New World Order

Which civil politician besides Ron Paul competes in American politics with only grassroots support? FYI, Ron Paul doesn't get corporate money, because he doesn't support regulation.

Paul has had more business PAC donations than Kucinich.

Ron Paul: Campaign Finance/Money - PAC Data - Career | OpenSecrets
Dennis J Kucinich: Campaign Finance/Money - PAC Data - Career | OpenSecrets

With the talk of Google and Microsoft in here, it is a bit humorous that those have ranked 4 and 5 for the groups from which Paul's donations came.

Ron Paul: Campaign Finance/Money - Top Donors - Career | OpenSecrets
 


Paul has had more business PAC donations than Kucinich.

Ron Paul: Campaign Finance/Money - PAC Data - Career | OpenSecrets
Dennis J Kucinich: Campaign Finance/Money - PAC Data - Career | OpenSecrets

With the talk of Google and Microsoft in here, it is a bit humorous that those have ranked 4 and 5 for the groups from which Paul's donations came.

Ron Paul: Campaign Finance/Money - Top Donors - Career | OpenSecrets
It's also a bit humorous that the person you cited wanted to run for president with Ron Paul.
 
guerilla, you should be an economics professor -- Damn Dude -- YOU RULE...
+ rep for all your great posts in this thread!
 
Guerrila, when you're back, can you answer the following for me, to save time in clarifying your position.

Which of the following is your position/view closest to:

the Chicago School, Hayek, Mises, Lachman, Paul, Rothbard

Across the board, not just no economics. ie foreign policy and, secondarily, social issues.
 
I think one should be naive to think that there are no hidden agendas being pushed. Even in a small community like a work environment, there are inner circles and stuff ... its not too far fetched to think that such a think can exist in the global level.
 
Do people believe Walmart is the product of free market capitalism? That company achieved its massive growth because it manipulated government at every level: local, state and federal.

It destroys locally owned and operated retail business because it arranges multi-year tax breaks which the mom-and-pop shops do not get. It is anti-competitive.

Guerilla may have said it earlier (or I read it on his beloved mises.org) that the last 30 years in the U.S. has not been an example of the problems with free market capitalism. Instead, we have most and more markets operating in pretty much a fascist manner.

That behavior is what Shady is trying to illustrate in his replies about regulation, and what I have described above. The natural next move for businesses who have reached the point at which they can afford it is to shore up their position through legislation; be it increased regulation or mitigation of tax obligation.
 
Taking a slight detour but still explaining the growth of large businesses.

I just thought I would get your opinion on something I have been thinking about, a lot of people blame the low interest rates for the problems we are in (housing and credit wise), but I've been thinking about a much more subtle effect, that links in with some of the debate here about these large corporations.

I think the massive increase in multinational corporations and worldwide brands is actually in indirect effect of low interest rates just like the housing bubbles across the world. It is not surprising that all of these companies, e.g. starbucks, tesco were built using almost entirely debt. The consolidation among almost every business area has been built using debt, and the fall of small business has almost been down to this too.

I think people who were savvy enough, and more importantly had access to credit, took advantage of government engineered low interest rates to build huge businesses, that in free markets would never have happened. But since the debt could be financed by the expansion (as there was hardly any interest), people willing to take that risk, and people who had contacts in say the banking world, were able to crush a lot of small businesses by either buying them up or just putting them out of business.

A family business with (slightly naive) simple business owners, ones who perhaps just want to make a living and don't have world domination ambitions, were completely fucked by this, and yet again it is indirectly down to government and controlling money.

It's exactly what annoys me about the discussion in this thread, as it is not just regulation that has allowed these huge corporations to become so big, but the actual monetary policy, and the banking system, which is yet again down to government not allowing free markets (and market-set interest rates) to operate.

Just wondering what you think about this... :)
 
It's exactly what annoys me about the discussion in this thread, as it is not just regulation that has allowed these huge corporations to become so big, but the actual monetary policy, and the banking system, which is yet again down to government not allowing free markets (and market-set interest rates) to operate.

Just wondering what you think about this...

Most people would agree about the destructive role that monetary policy by The Fed has had - that's how this discussion ended up in a NWO thread.

The two schools of thought in this thread basically agree on most points, but Anarcho-Capitalists like Guerilla (correct me if I'm wrong G) and others believe that the market will fix all of these issues if completely unregulated. People like me argue that regulations for corporations are like laws for people. Without them you would have a Wild West scenario like you have in Somalia where the strong warlords and pirates take advantage of the weak because that's human nature and there are no laws to protect the weak.

People like Guerilla would argue that most people are inherently good and will regulate themselves without outside interference. This actually works in an environment with "good" people (especially in remote regions where people rely on each other to survive), but would never work in population centers and major cities where only the strong survive.

The obvious parallel in free markets is that unfettered capitalism works well in less competitive markets (ie. safe areas with "good" people) but not in super competitive markets where there are vast fortunes to be made (such as the the "wild west" scenario) because there is too much incentive for people and businesses to stop behaving "good".
 
People like me argue that regulations for corporations are like laws for people. Without them you would have a Wild West scenario like you have in Somalia where the strong warlords and pirates take advantage of the weak because that's human nature and there are no laws to protect the weak.

At the risk of muddying the waters, here's a good read regarding ancap in the "Wild West."

http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/3_1/3_1_2.pdf (PDF, 21 pages)

One of the (many) points made by the authors is that life in the Wild West is misrepresented in popular culture (i.e. unrestrained violence throughout, etc.). Further, there were instances that demonstrated how ancap might have worked.

Again, it's a good read for anybody with an hour to spare.
 
At the risk of muddying the waters, here's a good read regarding ancap in the "Wild West."

http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/3_1/3_1_2.pdf (PDF, 21 pages)

One of the (many) points made by the authors is that life in the Wild West is misrepresented in popular culture (i.e. unrestrained violence throughout, etc.). Further, there were instances that demonstrated how ancap might have worked.

Again, it's a good read for anybody with an hour to spare.

Not sure how that applies to current lawless situations like Somalia...Wild West is just a general term referencing lawless situations in general. The true Wild West from early in US history would have worked better for the exact reasons I stated in the above post.
 
Not sure how that applies to current lawless situations like Somalia...Wild West is just a general term referencing lawless situations in general. The true Wild West from early in US history would have worked better for the exact reasons I stated in the above post.

In my haste, I may have misunderstood a portion of your post. I've read it again and may still be confused.

In posting the PDF, I was responding to the idea (inferred, though maybe not implied) that "unfettered capitalism" would work less well in the Wild West, an environment where "there is too much incentive for people and businesses to stop behaving "good." My point was that ancap, while not synonymous with "unfettered capitalism," has similarities, and did, in certain circumstances (according to the PDF's authors), work in the Wild West.

My apologies if I missed something important. My tendency to do so when I'm in a hurry is the reason I usually shy away from getting involved in these discussions. :)
 
The difference is that in the US frontier days people had an incentive to work together to survive. The survival motive generally outweighed the profit motive for obvious reasons. In a situation like Somalia or other lawless regions now you generally have a situation where the strong oppress the weak and warlords fulfill their profit motive through controlling black market trades, often with violence.

Anarcho-Capitalism is just another theory that looks good on paper but since it fails to account for controlling the human greed element, it doesn't work as well in practice. For a system to work in practice it needs to both take advantage of the greed element (because it leads to innovation and progress) while at the same time controlling it (guiding it, actually) because it is also a destructive force that is abused by people with less than noble intentions.

If people were "good", we wouldn't need regulations. Unfortunately, people are not always "good" and that's why we need laws and regulations.
 
Somalia is a failed state. It didn't transition smoothly to a stateless territory, it collapsed. It does not at all resemble an anarcho-capitalist ideal.
 
I agree. How are humans still alive if these chaos theories would be true?

It is one of those myths spread by hollywood about how post-apocalyptic chaos worlds will be dominated by gangs that ransack the weak (I watched the road yesterday).

After all, we came from tribes of around 150 people that occasionally clashed, but managed to evolve and survive tens of thousands of years now.

AHaha, tens of thousands of years? I'm pretty sure we survived as something for billions of years
 
There is a huge difference between "surviving" and prospering. If your goal is to simply survive like the cavemen did maybe it would work. However, all of the advances we've seen in recent years have happened under a regulated system...
 
The economic problems of anarcho-capitalism aside, a far bigger issue is its isolationist foreign policy (particularly as Rothbard puts it forwards, but even Ron Paul's non-interventionism). Most successful empires emerged out of the need to protect trade (unless of course you an history imbecile and believe conspiracies create empires) . Globalisation only tightens the relationship between economic power and political and military power.
 


/facepalm
 
Taking a slight detour but still explaining the growth of large businesses.

I just thought I would get your opinion on something I have been thinking about, a lot of people blame the low interest rates for the problems we are in (housing and credit wise), but I've been thinking about a much more subtle effect, that links in with some of the debate here about these large corporations.

I think the massive increase in multinational corporations and worldwide brands is actually in indirect effect of low interest rates just like the housing bubbles across the world. It is not surprising that all of these companies, e.g. starbucks, tesco were built using almost entirely debt. The consolidation among almost every business area has been built using debt, and the fall of small business has almost been down to this too.

I think people who were savvy enough, and more importantly had access to credit, took advantage of government engineered low interest rates to build huge businesses, that in free markets would never have happened. But since the debt could be financed by the expansion (as there was hardly any interest), people willing to take that risk, and people who had contacts in say the banking world, were able to crush a lot of small businesses by either buying them up or just putting them out of business.

A family business with (slightly naive) simple business owners, ones who perhaps just want to make a living and don't have world domination ambitions, were completely fucked by this, and yet again it is indirectly down to government and controlling money.

It's exactly what annoys me about the discussion in this thread, as it is not just regulation that has allowed these huge corporations to become so big, but the actual monetary policy, and the banking system, which is yet again down to government not allowing free markets (and market-set interest rates) to operate.

Just wondering what you think about this... :)


I think the Far East Asian economies are the best examples of what you're describing. Their whole economic model is based on sustained low interest rates used to fuel fast growth and maintain social order (keep unemployment low). Japan is the perfect example, with its fast rise, many multinationals, then sudden crisis (housing crisis, late 80s), followed by 20 years of stagnation, with 9 recessions in that time and a coming even greater crisis, because they're continuing in the same spirit - they continue with stimulus package after stimulus package to kickstart growth, interest rates now below 1% and they keep wondering why it doesn't work. They deficit is almost 200% of GDP. However they're unwilling to face the unemployment (for cultural reasons) that would come with real reform, so keep inching towards the abyss. Now that the population is rapidly shrinking its not too far off.

Then you have the Asian tigers, same thing on a smaller scale -> they collapsed in 1998, with them the dream of Asia being the centre of the global economy.

Now its China's turn. Hyper growth, massive hardwired inefficiencies in their economy, due to the same low interest rates. Uncompetitive businesses that would fail in a free market, being kept artificially alive. Employing hundreds of millions. A culture unfamiliar, if not allergic to saving. A speculative financial market. A lack of domestic consumption. Massive exposure to foreign hydrocarbon markets for production and a dependence of Western markets for exports. When this comes crashing down expect blood to flow in the streets.

Those who think the Far East is about to become the centre of the global economy are blind.

Alternatively, of course, the all-knowing, all-seeing Illumanati planned it all, spending centuries creating a culture of honor and loyalty in Japan which makes harakiri preferable to massive lay-offs. Its all coming together, I know.