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

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Originally Posted by hippifried

Well, I don't know about y'all, but I'm still waiting for any kind of evidence that supports the egoist philosophy. If anything even remotely resembling a successful individualist society has ever existed, give me the where & when.

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.

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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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Originally Posted by Stavros

Free market capitalism is a liberation ideology; without the state as it is today, your arguments lack a target -you are dependent on the critique of contemporary capitalism to enable you to constantly say what is wrong without having to tell us what life will be like after the revolution. You refer to violence in Greece knowing full well that it is extremist neo-Nazis attacking immigrants from North Africa, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent, and is part of the unresolved ideological fractures of the Balkans that date back to the dissolution of Ottoman rule there and which have shaped the garganuan mess that modern Greek politics has collapsed into.

As a free market capitalist I know you think all immigration controls are wicked and deplorable, but the simple truth is that you cannot conceive of a free market capitalist alternative to what we have now without getting all confused about what role in your Eden will be played by nationalism, globalisation, climate change, modern technology and its impact on jobs -like the Trotskyist waiting for the transition you wish it all away with the pie-in-the-sky fantasy of a politics free of government and taxation, economic relations regulated by markets, social relations shaped by individual self-interest, the majority of people living in the sunlit uplands of prosperity and bliss.

Or, politics in which democratically elected governments are replaced by the tyranny of market forces; in which economic relations are not controlled by any regulations so that 'meat manufacturers' can sell diseased rats as 'chicken burgers' and respond to customer complaints -nobody is forcing you to buy my burgers! And social relations shaped by violence, slavery and contempt for human rights.

Free market capitalism is a utopian fantasy in which privilege and wealth replaces the Nazi party as the arbiter of life and death. In this system, if your father's business goes bankrupt taking your inheritance with it, you force your father to his knees, and order him to open his mouth while you piss in it, just as Ayn Rand would expect you to deal with such a loser. Better still, lock him and the rest of the losers in your family into a barn, and set fire to it -why should the world carry this extra, surplus-to-requirements, breadcrumb begging extra bagagge?

An Idaho senator has introduced a bill that would require all high school students in the state to read Atlas Shrugged -evidence of the controlling mentality, the venal hostility to freedom that free market capitalists are addicted to. The fact that he doesn't even take it seriously underlines the contempt with which free market capitalists treats democracy. Or maybe he is just one of capitalsm's useful idiots? And in such a crowded market...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_2631414.html

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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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Originally Posted by broncofan

Libertarianism does tend to be efficient. I have pointed to market failures in such systems but they're not easy to correct. However, I point to these market failures not just to show challenges to the efficiency of pure free markets but also individual inequities suffered in the process.

To say that a market system is efficient says nothing about how capital is acquired. It says nothing about how it is distributed. It says nothing about what happens to individuals who are victims of a market failure, say through lack of information, and end up serving as a cautionary tale for others heeding their signals in the marketplace in furtherance of this sought after efficiency.

We have to consider in this calculus what happens to the person who has his money deposited at a bank when there's a bank run. The reason the government insures these banks, even if it is inefficient in the long run because of the costs we've talked about, is because it is unfair for any one individual to pay for a failure with his life's savings. In free market ideology, we might assume that individuals would be able to pick the more responsible banks and so the person who loses his money does so because he was seeking a higher return by taking on more risk. The truth is, this risk is not priced very efficiently by the market and someone could lose everything through no fault of his own. Credit risk is notoriously difficult to value.

When it comes down to it, Libertarians want a competitive system and they strive for efficiency (an aggregate number), but they forget about the people who through no fault of their own lose out in the process. There are basic things people are unable to live without. In a free market system, economic losers would be forced to go without for the benefit of some aggregate utility function. Life is not so easily reducible to mathematical abstractions. A hands off system avoids unintended consequences, but accepts all of the easily foreseen and avoidable misery. To me, this is a pessimistic ideology that says let the losers lose because helping them share in the economic success might involve some waste.

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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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Originally Posted by fivekatz

And in the world we live in companies like Goldman-Sachs, JP Morgan-Chase, Lehman Brothers, HSBC should be taken to the wood shed and the CEO's who either lead so poorly they hadn't a clue what was happening or led the charge, those dudes should spend some time in minimum security incarceration and that will create moral hazard.

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What would you have them convicted of?

Serious question. I know little of your law, but am struck by your use of the word 'quasi' to describe the legality of their actions. Either they were legal or illegal.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

I'm for more regulation. I'm just saying that all regulation changes incentives in the marketplace. Providing insurance makes people take on more risk, but that's not a good enough reason for withdrawing it. It's a good reason to provide MORE regulation so that their new incentives are properly checked by bank regulators.

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Trouble is, you'll have to keep regulating to correct more regulatory failures, ad infinitum. You will never get it right.

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Originally Posted by fivekatz

Unbridled greed is at the core of capitalism and regulation is the bridle that allows it to survive without either it's taking itself down or the 99% toppling it.

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The people must be shackled for their own good.

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.

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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Originally Posted by Prospero

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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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.

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.