Would YOU vote for RON PAUL

Indie

Yes I know but as pointed out that argument doesn’t seem to stand up to many studies and the statistical evidence, but then you get around that by just ignoring the studies and statistical evidence, and instead bring up supposedly real but oh so self serving examples from your life.

Are you claiming that in nature there are organisations of lions, tigers and bears that some of these animals give to so that the organisations can distribute them to other less fortunate animals?

No I don’t – as stated many times I ask the question - Is it justified for a person born into advantage to retain exclusive rights to advantages they didn’t earn rather than share them with others who through no blame of their own are disadvantaged?

Your reply is yes - based on the rather irrational and unreason argument that ‘shit happens’.

But as pointed out the amount of shit can be reduced its just that you seem to like the shit as it is.

LOL – again with the ‘envy’ jibe – is that all you have as counter argument rather pathetic and unfounded jibes.

 

Indie

Oh hell Indie LOL – don’t you read the posts (even your own)?

The deserving / undeserving argument is an old one (some argue it goes back to ancient Athens others to the Elizabethan poor laws others to the industrial revolution). Anyway it was quiet established before you were born.

I brought it up in response to your ideas and viewpoints.

One is the idea that an individual can evaluate who is deserving and who is not deserving of assistance as I pointed out nealy two years ago (10-07-2010 Question About Operation of Small Government thread)

- “most people have not the time, energy, inclination or knowledge to ‘evaluate’ another persons worth and too often people would be motivated by bias and prejudice in their assessment.

This kind of thinking has often lead in the past to the self serving idea of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. The deserving being….”

We have been through this many times (for example post 478 etc in the Effort or Luck thread from September 2010) - So how do you judge what criteria do you use, I’ve asked you before and you don’t seem able to say? You’ve hinted that you ‘feel’ you can judge absolutely who is worthy and who not – so please do so.

I’ve asked you to explain how your model would work many times and all I have ever got is evasion.

How do you monitor and evaluate the situation?

By what criteria is the results viewed as positive?

How do you know the money is going to alcohol, drugs or gambling?

What is being done to tackle the alcohol, drugs and gambling problem?

How is the food given how do you make sure it goes to the child?

What and how are the ‘family services’ and how are they funded?

As I’ve said many times your model seems to throws up more questions than answers.

We have been through this many times as well and as pointed out to you before localism is fine up to a point - but only up to a point, for example someone – say X – lives in a prosperous town with high employment, they might ‘evaluate’ their area and find little reason to give since there are few disadvantaged people. But only a few miles away their could be another town with high unemployment and with many people in hardship and little spare local money to go round but since X doesn’t live there, doesn’t go there and so cannot ‘evaluate’ that towns needs he doesn’t help to relieve they hardship.

If you have a national scheme with the duty, time, and knowledge to ‘evaluate’ things locally, regionally and nationally if can move resources to those places where it is most needed.

But this is often when you get self serving arguments or ones based in prejudice and bias.

- Why should I give money to people I haven’t personally evaluated I mean they are most likely feckless, scroungers.

- The people around here don’t need so much help probably because they work harder than those feckless scroungers.

- They are probably in hardship because they have alcohol, drugs and gambling problem?

- If these feckless scroungers had just made better choices in their lives then they wouldn’t need help I mean it is the duty and responsibility of each individual citizen to acquire by their own efforts what they need to survive.

 

Indie

LOL your evasion and misdirection is hilarious thing is as you well know I said - I know you claim to want to limit wealth’s influence but the ideas you have presented would most like increase its power and influence and you have even suggested that wealth should have greater voting rights so that it could block or veto the votes of the majority.

Yes and you have still suggested that wealth should have greater voting rights so that it could block or veto the votes of the majority

 

Indie

As I’ve pointed out to you many times I’m trying to work out why you hold onto views and even promote them when you seem totally incapable of defending them in any rational or reasonable way.

 

Bal,

You seem to have much more time on your hands than me so I'm simply going to hit on the high points as I skim over your many posts.

While debt/investment can be a part of a capitalist system, that's about as far as I can agree.

My views have been explained, and as I've stated there is nothing further I could say to make them acceptable or understood by you as we seem to view things from a perspective which is diametrically opposite.

Emotional - You claim I would let people die on the side of the street, kids starve or kept from getting an education.

I've not claimed that an advantage must be earned, only that they belong to those who possess them, and it is the right of the possessor to use or share as they see fit.

I've not said that people who find themselves in hardship deserve it, or have earned it, but they are not entitled to receive assistance, nor should they expect or demand that government take from "the evil" rich to provide their needs. I don't promote advantages or disadvantages as anything other than circumstances, although they can be the result of good/bad decisions which you might claim to be earned.

I see no benefit to a society when only a small portion are producing and a growing number are allowed or encouraged to simply consume.

Like it or not, genetics plays a large role in todays society, and simply calling it social Darwinism derogatorily doesn't change the fact that it does.

Like your baseball/basketball game of life, advantages and disadvantages exist naturally in life, and success is most generally achieved by learning where ones advantages and disadvantages exist and taking steps to make use of the advantages.

If life experiences count for nothing, you're living in a fantasy world.

I've not been talking about wild animals, but only civilized human animals. A major difference between us and the rest of the animal world is that we tend to overpopulate at the expense of not only all other life, but also our resources and our environment.

My previous reply of "shit happens" could also be taken as "live with it, and don't let it become the primary issue on which you base your life, only to elevate your shortcomings." We each make our own way in this world, and society is simply a source that we have to make an effort to find where in it we best fit. If you need help and receive it, show appreciation, and if you do not, don't let it anger you.

That's enough for now, and I don't go back and read posts made previously, but only respond to what appears new. And I've stated before, you try to expand and make it so time consuming that I end up just skimming lightly over what you post. The remainder of your posts were simply ignored as they would require valuable time trying to set you straight and after all this thread was simply a question of "would you vote for Ron Paul". I believe I did answer that yes quite a number of posts ago, and at this point I would likely vote for anyone at all who would run against Obama.

 

Indie

Can you clarify please?

We have covered this many times and you still haven’t addressed the criticisms levelled at your views. For example post 719

Now there are a number of good books on the origins and reasons for the financial crisis and all of them point to the significant role of financial deregulation or the blocking of regulation.

Try reading – Freefall by Joseph Stiglitz or Whoops!: Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay by John Lanchester - To name but two

People could also look up the story of Brooksley Born who tried to regulate derivatives and got stopped from doing so by thhe likes of that great friend of Ayn Rand and well known right wing libertarian Alan Greenspan, because he didn’t believe in the regulation of such things.

The problem is that the neoliberal ideas that you seem to support brought about a situation in which not only seemed to allow but to encourage the emergence of ‘too big to fail’ institutions and the type of financial engineering (speculation) that has caused so many problems.

And once again I’d suggest reading - Utopia, no just Keynes
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=328353

Again you seem to think in either/or – for me changes need to be made holistically across the board including government and banks

 

58

No if they pay themselves to the point that they’d be cushioned from any collapse

Let us look at the case of James (Jimmy) Cayne, who seemed to prefer playing bridge and golf to running Bears Stearns although he got a salary of $200,000 dollars to supposedly do it along with huge bonuses.

Well on paper he was worth in the region of 900 million.
But then Bears needed Fed help and JPMorgan Chase was found to snap it up and Cayne cashed in his Bears stock at a rather low price and supposedly only made 60 million or so. But as the New York Times noted even with the ‘loss’ he wasn’t liable to go hungry, in fact “he has certainly accumulated enough to live out his retirement years in comfort”. There is the other investments such as the Plaza hotel apartments he brought for $28 million.


So lets see - According to US social security the average wage for Americans in 2006 was around 38,651, and remember there are a hell of a lot of people on lower, but lets round it up to 40,000 for convenience.

So if someone didn’t spend any of their wages and lived off air then it would take them a hundred years, 100 years, to make just 4,million, so it would take them just seven hundred years 700, to raise the 28 million Jimmy paid for his flats and only 1500 years to raise the 60 million he got for his shares.

So an average American would have had to have begun working in the reign of the dark age Frankish king Clovis, well over 1000 years before America was even discovered to reach the amount that Jimmy made in one day.

My point is that while neoliberal advocates sold their brands of economics to the general population as a panacea, some type of elixir of eternal wealth, many actually knew of the risks.

But it is very possible that if those risks had been explained then many of things that were very beneficial to the economic elites would not have taken place or been allowed (such as the huge hikes in top executive pay and the lowing top band tax rates). I mean there was meant to be a trickle down that never came and there was meant to be a economic stability that just evaporated. Both of these things were the shortcomings and risks within the neoliberal ideology but the criticisms were dismissed by the advocates.

The neo-liberalists claimed that under there deregulated ‘free market’ model if a business failed it should be allowed to fail.

But they sold the con (through think tanks and lobbyists) that neo-liberalism would work and always work, because of the superiority of their ‘free market’ model and for the very reason that the people in control of corporations’ would also ‘fail’ if their businesses failed.

The thing was that those that had most to gain from deregulated neoliberal economic ideas were those that could use it to cushion themselves if things did fail.

I mean a CEO that is making 500 times the amount of his average worker is 500 times more likely to weather any economic downturn than the average worker and that’s a large margin that makes one hell of a cushion.

 

56

This seems to have originated with a Hank Paulson piece for the Washington Post

Here is a view of that –

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/07/hank-paulson-blame-it-on-housing/

 

Bal,

What needs clarification? Banks, like any business, and unlike government, remain in business only by remaining profitable. Government regulations such as the CRA (1977) required banks to increase their risk in making loans to those who under more normal banking practices would have likely been denied, but non-compliance which would result in undesirable consequences allowed government pressures to prevail.

I'm not thinking either/or at all, simply looking to resolve the largest problem first so that the lessor problems can be more easily solved without interference.

 

Blab

The bank itself is not the same as the CEO of said bank – why dispute my point / cloud the issue by comparing apples and oranges (metaphorically speaking, of course).

 

I just can't take seriously a guy whose name is 'Individual' consistantly advocating for policiies which would harm the individual.

You mr. Individual are a contradiction.

 

Blab

No, my information / opinion is based on personal knowledge and experience of and with the US housing market and not just what I’ve read and find convenient for proving the point to myself or anyone else.

BTW, the “Hank Paulson piece” you provide a “view” of is actually one by Barry Ritholtz – the same one you link to.

 

Seriously.... all of this should be in another thread(s).

It's been a big circle jerk in here for weeks and no one is even talking about Ron Paul anymore. You know.... Ron Paul. As in "WOULD YOU VOTE FOR RON PAUL"

 

And just what policies might they be?

What is it you feel to be contradictory?

 

You should answer Balbus' questions. I was waiting for you to answer but you don't.

 

Some of us have been waiting for those answers for quite some time.

 

Out, Fuddy, and peanut gallery in general,

Ask a question and you'll receive an answer. If you don't like or comprehend the answer given, resolution is generally accomplished by narrowing the focus or scope of the question rather than broadening it. As the latter does result in lengthy, irrational, and irrelevant argument, it seldom achieves any positive results.

Most every thread I've posted in has gradually, if not quickly, morphed into an argument of collectivism vs individualism regardless of the subject heading.

 

Indie

Actually as I’ve pointed out before you seem to post a lot more and more quickly than I do.

And remember since most of your stuff is just reiteration that I’ve already covered I can usually recall the criticisms of your views that you refused to address last time.

You have stated your views many times however often you have refused to explain them even when asked (repeatedly) so I’m not sure that statement is entirely truthful.

Other times the explanation is so short and simplistic that it hardly counts as an explanation at all and cannot to stand up to even the smallest amount of scrutiny.

As pointed out many times before I’m happy and willing to defend my ideas from criticism and have done so many times - you seem incapable of doing so and instead fall back on evasion and dismissal. The thing is that if an idea can’t be defended from criticism it’s probably not a very good idea.

But you have said that in your model of society you would be happy to see people who through no fault of their own find themselves in hardship to suffer and even die of want.

We’ve been through that before it is the same argument put forward by Kings and nobles for holding onto power, I mean King George inherited the American colonies so was it right for the British subjects who lived their to rebel and take it away from him and his successors? Are you saying we can have them it back?

LOL - You begin the paragraph denying it and end it by admitting it.

Oh and I love the bit with the ‘evil rich’ – LOL I mean come on man do you live in the middle ages? It also seems like another example of your absolutist thinking in this case projecting it on to others.

But as I’ve explained many times now - I want a society that is aimed at full employment where people are paid a decent living wage with the prospects of having a happy, healthy and fulfilled life.

The problem, which again has been highlighted many times is that you don’t seem to be aiming for that, the ideas you have promoted would more likely make wealth more powerful to the detriment of all other groups and the situation of the last thirty years or so were wealth has vastly increased its wealth while the real term incomes of the middle a low classes has stagnated or fallen, would most likely get worse.

 

Indie

LOL – ok explain this ‘fact’ - in what way does genetics plays a large role in today’s society, in what way is advantage and disadvantage ‘genetically’ predisposed rather than being structural?

Yes I know that’s you view but the problem is that you seem incapable of defending it from the many criticisms levelled at it. I mean you say naturally and then later in the post you say you are talking about human civilisation the artificial human construct of human structures like law, religion and politics.

There is a quote attributed to the Jesuits founder Loyola along the lines of "Give me the child until seven and I will mould the man."

We have been through this a number of times only recently in post 1567 where I said - a child learns from the moment it is born, and even with the best will in the world the disadvantaged are less likely to have the resources and in many cases the education themselves to help develop that learning. Meaning they cannot afford or don’t see the value of educational tools and activities (reading, books, educational play, educational trips etc). Such children are also likely to live in environments where the value of education is not necessarily seen as worthwhile or encouraged. This means that often children are ill prepared for schooling and find it difficult to adjust to. However good a teacher is it is much harder for them to teach a child to read from scratch than one that knows the rudiments or can already read at a basic level. It is also easier to teach a child that has leant to learn than one that hasn’t had that experience.

In other words not a natural system but an artificial one a human construction.

Are you hinting that you would want to under-populate the human race reduce our numbers and how would you go about that? Is that why you would want a society where you’d be happy to see people die of want?

Oh and I’m not putting words in your mouth – I’m trying to understand your thinking here.

Also as people have pointed out the ideas you would seem to be promoting would increase rather than diminish environmental harm.

But why should people ‘live with it’ beyond you wanting them to suffer hardship through no fault of their own? This isn’t a natural occurrence it is a structural occurrence it is down to the structure, and structures can be changed. The problem I have with your ideas as explained many times is that you seem to want to make the structure worse whiled I’d try and improve it.

Even you admit that isn’t true - some get advantage and others disadvantage, that has an effects on how prepared and equipped they are to face what the world throws at them.

 

Indie

The problem with that is you can end up forgetting what was said and so start making it up. That’s probably why you claim to have said things when you haven’t or make so many unsubstantiated accusations that don’t seem to have any basis in evidence.

Oh indie LOL as you well know I try brief and you call it simplistic and demand explanation, if I go into explanation you claim it is too long. The outcome in both cases is the same – you not addressing what’s been said.

This could be the reason why you seem rather uninformed on many things. I get the feeling you’ve skimmed a lot in your life and have had a tendency to ignore anything you didn’t agree with. That would mean that you have never put your ideas under any pressure to see if they are any good, its no wonder you can’t defend them.

I think the problem is that you approach things with the belief that your views are right rather than seeing if your can stand up to criticism.