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

[Prospero]

And when this religion fails you An8150, what next? Catholicism or Islam?

[an8150]

And when this religion fails you An8150, what next? Catholicism or Islam?

I confront you with facts which don't fit your narrative, and you accuse me of cleaving to articles of faith?

[Prospero]

No your worship of the ludicrous ayn rand and the impossility of your creed manifest all the characteristics of blind faith

[an8150]

No your worship of the ludicrous ayn rand and the impossility of your creed manifest all the characteristics of blind faith

Okay, let's take it as a given that I'm some kind of nutter kneeling at the Randian altar. You can even imagine me sacrificing virgins thereon, if it makes you happy.

Now we've got that out of our system, let's go back to your narrative and my facts.

How do you reconcile the two?

[Prospero]

I am bemused tHat you accuse me of doing what is a habit for you which is ignoring the acres of reason offered by many other folk here to pursue your idealistic agenda. For weeks I have ignored your postings as so much idealistic irrelevancy and will resume that position. Carry on without me. Sweet dreams..

[an8150]

I am bemused tHat you accuse me of doing what is a habit for you which is ignoring the acres of reason offered by many other folk here to pursue your idealistic agenda. For weeks I have ignored your postings as so much idealistic irrelevancy and will resume that position. Carry on without me. Sweet dreams..

Childish. Come on, give me an example of my having been offered facts that do not fit my narrative and where I have failed to address that issue.

[trish]

Libertarians assert the market seeks an equilibrium that maximizes freedom. Yet they never define what it means to maximize freedom nor do they provide a proof that free market systems seek any sort of equilibrium. Anecdotes that suggest the obvious, that regulatory systems require constant adjustment, do not constitute proof that a system without regulation will do just fine; the persistent assumption that it will is tantamount to religious faith.

[an8150]

Libertarians assert the market seeks an equilibrium that maximizes freedom. Yet they never define what it means to maximize freedom nor do they provide a proof that free market systems seek any sort of equilibrium. Anecdotes that suggest the obvious, that regulatory systems require constant adjustment, do not constitute proof that a system without regulation will do just fine; the persistent assumption that it will is tantamount to religious faith.

We don't assert the market seeks an equilibrium that maximises freedom. That is precisely backwards. We assert that a free market tends to find equilibrium or, when unbalanced, that it seeks out equilibrium more efficiently than any other model. In other words, the freedom maximises equilbrium, not the other way around. I would go so far as to say there is no such thing as maximised freedom. There is only freedom, or degrees of servitude. I have defined freedom, on that previous thread. It is the absence of coercion ('coercion' as properly meant in English, not in some mangled and politically-motivated use of the language which equates working for a living with coercion). If you require proof that free market systems seek out equilibrium, you need only consider the law of supply and demand. You're right, however, logically that criticism of regulation does not necessarily mean that it's absence will work better; I have made no such persistent assumption. Indeed, my arguments have tended to shy away from the utilitarian in favour of the purely moral, because I happen to think that even if central planning, regulation and all the rest of it could be made to work in its own terms, it would still be undesirable. The reason I say that is because I believe freedom has greater moral value than utility, in terms of human happiness.

[trish]

We assert that a free market tends to find equilibrium or, when unbalanced, that it seeks out equilibrium more efficiently than any other model.

Where is your proof? Von Neuman and Morganstern refute this claim.

In other words, the freedom maximises equilbrium,

This is of course the converse of what you claimed in prior posts. But never mind that, tell us instead what a "maximized equilibrium" is.

It is the absence of coercion

This is a ridiculous notion of freedom. What happens to a person who infringes upon your legally assured freedom if he is not coerced to recompense you in some way?

the law of supply and demand.

This law has nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of equilibrium. It merely asserts that demand diminishes with price.

[Stavros]

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.

Setting aside my colourful use of language, the point is that you claim fidelity to a system that when it has been applied more closely to your principles -if not entirely- has not resulted in either economic equilibrium or greater freedom -the late 19th century in the US and the 1990s in Russia were symptomatic of the tendency of capitalism to monopolise the means pf production, anything rather than sharing it out -you can wish it away as 'the unacceptable face of capitalism' if you want to, but the evidence of dirty dealings amongst the railroad bosses, the bankers, the Rockefellers and Mellons of this/that world are well documented, and resulted in the haven of free markets, the USA introducing an Act in 1890 to prevent the dominance by single individuals and their firms of industrial sectors -ie the Sherman Act, even if not implemented until 1911. Your faith in the honest intentions of free market capitalists is as absurd as the belief of a Communist Party cadre in the wisdom of the Central Committee. And as for Russia, it was called The Sale of the Century for good reason, only the average consumer wasn't involved, merely screwed.

Perhaps we can agree that communism is the natural condition of mankind, that private property emerged historically as a consequence of the process of accumulation that began during the Neolithic revolution, and which combined with the division of labour to enable a minority of the population to dupe the majority into thinking they were superior, aided and abetted by religious/mythological systems of belief. Industrial capitalism is the private appropriation of publicly produced wealth -the capitalist who puts say £100,000 of capital into a shirt-making business and collects say, £1 million on that investment pays the people who actually make the shirts their equivalent share - £10, thereby proving that capitalism is immoral, and that private property is theft. Moreover, as Marx pointed out in Capital the workers are so completely subsumed by capitalism that they are both producers and consumers, and simultaneously exploited at work and in the market-place, bridging the gap between the natural price of a commodity and its market price -(viz Capital, Vol 1: Appendix: Results of the Immediate Process of Production, esp pp1019-1025 in the Pelican Marx Library, Capital, Vol 1; and same series, Capital Vol 2, Chapters 1-2; and Chapters 20-21).

This pseudo-debate however is going round in circles -perhaps you can explain how free market capitalism will produce economic growth and full employment in the UK, and crucially -what happens to the losers who fail at business, who can't hold down a job, don't have the education or whatever their problem is?

On xenophobic violence in Greece, I provide a link from HRW.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/12/30/x...iolence-greece