It's All Ayn Rand's Fault
wjtingle
about that eternal rasfw whipping-girl, Ayn Rand? How the financial
collapse killed libertarianism, according to Slate Magazine.
"The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are
intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed
from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school. [That seems sufficiently
bad. - JT] Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world's
failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong.
Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult for them to accept
that markets can be irrational, misunderstand risk, and misallocate
resources or that financial systems without vigorous government
oversight and the capacity for pragmatic intervention constitute a
recipe for disaster. They are bankrupt, and this time, there will be no
bailout."
Quoted from "The End of Libertarianism
The financial collapse proves that its ideology makes no sense.",
Jacob Weisberg, Slate Magazine, Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008, Article URL:
http://www.slate.com/id/2202489/
Now I'm no libertoonian, nor am I an apologist for them, but this seems
to be a pretty weak standard of proof. On the other hand, the article
does offer a prima facie argument. On the gripping hand, there's a
certain visceral satisfaction to identifying a whole, entire branch of
philosophy, and its basis in an sf story as the bad guy.
There's also a nice symmetry that both Marxism and Libertarianism are
deceased around the fin de siecle. "Die you Objectivist dogs! HA!"
(Sound of headsman's axe falling.)
Regards,
Jack Tingle
Dan Goodman
> Well, we've all been looking for a scapegoat for our 401K's tanking.
> How about that eternal rasfw whipping-girl, Ayn Rand? How the
> financial collapse killed libertarianism, according to Slate Magazine.
>
> "The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are
> intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them
> absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school. [That seems
> sufficiently bad. - JT] Like other ideologues, libertarians react to
> the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the
> world went wrong. Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult
> for them to accept that markets can be irrational, misunderstand
> risk, and misallocate resources or that financial systems without
> vigorous government oversight and the capacity for pragmatic
> intervention constitute a recipe for disaster. They are bankrupt, and
> this time, there will be no bailout."
>
> Quoted from "The End of Libertarianism
> The financial collapse proves that its ideology makes no sense.",
> Jacob Weisberg, Slate Magazine, Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008, Article url:
> http://www.slate.com/id/2202489/
>
> Now I'm no libertoonian, nor am I an apologist for them, but this
> seems to be a pretty weak standard of proof. On the other hand, the
> article does offer a prima facie argument. On the gripping hand,
> there's a certain visceral satisfaction to identifying a whole,
> entire branch of philosophy, and its basis in an sf story as the bad
> guy.
>
> There's also a nice symmetry that both Marxism and Libertarianism are
> deceased around the fin de siecle. "Die you Objectivist dogs! HA!"
> (Sound of headsman's axe falling.)
There's also the small matter that Ayn Rand is reported to have not had
a high opinion of Libertarians and Libertarianism.
--
--
Dan Goodman
"I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers."
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Expire
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
Futures http://clerkfuturist.wordpress.com
Mirror Journal http://dsgood.insanejournal.com
Mirror 2 http://dsgood.wordpress.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
Will in New Haven
Or of libertarians. But her thiking on economics does fall into the
broad category of libertarianism. However neither the current
administration nor the legislative branch that oversaw the current
economic crisis has any tinge of libertarian thought.
--
Will in New Haven
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:gdde45$g14$1...@registered.motzarella.org:
In fact, there are plenty of fiction stories, and historical
accounts, in which one could use a global search and replace on
dates, and to replace "litertarianism" with "communism," it it
would scan just as true.
Fact is, it doesn't matter *what* ideology you subscribe to,
accepting as an absolute TRVTH, without exception, makes you a
retard.
--
Terry Austin
"There's no law west of the internet."
- Nick Stump
Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Well, we've all been looking for a scapegoat for our 401K's tanking. How
> about that eternal rasfw whipping-girl, Ayn Rand? How the financial
> collapse killed libertarianism, according to Slate Magazine.
All it says is that the people doing the financial work WEREN'T
libertarians and DIDN'T understand it.
The financial crisis was caused by the fact that people don't
understand basic physics.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Dorothy J Heydt
What she and they appear to have in common is the motto I saw
once on a page of Hagar the Horrible. IIRC the motto
(cross-stitched and framed) read UBI PECUNIA IBI DOMUS, "where
your money is, there is your home," but Hagar translated it
simply, "I got mine."
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Damien Sullivan
>There's also the small matter that Ayn Rand is reported to have not had
>a high opinion of Libertarians and Libertarianism.
Yeah, because they agreed with her positions without agreeing with her
reasoning.
-xx- Damien X-)
bay...@gmail.com
We have had libertarianism in economics the past few years? News to
me; looked like a solid plutocracy.
wjtingle
>> Now I'm no libertoonian, nor am I an apologist for them, but this seems
>> to be a pretty weak standard of proof.
> We have had libertarianism in economics the past few years? News to
> me; looked like a solid plutocracy.
Hence the statement above. Note, however, that one of the flaws of
libertarianism (and the author's ill-made point) is that it can
degenerate into plutocracy if people are perhaps a smidge less than
fully committed to the virtues of libertarianism.
Personally, I've always leaned a bit towards libertarianism, so long as
there is a hard restriction on the size corporations can reach, compared
to the government and society, and a similar, but much larger
restriction on government. Call it Jeffersonian libertarianism.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
Will in New Haven
And they, or I, don't necessarily agree with all of her positions. Far
from all. Our points of agreement are largely on economic matters and
basic civil liberties. Philisophically, if you will, there isn't a
whole lot of Objectivism that most libertarians will accept. Also, she
seemed to think that being a domineering, vindictive hag was pretty
cool.
Mike Schilling
>
> Or of libertarians. But her thiking on economics does fall into the
> broad category of libertarianism. However neither the current
> administration nor the legislative branch that oversaw the current
> economic crisis has any tinge of libertarian thought.
"Regulation is a bad thing if it might hurt our friends" is a subset
of "Regulation is a bad thing."
Will in New Haven
wrote:
Actually, it is a subset of "we will use any excuse to help the people
who helped us." It has nothing to do with liberty OR fairness.
–
Will in New Haven
“I have seen the David, seen the Mona Lisa too
And I have heard Doc Watson play Columbus Stockade Blues"
Guy Clark - "Dublin Blues”
Joel Olson
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ZyzKk.955$%11....@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com...
And Regulation is NOT a subset of Smaller Government.
Mike Schilling
> On Oct 19, 1:27 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Will in New Haven wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Or of libertarians. But her thiking on economics does fall into
>>> the
>>> broad category of libertarianism. However neither the current
>>> administration nor the legislative branch that oversaw the current
>>> economic crisis has any tinge of libertarian thought.
>>
>> "Regulation is a bad thing if it might hurt our friends" is a
>> subset
>> of "Regulation is a bad thing."
>
> Actually, it is a subset of "we will use any excuse to help the
> people
> who helped us." It has nothing to do with liberty OR fairness.
Since when is "fairness" a libertarian virtue?
Mike Schilling
Its absence is.
Louann Miller
9703-b03...@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com:
> We have had libertarianism in economics the past few years? News to
> me; looked like a solid plutocracy.
As long as the problem was phrased as "should the government spend money to
[lots of things that poor and middle-class people benefit from]?" then the
answer "Hell, no!" could be mistaken for libertarianism. It was when
"should the government spend money to benefit its wealthy corporate
masters, er, campaign contributors and lobbyists?" was answered with the
contrary "Hell, yes!" that their cover was blown.
Will in New Haven
It's not. However, it is one of the reasons advanced against allowing
maximum liberty. And this argument usually has some merit. However,
the actions of the administration _and_ the Congress reflected neither
a concern for liberty or for fairness.
John
"Louann Miller" <loua...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:S_OdndsQNvCUPWbV...@giganews.com...
But then the financial industry has the world over a barrel. "Rescue us or
the world turns to chaos!". The statement is broadly true, but it certainly
stings to the average tax payer to be blackmailed, hence the backlash
concerning CEO salaries.
wjtingle
I have a feeling polls of the little people would find "CEO salaries"
would be polite language for "CEO blood". Of course, CEOs being what
they are, the two might just be synonymous. Hmmm.
The world is probably willing to forgo axing _competent_ plutocrats, but
being greedy, incompetent, and to blame for bringing down the entire
world financial system might require a _really_ good defense lawyer.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
Kevin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan
What could this mean?
"wjtingle" <wjti...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:gdde45$g14$1...@registered.motzarella.org...
Dimensional Traveler
The backlash concerning CEO salaries has been building for a long time. Its
not that the CEOs are floating from their platinum gilded golden parachutes
this time, its that they've done so so many times before and this time they
not only took their own companies down, they're taking everyone else down
while bilking us out of _our_ tax dollars in the process.
--
"What Kind of perv rememembers the scenes where she's clothed???" -
Anim8rFSK, 8/23/08
PR
> "bayno...@yahoo.com" <bayn...@gmail.com> wrote in news:53aa2c11-31da-4632-
> 9703-b03fcb272...@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com:
>
> > We have had libertarianism in economics the past few years? News to
> > me; looked like a solid plutocracy.
>
> As long as the problem was phrased as "should the government spend money to
> [lots of things that poor and middle-class people benefit from]?" then the
> answer "Hell, no!" could be mistaken for libertarianism. It was when
> "should the government spend money to benefit its wealthy corporate
> masters, er, campaign contributors and lobbyists?" was answered with the
> contrary "Hell, yes!" that their cover was blown.
It would be, and is, however, just that. A Mistake. I'm not a fan of
the Libertarian Party, but I am rather fond of libertarianism. A
person should be free to try do pretty much whatever the heck they
want to do, without the government being able to deny them. Or
without the government guaranteeing their success.
Freedom is pretty hard to handle for a lot of people; the freedom to
succeed is limited by the freedom to fail. Which is why this stupid
bailout / rescue / whatever-you-want-to-call-it is a bad idea. In my
opinion of course.
-Paul
Dan Goodman
> I'm not a fan of
> the Libertarian Party, but I am rather fond of libertarianism.
Too bad they didn't nominate a libertarian for President this year.
Bill Patterson
> "bayno...@yahoo.com" <bayn...@gmail.com> wrote in news:53aa2c11-31da-4632-
> 9703-b03fcb272...@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com:
>
> > me; looked like a solid plutocracy.
>
> As long as the problem was phrased as "should the government spend money to
> [lots of things that poor and middle-class people benefit from]?" then the
> answer "Hell, no!" could be mistaken for libertarianism. It was when
> "should the government spend money to benefit its wealthy corporate
> masters, er, campaign contributors and lobbyists?" was answered with the
> contrary "Hell, yes!" that their cover was blown.
Yeah That's the point at which movement libertarians began saying "we
told you all along these Party fools were just conservatives in
disguise! The Libertarian Party has been viewed with deep suspicion by
many libertarians for decades.
Will in New Haven
Deep suspicion? That sounds like we suspect some kind of conspiracy. I
just think the LP suffers from a few flaws that make it a horrible
tool for getting any libertarian policies put into place.
1: They ignore the maxim that all politics is local politics. They
tend to turn up every four years with a presidential campaign and
disappear the rest of the time. That isn't true everywhere but it is
certainly true most places.
2: They tend to nominate whoever had his name in the paper, often
former Republicans who never showed any interest in the party before.
3: The libertarian philosophy does not appeal much to people with that
spark that says "I want to take office and make thngs right." The lack
of that sort of people makes it hard to find candidates, which means
that this problem contributes heavily to the other two.
4: And speaking of contributes heavily...
So it's more like disgust than suspicion.
Matthias Warkus
> Deep suspicion? That sounds like we suspect some kind of conspiracy. I
> just think the LP suffers from a few flaws that make it a horrible
> tool for getting any libertarian policies put into place.
>
> 1: They ignore the maxim that all politics is local politics. They
> tend to turn up every four years with a presidential campaign and
> disappear the rest of the time. That isn't true everywhere but it is
> certainly true most places.
It's kind of logical, though. Bottom-up implementation is not the way to
put a policy in place that would only take off if you globally wiped the
entire slate clean.
mawa
--
http://www.prellblog.de
Konrad Gaertner
[Libertarian Party]
> 1: They ignore the maxim that all politics is local politics. They
> tend to turn up every four years with a presidential campaign and
> disappear the rest of the time. That isn't true everywhere but it is
> certainly true most places.
Around here they reliably show up on the ballot; some years they
even outnumber the Democrats. But no one ever votes for them.
--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - email: kgae...@tx.rr.com
http://kgbooklog.livejournal.com/
Future Member of Ben Franklin's Undead Pixy Army
wjtingle
> Freedom is pretty hard to handle for a lot of people; the freedom to
> succeed is limited by the freedom to fail.
I have no objection to your freedom to fail. I object when your failure
due to incompetence brings down the entire financial system. That's why
financial markets are regulated. Once or twice a century some overly
clever fellows find a new way to overleverage without anyone realizing
it, and they blow up the whole shebang. If it was just them (or you),
f@#k-em. Alas, it's all of us as well. I'm not willing to give you that
much freedom.
Ref.: "The Peter Principle".
ObSF: Tiedemann, Mark W., "Peace and Memory".
Regards,
Jack Tingle
David V. Loewe, Jr
Yes...
Regulation that might hurt Franklin Raines, Henry Cisneros, Angelo
Mozilo and other friends of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd was strictly
frowned upon.
And Cisneros himself did a lot of that deregulating...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19cisneros.html
"Under Mr. Cisneros, there were small and big changes at HUD, an agency
that greased the mortgage wheel for first-time buyers by insuring
billions of dollars in loans. Families no longer had to prove they had
five years of stable income; three years sufficed.
And in another change championed by the mortgage industry, lenders were
allowed to hire their own appraisers rather than rely on a
government-selected panel. This saved borrowers money but opened the
door for inflated appraisals. (A later HUD inquiry uncovered appraisal
fraud that imperiled the federal mortgage insurance fund.)
�Henry did everything he could for home builders while he was at HUD,�
says Janet Ahmad, president of Homeowners for Better Building, an
advocacy group in San Antonio, who has known Mr. Cisneros since he was a
city councilor. �That laid the groundwork for where we are now.�"
--
"I guess I wouldn't believe in anything anymore if it weren't
for my lucky astrology mood watch."
- Steve Martin
David Loewe, Jr.
I'm guessing that, if you can get enough people to follow you, that it
might BE pretty cool.
--
"Clams on the half shell...and rollerskates."
Bernard Edwards & Nile Rodgers
Mike Schilling
> On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 22:27:21 -0700, "Mike Schilling"
> <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Will in New Haven wrote:
>>>
>>> Or of libertarians. But her thiking on economics does fall into the
>>> broad category of libertarianism. However neither the current
>>> administration nor the legislative branch that oversaw the current
>>> economic crisis has any tinge of libertarian thought.
>>
>> "Regulation is a bad thing if it might hurt our friends" is a subset
>> of "Regulation is a bad thing."
>
> Yes...
>
> Regulation that might hurt Franklin Raines, Henry Cisneros, Angelo
> Mozilo and other friends of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd was strictly
> frowned upon.
Glad you're well enough that your knee still jerks.
Rebecca Rice
And, shockingly, the average taxpayer tends to get a bit
irate when they find out a company is spending $440,000 on a
spa retreat for upper management less than a week after
accepting an 85 billion dollar bailout. Who woulda thunk it?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100702604.html
Rebecca
David Loewe, Jr.
<philos...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>> John wrote:
>>> "Louann Miller" <loua...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> "bayn...@yahoo.com" <bay...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> We have had libertarianism in economics the past few years? News to
>>>>> me; looked like a solid plutocracy.
>>>> As long as the problem was phrased as "should the government spend
>>>> money to
>>>> [lots of things that poor and middle-class people benefit from]?"
>>>> then the answer "Hell, no!" could be mistaken for libertarianism. It
>>>> was when "should the government spend money to benefit its wealthy
>>>> corporate masters, er, campaign contributors and lobbyists?" was
>>>> answered with the contrary "Hell, yes!" that their cover was blown.
>>> But then the financial industry has the world over a barrel. "Rescue
>>> us or the world turns to chaos!". The statement is broadly true, but
>>> it certainly stings to the average tax payer to be blackmailed, hence
>>> the backlash concerning CEO salaries.
>>
>> The backlash concerning CEO salaries has been building for a long time. Its
>> not that the CEOs are floating from their platinum gilded golden parachutes
>> this time, its that they've done so so many times before and this time they
>> not only took their own companies down, they're taking everyone else down
>> while bilking us out of _our_ tax dollars in the process.
>
>And, shockingly, the average taxpayer tends to get a bit
>irate when they find out a company is spending $440,000 on a
>spa retreat for upper management less than a week after
>accepting an 85 billion dollar bailout. Who woulda thunk it?
>
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100702604.html
Of course, the spa was booked beforehand and it probably would have cost
quite a bit to cancel...
"The gathering was planned before the bailout as a reward for life
insurance agents, a company spokesman said, and fewer than 10 AIG
executives were present."
...and agents are hardly "upper management." But, do feel free to lie
and exaggerate in service of the class war.
--
"Tax the rich, feed the poor
till there are no rich no more."
Alvin Lee
Dan Clore
> Well, we've all been looking for a scapegoat for our 401K's tanking.
> How about that eternal rasfw whipping-girl, Ayn Rand? How the
> financial collapse killed libertarianism, according to Slate
> Magazine.
On the other hand, if only we had adopted the libertarianism expressed
in the Illuminatus! trilogy and other works by Robert Anton Wilson, none
of this would have happened.
> "The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are
> intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them
> absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school. [That seems
> sufficiently bad. - JT] Like other ideologues, libertarians react to
> the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the
> world went wrong. Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult
> for them to accept that markets can be irrational, misunderstand
> risk, and misallocate resources or that financial systems without
> vigorous government oversight and the capacity for pragmatic
> intervention constitute a recipe for disaster. They are bankrupt, and
> this time, there will be no bailout."
I've encountered plenty of libertarians and Randroids who fit that
description perfectly, but one should avoid the temptation to
over-generalize. RAW's suggested neologism "sombunall" (some but not
all) might fit in here.
One should also try to not to identify our system of state-corporate
capitalism (whatever the precise kind and amount of government
regulation) with a truly free market.
> Quoted from "The End of Libertarianism The financial collapse proves
> that its ideology makes no sense.", Jacob Weisberg, Slate Magazine,
> Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008, Article URL:
> http://www.slate.com/id/2202489/
>
> Now I'm no libertoonian, nor am I an apologist for them, but this
> seems to be a pretty weak standard of proof. On the other hand, the
> article does offer a prima facie argument. On the gripping hand,
> there's a certain visceral satisfaction to identifying a whole,
> entire branch of philosophy, and its basis in an sf story as the bad
> guy.
>
> There's also a nice symmetry that both Marxism and Libertarianism are
> deceased around the fin de siecle. "Die you Objectivist dogs! HA!"
> (Sound of headsman's axe falling.)
Though news stories report a resurgence of interest in Marxism -- sales
of Das Kapital surging in Germany, the Japanese Communist Party gaining
members, etc. I would rather see a rise in interest in anarchism and
libertarian socialism.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
Mike Schilling
>
> And, shockingly, the average taxpayer tends to get a bit
> irate when they find out a company is spending $440,000 on a
> spa retreat for upper management less than a week after
> accepting an 85 billion dollar bailout. Who woulda thunk it?
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100702604.html
How else are they going to retain the geniuses who drove them into
insolvency? (Seriously, in similar situations, like when PG&E awarded
big management bonuses while they were in bankruptcy, that's been the
answer.)
Matthias Warkus
> Though news stories report a resurgence of interest in Marxism -- sales
> of Das Kapital surging in Germany, the Japanese Communist Party gaining
> members, etc.
For a Western country, Japan's Communist Party has been comparatively
gigantic in size since at least WW2, with currently about 400,000
members. ISTR they have their finger firmly in the pie and are not
really interested in class struggle.
mawa
--
http://www.prellblog.de
J. Clarke
The Italian Communist Party had had as many as 2 million members since
WWII. Its current status is something that I think is comprehensible
only to an Italian (or perhaps just someone who cares a lot more than
I do), what with all the various splits and mergers that have taken
place, and depending on whether you think that changing the name to
something other than "Communist" changes the party. That's for a
country with half Japan's population.
--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
PR
Me thinks that is a rather silly objection. You *want* to keep a
failed system in place? You want to reward incompetence?
Regulation in a society is necessary, I admit. But it has its
problems.
Look up how Standard Oil came into being, and the mechanism they
developed as a corporate structure. You might find a few things you
recognize. History just constantly repeats- think of the teapot dome
scandal.
-Paul
Will in New Haven
wrote:
You are, of course, wrong. Libertarianism doesn't have to wipe any
slate clean. Human history and society cannot be changed so massively
as that. On the other hand, I think your error is shared by many of
the people who make up the Libertarian Party. They see no triumph in
one fewer blue law, one less annoying local restriction, one fewer
public official who can make your life less satisfying. However,
incremental change is the only change that is possible and electing
local officials would be a good start.
So the Party puts no money or effort into local campaigns, leaving
them to candidates who can finance themselves and they don't make much
of an effort to screen local candidates. If you want the LP
nomination, in many places, and can raise some money, you have it. Now
they do get some good candidates that way but they also get people who
advocate things far from libertarian in principle. As bad as Bob Barr,
in many cases.
Bill Patterson
>
> - Show quoted text -
What you said. Truth of the matter is, if you "get" libertarianism,
power -- and particuarly political power -- does not have the siren
lure, but political parties are all about participating in political
power, so it was immediately obvious when the LP was formed that the
people most involved in the party are going to be those who least get
what libertarianism is all about.
Bill Patterson
> -- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
Hmmm. I was on the UC Santa Cruz campus for three years ending in
2006, and Marxism hasn't died out there. And in fact, in lit crit
studies, there are essentially only two active modalities -- feminist
and marxist, (there are others, e.g., post-colonialism, but the
adherents and advocates are in such a minority they don't really count
for much except that they must be acknowledged). On the other hand,
if you look closely at what is published as marxist criticism these
days, they seem to be keeping the name but getting rid of the actual
Marx-derived apparatus. It'll be interesting to see what emerges.
DouhetSukd
> Well, we've all been looking for a scapegoat for our 401K's tanking. How
> about that eternal rasfw whipping-girl, Ayn Rand? How the financial
> collapse killed libertarianism, according to Slate Magazine.
I do find "pure" Libertarians weird. Government regulations are
sometimes necessary, but should always be examined with lots of
skepticism first. However, regulation by lawyer is even of more
dubious value and instinctive, rather than reasoned, aversion to
regulation is sloppy thinking.
I read Atlas Shrugged and really liked it. Yes, it is a slow, turgid
novel. Yes, Ayn shoulda been shot for her love scenes. But, having
emigrated from France to Canada because of French insistence on state
handouts and control for everything under the sun, I found AS a breath
of fresh air that, however imperfectly and heartlessly, managed to
convey my frustration with the French system.
I don't think her vision in AS is realistic or desirable. There are
legitimate roles for the state, motivated both by human solidarity and
economic interest. Citizens have a vested economic interest in some
form of government-funded (not delivered, think vouchers) education.
Same for health care, where self-selection of insurance means the
sickest are the only ones to sign up.
Having said that, I find a tendency for everyone to blame everyone
else with our particular situation and Ayn's position is actually
vindicated.
"Sure I bought way expensive properties w.o. having the means.
Somebody shoulda stopped me. Sure I overindebted my Visa, someone
shoulda stopped me. Sure the stock market ran up up and away for
years. Someone shoulda stopped my financial adviser from selling me
bank stocks. Sure, as stockholders, we OKed ever bigger pay to CEOs,
but someone... Sure, we agreed to contracts that were larded with
golden parachutes. Someone... Sure, we fired CEOs that did not
drink the Koolaid and didn't take on sufficient risk. Some1... Sure
we thought that allowing Fanny Mae lobbyists to influence politicians
made for good democracy. Sure, house prices were rising too quickly,
but some1..."
Our democracies mix over, and under-regulation by the state. They
give big fat handouts to whole industrial sectors and then allow
lobbyists to drive regulation. We throw money at the middle class,
undertax the rich and basically avoid thinking about the poor and
truly needy. As voters, we were only too happy to allow that and we
are still happy with them wasting our money on pork. Witness $25B for
the automakers with their gas guzzlers. Individually, we were willing
to abdicate basic economic decision-making to snake oil salesmen.
Are we in in unfettered free market territory?
Taking solely the example of agriculture, the only developed country
with a solid free market is New Zealand. It is not the US, nor the
EU.
Would a panicky set of regulations really help in the long run? I
don't think so. Sarbanes-Oxley seems to do more for IT and
accountants than produce any lasting value. My preference would be
for taking a hatchet to lobbyist-derived contributions and to educate
people, during high school, on basic personal finance management. As
well as bringing down CEO and exec pay, or at least making it more
demonstrably linked to firms' fortunes.
Alexey Romanov
> Will in New Haven wrote:
>>
>> Or of libertarians. But her thiking on economics does fall into the
>> broad category of libertarianism. However neither the current
>> administration nor the legislative branch that oversaw the current
>> economic crisis has any tinge of libertarian thought.
>
> "Regulation is a bad thing if it might hurt our friends" is a subset
> of "Regulation is a bad thing."
No, "some regulation [i.e., that which might hurt our friends] is a bad
thing" is a _super_set of "Regulation is a bad thing".
--
Alexey Romanov
Alexey Romanov
> wjtingle wrote:
>> Well, we've all been looking for a scapegoat for our 401K's tanking. How
>> about that eternal rasfw whipping-girl, Ayn Rand? How the financial
>> collapse killed libertarianism, according to Slate Magazine.
>
> All it says is that the people doing the financial work WEREN'T
> libertarians and DIDN'T understand it.
>
> The financial crisis was caused by the fact that people don't
> understand basic physics.
Did you just say that libertarianism is basic physics? Or that
understanding libertarianism is required to understand basic physics? Or...
well, what did you mean to say?
--
Alexey Romanov
PR
> On Oct 18, 12:32 pm, wjtingle <wjtin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Would a panicky set of regulations really help in the long run? I
> don't think so. Sarbanes-Oxley seems to do more for IT and
> accountants than produce any lasting value. My preference would be
> for taking a hatchet to lobbyist-derived contributions and to educate
> people, during high school, on basic personal finance management. As
> well as bringing down CEO and exec pay, or at least making it more
> demonstrably linked to firms' fortunes.
Sarbanes Oxley is NOT good for IT. It is a BANE on the IT world. It is
in fact, a financial vampire sucking out IT budgets like a vacuum
pump...
<grrrr>
Walter Bushell
wjtingle <wjti...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Once or twice a century some overly
> clever fellows find a new way to overleverage without anyone realizing
> it, and they blow up the whole shebang.
Many people recognized the current over leveraging. It was just too
profitable to not ignore. Bonuses computed on quarterly results,
companies run on quarterly results. Long range planning being anything
beyond the end of the current quarter. Pressure on the quants to produce
more optimistic reports.
I mean how can a country have rising prices for homes with most people
going backwards with respect to take home pay? It should have been
casual to the most obvious observer when they had to go to teaser rates
on no down payment mortgages, much less negative amortization for same.
As was noted later, with no down payment people got houses without the
pain of accumulating a down payment which is substantial when you have
to put down 20%. Losing that makes people smart.
Walter Bushell
<a25b15be-c468-49c4...@t65g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
PR <paul.ra...@gmail.com> wrote:
And what we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.
<sigh>
Walter Bushell
wjtingle <wjti...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> John wrote:
> > "Louann Miller" <loua...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:S_OdndsQNvCUPWbV...@giganews.com...
> >> "bayn...@yahoo.com" <bay...@gmail.com> wrote in news:53aa2c11-31da-4632-
> >> 9703-b03...@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com:
> >>
> >>> We have had libertarianism in economics the past few years? News to
> >>> me; looked like a solid plutocracy.
> >> As long as the problem was phrased as "should the government spend money
> >> to
> >> [lots of things that poor and middle-class people benefit from]?" then the
> >> answer "Hell, no!" could be mistaken for libertarianism. It was when
> >> "should the government spend money to benefit its wealthy corporate
> >> masters, er, campaign contributors and lobbyists?" was answered with the
> >> contrary "Hell, yes!" that their cover was blown.
> >
> > But then the financial industry has the world over a barrel. "Rescue us or
> > the world turns to chaos!". The statement is broadly true, but it certainly
> > stings to the average tax payer to be blackmailed, hence the backlash
> > concerning CEO salaries.
>
> I have a feeling polls of the little people would find "CEO salaries"
> would be polite language for "CEO blood". Of course, CEOs being what
> they are, the two might just be synonymous. Hmmm.
>
> The world is probably willing to forgo axing _competent_ plutocrats, but
> being greedy, incompetent, and to blame for bringing down the entire
> world financial system might require a _really_ good defense lawyer.
>
> Regards,
> Jack Tingle
And a good venue.
Walter Bushell
$10t$1...@registered.motzarella.org>,
wjtingle <wjti...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> bayn...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > On Oct 18, 3:32 pm, wjtingle <wjtin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> >> Now I'm no libertoonian, nor am I an apologist for them, but this seems
> >> to be a pretty weak standard of proof.
> ...
> > We have had libertarianism in economics the past few years? News to
> > me; looked like a solid plutocracy.
>
> Hence the statement above. Note, however, that one of the flaws of
> libertarianism (and the author's ill-made point) is that it can
> degenerate into plutocracy if people are perhaps a smidge less than
> fully committed to the virtues of libertarianism.
>
> Personally, I've always leaned a bit towards libertarianism, so long as
> there is a hard restriction on the size corporations can reach, compared
> to the government and society, and a similar, but much larger
> restriction on government. Call it Jeffersonian libertarianism.
>
> Regards,
> Jack Tingle
Simple, abolish corporations. Use limited partnerships instead. The
general partners lose everything if the partnerships crashes. This leads
to a close watch on the management, and you don't have the situation
where management squeezes the value out of the company, then declares
bankruptcy.
Corporations are bad, as Adam Smith pointed out.
Walter Bushell
<c5892461-4db8-45c5...@u65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
Will in New Haven <bill....@taylorandfrancis.com> wrote:
> Or of libertarians. But her thiking on economics does fall into the
> broad category of libertarianism. However neither the current
> administration nor the legislative branch that oversaw the current
> economic crisis has any tinge of libertarian thought.
>
> --
No regulation, seems to be common to both. Also, "Mine".
Walter Bushell
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Will in New Haven wrote:
> > On Oct 19, 1:27 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> Will in New Haven wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> Or of libertarians. But her thiking on economics does fall into
> >>> the
> >>> broad category of libertarianism. However neither the current
> >>> administration nor the legislative branch that oversaw the current
> >>> economic crisis has any tinge of libertarian thought.
> >>
> >> "Regulation is a bad thing if it might hurt our friends" is a
> >> subset
> >> of "Regulation is a bad thing."
> >
> > Actually, it is a subset of "we will use any excuse to help the
> > people
> > who helped us." It has nothing to do with liberty OR fairness.
>
> Since when is "fairness" a libertarian virtue?
Libertarians think that Libertarianism is the apotheoses of fairness.
tcbev...@yahoo.com
following: "I consider myself a libertarian with a small ell. I
couldn't be a Libertarian with a big L because I don't hate poor
people." I agree entirely, and disagree with such as Penn & Teller who
are totally groovy about sex&drugs type do-what-thou-wilt issues but
come across as dogmatudinous arsehools when the subject turns to
regulations over business. This mess became inevitable when
regulations bacame so weak that Wall Streeters didn't even have to
pretend to follow them, and when the ranks of regulators were thinned
out by bean-counters and budget cutters zealously getting rid of
'deadwood.'
As we can now see, it would have been a lot cheaper to keep ten
thousand Javerts on the SEC payroll.
Tom Buckner
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 17:36:51 -0400, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>
>> wjtingle wrote:
>>> Well, we've all been looking for a scapegoat for our 401K's tanking. How
>>> about that eternal rasfw whipping-girl, Ayn Rand? How the financial
>>> collapse killed libertarianism, according to Slate Magazine.
>> All it says is that the people doing the financial work WEREN'T
>> libertarians and DIDN'T understand it.
>>
>> The financial crisis was caused by the fact that people don't
>> understand basic physics.
>
> Did you just say that libertarianism is basic physics?
No.
>Or that
> understanding libertarianism is required to understand basic physics?
No.
> Or...
> well, what did you mean to say?
From what I've been able to determine, the basic cause of the current
issue was "leveraging".
The general view of leverage is that you can use a small thing at the
long end of the lever to move a large thing at the other end. Thus a
small amount of money can potentially gain you a lot.
However, what this principle leaves out is that the fulcrum -- the
pivot point of your lever -- HAS TO REST ON SOMETHING AT LEAST AS
MASSIVE/STRONG AS THE THING YOU ARE TRYING TO LEVER! Put your fulcrum on
a thin wooden floor and try to lever up a 300 ton weight, your floor
breaks and fulcrum, lever, small weight, and large weight all fall down.
Since there ISN'T 700 trillion dollars in the world, there was no
possible way to "leverage" this in any reasonable sense.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
David Loewe, Jr.
wrote:
> wjtingle <wjti...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Once or twice a century some overly
>> clever fellows find a new way to overleverage without anyone realizing
>> it, and they blow up the whole shebang.
>
>Many people recognized the current over leveraging. It was just too
>profitable to not ignore. Bonuses computed on quarterly results,
>companies run on quarterly results. Long range planning being anything
>beyond the end of the current quarter. Pressure on the quants to produce
>more optimistic reports.
>
>I mean how can a country have rising prices for homes with most people
>going backwards with respect to take home pay?
?
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h08.html
>It should have been
>casual to the most obvious observer when they had to go to teaser rates
>on no down payment mortgages, much less negative amortization for same.
>
>As was noted later, with no down payment people got houses without the
>pain of accumulating a down payment which is substantial when you have
>to put down 20%. Losing that makes people smart.
--
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make
him pay cash."
-Lazarus Long
Dimensional Traveler
I think your analogy is seriously flawed. Economics is not physics,
economic "leverage" is not physical "leverage".
--
"What Kind of perv rememembers the scenes where she's clothed???" -
Anim8rFSK, 8/23/08
Derek Lyons
>Rebecca Rice wrote:
>>
>> And, shockingly, the average taxpayer tends to get a bit
>> irate when they find out a company is spending $440,000 on a
>> spa retreat for upper management less than a week after
>> accepting an 85 billion dollar bailout. Who woulda thunk it?
>>
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100702604.html
Um, so what? Life and business do go on you know. (And if you read
the article, most of the attendees were salesmen, not executives.)
>How else are they going to retain the geniuses who drove them into
>insolvency? (Seriously, in similar situations, like when PG&E awarded
>big management bonuses while they were in bankruptcy, that's been the
>answer.)
That argument is not entirely without merit however. Simply firing
the entire executive suite means you refill it with people who aren't
familiar with the company and likely aren't familiar with the business
of the company. That hardly seems like a recipe for sucessful
reconstruction.
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
Will in New Haven
> In article <
> $10...@registered.motzarella.org>,
>
>
>
> wjtingle <wjtin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
This is a libertarian solution that the Libertarian Party would
oppose, for the most part. There are more ways to have a market
economy than simply modern capatalism.
--
Will in New Haven
“ It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond
of it.” - Robert E. Lee
Mike Schilling
Nice metaphor; unfortunately for your argument, much of the theory
behind the edifice that's in the process of collapsing was developed
by Ph.Ds in math and physics.
Mike Schilling
> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Rebecca Rice wrote:
>>>
>>> And, shockingly, the average taxpayer tends to get a bit
>>> irate when they find out a company is spending $440,000 on a
>>> spa retreat for upper management less than a week after
>>> accepting an 85 billion dollar bailout. Who woulda thunk it?
>>>
>>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100702604.html
>
> Um, so what? Life and business do go on you know. (And if you read
> the article, most of the attendees were salesmen, not executives.)
>
>> How else are they going to retain the geniuses who drove them into
>> insolvency? (Seriously, in similar situations, like when PG&E
>> awarded big management bonuses while they were in bankruptcy,
>> that's
>> been the answer.)
>
> That argument is not entirely without merit however. Simply firing
> the entire executive suite means you refill it with people who
> aren't
> familiar with the company and likely aren't familiar with the
> business
> of the company. That hardly seems like a recipe for sucessful
> reconstruction.
That's funny; from your response, you'd almost think someone mentioned
"firing".
David Loewe, Jr.
Way to dodge both my post and Derek's.
--
"I guess I wouldn't believe in anything anymore if it weren't
for my lucky astrology mood watch."
- Steve Martin
_ berge @hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
> Since there ISN'T 700 trillion dollars in the world, there was no
>possible way to "leverage" this in any reasonable sense.
?
The bailout Congress voted for is 700 _billion_, not _trillion_.
Mike Schilling
Neither, actually. If you don't think that immense failures have led
to retention bonuses, you're not paying attention. And I still don't
see that I suggested firing anyone.
Rebecca Rice
Of course, the reason that the 20% fell by the wayside is
that in some parts of the country it is almost impossible to
accumulate that much without having a house to sell. Where
I live the average house price is 417K. Twenty percent of
that is 83.4K. There are places where that amount will buy a
house outright. And I don't know why it's better to have a
200K mortgage and 50K down (so a 250K house) as opposed to
the person who just has the 200K mortgage and a slightly
less-expensive 200k house. Once you've put the money down
on the house, you need to come up with the same amount of
money every month as the person who hasn't put any money down.
The problem, as I see it, is people getting mortgages that
they just couldn't afford, given their current income.
Which may be influenced by what the banks and brokers said
that people could afford. I frustrated my mortgage broker
and real estate agent by refusing to stretch as much as they
thought that I should. Technically I could have qualified
for about twice what I got, but I took one look at the
monthly payment and asked them if they were totally insane.
And I have seen some discussion that the change in the tax
rules to exempt that huge amount of profit when selling a
house from income tax might have had a large part in fueling
the bubble, since it shifted people's view of a house away
from "home" and more to "investment". I knew people who
sold and moved every two years during the real estate boom
in order to maximize their profits. (They'd buy a house
that needed some fixing, live in it two years while fixing
it up, then sell it and use the profits to get a bigger
house in a nicer neighborhood that needed a little fixing,
lather rinse repeat.) I can't imagine doing that, since I
hate packing and moving, but there are people who do it.
Rebecca
DouhetSukd
> It is a BANE on the IT world. It is
> in fact, a financial vampire sucking out IT budgets like a vacuum
> pump...
>
Err... I thought you said it _wasn't_ good for IT?
David V. Loewe, Jr
"Leverage" is the use of something small to move or control something
large. The 700 billion would control the 700 trillion.
--
"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around
for a coffin."
- H. L. Mencken
David V. Loewe, Jr
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Both Derek and I made the point that the spa getaway was A) setup well
before the bailout and B) hardly any of the attendees was an executive.
You quoted this for Derek's post and ignored it in favor of addressing a
side issue.
Ergo, you dodged.
>If you don't think that immense failures have led
>to retention bonuses, you're not paying attention. And I still don't
>see that I suggested firing anyone.
A side issue. Useful only if you are dodging the main point which
addressed your own.
--
"There is a move in the Texas legislature to put the words 'The Lone
Star State' in our plain looking car plates. One representative
unsuccessfully tried to ammend it to 'The Savings and Lone Star State'."
- Martin Soques
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Yes, but as someone else pointed out to me when I posted the same
question, the total "leveraged value" of all the involved organizations,
etc., was in fact around a thousand times that. All fairy castles on
air, of course, but that was the paper valuation at the time everything
came apart
Louann Miller
@flpi148.ffdc.sbc.com:
> I frustrated my mortgage broker
> and real estate agent by refusing to stretch as much as they
> thought that I should. Technically I could have qualified
> for about twice what I got, but I took one look at the
> monthly payment and asked them if they were totally insane.
What are you, a sensible adult or something?
Spouse and I turned down a home-building loan once for much the same
reason. We thought we might want to have children, buy a car, or have a
financial cushion for emergencies some time in the next 30 years.
We live in a rural area. One perennial mistake people make is taking out
20 year loans on 'manufactured housing' as if it were going to appreciate
over 20 years instead of wear out in 10.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:48fe6bbf$0$33537$742e...@news.sonic.net:
The analogy, however, is dead on.
--
Terry Austin
"There's no law west of the internet."
- Nick Stump
Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:4muLk.2997$Ei5....@flpi143.ffdc.sbc.com:
Sometimes, PhDs are just very well educated retards.
Bill Patterson
> In article <
> $10...@registered.motzarella.org>,
>
>
>
>
>
> �wjtingle <wjtin...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> - Show quoted text -
I think it's become pretty obvious that, whether or not the basic idea
is bad, there's something dreadfully wrong with the way corporations
have been done, and the problem centers on the limitation of liability
feature. Partnership organizations don't have the same problem --
though they have problems (in terms of overall "public policy") of
their own. But there is something fundamentally wrong with removing
or placing limitations on negative feedback coming from the system at
large. Complex dynamic systems functions on feedback. Building
sabotage to the feedback mechanisms into the systems is ... foolish.
Bill Patterson
> Rebecca Rice <philosphe...@yahoo.com> wrote in news:3izLk.3236$W06.2497
What are you, a sensible adult or something? I just got back from a
stint in rural New Mexico, where the 10 year+ manufactured housing
not only is not appreciating but actualy constitutes something like a
blight. (the climate there is pretty darned severe)
Will in New Haven
it is analogous to physical leverage. It isn't identical but the
resemblance is real and he has a point about the mass of the object
being leveraged.
Derek Lyons
>The problem, as I see it, is people getting mortgages that
>they just couldn't afford, given their current income.
>Which may be influenced by what the banks and brokers said
>that people could afford. I frustrated my mortgage broker
>and real estate agent by refusing to stretch as much as they
>thought that I should. Technically I could have qualified
>for about twice what I got, but I took one look at the
>monthly payment and asked them if they were totally insane.
But the key to understanding the crisis is to understand _why_ the
mortgage brokers, bankers, and real estate agents were pushing people
into houses larger than they could afford... The first part is
banking and securities deregulation in the 80's (Reagan) that
increased the ways banks could invest their money. The second is
mortgage credit deregulation and increased mortgage guarantees by the
Fed in the 90's (Clinton).
As a side note: Not only does the current crisis well predate the
current administration, those who think it would have been politically
possible to avert it are deluding themselves.
>And I have seen some discussion that the change in the tax
>rules to exempt that huge amount of profit when selling a
>house from income tax might have had a large part in fueling
>the bubble, since it shifted people's view of a house away
>from "home" and more to "investment".
And that became possible, in part, because of the changes mentioned
above - in essence we created a giant pyramid scheme based on the
assumption that housing values would always go up and that the Fed
would always be there to input more money (in the form of mortgage
guarantees) at the bottom.
The system failed when the middle links in the chain began to unravel.
Derek Lyons
I was pondering on that myself. Manufactured housing is much more
than mobile homes... And while the banks have acted pretty stupidly,
I find it hard to believe they'd loan on something guaranteed to go
upside down.
Mike Schilling
Try reading what Derek wrote; that's not the point he was addressing
at all.
Derek didn't make that point art all.
>
> A side issue. Useful only if you are dodging the main point which
> addressed your own.
A side issue only if you assume I was talking to you and not Derek.
And I'd still like to know why anyone thinks I suggested firing
people, as opposed to not specially rewarding them.
Mike Schilling
And sometimes they're not all that well educated.
PR
I did. And I meant it.
We have, in my office, about six feet of bookshelves all packed with
binders labeled SOX-TSTD.
The SOX part is, I am sure clear.
These binders take enormous effort to maintain to SOX standards. Time
and money that would be much better spent updating a software program,
upgrading something, or even just planning.
-Paul
TSTD = Too Stupid To Describe
David V. Loewe, Jr
<philos...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Because having that money invested IN the house makes you less likely to
just walk away.
>The problem, as I see it, is people getting mortgages that
>they just couldn't afford, given their current income.
>Which may be influenced by what the banks and brokers said
>that people could afford. I frustrated my mortgage broker
>and real estate agent by refusing to stretch as much as they
> thought that I should. Technically I could have qualified
>for about twice what I got, but I took one look at the
>monthly payment and asked them if they were totally insane.
>
>And I have seen some discussion that the change in the tax
>rules to exempt that huge amount of profit when selling a
>house from income tax might have had a large part in fueling
>the bubble, since it shifted people's view of a house away
>from "home" and more to "investment". I knew people who
>sold and moved every two years during the real estate boom
>in order to maximize their profits. (They'd buy a house
>that needed some fixing, live in it two years while fixing
>it up, then sell it and use the profits to get a bigger
>house in a nicer neighborhood that needed a little fixing,
>lather rinse repeat.) I can't imagine doing that, since I
>hate packing and moving, but there are people who do it.
--
"...you know, it seems to me you suffer from the problem of
wanting a tailored fit in an off the rack world."
Dennis Juds
Dimensional Traveler
So is the value of everything. Since US currency isn't gold- or
silver-backed it is all imaginary. Economics is _not_ physics. Handing
something along a chain a people does not increase its mass, but the value
of something can increase by moving it around. Likewise you don't make it
more massive by disassembling it but companies get disassembled and sold off
in pieces for more than the whole company could have sold for.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:tr8uf4lhr0o07sneh...@4ax.com:
And equity has practical uses, including a pad against real estate
busts. If the bottom drops out, and you have equity, you can *sell*
your house for more than you owe on it.
Walter Bushell
fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:
> Bill Patterson <WHPat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Oct 22, 7:05�am, Louann Miller <louan...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >> We live in a rural area. One perennial mistake people make is taking out
> >> 20 year loans on 'manufactured housing' as if it were going to appreciate
> >> over 20 years instead of wear out in 10.
> >
> >What are you, a sensible adult or something? I just got back from a
> >stint in rural New Mexico, where the 10 year+ manufactured housing
> >not only is not appreciating but actualy constitutes something like a
> >blight. (the climate there is pretty darned severe)
>
> I was pondering on that myself. Manufactured housing is much more
> than mobile homes... And while the banks have acted pretty stupidly,
> I find it hard to believe they'd loan on something guaranteed to go
> upside down.
>
> D.
They sell the loans. Not their problem; it was all rolled into AAA
paper.
No more absurd than liar loans or negative amortization loans.
Dan Clore
> On Oct 20, 11:19�pm, Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
> Hmmm. I was on the UC Santa Cruz campus for three years ending in
> 2006, and Marxism hasn't died out there. And in fact, in lit crit
> studies, there are essentially only two active modalities -- feminist
> and marxist, (there are others, e.g., post-colonialism, but the
> adherents and advocates are in such a minority they don't really
> count for much except that they must be acknowledged). On the other
> hand, if you look closely at what is published as marxist criticism
> these days, they seem to be keeping the name but getting rid of the
> actual Marx-derived apparatus. It'll be interesting to see what
> emerges.
Getting rid of the Marx-derived apparatus isn't really hard, as there's
practically nothing in Marx that can be used as such. Because of that,
what has passed for "Marxist" literary criticism has usually just taken
a vaguely sociological approach. (Or hammer-handed Bolshevism, like
Stalinist calls for "social realism" and attacks on everything else as
bourgeois false consciousness etc., but that's never been more than a
joke outside the Soviet world and party circles.)
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
Michael Stemper
At last, a practical application for the Banach-Tarski result!
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
This email is to be read by its intended recipient only. Any other party
reading is required by the EULA to send me $500.00.
Mike Schilling
>> likely to just walk away.
>
> And equity has practical uses, including a pad against real estate
> busts. If the bottom drops out, and you have equity, you can *sell*
> your house for more than you owe on it.
Which is similar, if not identical, to what Dave said.
Mike Schilling
> Getting rid of the Marx-derived apparatus isn't really hard, as
> there's practically nothing in Marx that can be used as such.
> Because
> of that, what has passed for "Marxist" literary criticism has
> usually
> just taken a vaguely sociological approach. (Or hammer-handed
> Bolshevism, like Stalinist calls for "social realism" and attacks on
> everything else as bourgeois false consciousness etc., but that's
> never been more than a joke outside the Soviet world and party
> circles.)
Much of what's called "Marxist analysis" amounts to "history, culture,
and religion are all very nice, but if you want to know what's
*really* going on, follow the money." How many people don't believe
that these days?
Bill Snyder
Kurds? Bosnians? Somalis? Rwandans? Afghans?
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Wayne Throop
::: likely to just walk away.
Or more importantly, whether you walk away or not, the
lenders money is less likely to evaporate.
:: And equity has practical uses, including a pad against real estate
:: busts. If the bottom drops out, and you have equity, you can *sell*
:: your house for more than you owe on it.
: Which is similar, if not identical, to what Dave said.
Which becomes apparent if phrased as "if the bottom drops out and
there's equity, the lender's money ie less likely to evaporate".
(or a smaller fraction of the lender's money evaporates, in any event)
Pardon me, I have to go take a couple of droids and work on the
currency vaporators now...
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Mike Schilling
> On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:19:35 -0700, "Mike Schilling"
> <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dan Clore wrote:
>>> Getting rid of the Marx-derived apparatus isn't really hard, as
>>> there's practically nothing in Marx that can be used as such.
>>> Because
>>> of that, what has passed for "Marxist" literary criticism has
>>> usually
>>> just taken a vaguely sociological approach. (Or hammer-handed
>>> Bolshevism, like Stalinist calls for "social realism" and attacks
>>> on
>>> everything else as bourgeois false consciousness etc., but that's
>>> never been more than a joke outside the Soviet world and party
>>> circles.)
>>
>> Much of what's called "Marxist analysis" amounts to "history,
>> culture, and religion are all very nice, but if you want to know
>> what's *really* going on, follow the money." How many people
>> don't
>> believe that these days?
>
> Kurds?
You don't think that distribution of oil money affects the friction
between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq?
> Bosnians?
You don't think that tension between former Yugoslavs who were looking
forward to becoming wealthy members of the Western orbit and those who
were dreading left behind with the East explains why Slovenes, Croats,
and Bosniaks were eager to secede, but Serbs didn't want to let them
go?
> Somalis? Rwandans? Afghans?
I know less about these. Certainly, the fact that the Tutsis had been
privileged (and thus gotten weathier and more powerful) during
colonial times is not irrelevant.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>> Eric D. Berge wrote:
>>> On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:55:47 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
>>> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Since there ISN'T 700 trillion dollars in the world, there was no
>>>> possible way to "leverage" this in any reasonable sense.
>>> ?
>>>
>>> The bailout Congress voted for is 700 _billion_, not _trillion_.
>>>
>> Yes, but as someone else pointed out to me when I posted the same
>> question, the total "leveraged value" of all the involved
>> organizations, etc., was in fact around a thousand times that. All
>> fairy castles on air, of course, but that was the paper valuation at
>> the time everything came apart.
>
> So is the value of everything.
To some extent.
> Since US currency isn't gold- or
> silver-backed it is all imaginary.
Not entirely imaginary, just no longer directly traceable to ONE set of
values.
> Economics is _not_ physics. Handing
> something along a chain a people does not increase its mass, but the value
> of something can increase by moving it around.
JUST by moving it? Some things, maybe. Not everything. There must be
SOME real value involved, or Heinlein's old joke about dumping "two
Chinee down in our maria, would get rich selling rocks to each other
while raising twelve kids" wouldn't be a joke.
> Likewise you don't make it
> more massive by disassembling it but companies get disassembled and sold off
> in pieces for more than the whole company could have sold for.
>
Again, either it's fairy castles, or there IS some value that the
purchasers see in the pieces which may not have been accessible or
usable in the large chunk. (For instance, the company may have had
dozens of divisions which were mutually strangling each other with an
overarching bureaucracy, but if I can just grab the ONE division and get
it out of there, it may be worth a lot more -- maybe even more than the
whole parent company, if it's really self-destructing.
Again, this has an analogy. Dozens of plants growing in an untended
overgrown garden or forest, some of these plants may be very valuable if
I can concentrate them in an accessible place and grow them away from
the shade, competition for resources, etc., found in the overgrown area.
Derek Lyons
>And I'd still like to know why anyone thinks I suggested firing
>people, as opposed to not specially rewarding them.
For the purposes of my point, which is executive (and knowledge)
retention, there isn't a significant difference that I can see as the
principle hold regardless.
Derek Lyons
And not entirely true either. Much depends on how much equity you
have, how bad the market is, and how desperate you are to sell.
Bill Snyder
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Bill Snyder wrote:
>> On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:19:35 -0700, "Mike Schilling"
>> <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dan Clore wrote:
>>>> Getting rid of the Marx-derived apparatus isn't really hard, as
>>>> there's practically nothing in Marx that can be used as such.
>>>> Because
>>>> of that, what has passed for "Marxist" literary criticism has
>>>> usually
>>>> just taken a vaguely sociological approach. (Or hammer-handed
>>>> Bolshevism, like Stalinist calls for "social realism" and attacks
>>>> on
>>>> everything else as bourgeois false consciousness etc., but that's
>>>> never been more than a joke outside the Soviet world and party
>>>> circles.)
>>>
>>> Much of what's called "Marxist analysis" amounts to "history,
>>> culture, and religion are all very nice, but if you want to know
>>> what's *really* going on, follow the money." How many people
>>> don't
>>> believe that these days?
>>
>> Kurds?
>
>You don't think that distribution of oil money affects the friction
>between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq?
>
I think a lot of things "affect" it. But I don't think that one
is to any great degree responsible for it. And how is the
distribution of oil money supposed to affect the Turks' attitude,
anyway?
>> Bosnians?
>
>You don't think that tension between former Yugoslavs who were looking
>forward to becoming wealthy members of the Western orbit and those who
>were dreading left behind with the East explains why Slovenes, Croats,
>and Bosniaks were eager to secede, but Serbs didn't want to let them
>go?
Not really.
> > Somalis? Rwandans? Afghans?
>
>I know less about these. Certainly, the fact that the Tutsis had been
>privileged (and thus gotten weathier and more powerful) during
>colonial times is not irrelevant.
>
--
Mike Schilling
> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> And I'd still like to know why anyone thinks I suggested firing
>> people, as opposed to not specially rewarding them.
>
> For the purposes of my point, which is executive (and knowledge)
> retention, there isn't a significant difference that I can see as
> the
> principle hold regardless.
Then I've been fired almost every year I've worked.
Mike Schilling
> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy wrote:
>>
>>> And equity has practical uses, including a pad against real estate
>>> busts. If the bottom drops out, and you have equity, you can
>>> *sell*
>>> your house for more than you owe on it.
>>
>> Which is similar, if not identical, to what Dave said.
>
> And not entirely true either. Much depends on how much equity you
> have, how bad the market is, and how desperate you are to sell.
"Being able to sell your house for more than you owe on it" is the
definition of having equity.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Eeeeh. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, but no such
information came up in the discussion I had RE getting a Home Equity
loan recently. It was "you have X equity in your home". No discussion of
where that number came from, how it related to what the house was
actually worth, by whose standards, etc. It was just a number that
limited the maximum amount I would be permitted to borrow against the house.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
It is a subset of what Dave said, offered as a specific example of
how it might work. There are other ways it might manifest, too.
Plus, I'm smarter than Dave (but then, who isn't?), and said it
better.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:12247...@sheol.org:
>::: Because having that money invested IN the house makes you
>::: less likely to just walk away.
>
> Or more importantly, whether you walk away or not, the
> lenders money is less likely to evaporate.
Which is a good reason for the lender to encourage a large down
payment. But question, though, was why the *borrower* would want to
do so. Mike snipped it out, but do try to keep up.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
Apparently, there's a reason Derek is in my twit file.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:gdod47$t7$1...@registered.motzarella.org:
Which has little to do with equity, actually, and a great deal to
do with optomizing the bank's profits on the loan.
And if they didn't tell you how they arrived at that number, how do
you know it wasn't assessed price - amount owed - whatever expenses
would be known to occur?