So I'm already versed on the Rothbardian revisionist history of regulations, I've even got The Triumph of Conservatism on my shelf waiting to be read. But this video provoked some thoughts of mine which leads me to believe we have a chance to develop a more nuanced position on regulation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_I3fh0AW50
As you can see this Government Bad! point of view comes off as very oversimplifying the issue even though actually have a very coherent opinion if they would only understand what I like to call the Kolko Cartelization Argument
I think Schiff held his own but I would like to address some certain points that were brought up. I do think Cenk is ignorant of great depression history so I won't bother addressing that.
Okay so the view that many "pragmatic" social democrat types hold is that Glass Steagall like some magic force field was the only thing preventing us from economic Armageddon
2 issues with this.
1. The regulators don't enforce every rule, they have literally bookshelves full of regulations, so saying that regulators are analogous to referee's or watchdogs is erroneous. I like to think of the regulations more as a shed full of tools and they pick and choose which ones they would like to use to nudge players in the market in the direction that they would like to see the market go.
2. Glass Steagall only blocked certain types of speculation, it didn't really do away with fractional reserve banking, there is no reason to think the speculation wouldn't manifest itself in another form, I do not think the bankers lack the creativity or the imagination to find risky investments. It's kind of like pointing to someone who gained 80 pounds in 4 years and saying "if only we had banned cheeseburgers" I say he would of went for the fried chicken.
Obviously he isn't understanding the underlying causes of the crash and is pointing at how they happened to manifest themselves
What he said about shareholder control is a function of corporate law and should have been answered with more agreement/openness as this aspect of corporate law was developed by a series of court rulings in the mid 19th century. Not the market.
Which brings me to the main point I would like to make, perhaps we shouldn't reject all regulation proposals by the social democrats off hand. I say we begin distinguishing between:
Expansion of Regulation vs. Optimization of Regulation
Otherwise we will come off as basically WANTING the government to fail, which in my opinion is a strategically bad move.
Another point I would like to bring up is the possibility of regulations potentially mitigating a problem of a problem in our current system of property rights. Specifically the right to get injunctions against others directly violating our property rights through environmental damage or even putting us at risk. I'm open to the possibility of a regulatory commission mitigating this IF we already have to put up with them they may as well do something useful.
Also if anyone could point to specific powers that the various regulatory commissions had and could have used but didn't that would make for an even better argument. Because as far as I can tell the regulators were encouraging the players in the market to act this way.
The regulators in the MMS had a sweet deal getting free vacations with adult entertainment and what not. But that never happens at other regulatory agencies? They are true stewards of the federal purse.
We do want it to. People may not like that but it is what we want. We want regulation gone. I personally wish to see the government collapse with every fibre of my being. There is no economic rationale for it. There is no moral rationale. It is a parasite that simply exists and must go. No need to even optimise its stupid, arbitrary rules.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
"We do want it to. People may not like that but it is what we want. We want regulation gone. I personally wish to see the government collapse with every fibre of my being. There is no economic rationale for it. There is no moral rationale. It is a parasite that simply exists and must go. No need to even optimise its stupid, arbitrary rules."
One thing that has always been a concern for me is that were the government to collapse, I don't really see how a well functioning AnCap society would result. Why wouldn't there just be turf warfare or a complete collapse of the legal code?
Edit: Also, how do I quote? I used to be able to quote people but one day something happened, and ever since then I have never found out how to quote properly for the life of me.
Why should there be an issue if there is a turf war as opposed to a massive growing government with a vast array of resources at its disposition?
If there is a movement that is shown to want the state to fail, than they will be blamed for the failure of the state and marginalized and we will just end up with a new state. I don't think making government more optimized in certain areas is really going to save it from failure on a massive scale.
I am an ancap, I do want to abolish the state, but that just seems like a terrible strategic move. By fail I don't mean collapse, I mean a particular program making things worse.
It just seems disingenuous, I mean the republicans are accused of aiming to make government policy fail just because Obama is in office, it seems like you're pretty much hoping the government makes things worse. I mean I guess it will raise antigovernment sentiment but remember modern states collapsing don't lead to anarchy... We really need a massive ideological turn...
There isn't an "if" about their collapse. It will happen. They are addicted to spending. With the US's current unfunded liabilities I don't think it will ever have a "rational" economy. And no, anarchism won't necessarily follow the collapse of the state. Though bear in mind, we're not the ones causing the state's failure. Its own idiotic policies are. All we can do really is make "suggestions" we know will never really be implemented and let them get on with wrecking their host until the expropriation becomes untenable.
Optimising regulation just restores people's confidence in it for a bit longer, extending their comfort zone. Strategically it's fine to pretend to want to optimise the system in the knowledge the state will just adopt braindead policies anyway, but otherwise let it come tumbling down.
As long as banks do business on FRL we will need regulations.
I would start by breaking the biggest 10 banks in 10 pieces each.
Corporatism is using state means to enhance market share and profitability of a few favored firms, at the expense of the citizen.
wolfman:I would start by breaking the biggest 10 banks in 10 pieces each.
The top 10 banks in the US are also among the 10 most powerful, dominant, coercive, evil, dangerous, monopolistic economies.
You have to be naïve not to know this.
I have hope that breaking them makes their business harder. However; I could be wrong by just braking 10 big asteroids into 100 ones.
wolfman:You have to be naïve not to know this.
wolfman:I have hope that breaking them makes their business harder. However; I could be wrong by just braking 10 big asteroids into 100 ones.
Sieben wrote the following post at Thu, Jul 15 2010 1:47 PM:
I would say from both.
His 540 m income does not prove anything.
"Regulation" is nothing but another euphemism for market-killing interventionism
In case you guys are interested, here's the 1700 page financial regulations bill that's going to pass the Senate today:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4173/text
1700 pages ???
I wonder how many regulators will know what it says on every page, let alone any senator, congressman, businessman or lawyer.
its a trap !!!!
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring