We’re all screwed. My IRA is lower now than it was in the Clinton Administration, and my house has been devalued by a stupid amount that makes my heart pound. The GOP just abandoned their president and their candidates McBush and FemQuayle.So here’s a thread for the financial crisis. How long before the politicians start praying for relief from a god (like the Alabama Governor prayed for rain)? It’s too bad we don’t have huge numbers of large buildings that are exempt from taxation for no reason. Then we could tax these buildings in a fair way and lower the burden on citizens. If only there was a huge and powerful sector of the economy that wasn’t paying its taxes AT ALL, that we could finally tax, and get immediate relief for the country. If only.
r4d,
Please note these are examples of government regulation.
I always find it amusing when people accept bottom up randomness producing efficiency in one instance reject it in another.
Evolution & free markets.
mxracer652,
Evolution is a brutal process. I would never want to base a society on it. Just like we need law enforcement in civil society, we also need law enforcement in our economy. Sometimes the laws are bad laws, and sometimes the cops are bad cops, but that doesn’t make it wise to throw out all the laws and cops in favor of complete anarchy.
Mxracer
You get evolution whether you like it or not . Check that box.
What’s a “free market”?
r4d,
I’m not advocating total anarchy w/o oversight at all, as we all know that’s bound to fail miserably.
However! My opinion is that business should be a brutal competition and that the role of government should only be to see they compete legally (monopolies, cooking the books, etc).
The government is horribly inept, prone to failure, poor policy & politics. The less of it we have telling us what to do, the better off we are.
MX,
In fairness, so is business and the free market.
mxracer652,
Yeah, but first you have to define just what is legal and what is not. One of the main problems, so far as I can tell, was that the rules were relaxed to the point where investment firms could operate like banks while avoiding the oversight that banks have traditionally been subjected to. In the short term it worked and people made a shit ton of money. But now, as is the natural order of things (pushing the evolution analogy to the limit here,) we’re faced with a mass extinction of sorts that threatens to dramatically lower everyone’s standard of living. The only solution appears to be more corporate welfare – something that nobody is happy about.
And as far as the government being horribly inept: I fail to see how business is that much different. I mean, people are horribly inept. People are also often incredibly brilliant. I’ve always hated the whole libertarianism versus socia_lism dichotomy; this idea that the only choice we have is between limited government or complete nationalization. Neither path makes any sense to me – both have been proven disasters when applied in the real world. The reality is that some institutions appear to work better when highly regulated while others work better when largely left to their own devices. The goal should be to find that balance.
Mx
How many businesses have survived over the past 230 years? How many have failed? The fact is that failure is the expected outcome for a business.
Fannie Mae, formerly a government agency, was converted to a private company and we get the expected outcome – failure.
What is a free market?
Mx
And what about those innocent bystanders? F— em?
Why are we better off with corporations that are horribly inept, prone to failure, poor policy and politics telling us what to do?
is the biggest reason to incorporate the protection of personal assets …..assets acquired before less than good faith practices are discovered cant be good…maybe the rules need to be looked at…..
Comment from: What
Comments like this validate your screen name….”What do I know”.
How many government ideas are utter failures but are consistently funded?
r4d…by the way…
How’s your band doing these days?
That’s the big problem here.
Also, Fannie & Freddie are quasi private/public entities. Sure they issue stock, but they’re meddled with by legislation & corporate welfare to subsidize their distortion of fair market value.
phreedm,
It’s just my wife and I now, which is fine. We’ve been working on new material, playing a few parties, and waiting for the smoking ban to take effect before hitting the clubs again.
Mx
I see you didn’t answer my questions and you keep returning to the same mantra. It appears that you are unwilling to defend the mantra. Is that the case?
r4d
When I used to play on the road the smoke was unbearable. It was one of the reasons I quit the music biz and went back to school.
What,
Yeah, the only thing good about the music biz is the part where you actually get to play music. Everything else is total shit.
Yeah, the only thing good about the music biz is the part where you actually get to play music. Everything else is total shit.I think that’s true for most creative endeavors where business has to be involved.
Blockquote screw up…
I think that’s true for most creative endeavors where business is involved.