Richism: The Self-Righteous Bigotry of the Wall Street Protestors

[sjw]

I also pointed out specific situations where you're flat out wrong.

Actually no, all you did was say that you know a guy who knows a guy. All you're talking about is hearsay.

You are biased to want to make the case that big business has it harder, or at least about as hard. You haven't made that case, nor have you undercut my case in the slightest; on the contrary, a number of the things you said only confirm my case.

The patent system and regulations alone are enough to make my case. The points about fiat money are just bonus material.

Here's some more bonus material: Try setting up a lemonade stand or a small pub nearby your neighborhood. You'll find that you can't do it. The zoning laws corral us into big locations with huge expensive buildings that only big business can fund. We're not allowed to do the smaller stuff that individuals and small businesses could handle. Try going downtown and selling some wares. You'll find you generally can't do that either. We're mostly blocked and corralled such that we wind up working for some big employer. We're not 100% blocked, but there are very strong forces leaning that way.

The current system is a kind of neo-feudalism.

Shayne

[bmacwilliam]

I also pointed out specific situations where you're flat out wrong.

Actually no, all you did was say that you know a guy who knows a guy. All you're talking about is hearsay.

You are biased to want to make the case that big business has it harder, or at least about as hard. You haven't made that case, nor have you undercut my case in the slightest; on the contrary, a number of the things you said only confirm my case.

The patent system and regulations alone are enough to make my case. The points about fiat money are just bonus material.

Here's some more bonus material: Try setting up a lemonade stand or a small pub nearby your neighborhood. You'll find that you can't do it. The zoning laws corral us into big locations with huge expensive buildings that only big business can fund. We're not allowed to do the smaller stuff that individuals and small businesses could handle. Try going downtown and selling some wares. You'll find you generally can't do that either. We're mostly blocked and corralled such that we wind up working for some big employer. We're not 100% blocked, but there are very strong forces leaning that way.

The current system is a kind of neo-feudalism.

Shayne

"Actually no, all you did was say that you know a guy who knows a guy"

Wrong.

I, me, first person. I hired the accountant - still do.

"The patent system and regulations alone are enough to make my case."

Perhaps. But this is the only reasonable thing you asserted. Other assertions are highly questionable and/or false.

"Try setting up a lemonade stand or a small pub nearby your neighborhood. You'll find that you can't do it."

I live in a different country so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Here? You couldn't possibly be more wrong. A small mom and pop pub just opened two weeks ago in my neighbourhood in a small (no big-box) commercial spot quite quickly (a month or two) after the previous business vacated. Was just in there on Thurs chatting up the new owner.

One of my closest friends does this for a living. Opens a restaurant/pub in a cheap, non big-box location, cooks great food, builds the business, then sells for a profit and starts over. He's done this many times. He's good at what he does - best ribs ever.

Again, different country, but your description doesn't fly here, not at all.

I'm starting to agree with George again, please help....

Bob

[sjw]

Perhaps. But this is the only reasonable thing you asserted. Other assertions are highly questionable and/or false.

No, your assertions are false. Every one of them is either wrong on its face or represents confusion and distortion on your part. Further, you admit that I am possibly right about the matter that settles the overall point, and yet like a little gnat you continue to pester me over silly details. Why? I think your motive is hinted at here:

I'm starting to agree with George again, please help....

So, your only motive here is to support George in his deranged quest. Your pointless and misguided quibbling makes a lot more sense now.

Shayne

[bmacwilliam]

No, your assertions are false. Every one of them is either wrong on its face or represents confusion and distortion on your part.

Interesting.

"Try setting up a lemonade stand or a small pub nearby your neighborhood. You'll find that you can't do it"

Couldn't be more wrong. No confusion or distortion.

" it is very simple for a big business to hire a professional accountant, but a huge burden for a small business to do so."

Bullshit. Nonsense. Done it myself.

"Only big business can afford to devise and implement the complicated tax-shelter schemes the current legal environment encourages."

Bullshit. Nonsense. Done it myself.

"The Federal Reserve hands out money at low or no interest to big businesses, who then either use it to compete directly with small businesses who have no such access to cheap fiat money, or loan the money out at substantially marked up rates to the smaller businesses."

Now there's a distortion. Higher risk = higher rate, perfectly rational. Take out the Fed, and small business would still pay more for money no matter what.

I'd like to know what the colour of the sky is in your world.

Bob

[sjw]

Bob, given your lack of interest in the overall point, your motive to just pick at details to some untoward end, I have no inclination to cure you of your various other delusions. How do I know whether your delusions are genuine, or whether you are just faking them in order to pursue some other unspecified end? I can't. You're a waste of time.

I will mention one thing: your remark about "smaller = higher risk" is particularly stupid given that it was failed big businesses that were bailed out. There's a circular logic there: they're too big to fail, ergo they're lower risk. Well of course they're lower risk, they're not allowed to fail. Abolish legal tender laws and the other things I'm talking about and many of these corporations would fall completely apart and be replaced by smaller and better businesses.

Shayne

[bmacwilliam]

I will mention one thing: your remark about "smaller = higher risk" is particularly stupid given that it was failed big businesses that were bailed out. There's a circular logic there: they're too big to fail, ergo they're lower risk.

Shayne

Well, your one remark is remarkably wrong. Just because some big businesses fail obviously doesn't mean they're a higher risk as a group. You don't need to be an economist to know that the small business failure rate is astronomically higher than Big Business. Oh, a few companies get a bailout (0.01%) so that alters the risk profile? I think you're just screwing around and can't be serious.

You don't see millions of rational people investing all their retirement funds in Joe's discount dog grooming service. Blue chip companies fail much more rarely and they're certainly not protected by bailouts (vast majority). Do I really need to point this out???

[George H. Smith]

I'm starting to agree with George again, please help....

So, your only motive here is to support George in his deranged quest. Your pointless and misguided quibbling makes a lot more sense now.

Yeah, Bob is one of my biggest boosters, even though he doesn't like me.

In a subsequent post Bob asks what color your sky is. My guess would be multi-colored polka dots with unicorns flying to and fro.

Ghs

[sjw]

I will mention one thing: your remark about "smaller = higher risk" is particularly stupid given that it was failed big businesses that were bailed out. There's a circular logic there: they're too big to fail, ergo they're lower risk.

Shayne

Well, your one remark is remarkably wrong. Just because some big businesses fail obviously doesn't mean they're a higher risk as a group. You don't need to be an economist to know that the small business failure rate is astronomically higher than Big Business. Oh, a few companies get a bailout (0.01%) so that alters the risk profile? I think you're just screwing around and can't be serious.

You don't see millions of rational people investing all their retirement funds in Joe's discount dog grooming service. Blue chip companies fail much more rarely and they're certainly not protected by bailouts (vast majority). Do I really need to point this out???

You're hopelessly confused.

The point was that if you remove those things propping up big business, many of them will fall like a house of cards (or shrink, which is fine too). Their "low risk" is only coming from the unjustified propping up.

Also, if you want to measure risk for a given pile of money you need to spread it around. Obviously it'd be dumb to invest all you money into a single mom and pop, you want to diversify. A big conglomerate is in effect a kind of diversification; but so too would be a means of investing in a thousand small businesses. But you can't do that now, can you? It's illegal. You can't form a "small business stock market" and invest by buying their stocks. Anyway, I don't see how you can apriori know how risky big business is vs. small given a sane investment strategy and a free-market determination of risk.

This is why I don't want to go into your other details, you're too "high maintenance" even on this one.

Shayne

[sjw]

In a subsequent post Bob asks what color your sky is. My guess would be multi-colored polka dots with unicorns flying to and fro.

Ghs

As an anarchist, do you believe that a free market would result in mega-corps, or do you think they would tend toward smaller businesses and less conglomerates?

As supporters of the free market, neither of us is against big nor large business per se, but we're going to have opinions on what the motivations of "one neck ready for one leash" big government will lead to in the business realm, and I suspect you rather agree more with me than with Bob.

Also, as one who does not support the patent regime, I don't see how you can but conclude that many big businesses are engorged from unjustified propping up, as opposed to just being naturally large.

Shayne

[Dennis Hardin]

"Party Line" Objectivists are useful idiots for this kind of thing. The storm clouds are gathering and yet they persist in their antics.

Shayne

A 'useful idiot' is someone who unwittingly supports a malignant cause through their naive attempts to interpret that cause benevolently.

It is typically a mistake made by someone who is so blinded by his own obsessions that he cannot see the obvious malignancy others easily recognize.

It's tempting to think that you're deliberately creating a smokescreen. It's rare to have philosophical differences so clearly defined as is the case with the Wall Street Protest. Objectivists have a rare educational oportunity here: "Capitalism and conventional altruist ethics are incompatible. It's the unwashed dopeheads or the skyscrapers, America. Make your choice."

Wake up and smell the envy. (And stop trying to muddy the waters. It just makes people question which side you are really on.)

[sjw]

"Party Line" Objectivists are useful idiots for this kind of thing. The storm clouds are gathering and yet they persist in their antics.

Shayne

A 'useful idiot' is someone who unwittingly supports a malignant cause through their naive attempts to interpret that cause benevolently.

I do not interpret this cause benevolently (note how I said "storm clouds are gathering"), I merely report that the widespread support is partly stemming from fascist/corporatist factors you blithely ignore. Ironically, you're the useful idiot for both the fascist and communist side. I'm the one who sees both as they are, and wants them both eradicated and replaced with an authentic respect for individual rights.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

In a subsequent post Bob asks what color your sky is. My guess would be multi-colored polka dots with unicorns flying to and fro.

Ghs

As an anarchist, do you believe that a free market would result in mega-corps, or do you think they would tend toward smaller businesses and less conglomerates?

As supporters of the free market, neither of us is against big nor large business per se, but we're going to have opinions on what the motivations of "one neck ready for one leash" big government will lead to in the business realm, and I suspect you rather agree more with me than with Bob.

Also, as one who does not support the patent regime, I don't see how you can but conclude that many big businesses are engorged from unjustified propping up, as opposed to just being naturally large. Most of them are as close to pure Randian villains as it is possible to get. Dennis is right.

Shayne

My anarchism has nothing to do with my free-market views, which are Austrian.

It is hazardous to speculate on what woutd happen in a completely free market, but I see no reason why we would not have mega-corporations. In some instances they would be better able to compete in a global economy. And take a large corporation like Walmart. So far as I know, Walmart is not the beneficiary of governmental privileges. It is better able to compete than smaller businesses because of several factors, including purchasing in huge volume and providing so many commodities under one roof. It is also a well-managed corporation, so it would thrive in a genuinely free market.

Ghs

Addendum: Ask the OWS protesters what they think of Walmart. I think you would find that most of them condemn it as much as they condemn any other corporation. Most of those people do not make the same distinction that libertarians make. How many signs have you seen or how many speeches have you heard from those people that call for a genuinely free market? Dennis is right.

[sjw]

Most of those people do not make the same distinction that libertarians make.

Not relevant. Most Americans don't make those distinctions either.

It's not "hazardous" to speculate on what would happen in a free market, it's impossible to know. What we can know is where there are non-free-market pressures that are supporting some things and harming others, and we can predict initial probable market motion when those pressures are removed, but we can't predict long-term results.

Walmart too enjoys non-free-market pressures, and I'm sure you could identify them George if you wanted to. But of course, Walmart is much more benevolent than a patent troll, or an FDA-backed drug company.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

Most of those people do not make the same distinction that libertarians make.

Not relevant. Most Americans don't make those distinctions either.

So what? This thread is about the OWS protesters. You responded to Dennis' post with an off-the-wall claim to the effect that he was implicitly defending fascism because he failed to mention the alliance between many corporations and the U.S. government. So what the hell was your point, if not to suggest that we should view the protesters more sympathetically?

I should have learned by now that you cannot stay focused from one post to the next. You wander aimlessly from one subject to another.

Ghs

[sjw]

So what the hell was your point,

The point is that a major cause of OWS is fascism, and if you don't like the effect (OWS and its attending political action toward communism), remove the major cause (fascism).

I can't believe these simple cause and effect relations are so difficult for you to grasp. Of course, I am an engineer and took a lot of courses in physics and engineering, so perhaps this stuff is just far more sophisticated than I realize, because compared to information theory this stuff is trivial.

Shayne

[Roger Bissell]

So what the hell was your point,

The point is that a major cause of OWS is fascism, and if you don't like the effect (OWS and its attending political action toward communism), remove the major cause (fascism).

I can't believe these simple cause and effect relations are so difficult for you to grasp. Of course, I am an engineer and took a lot of courses in physics and engineering, so perhaps this stuff is just far more sophisticated than I realize, because compared to information theory this stuff is trivial.

Shayne

If we're talking cause-effect here, seems to me that historically, fascism has been a response to communism, not the other way around. As a more "practical" way to collectivize society, so that (it is hoped) the process of collectivization does not kill the goose (enterprises) that lays the golden egg (goods and services people want). Of course, it's ~not~ practical, but that doesn't stop people from advocating it -- nor does it stop socialists from package-dealing it with capitalism, in order to try to eliminate the latter from consideration as a moral (and practical) alternative.

REB

[sjw]

I wouldn't have guessed this myself but one doesn't have to look very far to find that Walmart is indeed benefiting qua big business from fascist interventions:

http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/24/news/fortune500/walmart_subsidies/

http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/03/small-retailers-being-forced-out-by-government-subsidies-to-big-chains/

http://www.walmartsubsidywatch.org/state_tallies.html

While one can't necessarily blame Walmart for taking advantage of the situation, one can definitely infer that a substantial part of their bigness is subsidized. As I said -- one neck ready for one leash.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

So what the hell was your point,

The point is that a major cause of OWS is fascism, and if you don't like the effect (OWS and its attending political action toward communism), remove the major cause (fascism).

I can't believe these simple cause and effect relations are so difficult for you to grasp. Of course, I am an engineer and took a lot of courses in physics and engineering, so perhaps this stuff is just far more sophisticated than I realize, because compared to information theory this stuff is trivial.

Shayne

If we're talking cause-effect here, seems to me that historically, fascism has been a response to communism, not the other way around. As a more "practical" way to collectivize society, so that (it is hoped) the process of collectivization does not kill the goose (enterprises) that lays the golden egg (goods and services people want). Of course, it's ~not~ practical, but that doesn't stop people from advocating it -- nor does it stop socialists from package-dealing it with capitalism, in order to try to eliminate the latter from consideration as a moral (and practical) alternative.

REB

I don't think this is but superficially supportable. Deep down, politically speaking, it's freedom versus fascism, out of which totalitarianism grows.

--Brant

[sjw]

If we're talking cause-effect here, seems to me that historically, fascism has been a response to communism, not the other way around.

I see the two more as perspectives than as two different entities. The difference if any seems to be in what psychologically motivates in either case. With fascism the motivation seems to be nationalism/patriotism, a "we should all be strong as a nation" ethic; communism's motivation seems to be altruistic, some kind of "we should all share" ethic. But they both wind up in the same place relative to the individual. So to me it seems to be a matter of what trick is used on the individual to get him to yield political power to a central dictatorship, and not so much about the kind of dictatorship you wind up with, because really there is only one kind: the kind that attacks the individual qua individual.

So according to this analysis, when people want the government to create a strong economy, that's a fascist motivation. When they see the result and want more "fairness" about who is deciding what regarding the economic units created, that's a communist motivation. But they're all just haggling over details.

It's not the rich vs. the poor, it's the individual vs. the collective. I am of course preaching to the choir.

Shayne

[sjw]

http://politicaltick...bate/?hpt=hp_t1

6:12 p.m. PT – Paul says the protesters should not be blamed and that blame should be put on those whose actions led to the economic collapse.

6:10 p.m. PT - Cain says he stands by his previous comments that were critical of the protesters and that the protests on Wall Street are not productive.

6:09 p.m. PT - Q from Twitter: How do you explain the Occupy Wall Street movement?

6:07 p.m. PT – Cain says he supported the concept of TARP initially but that he disagreed with the plan ultimately after seeing how the Obama administration used the money.

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shayne,

I support Cain, but not because he is an ideal intellectual.

He's a pro-small-business (and, only then, big business) winner and producer who is good at solving problems.

You're an engineer. How do you turn an aircraft carrier around in a major squall? On a dime? Won't happen. If you try, you'll sink the ship.

So in the big picture, I'm not worried about a few inconsistencies with Cain. I believe he has the willingness and capacity to turn the ship around and head it out of the storm without sinking it. If the ship sinks, it won't matter who was right or wrong.

Another way of saying this is that, if the country were in another context, I might not support Cain.

Michael

[sjw]

[sjw]

I'm not in favor of big fast (and poorly-engineered) changes Michael. If we had the will, I think we could change things in about 20 years time without causing a lot of unintended bad consequences, but that's not the problem. The problem is that people generally can't fit in their minds the ideal you'd be moving toward. Ergo you don't really move toward it.

The main solution I advocate is to re-open the Frontier and let people exercise their right of self-determination again. These people would show the rest of the world how it's done, just as America showed how it could be done better than before. So the main problem as I see it is that whole planet is locked down into a totalitarian scheme and that prevents humanity from moving forward politically.

Shayne

[Selene]

I wouldn't have guessed this myself but one doesn't have to look very far to find that Walmart is indeed benefiting qua big business from fascist interventions:

http://money.cnn.com...mart_subsidies/

http://dissidentvoic...-to-big-chains/

http://www.walmartsu...te_tallies.html

While one can't necessarily blame Walmart for taking advantage of the situation, one can definitely infer that a substantial part of their bigness is subsidized. As I said -- one neck ready for one leash.

Shayne

Shayne:

Your cited sources are from extreme left wing policy institutes,.

Linked to http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/ or http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/about_04.html#staff heavily staffed by Democratic, NY State folks with allegiances to the Working Families Party. NY State Assembly Democratic power brokers, e.g., Assem. Fink, the New School and other progressive institutions.

The primary organization Good Jobs First is affiliated with - The Corporate Research Project that "...assists community, environmental and labor organizations in researching and analyzing companies and industries. The Project is designed to be a resource to aid activism. Consequently, our focus is on strategic research, i.e., identifying the information activists can use as leverage to get business to behave in a socially responsible manner

Seems that these folks are a tad agenda driven. Also, they produce not one single original source cite of a single land grant or tax abatement document.

Makes me awful suspicious, how about you?

Adam

[sjw]

Makes me awful suspicious, how about you?

Adam

I'm suspicious of both the left and the right, but I see no reason to question the facts listed. If you see a reason (beyond political leanings) to question them, then I am interested in it.

Shayne