Ted Rall for August 03, 2009

Fabulous.

Reminded me of Freaky Fables by J B Handelsman.

Nice summation of the American Way.

Unregulated Capitalism is fine so long as you are OK with people dying in the streets and having top step over the bodies on the way to your CEO job.

Since most high ranking capitalists are sociopaths, this shouldn’t be a problem for them, but it clearly illustrates the need foir Union and strong central regulation.

The greatest enemy of capitalism is a successful capitalist.

Unregulated capitalism tends towards oligarchism which is no longer capitalism. It definitely needs regulation. Most arguments are over how much. Even honest free marketers understand the need for regulation. Not that we have ever had a free market, however, if we did, it would be destroyed by those who are successful. If it wasn’t monitored.

Um, Adam old chap, I work in executive-level consulting. “Most high ranking capitalists are sociopaths” is simply not true. In fact, most of the top people I work with are highly principled. You may disagree with their principles, but they are not sociopaths. I agree we need regulation, but sociopathy isn’t why.

The invisible hand regulates the market.

Grown people usually don’t believe in “invisible” or “magic” stuff, much less when it comes to govern a nation or the World.

I think the third box would have been best served by using a dithering approach. The hologram is not well done Ted…

The cartoon was quite funny though!

That’s it I quit !

Hahahaaa! Nice one!

“strong buy” lol

Thanks for this.

New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit http://tinyurl.com/kwvbpe

Corosive Frog, the «invisible hand» is Adam Smith’s metaphor for a market under «perfect competition», which the good Scotsman realised was an idealisation, but one necessary to the development of a theory concerning how markets work - just as, say, Galielo’s concept of a body falling in a perfect vacuum, was an idealisation, but one absolutely necessary for the development of the laws of motion. In «The Wealth of Nations», in fact, Smith warned that governments should not be run by «merchants» (capitalists), as they will always attempt to distort the market to their own private profit. which is why government regulation (by non-merchants, not people like Lawrence Henry Summers) is necessary. In any event, Ted’s cartoon on the «new economy», in which shares in companies downsized to levels which require quantum mechanics - or possibly string theory - to describe are puffed, rather than those in companies which produce real products in demand by real people and thus are hiring workers and «upsizing» (the «creative» part of Joseph Schumpeter’s «creative destruction»), is spot on, and deserves to become a classic….

Henri

I look to Cuba and see the workers’ paradise. Clinton is shopping for a getaway in North Korea.

US Congress is considering a bill to change the way the post office funds its retiree health benefits over the next two years that could save $2 billion annually.

In addition, Postmaster General John Potter has asked Congress for permission to reduce mail deliveries from six days a week to five.

I say look to Canada for the answers.

@Biafra - perhaps you should rather check the Scandinavian countries. An old communist dictator, after his imprisonment, joked that they were trying to build communism for 45 years - and the Swedes still beat them to it.

Edit: oh, and Clinton did go to North Korea. Did a good job, too.

motivemagus, tell that to the people of Bhopal, or tyhe oil-covered wildlife onthe coast of Alaska. Some people do not care how big a mess they make (or people they kill) and would never, ever consider cleaning it up (or make restitution).

Adam, I didn’t say they were all saints, and I’ve posted here repeatedly myself about the flaws of an unbridled capitalist system. You asserted that “most high-ranking capitalists are sociopaths.” I disagreed with that sweeping assertion based on data and experience. I am fully aware of both your examples, believe me. And in fact, when the Exxon Valdez spilled oil all over Alaska, the North American head of one of the other oil companies went there at once, walked the beaches himself, listened to people there, and really tried to make some change. Exxon, by contrast, bought the newspaper to shut down the bad news. There are good ones and bad ones, like everything else in life. What makes the roles so dangerous is that a minor slip-up for an individual can become a catastrophe when magnified by a company.

M Henri Day – nicely said

I’m OK with people dying – it’s called natural selection and we have WAY too little of it going on. Don’t want to see them dying? – how about a little unnatural selection…snip snip. It takes no brains and little ability to reproduce – the result is obvious – more democrats, who by in large are less educated (at least in the hard sciences) and poorer (less productive). If you are receiving direct payment from the government, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote. You contribute to society, you get the vote. It’s simple and would put an end to this socialist nonsense (Cuba, Venezuela etc.).

Some of the richest people in the world are the most philanthropic.

ynnek58: That’s a nazi philosophy. That leads me to conclude you are a fascist and proud of it. There’s a place for you in North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia and on and on. You are only an American by virtue of where you live.

ynnek58, don’t forget also about your privileged role in comparison to other people. What you have attained, odds are, is the result of plenty of unrecognized luck, such as being born in a favorable rung in the class system. Or have you really started from zero; the true zero, meaning, born from parents living in an impoverished hut, with no access to education but hard labor?

Would you have the same opinion if luck had been otherwise and you had been born to a much more disadvantageous position?

P.S. Intrinsically, conservatism tends to be inactive at any level, hence “conservatism”. Its philosophy itself is a resistance to new ideas, not only stifling intellect, but in time also hindering progress, whether this be intellectual, scientific, or even spiritual. Conservatives may not tend to be less educated, but more stagnant in their education. Which could be argued is kind of the same.

ynnek - boy, are you wrong, in so many ways it’s hard to begin.

“democrats are less educated and poorer.” First, cite proof. Second, even if so, you are reversing cause and effect. One reason the country went so strongly for Obama is because of the declining economy - people vote in favor of the party not in power when the economy tanks. Third, the ten states with the most dropouts as of 2007, in order from worst to best, are: Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, California, Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina. Note a pattern? With one obvious exception (California), every single one of those states voted Republican in 2008. 538.com suggested a more nuanced view – those with less education AND those with the most education went for Obama. “If you are receiving direct payment from the government, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote.” Social Security? Which is paid for by past payroll taxes? How about Veteran’s benefits? Seems to be a contribution not measurable in money. If you are suggesting something like the government in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, I suggest you read it more carefully. “Some of the richest people in the world are the most philanthropic.” And some are the least. And they have the most money, so everyone knows about it. What’s more philanthropic – some robber baron who pays for a library with a fraction of his income to promote his own name, or some nameless worker giving 10% of their minimum wage to their church?

A modest proposal: If “natural selection” is truly to be endorsed, let’s make sure it’s allowed free rein - abolish inherited wealth, and make every generation succeed or fail on its own merits. If the parents who have, through natural ability, amassed wealth and power truly have genes that ought to be preserved, then those of their offspring which share those genes will likewise be favored for similar success. As it stands now, the surest way to become rich is to be born to rich parents, and likewise the surest way to wind up poor is to be born to poor parents. If someone is born poor but through drive and natural ability has what it takes to rise to the top, we encourage that. But if someone is born wealthy yet through indolence or natural inability has nothing to offer society, don’t give the kid a trust fund, put a shovel in his hand and let him live on a ditch-digger’s salary.

Let’s find a way to get the best educations and job opportunities to those who would most benefit from them, rather than those who can best afford them. Let well-to-do parents know that, if they DO want their children to likewise enjoy a high standard of living, then those children will have to succeed on their own merits. Barring “special needs” such as developmental disability or such (for which we already have separate tracks of inheritance law), once they’re 18 the kids have to stand on their own two feet.

Fritzoid, you’ll be one of my advisers when I rule the NWO.

My own friends have said that they’d be the first to shoot me if I ever REALLY came to power.

I’m half-serious, though. Some sort of redistribution of wealth is inevitable, and if it doesn’t happen in an orderly fashion it will happen in a DISORDERLY fashion and that’s what I’d like to avoid. Come MY revolution, nobody goes up against the wall (but Paris Hilton would have to get used to pouring coffee and serving donuts. She’s reasonably cute, though, so she’d make decent tips).

It’s only been a couple of hundred years since this country got rid of the idea that political power can be handed down through “noble” families by Divine Right (the lingering affection for “dynasties” such as the Kennedys and the Bushes notwithstanding). If we got rid of the idea that a person is entitled to be wealthy just because their parents were wealthy, it would certainly be jarring but in a generation or two people would get used to it, I think. It would be the norm, and people 100 years from now would say “Can you imagine? Most wealthy people used to be rich because someone else simply GAVE them money! They didn’t have to do ANYTHING to merit it! How barbaric.”

Not enough of one, and they’re trying to get rid of THAT.

I’m not talking about taxing it, I’m talking about actual confiscation. A surviving spouse would be able to inherit, but would not be able to pass along that wealth to a successor spouse. Orphaned minors would be allowed maintenance until they reach majority. But once you’re 18, like I said THAT’S IT. Your parents can’t make the down payment on your house. They can’t pay your tuition at college. You can’t go work for your dad (there would be some provision for continuity of ownership of small businesses, if the offspring has been helping run a Mom-and-Pop store since s/he was a child, but as with SPecial Needs trusts we already have separate provisions in place for small businesses), or your uncle, or your dad’s frat brother, or golfing crony. If there’s even the APPEARANCE of impropriety, you aren’t allowed to apply for that job.

The wealth thus confiscated would be returned to the economy as education grants for the deserving poor and small-business loans.

My opinion of Bill Gates went way up when I heard that he put the vast majority of his wealth into his foundation. He set aside a relatively small amount for each of his kids, but they aren’t getting anything like enough to live forever in luxury. He wants them to work like he did.

If citizens of our country are expected to survive according to “Sink or Swim”, we have to make sure everyone is thrown into the same pool, and nobody’s parents are allowed to give them waterwings. Until that point, anybody who maintains that we have anything RESEMBLING a “level playing field” is deluding themselves.

When someone asked JFK whether it was “fair” that he had the advantages of inherited wealth behind him, he famously replied “Life isn’t fair.” And that’s true. “Life isn’t just” either, but that hasn’t prevented every functioning society from trying to IMPOSE justice on Life. Even if an established “Fairness System” could only yield results as approximate as the “Justice System” that we rely on, it would be a vast improvement on the status quo.