Author Topic: DNC Rule Changes  (Read 18459 times)

Wayward Son

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #50 on: February 05, 2020, 06:10:12 PM »
Whilst I chuckle at the sentimentism, Wayward, it's a bit Facebooky. Like, you know, what Crunch would forward to us from Facebook.

I would be much more interested in hearing your thoughts on the Killer Mike campaign speech.

Or even my other potentially offensive-to-the-left thoughts, as you are one of the people I actually look to on this board on that side of the spectrum.

Sorry, DJQuag, I don't do rap. ;) :)

Wayward Son

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #51 on: February 05, 2020, 06:12:27 PM »
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It’ll be a choice between the current economy or eating your pets to survive.

I know.  Think of those poor Swedes, having to eat their babies because their socialist economy has left them destitute.  ;D

Grant

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #52 on: February 05, 2020, 08:21:18 PM »
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It’ll be a choice between the current economy or eating your pets to survive.

I know.  Think of those poor Swedes, having to eat their babies because their socialist economy has left them destitute.  ;D

Other than railway companies and postal companies and a single mining company, the Swedish government doesn't really own much of the means of production.  The largest corporations in Sweden by revenue are all privately owned, such as Volvo and Ericcson.  The government has been going on a privatization streak since the 90s when the Swedish socialist paradise nearly collapsed under debt and inflation.  Swedish public education has been collapsing.  It seems to me that the United States already has Swedish socialism, except for the fact that the Swedish government has minority stakes in so many private companies.  If government investment in private companies is part of Bernie Sanders's economic plan, please let me know. 

Are you sure that Sweden is the model that Bernie Sanders is actually aiming for?  Or is it just the curtain that socialists like to pull out to hide behind when capitalists begin to talk about the USSR, Eastern Europe, and Venezuela?

TheDrake

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #53 on: February 05, 2020, 10:21:19 PM »
Slippery slope fallacy.

Step 1 - universal health care
Step 2 -???
Step 3 - gulags and political prisoners

Seriati

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #54 on: February 06, 2020, 10:13:10 AM »
That's not the slippery slope fallacy, I think you're going for the Underpants Gnome fallacy.

In any event, we've gotten hundreds of posts on this board alone that walk through why a system that prioritizes redistribution over success and production ends up in bad places.

ScottF

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #55 on: February 06, 2020, 12:23:42 PM »
I would love to have Bernie explain his thoughts around what happens when we start taxing wall street (aka the 401k accounts of over half the population) with a 50% trading fee. True believers probably have an image of a handful of Gordon Gecko's finally paying their dues.

In reality, it would crush the market as institutional investors moved assets, probably out of the country, in the lead up to it.

Erasing $1.6 trillion in student debt, free college, free healthcare. There's some unavoidable math that I've yet to hear debated in an open forum. To his credit, Bernie spent a couple of hours on Rogan's podcast, but Joe's not equipped to ask those kinds of questions. I'd love to see the same forum but add an economist or free-market advocate to raise specifics and debate with him.


Fenring

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #56 on: February 06, 2020, 12:32:07 PM »
Erasing $1.6 trillion in student debt, free college, free healthcare. There's some unavoidable math that I've yet to hear debated in an open forum. To his credit, Bernie spent a couple of hours on Rogan's podcast, but Joe's not equipped to ask those kinds of questions. I'd love to see the same forum but add an economist or free-market advocate to raise specifics and debate with him.

Quick question: let's say Bernie were prove beyond a shadow of a doubt he could arrange to pay for all these things, using existing funds and re-routing them; perhaps his method might involve a 1% raise in income taxes or something. In other words, what if it was a stone cold fact that it could work, either within the current system or with a tweak that isn't too serious? Would you (and others) then be in favor of those policies, or would you still oppose them purely on principle?

I'd like to know how much of the opposition to Bernie's plans is completely economic - can it really work - versus a principled stance, perhaps in one of these variants:

-"It's wrong to ask me to pay for someone else's health care."
-"People need to learn how to take care of themselves."
-"The populace will get weaker and weaker if everyone is taking care of them."
-"The government has no business telling me where my money goes, and no business butting into health care."
-"If they want to afford health care they should just work harder."

I suppose I have a sneaking suspicion that the "who's going to pay for it" arguments are a fig leaf for one of these, and that it's not about the money at all. But I would be curious to hear from a right-leaning poster whether if the monetary issue was settled then Bernie's plans would sit much better with them. Then it becomes an engineering problem rather than a moral one. However I also have a sneaking suspicion that even this hypothetical premise will be rejected in certain particular ways.

Crunch

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #57 on: February 06, 2020, 12:42:11 PM »
Quick answer: he can’t.

Thanks for playing Wheel of Hypotheticals.

Crunch

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #58 on: February 06, 2020, 12:45:02 PM »
Jesus, the DNC is now calling for a do over in Iowa. They want a revote!  And this time, it’ll be “right”!

It’s like watching a bunch of monkeys trying to hump a football.

Crunch

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #59 on: February 06, 2020, 12:59:32 PM »
I started this thread about how the DNC was actually rigging the election to stop Bernie. Is there any bigger rule change than just trying to declare the vote void and have it go again? I though what they did to him in 2016 was pretty astonishing but this is *censored*ing mind blowing.

Bernie supporters say they’ll burn cities down and, at this point, I can see why they’re so angry. I mean, Jesus Christ, this is just so unbelievable. If they really hold a revote and Bernie loses it, his supporters may lose what’s left of their minds.

Fenring

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #60 on: February 06, 2020, 02:26:18 PM »
Quick answer: he can’t.

Thanks for playing Wheel of Hypotheticals.

Your answer is predictable, although perhaps it says something about me that I still find it disappointing. Hopefully you'll eventually see that entertaining a hypothetical without accepting it does not *automatically* give aid and comfort to the enemy.

cherrypoptart

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #61 on: February 06, 2020, 02:38:13 PM »


"It’s like watching a bunch of monkeys..."

Or a plane crash caused by incompetence, arrogance, and greed.

‘Designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys’

Which is worse, if they are incompetent or if they are rigging it again?

Or option three which is they are incompetently rigging it?

Crunch

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #62 on: February 06, 2020, 02:45:44 PM »
Quick answer: he can’t.

Thanks for playing Wheel of Hypotheticals.

Your answer is predictable, although perhaps it says something about me that I still find it disappointing. Hopefully you'll eventually see that entertaining a hypothetical without accepting it does not *automatically* give aid and comfort to the enemy.

You completely misunderstand. This frequent attempt around here to veer into the realm of hypothetical is a misleading tactic. It’s the admission that facts and reality don’t apply and let’s start in the realm of the theoretical where all sorts of nuttery sounds plausible. Of course, once you establish the hypothetical as valid, it’s pushed into the conversation as reality. It’s Schiffism.

If you can’t get to the point except in the realm of hypotheticals then your point is invalid.

Fenring

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #63 on: February 06, 2020, 03:03:49 PM »
You completely misunderstand. This frequent attempt around here to veer into the realm of hypothetical is a misleading tactic. It’s the admission that facts and reality don’t apply and let’s start in the realm of the theoretical where all sorts of nuttery sounds plausible. Of course, once you establish the hypothetical as valid, it’s pushed into the conversation as reality. It’s Schiffism.

If you can’t get to the point except in the realm of hypotheticals then your point is invalid.

Are you going on record as saying that you literally cannot conceive of a single payer healthcare system of being possibly affordable? Like, the entire great nation of the U.S., completely in agreement with no partisan divide, putting all heads together into the project, and it would be completely impossible? So impossible that you cannot even entertain how you would feel about it if it were achieved? You must have a resoundingly poor opinion of your country if this is what you believe. Is this what you're going with?

DJQuag

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #64 on: February 06, 2020, 03:16:56 PM »
A) Trump won because he made a bunch of crazy promises that he couldn't keep.

He is at best stretching the truth, here.  And not in favor of the working class.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-politicians-wrong-us-economy-stock-market-2020-1

 B) It's cool because all off those middle west farmers who may have suffered don't necessarily need to take a big price in the narrative. Trump. Helping the little people. L-o-fricking-lol.

By all means, Mushroom Don. Keep on ignoring and belittling he exact same desperate and on the edge voters who went ahead and voted whilst holding their noses for someone promised something that they couldn't deliver. I'm sure it'll work out.

DJQuag

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #65 on: February 06, 2020, 03:23:51 PM »
You completely misunderstand. This frequent attempt around here to veer into the realm of hypothetical is a misleading tactic. It’s the admission that facts and reality don’t apply and let’s start in the realm of the theoretical where all sorts of nuttery sounds plausible. Of course, once you establish the hypothetical as valid, it’s pushed into the conversation as reality. It’s Schiffism.

If you can’t get to the point except in the realm of hypotheticals then your point is invalid.

Are you going on record as saying that you literally cannot conceive of a single payer healthcare system of being possibly affordable? Like, the entire great nation of the U.S., completely in agreement with no partisan divide, putting all heads together into the project, and it would be completely impossible? So impossible that you cannot even entertain how you would feel about it if it were achieved? You must have a resoundingly poor opinion of your country if this is what you believe. Is this what you're going with?

So these are the four main models of healthcare in the modern age. They all seem to work, to different degrees, in western countries at least. I guess the US is the richest, best country ever but they won't be able find one...

https://www.pnhp.org/single_payer_resources/health_care_systems_four_basic_models.php

DJQuag

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #66 on: February 06, 2020, 03:33:28 PM »


"It’s like watching a bunch of monkeys..."

Or a plane crash caused by incompetence, arrogance, and greed.

‘Designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys’

Which is worse, if they are incompetent or if they are rigging it again?

Or option three which is they are incompetently rigging it?

Of course they're rigging it. Whether through media representation and reports or "accidents," on the night of the vote. The DNC *DOES NOT WANT* Sanders or to a lesser extent Warren as the candidate. (Warren is a woman, they have guaranteed votes there regardless.)

We saw this in 2016 and we are indeed seeing this again. They're trying to be a bit trickier about it this time, but it's pretty evident.

PS Crunch go away. This is an internal dispute. Go share your celebrations on Facebook or Breitbart or something.

DJQuag

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #67 on: February 06, 2020, 03:47:31 PM »
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It’ll be a choice between the current economy or eating your pets to survive.

I know.  Think of those poor Swedes, having to eat their babies because their socialist economy has left them destitute.  ;D

Other than railway companies and postal companies and a single mining company, the Swedish government doesn't really own much of the means of production.  The largest corporations in Sweden by revenue are all privately owned, such as Volvo and Ericcson.  The government has been going on a privatization streak since the 90s when the Swedish socialist paradise nearly collapsed under debt and inflation.  Swedish public education has been collapsing.  It seems to me that the United States already has Swedish socialism, except for the fact that the Swedish government has minority stakes in so many private companies.  If government investment in private companies is part of Bernie Sanders's economic plan, please let me know. 

Are you sure that Sweden is the model that Bernie Sanders is actually aiming for?  Or is it just the curtain that socialists like to pull out to hide behind when capitalists begin to talk about the USSR, Eastern Europe, and Venezuela?

How is Sweden and, through extension, Scandinavia doing on things like social inequality, child poverty, class movement, and the like?

I'll grant you the meme where we bring up Scandinavia is flawed in that they do have capitalist institutions, but I will ask how many of their captalist conglomerates accumlate and keep wealth in the same way as the rest of the West?

Seriati

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #68 on: February 06, 2020, 04:27:08 PM »
Erasing $1.6 trillion in student debt, free college, free healthcare. There's some unavoidable math that I've yet to hear debated in an open forum. To his credit, Bernie spent a couple of hours on Rogan's podcast, but Joe's not equipped to ask those kinds of questions. I'd love to see the same forum but add an economist or free-market advocate to raise specifics and debate with him.

Quick question: let's say Bernie were prove beyond a shadow of a doubt he could arrange to pay for all these things, using existing funds and re-routing them; perhaps his method might involve a 1% raise in income taxes or something.

Can we assume at the same time that he's running against Trump, who'll lower taxes to zero, while reducing the debt and providing more services?

Bernies plan calls for new spending that is 1.5 times greater than current spending (that's a total of 2.5 times current spending).

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In other words, what if it was a stone cold fact that it could work, either within the current system or with a tweak that isn't too serious? Would you (and others) then be in favor of those policies, or would you still oppose them purely on principle?

So, are you asking if someone invented a pill that could cure all diseases that costs a dollar to produce, would we deny it to people?  No.  It's a silly question.  If you want to assume there are no costs, than any model of benefits justifies everything.

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I'd like to know how much of the opposition to Bernie's plans is completely economic - can it really work - versus a principled stance, perhaps in one of these variants:

The opposition to Bernie is not just economic, and not because it could work and we're uncertain.  The opposition is because it's a proven failure, that actually generates a declining standard of living and has failed uniformly everywhere it's been tried.  It's a plan that's primary realized benefit is enhanced governmental power for the ruling class.

I oppose it because it will make your life worse.

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-"It's wrong to ask me to pay for someone else's health care."

Yes and no.  Is it right to ask you to pay for the healthcare of a politician's child, while you can't afford to pay for things your own children need?  We all agree (or rather most of us), that we need some level of taxes to pay for services, but we grossly disagree that government payment causes good results.  Advancements are pushed from the non-governmental systems to the governmental ones, not the other way around.  The biggest reductions in costs of services exist where there is the most capitalistic exposure to the market, where governmental payments support increasing costs.

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-"People need to learn how to take care of themselves."
-"The populace will get weaker and weaker if everyone is taking care of them."
-"The government has no business telling me where my money goes, and no business butting into health care."
-"If they want to afford health care they should just work harder."

None of which are primary arguments, just repetition of the libertarian ethos with greater or lesser levels of insensitive added.

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I suppose I have a sneaking suspicion that the "who's going to pay for it" arguments are a fig leaf for one of these, and that it's not about the money at all. But I would be curious to hear from a right-leaning poster whether if the monetary issue was settled then Bernie's plans would sit much better with them. Then it becomes an engineering problem rather than a moral one. However I also have a sneaking suspicion that even this hypothetical premise will be rejected in certain particular ways.

If everything was free, I'd have no problem with everyone having free stuff.  I didn't go out and demand that radio stations be prevented from playing in people's houses.  I don't look to censor the internet so that individuals can't get their stuff.  I'm not opposed to libraries.

But the idea that everyone could have a live in nurse is not plausible (at least not until we get robot nurses).  The idea that millions can have free access to a surgery that only a dozen people can perform with the current tech isn't realistic.  The idea that we can take from our productive uses enough money to fund free everything for everyone is just a recipe for a disaster where we literally kill and eat the goose that lays the golden egg the first day we have it.

Fenring

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #69 on: February 06, 2020, 04:32:09 PM »
Right, but let's say your economic analysis is simply wrong; you are mistaken, etc etc. Let's say that's proven one day, and it's much more affordable than you think. Not free, and not a perpetual motion machince, but more afforable than you thought, and tenable in an engineering sense. Would you champion it, or at least not be opposed in that case? And obviously I know you don't think you're wrong, but you must (I think) leave open the possibility that you might be, since scientically speaking it is false that it has been tried in the U.S. and has failed. So let's assume by hypothesis that your assessment of its affordability is really off: what is your take on it then?

Grant

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #70 on: February 06, 2020, 04:34:08 PM »
How is Sweden and, through extension, Scandinavia doing on things like social inequality, child poverty, class movement, and the like?

There are a bunch of questions there and even more ways of answering them. 

First, social inequality is always relative.  It's currently growing in Sweden, but it doesn't seem to be the kind of inequality we would think of in the US.  It's basically the difference between being able to not cook your own meals or clean your own clothes etc.  Nevertheless, Sweden has a huge amount of high net worth individuals.  Sweden has roughly the same amount of individuals of greater than $50m USD worth of net worth as Hong Kong, Brazil, Russia, or Spain.  These high worth individuals own 75% of Sweden's total wealth.  The middle class of Sweden owns 22%, just above the 19.6% of the United States.  https://econlife.com/2016/04/swedish-wealth-distribution/

Class movement in Sweden isn't any better than it is anywhere else in the West, and may be worse.  https://slate.com/business/2012/10/social-mobility-in-sweden-gregory-clark-finds-there-isn-t-very-much.html

The reasons you don't hear about it as much is because the Swedes are not on CNBC every night bitching about it.  Because they just don't care at some point and there isn't some political war against capitalism in Sweden to make it nightly news.  In Sweden, the "Socialists" are in power, so they're not rabble rousing constantly. 

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I'll grant you the meme where we bring up Scandinavia is flawed in that they do have capitalist institutions, but I will ask how many of their captalist conglomerates accumlate and keep wealth in the same way as the rest of the West?


Scandinavian governments are generally notoriously frugal, since they went through economic collapse previously due to socialist policies.  On the other hand, Scandinavian corporate debt is huge compared to US Corporate debt.  Private debt is also on the rise due to housing costs, labor costs, and cheap debt.  People borrow what they can pay, and right now you can pay a lot more than you used to be able to.  That's not due to socialism, necessarily, unless you count central banking as socialist. 

I'm really sorry that so many US socialists have been sold a dream of Scandinavian socialism. Maybe you can blame Toynbee.  No, it's not Venezula or the USSR.  Because it never really was socialist in the way they were and corrected a lot of their mistakes when it began to cause economic collapse in the 90s. 


Crunch

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #71 on: February 06, 2020, 04:44:16 PM »
You completely misunderstand. This frequent attempt around here to veer into the realm of hypothetical is a misleading tactic. It’s the admission that facts and reality don’t apply and let’s start in the realm of the theoretical where all sorts of nuttery sounds plausible. Of course, once you establish the hypothetical as valid, it’s pushed into the conversation as reality. It’s Schiffism.

If you can’t get to the point except in the realm of hypotheticals then your point is invalid.

Are you going on record as saying that you literally cannot conceive of a single payer healthcare system of being possibly affordable? Like, the entire great nation of the U.S., completely in agreement with no partisan divide, putting all heads together into the project, and it would be completely impossible? So impossible that you cannot even entertain how you would feel about it if it were achieved? You must have a resoundingly poor opinion of your country if this is what you believe. Is this what you're going with?
.

Love the straw man. Good one. This has nothing to do with an opinion of the country. That’s such a ridiculous setup.   

But, looking at the viability of a single monolithic healthcare system controlled by a central planning committee over a thousand miles away from the point of care is not going to work. These things have been tried before and they have always failed. History has also shown that allowing the individual to control their care and the care provider to control their practice has resulted in the best, most affordable care possible.

History should be your guide, not some childish attempt to shame me into supporting it.

Now, there are massive problems with the current healthcare system here. I know you’ll want to frame me into a false dichotomy here but that’s just not going to fly. Opposing single payer is not the same as supporting the status quo.

TheDrake

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #72 on: February 07, 2020, 02:23:45 PM »
Crunch. Explain medicare. It seems like it is exactly like what you say won't work, and yet despite some complaints it works to care for millions of elderly citizens.

I guess if we just treated medicine like a luxury good, It would be the best in the world for a handful of people.

Me - I believe in medicine as a right and a full on human entitlement. If that means that the top earners (including me) have a decline in the quality of our services to pay for it, I'm fine with that. Because I wouldn't tell somebody she has to rely on gofundme to get her kid treated for cancer. In case anyone thinks that's a "strawman" or an exaggeration, I refer you to
Help 6 Year Old Guy Sizikov Fight Cancer![/quote]

ScottF

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #73 on: February 07, 2020, 02:59:50 PM »
I don't believe people are universally entitled to healthcare - that seems nonsensical to me.

I do believe that it's in a high-functioning society's best interest to provide the highest level of care for the greatest number of people possible. I also believe there is a moral obligation to do so. Maybe that's effectively no different than your belief in it as "human entitlement", but it feels quite different to me.

Fenring

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #74 on: February 07, 2020, 03:19:10 PM »
I don't believe people are universally entitled to healthcare - that seems nonsensical to me.

I do believe that it's in a high-functioning society's best interest to provide the highest level of care for the greatest number of people possible. I also believe there is a moral obligation to do so. Maybe that's effectively no different than your belief in it as "human entitlement", but it feels quite different to me.

I tend to agree that I don't like words like "entitled". I see it more as observing that the more a thing becomes technologically possible to do, and we choose not to do it, then we are *guilty* of failing to do it. That's pretty much it, full stop. Does the technology exist to provide essentially unlimited food? If yes (and it is yes) then if anyone starves then the society is *guilty.* This didn't used to be the case, but I think it is increasingly the case for basic health care as well. The one thing to settle would be something to the effect of rationing - how many times do you get to go to the doctor, what are the wait times, etc etc. But "you're poor so you die" is a fail in my book.

Crunch

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #75 on: February 07, 2020, 04:56:48 PM »
Crunch. Explain medicare. It seems like it is exactly like what you say won't work, and yet despite some complaints it works to care for millions of elderly citizens.

I guess if we just treated medicine like a luxury good, It would be the best in the world for a handful of people.

Me - I believe in medicine as a right and a full on human entitlement. If that means that the top earners (including me) have a decline in the quality of our services to pay for it, I'm fine with that. Because I wouldn't tell somebody she has to rely on gofundme to get her kid treated for cancer. In case anyone thinks that's a "strawman" or an exaggeration, I refer you to
Help 6 Year Old Guy Sizikov Fight Cancer!
[/quote]

Medicare. Expected to run out of funding 6 years from now.
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Hospitals are currently losing money on Medicare payments.

Even the most efficient hospitals have a negative margin of -2 percent, according to MedPAC.

Margins are a negative 2 percent on a three-year rolling average for the estimated 291 hospitals considered efficient in operations, compared to another 1,800 hospitals.

Medicare is running out of other people's money. It's rife with fraud:
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According to the Office of Management and Budget, Medicare "improper payments" were $47.9 billion in 2010...

So yeah, it's working exactly like what we'd expect.

How about the VA? That's been quality over the last few years hasn't it?

Every example we have of government-run health care here has been a litany of waste, abuse, and service failure. Expanding the programs are not going to fix these issues - it will actually only exacerbate them.

Let's consider another side of this. Rush Limbaugh came out with the news he has advanced lung cancer. Have you seen the left's reaction to that news? How many of you here felt at least a smug sense of satisfaction upon hearing it? It's ok, you can be honest. We all know at least a few of you did if not every single one of you. That would put you in the "nice" camp on the reactions. Many have hoped for him to have a long, lingering, painful death. The left is loving the idea of Rush dying from this.

Now, you're telling me that after championing an ideology that resulted in the deaths of millions during the 20th century while also promoting the reactions I just described that I can trust you with my health care? Let's file that under "are you *censored*ing kidding me?"

I wouldn't trust you people to do my pedicure much less make life or death decisions for me.


Seriati

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #76 on: February 07, 2020, 05:04:01 PM »
Right, but let's say your economic analysis is simply wrong; you are mistaken, etc etc. Let's say that's proven one day, and it's much more affordable than you think. Not free, and not a perpetual motion machince, but more afforable than you thought, and tenable in an engineering sense. Would you champion it, or at least not be opposed in that case?

So again, "it" is what socialized health care controlled by the government?  No.  As I pointed out above it's well beyond economics as to why it's a bad idea.

Government paying for it?  Again, there's no reality where your arguments about it being cheap and staying cheap and government payment will align.  It doesn't matter what you look at, when you add government dollars it gets more expensive over time.  Infrastructure?  That's why it's crumbling, fixing it, let alone building new is so much more costly than it was to build it in the past it can't be afforded.  College education?  Every single government touch has supported tuition increases faster than inflation.  Healthcare?  Don't make me laugh.

So, how do I answer without thinking you must mean a perpetual motion machine?  Governments do not respond to spending incentives in rational ways because they are always spending someone else's money and always have decision makers that have incentives that aren't economic.

If you invented essentially free healthcare, the government would find a way to add costs to it, to support graft or to raise revenue for other things that benefit the politicians making the decision.

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And obviously I know you don't think you're wrong, but you must (I think) leave open the possibility that you might be, since scientically speaking it is false that it has been tried in the U.S. and has failed.

There is zero evidence that communism and socialism lead to better results, and overwhelming that they generate misery and losses in standards of living.  We haven't tried Monarchy in the US either, does that mean we can't be certain about what it means to have an absolute monarch?

Socialism kills the very incentives that are necessary for advancement.  If you were to have the "benevolent" Socialism government (kind of like the philosopher king, or benevolent monarch), first of all you'd be talking of a utopian ideal, but second, in creating it you'd by necessity be eliminating any  protective mechanisms that could keep it benevolent, which means it will cross the line.  But if you were to magically create it and magically prevent it from drifting, you'd end up with different incentives, they'd be incentives to share and to mooch, but not to create or invest.  It's literally Star Trek, with the only motives to provide advancement being "recognition" and altruism, and those motivate only a tiny subset of people who don't necessarily align with the ones you need to motivate.

Meanwhile, you literally have to ignore that such a system of concentrated power, creates a massive incentive to the power hungry to get their hands on the levers of that power.  Imagine your worst nightmare of living under the Democrats or the Republicans where they have a supramajority in House and Senate, the Presidency, 8 out of 9 SC judges, and control over every state government, and that's not quite as bad off as you'd be on dealing with the government you're asking for.

Socialism if it works perfectly (and it never has or will) would virtually halt advancement in favor of marginally improving the lives of a handful.  Fast forward 5 years, and the worst off in a control group running side by side are now barely worse that the Socialists, and the new average would be much higher.  Fast forward 20 years, and the bottom of the control group is now over the Socialists and the new average would be a multiple.

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So let's assume by hypothesis that your assessment of its affordability is really off: what is your take on it then?

As I said before, I've got no objection to people getting things for cheaper.  But it's capitalism, not socialism that has the history of delivering better and cheaper to the common persons.  It's no accident that the poor in a first world country are better off than the average person elsewhere.

In fact, left to it's own devices healthcare automatically becomes more affordable, even for the uninsured.  The medical power available over the counter in your average first world country is insane.  Add in the low cost of most prescriptions for most illnesses, and the ability to see low cost doctors through clinics and other programs (including, that emergency rooms can't turn people away regardless of ability to pay), and honestly, even the "uninsured" in the US have a higher medical standard of living than much of the world.

No question there are things that aren't that cheap.  Diabetes is one that's often listed.  Yet the US has generated so many advances in treatment of diabetes in the last 4 decades that the "leftovers" are cheap and the "leftovers" are constantly improving.  4 decades in the future, a society like ours, very likely has monitors and treatment for this disease to the point of being over the counter and hardly more costly than aspirin. 

Not directly related, but thought this was interesting.  Just a little write up on the costs of the various parts of the medical economy.  https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10830.pdf

TheDrake

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #77 on: February 07, 2020, 06:07:31 PM »
Medicare is running out of other people's money. It's rife with fraud:
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According to the Office of Management and Budget, Medicare "improper payments" were $47.9 billion in 2010...
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I'll see your 48B and raise you 120B.

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I called health care fraud prosecutors across California to ask what insurers were doing to help bring cases against those plundering health care dollars. More than one simply burst out laughing. “Not much,” one prosecutor said.

It seems counterintuitive. Escalating health care costs are one of the greatest financial concerns in the United States. And an estimated 10% of those costs are likely eaten up by fraud, experts say. Yet private health insurers, who preside over some $1.2 trillion in spending each year, exhibit a puzzling lack of ambition when it comes to bringing fraudsters to justice.

We Asked Prosecutors if Health Insurance Companies Care About Fraud. They Laughed at Us.

Of course Medicare is going bankrupt. Private insurance raises rates, which get passed on to employees in the form of a larger payroll deduction. Medicare deductions haven't changed in 30 years.

Crunch

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #78 on: February 08, 2020, 10:20:08 AM »
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According to studies, the cost of Medicare for all sits at roughly $32 trillion over the next decade. But, as the analysis notes, Sanders’ universal health care plan doesn’t have a built-in financing mechanism. The senator’s policy allows for different types of financing, including income-based premiums, savings on health care costs, and the wealth tax.

But as a previous Penn Wharton Budget Model found, Sanders’ wealth tax would generate $1 trillion less in revenue than he stated. The analysis of Medicare for all considers three different types of financing: premiums, payroll taxes, and deficit financing.

Breaking it down:
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Premium-based funding. The PWBM finds that with premium financing, the U.S. economy could grow by 0.2% by 2060. Income tax revenue under this model increases by 16%, according to the analysis. Payroll tax revenues would be boosted by 26%. Worker productivity would also increase by 3.6% by 2060 compared to the current law.

Payroll-based funding. Medicare for all could also be paid for through payroll taxes. As a worker’s wages increase, the absolute amount paid for health care would also rise, making the tax progressive. Under this plan, GDP falls by 15%. While payroll tax revenues would grow by 160% under this model, income tax revenue would shrink by 6%.

Deficit-based funding. The real trouble comes when Medicare for all is financed by deficits. With government borrowing, universal health care could shrink the economy by as much as 24% by 2060, as investments in private capital are reduced. Worker productivity, however, would increase the most, at just under 8%. But overall income and payroll tax revenues would fall by 14% and 2%, respectively, after receiving a boost over the next two decades.

The best case scenario flatlines the economy and imposes massive tax increases. The other realistic options just wreck us.

There’s just no scenario under which a program like this works for the US. It’s only in the realm of the hypothetical that it can be funded and that it can provide better care.

wmLambert

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #79 on: February 08, 2020, 06:10:06 PM »
...voters were influenced to believe that Ben Carson had dropped out of the race.

No. What happened is that the workers for one GOP candidate were on the ball, and when they read the Main Stream Media's allegation that Carson had dropped out, they moved immediately to contact his people to see if they would come over to their candidate. The rest of the different candidates' staffs were too unorganized and unfocused to take advantage of what the MSM got wrong. Of course, because one group proved themselves abler than all the rest, that same MSM targeted them as being wrongdoers.

wmLambert

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #80 on: February 08, 2020, 06:21:21 PM »
...The best case scenario flatlines the economy and imposes massive tax increases. The other realistic options just wreck us.

There’s just no scenario under which a program like this works for the US. It’s only in the realm of the hypothetical that it can be funded and that it can provide better care.

History has proved that Socialism ends up hurting its people, and that Free Enterprise does the best at uplifting its people. Likewise, history shows that government can never run economics better than the Free Market can. Never let government bureaucrats run your life for you.

TheDeamon

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #81 on: February 09, 2020, 12:50:58 AM »
It's literally Star Trek, with the only motives to provide advancement being "recognition" and altruism, and those motivate only a tiny subset of people who don't necessarily align with the ones you need to motivate.

Star Trek isn't even Star Trek anymore going by Star Trek: Picard. Scarcity exists, a lot of other things exist that arguably shouldn't exist in that setting. But that's what happens when you let people who cannot grok the thing lead the production efforts on it.

Fenring

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #82 on: February 09, 2020, 11:33:15 AM »
Likewise, history shows that government can never run economics better than the Free Market can.

I think there's a disconnect here: the free market is not a person or an organization. "It" does not run economics or anything. The whole point of it is that the economy is not run at all under a free market system, it just goes chaotically but the theory goes that individual people and organizations pursuing money on their own, when added up as a whole, yields a profitable system with good wealth generation. But nothing is run. The results of this system are arbitrary and self-generating; no one at all decides on how it goes. So if the result is good then that's nice, and if it's bad there is nothing to be done about it without intervention. Not even arguing pro or con in this instance, but it betrays an innate bias and misunderstanding that you think there is any running of the economy at all under a free market system.

TheDrake

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #83 on: February 09, 2020, 11:35:37 AM »
...voters were influenced to believe that Ben Carson had dropped out of the race.

No. What happened is that the workers for one GOP candidate were on the ball, and when they read the Main Stream Media's allegation that Carson had dropped out, they moved immediately to contact his people to see if they would come over to their candidate. The rest of the different candidates' staffs were too unorganized and unfocused to take advantage of what the MSM got wrong. Of course, because one group proved themselves abler than all the rest, that same MSM targeted them as being wrongdoers.

CNN reported accurately that Carson wasn't travelling to nh. They did not report that he was suspending his campaign.

yossarian22c

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #84 on: February 10, 2020, 01:42:20 PM »
I wonder which party is going to realize the best way to win the election is to only let swing states hold early primaries. Iowa and NH are decent in that regards. But more swing states should go early if you want the candidate who will do best there. Honestly having SC go third for the democrats is a waste. SC is never going to be in play, and if it were in play during the election is so one sided it doesn't really matter. Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Minnesota all seem to me to be better options for a third state for the Dems. Nothing huge that would cost too much to compete in but states where having their preferred candidate and shifting the outcome by 1-2% could swing the entire election. Although this year, like 2016 the race could go on long enough to let the later states have a real impact. But despite those relatively close races in 2016 things were largely settled before the last groups of states got their say.

Seriati

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #85 on: February 10, 2020, 01:54:47 PM »
Likewise, history shows that government can never run economics better than the Free Market can.

I think there's a disconnect here: the free market is not a person or an organization. "It" does not run economics or anything.

That's a remarkably unsophisticated quibble, Fen.  First of all, I presume that wmLambert mean "economies" not "economics," which is perfectly understandable and not improper.  But even with the original text it's perfectly understandable.

The key difference between "government" run and "free market" run is who the decision makers are.  The translation is that Central planners without personal stakes in the outcome can't make as good of decisions as deals between those with stakes in the outcome.

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The whole point of it is that the economy is not run at all under a free market system, it just goes chaotically but the theory goes that individual people and organizations pursuing money on their own, when added up as a whole, yields a profitable system with good wealth generation.

No. Free markets are not moving "chaotically."  Even making that statement reflects a huge information problem on your part.  Free markets move rationally.  They, if efficient, rationally move resources to the most valued use for those resources, they reward resource generation, frugality and development.  They do require some help to be efficient, for example, if you have no controls you can get monopolists that use their power to move resources away from efficient uses.

As an example, if you put 10 people in a room each charged with making a puzzle but you've shuffled the 10 puzzles together, what you see as you watch them will look very chaotic at the start, but over time will move more and more towards order as they each make trades to obtain the pieces they need.

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But nothing is run. The results of this system are arbitrary and self-generating; no one at all decides on how it goes.

Everything is "run" its just run from the bottom up, with every transaction at the bottom being between interested parties protecting their own interest. 

Kind of like how every single student at a college is running their own schedule.  Sure there's a central system to determine who gets in demand classes, but each student is making their own determinations of which and what classes fit their needs based on their own goals (and requirements to graduate).  It's not true to say "no one at all decides" when it's literally everyone involved deciding.  And not in the way of a "group" decision, where hundreds of decision makers means no decision gets made, because it's not a group decision, it's an aggregate of individual decisions.

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So if the result is good then that's nice, and if it's bad there is nothing to be done about it without intervention.

"The" result?  As if every single transaction in the world can only be evaluated by reference to a collective goal?  Every single deal is entered into because the two sides think they are getting something more valuable than what they are trading (assuming basic efficiency requirements exist - like enforceability of contracts).

What is the bad result? 

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Not even arguing pro or con in this instance, but it betrays an innate bias and misunderstanding that you think there is any running of the economy at all under a free market system.

I think it reflects more that you are focusing on the sentences and not the principles.  The "free market" does "run the economy" its just a phrase that means the aggregate of all economic decisions made by the people directly involved in the transaction freely entered into.

TheDeamon

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #86 on: February 10, 2020, 02:44:51 PM »
I think there's a disconnect here: the free market is not a person or an organization. "It" does not run economics or anything. The whole point of it is that the economy is not run at all under a free market system, it just goes chaotically but the theory goes that individual people and organizations pursuing money on their own, when added up as a whole, yields a profitable system with good wealth generation. But nothing is run. The results of this system are arbitrary and self-generating; no one at all decides on how it goes. So if the result is good then that's nice, and if it's bad there is nothing to be done about it without intervention. Not even arguing pro or con in this instance, but it betrays an innate bias and misunderstanding that you think there is any running of the economy at all under a free market system.

Uh, people like to ignore the full scope and context of Adam Smith's work. The Free Market is unrestricted, yes. But the Free Market relies on the people involved in that market to behave in an ethical manner. Seeking self-interest is fine, just long as you aren't actively trying to ruin other people by unethical means. The constraints on the system are supposed to be self-imposed by producer and consumer alike, as they can likewise be responsive to any needed changes/adjustments than third parties(governments) could ever hope to be.

More generally, the Free Market, when allowed to "run free" (within ethical bounds) will produce more wealth than any other alternative, of course you also run the hazard of markets being disrupted entirely by new innovations, or just simple "market corrections" as certain segments of the economy suddenly finds more producers for a good/service than there are consumers to the point where the supply glut drives market value below cost of production--resulting in people/companies ceasing to produce that type of good.

Fenring

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #87 on: February 10, 2020, 03:13:30 PM »
I think there's a disconnect here: the free market is not a person or an organization. "It" does not run economics or anything.

That's a remarkably unsophisticated quibble, Fen.  First of all, I presume that wmLambert mean "economies" not "economics," which is perfectly understandable and not improper.  But even with the original text it's perfectly understandable.

No, my objection remains the same even with "econonies." Yes, the government monitors the economy even in a free market system, keeps the peace and upholds the law (ideally), but it is not in a position to run that economy, as in, make decisions about how it should go or whether the resources are going to the right place. You depart from a free market right away if the government begins making result-based decisions, whether in the form of "too much monies are concentrated there, they should be moved here" or in another vein "We need to make sure X amount of focus is put here in our economy." All of that requires either redistribution (through taxation or otherwise) or else systemic funneling such as by promoting certain areas through government assistance. It's not "free" in the sense you mean it if the government is making value judgements about how the particulars are going.

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No. Free markets are not moving "chaotically."  Even making that statement reflects a huge information problem on your part.  Free markets move rationally.  They, if efficient, rationally move resources to the most valued use for those resources, they reward resource generation, frugality and development.

Chaotically =/= irrationally. In fact it can never mean that in the real world. The ocean moves rationally, i.e. based on fixed principles that can do nothing other than make sense. But *we* cannot make sense of it, so fluids are a chaotic system, formally speaking. It means the complexity far exceeds our ability to track its minutiae, and often even to make general statements about its patterns. We can make some statements about it, but there are limitations there. Free markets are practically by definition a chaotic system, perhaps doubly so; they operate on fluid principles in some respects, flowing, ebbing, and trickling in ways that are hard to detect and quantify, and all of these fluctuations are themselves based almost exclusively on human psychology, which is a far more chaotic and untraceable system than liquid H2O molecules. Chaotic in this sense was a statement about its structure, not a value judgement.

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Everything is "run" its just run from the bottom up, with every transaction at the bottom being between interested parties protecting their own interest.

That's like saying you're running your business if the CEO quits and all employees get to determine for themselves what projects they think will personally earn them the best income. They might very well find clever ways to earn a living within that company - but that leaves out several parts of corporate operation that we normally take for granted (bottom line, pay equity, sustainability, etc). Even if it worked, it surely could not be called "running a company." That sort of collective activity might better be called by some other term, not sure what it should be.

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Kind of like how every single student at a college is running their own schedule.  Sure there's a central system to determine who gets in demand classes, but each student is making their own determinations of which and what classes fit their needs based on their own goals (and requirements to graduate).  It's not true to say "no one at all decides" when it's literally everyone involved deciding.

It's tough to address these analogies, and even my above attempt is imperfect because I'm trying to keep the parallel we're discussing, but it doesn't work so well. But to go with the student analogy, sure they can pick whatever courses they want, and it's collective in that sense. But to make it more apples to apples we must also assert that the students are also the ones creating the syllabus prior to picking their courses, and some of them are even opting into teaching the courses, so that the entire educational model at this hypothetical school is bottom-up: they decide what they want to learn, how to learn it, and they then attend. There can be no "master" in this situation, because in our analogy that would be government, telling people what they should be learning. But the "free market" as we mean it here means the government (i.e. school admin) stays out of it and lets people pursue their business how they want. It observes, maybe gives advice, but does not mandate or issue instructions. And then this hypothetical school admin is supposed to claim that the students are getting a first-rate education, because that's the draw, right? Except what if they aren't? What if their activities, furious and involved as they may be, are in fact not getting them a good education? And then we need to ask - 'good' based on what standard? Aha. That is where the analogy runs into trouble, because while there is no hard metric in schools that matters (grades are arbitrarily defined) I don't think you'll find anyone that would agree that any old set of learning is just as good as another qualitatively. Whereas in business we have the opposite result, which is that it is very easy to quantitatively measure money in and money out as a metric, but where there is rarely talk of that qualitative metric. Lots of money moving = good result? That does not in fact follow. It might be a necessary component of a good economy, but it is not sufficient. But you cannot have a qualitiative metric for success in an economy with a "dean of students" and a "chair of the department" whose jobs it is to determine whether what the students are up to is in fact helping them. This is putting aside that other issue of whether schools in face care about that all the time...

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So if the result is good then that's nice, and if it's bad there is nothing to be done about it without intervention.

"The" result?  As if every single transaction in the world can only be evaluated by reference to a collective goal?

Yes sir, you've got it exactly. In fact I will go further - every single action you ever take in your entire life should be evaluated by reference to a collective goal. And we can go even further than that: people who do not believe they need to take into account collective goals when making individual decisions are usually classed under terms like "antisocial", and when this choice is based on a lack of caring about the collective the term can become "sociopathic." That is, on an individual psychological level. On a group level it's tougher to come up with cogent names for these things. Also bear in mind I don't mean to personally attack you or anyone specific, but rather I am suggesting that psychological terms we take for granted in all areas of life other than business seem to somehow get forgotten about when talking about money. Funny, that.

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Every single deal is entered into because the two sides think they are getting something more valuable than what they are trading (assuming basic efficiency requirements exist - like enforceability of contracts).

They may think it all they want, but that doesn't make it true. I can go rip off a little kid who "agrees" to trade baseball cards with me (we had a thread about that recently) and is very happy about the trade, except that I know I'm winning out big-time. Most people here were quite clear that this is unethical. But what if, somehow or other, the two of us actually both do win out, but by the result of our trade someone else ends up a big loser? Free market economics suggests that this is literally impossible, whereas I am quite sure that it is in fact inevitable.

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I think it reflects more that you are focusing on the sentences and not the principles.  The "free market" does "run the economy" its just a phrase that means the aggregate of all economic decisions made by the people directly involved in the transaction freely entered into.

Just to be clear, I do understand that under a free market the economy "gets run" in the sense that it exists and has a function that does not magically cease because it lacks a conductor. What I am saying is that it has no conductor. And no, only certain classes of decisions are ever made on the bottom level - buying retail goods or buying/selling services. It is literally not possible when deciding between Apple and Samsung for your phone to make systemic decisions regarding which sectors of the economy are lacking resources, which areas of the country are having problems, whether there are enough jobs of certain kinds at the right time of year, and whether certain areas of the economy are national necessities and must be supported or bolstered at all costs (this can range from anything like foodstuffs to "too big to fail"). There is no sense at all in which these are "decisions that get made" by everyday transactions. All you're voting for when you go to the store is which shampoo company will do better, and in the job market which company will get your work. Those are very minor instances of decision-making, even if you add all those up into a collective. They are very important, but only one particular class of decisions; certainly not the sort of decisions that constitute "running" anything in any intelligible sense. I am pretty sure our mathematics is nowhere near sophisticated to even offer up any kind of proof that it is theoretically possibly for collective buying/selling to cover the bases of "running" like a CEO would do. Boy would you need a lot of information to calculate whether that's even possible, so it strikes me as really wild that you (I suppose) would argue not only that it's possible but that is certainly the best way to do things. I guess it's possible, although I *really* don't think so.

Fenring

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #88 on: February 10, 2020, 03:21:25 PM »
Uh, people like to ignore the full scope and context of Adam Smith's work. The Free Market is unrestricted, yes. But the Free Market relies on the people involved in that market to behave in an ethical manner. Seeking self-interest is fine, just long as you aren't actively trying to ruin other people by unethical means.

I might have wasted a lot of space typing my answer to Seriati just now, because I've thought of a way to phrase this much better, perhaps inspired by your use of "ethical" here. I think in order for your statement to be complete what you would say is that people need to pursue enlightened self-interest, as the expression goes. Which is to say, do the best move for you, keeping in mind the big picture. And that's my point: it is *completely* impossible for each individual to both see and also to cleanly evaluate the big picture, to say nothing of contriving a way to directly and knowingly affect that through every day shopping activities. Let's face it: no one decides crap, for the most part, they just buy the think they like or want as long as the price is ok, and they take a job with the best pay they can, all things being equal. There is no enlightened self-interest here, and rarely any chance even for "ethical" unless you're talking about free-range meat or something.

Now if you're a business owner it's a bit different, but right away you're no longer talking there about all the people at the bottom making the decision, you're talking about a much smaller circle; and the larger the company the more their vote counts. And do you think *those* CEO's are making decisions using enlightened self-interest, or mostly just self-interest? If we didn't literally stop them with brute force they would dump toxic waste in every river and lake, and you know it. There is no enlightenment happening there, only the government requiring them to stop the things they would otherwise do. If experience teaches us anything, it's that there is no self-curbing that almost ever happens; history proves that endlessly. So no, the "ethical" thing you mention cannot be taken for granted, because it virtually does not exist in practice. And on a consumer-level it it virtually cannot exist. Any theory that takes these so-called ethics for granted isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

TheDeamon

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #89 on: February 10, 2020, 03:23:35 PM »
Given where this topic has drifted to, I guess this assertion I just encountered on facebook earns a hilarious mention:

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Global capitalism has created conditions of mass poverty

Which gets into the matter of "Define poverty" and then "Explain how poverty wouldn't exist if profit motives never existed" or even better: "Provide an example of a time-period in human history where poverty didn't exist, and explain how capitalism caused it."

Fenring

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #90 on: February 10, 2020, 03:32:04 PM »
I tend to agree that blanket statements such as that one are not helpful. They seem aimed to stir up ire, rather than to inform.

Seriati

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #91 on: February 10, 2020, 05:36:52 PM »
Fen, it feels like you responded before you really read what I said.

No, my objection remains the same even with "econonies." Yes, the government monitors the economy even in a free market system, keeps the peace and upholds the law (ideally), but it is not in a position to run that economy, as in, make decisions about how it should go or whether the resources are going to the right place. You depart from a free market right away if the government begins making result-based decisions, whether in the form of "too much monies are concentrated there, they should be moved here" or in another vein "We need to make sure X amount of focus is put here in our economy." All of that requires either redistribution (through taxation or otherwise) or else systemic funneling such as by promoting certain areas through government assistance. It's not "free" in the sense you mean it if the government is making value judgements about how the particulars are going.

This is like a sharp jumping moment   Where exactly do you think I inserted the government "running" the economy in a free market?

Saying the free market runs the economy is not saying that the government of a country with a free market is running the economy.  Nor is setting rules and enforcing them remotely the same thing as influencing the direction of the economy in the way that a central government control function operations.

Everything you seem to be describing is a function of a planned economy.  A market economy doesn't move assets to their most efficient use because some government decided what was efficient and moved them there, it does so because the people in the economy are free to trade for the best deal they can get, which innately moves the assets they have to the uses where the counter party best compensates them.

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Chaotically =/= irrationally. In fact it can never mean that in the real world. *** Free markets are practically by definition a chaotic system, perhaps doubly so; they operate on fluid principles in some respects, flowing, ebbing, and trickling in ways that are hard to detect and quantify, and all of these fluctuations are themselves based almost exclusively on human psychology, which is a far more chaotic and untraceable system than liquid H2O molecules. Chaotic in this sense was a statement about its structure, not a value judgement.

I understand what is meant by a chaotic system.  I also understand what it means for something to move chaotically.  Neither situation applies to a free market.  Everyone in the market is moving based on largely predictable goals and generally the primary chaos elements are from lack of good information or slight irrationality on the part of one or more players.  There is no "chaos" or unpredictibility involved in figuring out who needs a job, or who's hiring, or how much they have to pay to hire people.  The medical needs of a population are largely predictable.  How much food is going to be grown and how it's going to be distributed isn't chaotic, it's predictable.  Walmart's shelves aren't randomly stocked and filled, but rather are deliberately stocked with models of great sophistication.  Next years profits are almost always tied to trends present this year.

I assume you're over relying on the description of financial markets (like a stock market) and forgetting everything else that makes up a free market, every personal decision and transaction.  But even in the financial markets there's not much chaos.  Bad news drops prices - predictably, and good news raises them.

What you see as "chaos" is almost always just imperfect information transmission.

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Everything is "run" its just run from the bottom up, with every transaction at the bottom being between interested parties protecting their own interest.

That's like saying you're running your business if the CEO quits and all employees get to determine for themselves what projects they think will personally earn them the best income.

It's really not.  Now if you posit there's no company, then it's exactly the same.  The self employed do in fact do exactly that.  But your "model" implies that you keep getting paid by a company in exchange for doing nothing the company wants.  That's not a free market, that's a bizarre version of a planned economy.

Now that said, for extremely creative endeavors that style may actually work.  Give your creative geniuses the free reign to produce what they want and monetize it on the back end.  But even there there's a time limit on how long you wait.

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They might very well find clever ways to earn a living within that company - but that leaves out several parts of corporate operation that we normally take for granted (bottom line, pay equity, sustainability, etc). Even if it worked, it surely could not be called "running a company." That sort of collective activity might better be called by some other term, not sure what it should be.

Again, that's actually not collective activity or even transactional activity.  That's welfare.  Getting paid for doing whatever you want.

For this to be an example of a free market, there has to be a rational deal between the company and these employees that benefits each.  Basically you "left out" that the company has to get something out of the trade worth more than what it pays (ie, the literal free market exchange).

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Kind of like how every single student at a college is running their own schedule.  Sure there's a central system to determine who gets in demand classes, but each student is making their own determinations of which and what classes fit their needs based on their own goals (and requirements to graduate).  It's not true to say "no one at all decides" when it's literally everyone involved deciding.

It's tough to address these analogies, and even my above attempt is imperfect because I'm trying to keep the parallel we're discussing, but it doesn't work so well. But to go with the student analogy, sure they can pick whatever courses they want, and it's collective in that sense.

It's not "collective" its aggregate.  There is no group decision.  But the aggregation of the individual decisions results in group patterns.  If lots of students want to take philosophy maybe they add a section, if no one wants basket weaving maybe they drop it.  This is exactly the opposite of the planned economy where the central group decides w need 3 basket weavings and 2 philosphies, even if 10 times more students make the "wrong" choice and want to take philosophy.

And why do they do that?  Maybe the central planner was a basket weaver, maybe they really need more baskets and who cars if the students get to study what they want?  Maybe they took a bribe from the philosophers guild to limit new competition.

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But to make it more apples to apples we must also assert that the students are also the ones creating the syllabus prior to picking their courses, and some of them are even opting into teaching the courses, so that the entire educational model at this hypothetical school is bottom-up: they decide what they want to learn, how to learn it, and they then attend.

No, you don't need any of that to make an apples to apples comparison.  It was already apples to apples.

But, let's assume you do add that.  If what the students are really interested in is a cooperative education where each teaches the other, that's a model that could work for some things.  Effectively peer tutoring.  In a free market it will arise, it may supplant traditional schools if they are no longer in demand, it may not.  It won't come about in a central planning economy unless someone at the top decides to impose it.  But if it does it won't be because it's supplanted the old order because the students found it more useful, just because the central planners decided to change (and that can be arbitrary or non-arbitrary)

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There can be no "master" in this situation, because in our analogy that would be government, telling people what they should be learning. But the "free market" as we mean it here means the government (i.e. school admin) stays out of it and lets people pursue their business how they want. It observes, maybe gives advice, but does not mandate or issue instructions. And then this hypothetical school admin is supposed to claim that the students are getting a first-rate education, because that's the draw, right? Except what if they aren't? What if their activities, furious and involved as they may be, are in fact not getting them a good education?

Well you've walked through a large amount of space to get there, but fundamentally you seem to think a "school" has some kind of credentialing role if the students are running a peer to peer network?  The point of the example was to show you a process that was understandable, not to defend everything about a university as if it is a free market paradigm (big secret it's not).

In this case, much like the reputation of an online university, the worth of your credentials is tied to the results of others coming from that environment.  I mean how does one evaluate whether someone is an elite hacker?  Do you look at their graduate school?  Do you look at their success?  If you're looking to hire a reformed hacker as a security expert, might you consider their prominence in hacker circles or boards as a form of credential?

In your example the "university" could say what ever it wants, but the results are what it's word will be judged on.

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And then we need to ask - 'good' based on what standard? Aha. That is where the analogy runs into trouble, because while there is no hard metric in schools that matters (grades are arbitrarily defined) I don't think you'll find anyone that would agree that any old set of learning is just as good as another qualitatively.

Except, you only ran into trouble because you made the trouble for yourself.  Because you ran a simple analogy demonstrating how individual choices can still drive aggregate results, into a morass of questioning everything that could conceivably change without really considering what any of those changes really meant.  The standard in a free market is always going to be a test of value, is what you learned valuable to me, and is what I'm willing to trade for your services valuable to you.

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Whereas in business we have the opposite result, which is that it is very easy to quantitatively measure money in and money out as a metric, but where there is rarely talk of that qualitative metric.

We have the same result.  Whether your services are based on your education or something else, it's still a measure of the value you can provide to me, and what value I'm willing to pay you for it.

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Lots of money moving = good result? That does not in fact follow. It might be a necessary component of a good economy, but it is not sufficient.

Again, this misses what's going on.  The amount or rate of money movements tells you nothing about why the money is moving.  A bad centrally planned economy may constantly move money to make hiding bribes easier.  A market economy could smoothly run on barter to a great extent.  What makes it a market economy, is the individual decision that making a trade is better for you than not making a trade.

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But you cannot have a qualitiative metric for success in an economy with a "dean of students" and a "chair of the department" whose jobs it is to determine whether what the students are up to is in fact helping them. This is putting aside that other issue of whether schools in face care about that all the time...

And that's why you fail.  If your dean gives you A's because they determine that what you learn is helping you, does that mean your basket weaving degree entitles you to success in a world that doesn't need baskets?

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Yes sir, you've got it exactly. In fact I will go further - every single action you ever take in your entire life should be evaluated by reference to a collective goal.

No.  You're not entitled to demand I subvert my goals to yours or anyone else's or the "collectives'."  We're all entitled to the pursuit of happiness.  That means if I want to be a crappy architect instead of the best brain surgeon, I get o make that choice.   I'm not your slave.

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And we can go even further than that: people who do not believe they need to take into account collective goals when making individual decisions are usually classed under terms like "antisocial", and when this choice is based on a lack of caring about the collective the term can become "sociopathic." That is, on an individual psychological level. On a group level it's tougher to come up with cogent names for these things. Also bear in mind I don't mean to personally attack you or anyone specific, but rather I am suggesting that psychological terms we take for granted in all areas of life other than business seem to somehow get forgotten about when talking about money. Funny, that.

First, this is a gross oversimplification and borderline offensive fantasy.  Lot's of people act in what they believe is society's interest, where other's completely disagree.  The owner of the lumber mill is bringing jobs to a community and lumber to people who need it, but to the eco-activist they're destroying the environment  They can both be right.  There are lots of social goods and bads that a single act can serve.  That doesn't make the actors anti-social.

Free market's have laws to try and correct to these social problems.  Transparency laws exist to make sharing certain information about a deal mandatory.  Other laws exist to tie externalities to decision making, so that the person that is polluting bears the costs of pollution in making their decision.

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Every single deal is entered into because the two sides think they are getting something more valuable than what they are trading (assuming basic efficiency requirements exist - like enforceability of contracts).

They may think it all they want, but that doesn't make it true. I can go rip off a little kid who "agrees" to trade baseball cards with me (we had a thread about that recently) and is very happy about the trade, except that I know I'm winning out big-time. Most people here were quite clear that this is unethical. But what if, somehow or other, the two of us actually both do win out, but by the result of our trade someone else ends up a big loser? Free market economics suggests that this is literally impossible, whereas I am quite sure that it is in fact inevitable.

I agree, you can't in fact ensure that every trade is good.  You can create the rules so that fairness is possible, but you can't eliminate stupidity or every information imbalance.  We can and do punish abuses.  But it's an odd criticism for an advocate of central planning to make.  The reality of central planning is that it causes many more bad deals because the persons making the decisions aren't the ones that have to live with the consequences.

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And no, only certain classes of decisions are ever made on the bottom level - buying retail goods or buying/selling services. It is literally not possible when deciding between Apple and Samsung for your phone to make systemic decisions regarding which sectors of the economy are lacking resources, which areas of the country are having problems, whether there are enough jobs of certain kinds at the right time of year, and whether certain areas of the economy are national necessities and must be supported or bolstered at all costs (this can range from anything like foodstuffs to "too big to fail").

You seem to want to hang a lot on your decision about a smart phone. 

I think your confusing a whole host of issues.  When you choose to buy a phone, you're making a decision about which phones is the better value, and whether you get enough value from the device to make it worthwhile.  Given that we all literally use the devices in all phases of business and entertainment it seems pretty clear you do get that value.

Your choice of phone does go to allocation of resources.  Specifically, it allocates money to that manufacturer, and they use that money to pay the people that developed the tech and to fund new tech so you'll buy their phones in the future, they build factories and they acquire resources.  The places their workers live get a boost in income, houses get built, taxes paid, schools and hospitals expand and their owners get fat checks that they then look to plow into other investments (and this ALWAYS happens, even if all they do is stick in a bank or the markets that moves it into other investments).

Does it decide to send money to poor people in the middle of no where? Sometimes.  Those kinds of places generally make good targets for low cos factories.  But it's not the job of your purchase of an iphone, to decide that means that farmers in Iowa need help.

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There is no sense at all in which these are "decisions that get made" by everyday transactions. All you're voting for when you go to the store is which shampoo company will do better, and in the job market which company will get your work. Those are very minor instances of decision-making, even if you add all those up into a collective.

The global haircare market (had to look this up) was $85.5 billion dollars in 2017.  So yes it really does add up in the collective.

When you consider that you buy 1000's of products a year, and that there are 6 billion people on the Earth that need to eat every day, have shelter and have other things, those "small" decisions really do add up to be giant and material trends.  And even a slight preference change can make a big swing.  For example, the organic shampoo market went over a $1 billion in 2018, and that's a direct reaction to those little choices.

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They are very important, but only one particular class of decisions; certainly not the sort of decisions that constitute "running" anything in any intelligible sense. I am pretty sure our mathematics is nowhere near sophisticated to even offer up any kind of proof that it is theoretically possibly for collective buying/selling to cover the bases of "running" like a CEO would do. Boy would you need a lot of information to calculate whether that's even possible, so it strikes me as really wild that you (I suppose) would argue not only that it's possible but that is certainly the best way to do things. I guess it's possible, although I *really* don't think so.

Again you attribute the faults of central planning to the free market.  You're correct that for the government or a group of decision makers to do this involves a near impossible data crunch.

Lucky for us a free market doesn't.  It doesn't take complex mathematics and a full understanding of global trends to move into a town and see a need for a barber shop, or a grocery store or dry cleaner.  It doesn't take genius level IQ to see that Lawyers make more than History Professors and make a choice in which graduate school to goto.  Realizing that a store is better run than the local competitors and a great model for franchising does take some knowledge and some math, but hardly the world beater level you're arguing for.

It doesn't take any kind of smarts to realize that when your local plant shuts down and there are job postings in the paper for a town 30 miles away that maybe that's where you should look for a new job.

And the aggregate impact of these decisions ends up being a market economy generating wealth at pretty good clip.

Crunch

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #92 on: February 13, 2020, 07:25:29 PM »
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Now. I know the right leaners will reject the concepts but even they acknowledge that Sanders says what he means and means what he says. And that is what is going to win.

Sander is, in fact, a socialist. He says it and he means it. That part is undeniably true.

However, even the DNC knows there’s no way a socialist takes the election. If they frame this election as a choice between socialism and capitalism, Trump may win in the biggest landslide in election history. It’ll be a choice between the current economy or eating your pets to survive.

Lol. Let's make this one of those Gregdavidson  "State of California," things and let's see what happens. The GOP is absolutely terrified of Sanders because he is a populist *just like Trump* and what Sanders preaches talks to more people then the type of farmers getting foreclosed under Trump''s world who fell for his BS.

I apologize. Look. I will buy you a beer via PayPal even if what I expect to happen doesn't happen. Just to help calm you down my friend.

Let’s see what Democrats think:

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Asked Rep. Dean Phillips, a freshman from a swing MN district and Klobuchar backer, if he thinks Bernie Sanders atop the ticket could have a disastrous impact on down-ballot races. “To be forthright, yes, I do. I think it would have some significant down-ballot effects.”

How much effect?

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Cunningham is one of 31 House Democrats who hold seats in districts that Trump carried in the 2016 election, seats that Republicans are planning to spend heavily on as they try to win back the majority they lost in the last midterm election. (Republicans need to net 18 seats to regain the majority.)

That these majority-maker Democrats are already willing to speak publicly about their belief that Sanders could cost the party the House speaks to the level of concern his ongoing rise is creating among those who would have to share the ballot with the senator from Vermont.

Enough to cost democrats the house..

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In private conversations, other Democrats are more succinct. One House Democrat said colleagues from swing districts are scared by the prospects of a Sanders nomination, while another said moderates are increasingly concerned that a Sanders candidacy would devastate their prospects for winning the White House and retaining the House. The lawmakers insisted on anonymity to describe private conversations.

Look, it’s not just my opinion here. It’s the opinion of a large number of democrats currently in office. The current expectation with a Sanders ticket is disaster.

Meanwhile:
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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has opened up a double-digit lead over his next closest rivals in a new national survey.

On election betting odds, As his odds of winning the nomination go up his odds of winning the election go down.


TheDeamon

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Re: DNC Rule Changes
« Reply #93 on: February 15, 2020, 07:31:14 PM »
Well hey, just had a(n alleged) text message from a campaign worker for Michael Bloomberg just a few minutes ago. Won't do him any good, I refuse to register as a member of any political party. Which sadly for me, means I've been unable to vote in a primary election since 2008.