes of behaviour such as competition, financial transactions, rent, debt and credit and so on. These were not common to human societies universally, and still today there are formal prohibitions on usury in some countries (whether they are held to or not is another matter). It is profoundly wrong to think that either Bedouin societies or South Pacific islanders lived in a 'state of nature' -the Hobbesian concept was derived from his experience of civil war, and the absence of government -there is no evidence that in the absence of government societies collapse into an orgy of violence, which is ironic given that your own dreamland has an absence of government, but you don't call it a 'state of nature'.

In fact, in the absence of government, societies will normally devise rules that seek to maintain peace. Amongst the Bedouin, for example, the practice of 'blood revenge' is viewed as pointless if every time someone from clan A is killed someone from the offending clan or tribe must also be killed -so property, usually in the form of camels, wheat etc are traded instead on the advice of tribal elders, as the property belongs to the tribe in common. You have also not considered the widespread existence in the Middle East and East Africa, of the 'moral economy' where, again in the absence of government, land was farmed for the benefit of the community rather than for markets. It was a way of ensuring that everyone participated in production, and received their fair share of the results. Indeed, the conflict between the moral economy of say, Kenya, was at the core of the Mau Mau conflict, just as both the Ottoman and later the British governments sought to replace the moral economy of Palestine and TransJordan with a market economy, which had already emerged in some parts of Palestine anyway; it was also common in parts of Lebanon and Syria. Critical to the transition are notions of efficiency, which the free marketeers argued was enhanced by market relations, and ownership, in which land farmed in common became private property, enriching some, impoverishing others: not all fields are as productive as others, and what once benefited all now benefited only a few. In Syria and Iraq, the commercialisation of agriculture through the creation of estates impoverished thousands and enriched a few, and was the source of much conflict both before the end of Ottoman rule and after it.

This means that in the absence of government, human societies will find ways of managing their relations to minimise violence and social disorder, which must be part of your Eden to Come; the problematic element has been the introduction of competition and market-led relations: on the one hand a driver of progress and change; on the other the cause of much misery, poverty and alienation -but you yourself admit there will be losers as well as winners; but you won't say what you will do with the losers.

[Oh, but I think it is when you say, 'private property is theft'. As it happens, that's long seemed to me a non-sensical formulation because it recognises the status and attributes of property - that ability to have it stolen - whilst presupposing property held in common, which by definition cannot be stolen. But that's incidental: if you believe private property is theft, then those items you 'value most' are either things you've stolen, in which case there's no moral bar to my taking them, or they're private property, properly meant, and I should get my hands of them.
--Marx's most radical challenge: money is the acme of private property, there can be no freedom until money is abolished -even the Bolsheviks couldn't handle that one.

[an8150]

[quote=Stavros;1280028]

but I don't see why your descriptions of Bedouin, etc. are any closer to the State of Nature - the natural condition of mankind, as you put it - than are mine. They're just different ways that different societies developed. So when you say that 'communism is the natural condition of mankind', I take you to mean that in the State of Nature everything is held in common. I agree that there are societies where that has happened, but I cannot see why that is any more natural a development upon climbing out of the primordial sludge than Ugg deciding that the frog he found is his. Take another example: studies of very young children suggesting that they sometimes share when there is no obvious gain to them in doing so. On the other hand, any parent of young children has witnessed in them the urge to acquire and to accumulate. I'd suggest that urge is even stronger where fundamentals such as hunger are at stake: if Ugg reckons he'll starve if he shares even a morsel with Grunt, then Grunt is on his own. A little further down the evolutionary tree, Ugg might start to consider the benefit to him of delaying satisfaction of his hunger by giving Grunt some frog, in return for Grunt's assistance slaying a sabre-tooth tiger. A primitive trade, if you will. Or maybe they'll Bedouin it up, who knows? ]

--You don't seem to be following my argument, in which the invention of private property as the foundation of modern socio-economic relations is an historical development. Within that concept are modes of behaviour such as competition, financial transactions, rent, debt and credit and so on. These were not common to human societies universally, and still today there are formal prohibitions on usury in some countries (whether they are held to or not is another matter). It is profoundly wrong to think that either Bedouin societies or South Pacific islanders lived in a 'state of nature' -the Hobbesian concept was derived from his experience of civil war, and the absence of government -there is no evidence that in the absence of government societies collapse into an orgy of violence, which is ironic given that your own dreamland has an absence of government, but you don't call it a 'state of nature'.

In fact, in the absence of government, societies will normally devise rules that seek to maintain peace. Amongst the Bedouin, for example, the practice of 'blood revenge' is viewed as pointless if every time someone from clan A is killed someone from the offending clan or tribe must also be killed -so property, usually in the form of camels, wheat etc are traded instead on the advice of tribal elders, as the property belongs to the tribe in common. You have also not considered the widespread existence in the Middle East and East Africa, of the 'moral economy' where, again in the absence of government, land was farmed for the benefit of the community rather than for markets. It was a way of ensuring that everyone participated in production, and received their fair share of the results. Indeed, the conflict between the moral economy of say, Kenya, was at the core of the Mau Mau conflict, just as both the Ottoman and later the British governments sought to replace the moral economy of Palestine and TransJordan with a market economy, which had already emerged in some parts of Palestine anyway; it was also common in parts of Lebanon and Syria. Critical to the transition are notions of efficiency, which the free marketeers argued was enhanced by market relations, and ownership, in which land farmed in common became private property, enriching some, impoverishing others: not all fields are as productive as others, and what once benefited all now benefited only a few. In Syria and Iraq, the commercialisation of agriculture through the creation of estates impoverished thousands and enriched a few, and was the source of much conflict both before the end of Ottoman rule and after it.

This means that in the absence of government, human societies will find ways of managing their relations to minimise violence and social disorder, which must be part of your Eden to Come; the problematic element has been the introduction of competition and market-led relations: on the one hand a driver of progress and change; on the other the cause of much misery, poverty and alienation -but you yourself admit there will be losers as well as winners; but you won't say what you will do with the losers.

[Oh, but I think it is when you say, 'private property is theft'. As it happens, that's long seemed to me a non-sensical formulation because it recognises the status and attributes of property - that ability to have it stolen - whilst presupposing property held in common, which by definition cannot be stolen. But that's incidental: if you believe private property is theft, then those items you 'value most' are either things you've stolen, in which case there's no moral bar to my taking them, or they're private property, properly meant, and I should get my hands of them.
--Marx's most radical challenge: money is the acme of private property, there can be no freedom until money is abolished -even the Bolsheviks couldn't handle that one.

You don't seem to be following mine. Ships in the night, etc.

Couple of other points:

1. I don't argue for the absence of government.
2. As to what I personally would do with the losers, that would depend upon my means and my assessment of whether they deserved to be assisted.

[an8150]

Of course they would have survived. Bhopal, for just one example.

According to wikipedia, the plant was 49% owned by the Indian government, and the disaster has given rise to criminal prosecutions.

But more specifically, I meant: what would have happened to a private company in Britain, or the US, in 2013, had it been responsible for what occurred at Staffs NHS.

[trish]

Obviously the size, wealth and power of the company determines how well it can ride out disasters.

So as a libertarian, how do you feel about copyright and patent protections?

[Stavros]

[quote=an8150;1280142]

You don't seem to be following mine. Ships in the night, etc.

Couple of other points:

1. I don't argue for the absence of government.
2. As to what I personally would do with the losers, that would depend upon my means and my assessment of whether they deserved to be assisted.

We are on the same ship, its called SS Capitalism, a system that has grown to global dominance since evolving along with (perhaps because of) the city states of Europe in the late medieval age. The moral economy tends to produce indifference in advocates of free market solutions precisely because it offers a verifiable alternative -in fact in many cases the option of a moral economy is deployed in a crisis -extended drought, famine, floods, etc, as a means of minimising the impact of such events; it is in fact a rational way of spreading risk and reward, but does require the prior belief that a village/community is such an entity and shares its values. Capitalists who promote individual self-interest enter this arena with a bag of tricks called lending, borrowing, rent, debt and in some cases have lent money to poor farmers in bad times, only to foreclose on the debt before it can be paid back, so that someone who subsisted on his produce must now pay rent on his own land to an absentee landlord. Free marketeers cannot understand how anyone would find this objectionable, regarding it as a transaction that both parties entered into knowing the risk even though one party was exploiting the downside of the other.

Rothbard, Hoppe, von Mises, only discuss morality when it is on their side, justifying rent, debt and credit; their historical interest may be in the value of currency, money supply, interest rates, industrial production and state intervention, but suggest that there is another moral dimension to economics and their eyes glaze over...as you wish, but you don't offer much insight into your brave new world.