Free Speech - Is There a Limit?

In a nutshell; you took my words and phrased them better (thanks). I agree with the idea of inherent value, my life is worth the same as yours which is the same as Shaggy's which is the same as Waar's. While our abilities at birth may be different. We'll all still have the ability to succeed/fail by using our abilities. It's my firm belief that if somebody works hard and smart enough they can improve their standing in life despite massive odds against them. Many ex cons and drug addicts make something out of themselves even though they squandered their chances earlier in life. As long as we instill the same values into our children and work so we can give them the things we didn't have they can improve their standing.





I was just pointing out that the tax system is hostile towards economic growth and that increasing taxes increases this hostility. Increasing taxes you would obviously close those loopholes which further makes the tax code even more hostile.

Okay, I've got to say that the "evidence" you've brought up as to how America is highly taxed, happens to be very misleading (and I can't see how you couldn't know that). These figures do not take into account indirect taxes, I ask you; How much do you pay for a gallon of petrol? How much does your government invest in it's war machine?

I disagree when you say that all humans are lazy, I accept that they are selfish, and laziness can be a factor of that selfishness, but it is not a symptom that is apparent in everyone. I've got to say I laughed when I read your view on Stalinist Russia, it's every bit as bad as you're proposing. Are you not advocating work or die? That is what you believe; the government shouldn't be responsible for the basic necessities of life for it's people; they should be left to die.

The people who will live on are the worst people; those who are willing to sacrifice the well being of their fellow humans for their own benefit. This is what you want humanity to become, social Darwinism has gone far enough, it is not the only way to make progress. People should be able to: earn a fair amount based on the quality and quantity of work they put in.

You have given some good reasons as to why the communist system does not work, and I accept that - I agree with you there. But; it does not have to be set out that way. Naturally people have to be controlled, because if they were like you, they would go around killing people for their "freedoms" they care so dearly about.

How about this: A government controlled system, with no private property. But with a twist, people's basic needs are catered for, but they can attain a level of privilege by showing they are of merit to society, by the quality of their work, and the way they go about it. The rewards would be temporary, and would only continue while they were operating to this level. People will want the privileges, because basic sustenance and health care do not always make for a fulfilling life. People wouldn't have to work, but it would be a hell of a lot better for them if they did.

These levels of privilege would not be unreachable by the weaker members of society, and those who are more capable, will have to do more to achieve them. So as to fulfill the potential of each person. People will achieve because they will be happier while achieving, humanity likes it's happiness. When you truly believe in freedom, it has to be for everyone, including those people who never had the chances you did. Your system will just leave them to die. My system will give each human a chance to realize at least some of their potential.

I agree, giving a man a fishing rod instead of a fish is the better choice, but you're not giving them either. The problem with your devil take the hind most is that there will be millions of people who have no prospects. Eventually if you continue with your policies they will become disillusioned with the whole of society and revolution will result. With the rich people being hung from the lampposts ;) You will be forced to live in gated communities protected by military forces, the oppressor hiding away from the oppressed.

Last time I check $1.86 before we threw a rod in the economic engine we were paying $4.00 and we were on the low side of the scale. Average tax on a gallon of Gasoline is roughly 13-20 cents.



Disagree with me as much as you wish. Doesn't change the fact that if people are given a choice between getting something by working hard vs getting the same thing by sitting on their ass watching t.v. They'll choose to sit on their ass and watch t.v. Sorry but, social science has you pegged there.

Again human nature. We are all competing for the same space and resources. Every species does it, humans are no different.

Yes, because I'm a murderer. I obviously kill anybody who says I can't say "Fuck" in public. You weren't paying attention to what I had typed.

Scenario: The "president" suspends the constitution, declares martial law, orders troops to patrol to "maintain law & order". Aion Flux, 1984, V for Vendetta style. The very definition of an Orwellian society. That is what I was speaking about. Fuck, pay attention.



Simply, Capitalism with a safety net. Freedom IS for everybody, anybody can say what they want, protest what they want, vote how they want,etc,etc,etc. Freedom and money are clearly two separate entities. You want to vote for Nader? Go for it. You want to own a firearm? Go for it. You want to protest Scientology? Go for it. Want to live in a hippie commune in Southern California? Go for it. Want to kill yourself by smoking? Go for it. Want to own a nice house? Work hard, save and go for it. Want to volunteer at a homeless shelter? Go for it.

I like that system better a little better but, it's quite clear I want to keep politicians on a tight leash. A politician steps out of line and there would be an angry mob waiting to lynch him. I keep a pretty close tab on American politics and every administration and every state has some jack-off(s) who abused their power or was just can't be trusted. At the end of the Bush Administration I was three degrees away from leading an angry mob to the white house. Just like now, I'm three degrees away from leading an angry mob at the white house. I'm fed up with morbidly obese governments, rampant unchecked spending, abuse of power at all levels of government, blatant lying, cover ups, inability to be transparent, fraud, the list goes on. The American government has been acting like a spoiled teenager with a no limit credit card. It's time to ground the ungrateful little bastard. These politicians are supposed to represent us, not fuck us! I've been fucked by the government so many times, somebody owes me dinner.

Both of you might find the novel "Looking Backwards" by Edward Bellamy interesting. It's a utopian novel about what is essentially a socialist society, but Bellamy seems to see the power of supply and demand economics and makes some concessions.

For example, while everyone who works receives the same amount of material wealth, wages are still controlled by the market. Essentially, jobs that pay more simply require one to work less hours. Thus, a highly demanded job has long hours while a low demand job has fewer hours. Certainly, we couldn't just institute this in society immediately and see it accepted, and it probably wouldn't work at all, but Bellamy clearly takes economics and capitalistic principles into account in his work, which makes it very different from a lot of the more raw idealistic utopian scenarios.



This is a big problem in democracies. The governments are inefficient because everyone gets a say, and accountability comes from voters, many of whom do not have the knowledge or simply don't have the motivation to make an informed decision. Politicians get away with lying, breaking promises, making clearly unrealistic claims, etc because the voters let them. However, what can we do about it that doesn't involve moving taking power away from voters? It's possible to use a parliamentary system where parties have more power and individual politicians less, that still doesn't solve a lot of the problems. Voting is a fundamental right that people can't lose by being ignorant, stupid, or not paying attention. As long as voters lack the acumen and motivation to hold politicians accountable, politicians will continue to say anything to get elected and behave unaccountably. It's very often as you say with economics: some people might be unusually noble and responsible, but ultimately, the incentive to do what works, regardless of what that might be, is very strong.

Okay, lets put the politicians on a tight leash, make all government activity transparent, then it will be easy for everyone to see whether they are acting in their own interest or not. But weren't you in favor of the government keeping secrets that might cause riots? Surely if people find out that their tax dollars are funding beach houses they aren't going to be too happy ;)

If you foster a dog-eat-dog mentality amongst your people; things are going to end badly for a lot of them. People should work in co-operation with one another in order to achieve a common goal. People are animals by definition, but we are superior - our intelligence differentiates us from these instinct driven creatures. We have the capacity for rational thought and I, for one; think we should make best use of it.

The way to dominate people, to rule them, is to keep them ignorant - works very well indeed. Budget cuts to education, and the poor can't see past their nose. The middle class pay all the taxes and do all the work. While the rich sit on their piles of cash. You cannot have a society which is ruled by it's richest people, as those people will attempt to maintain the status quo, to stay rich, to stay in power. It is not in their best interests to educate the poor. Or even the ignorant middle classes.

Governments have been spitting out propaganda, creating the idea that the poor can actually be better off. This is a lie, with cuts to education - the poor will continue to live in a vicious cycle. Spending the wealth they have on lottery tickets, cause let's face it - winning the lottery is a simple solution! They're not ignorant just because they ignore the fact that the odds are millions to one against them.

Power should be taken away from the rich, there should be no "upper class", measures should be taken to limit individual power, because that way there is more of a chance for decisions that serve justice, rather than just serve the wealthy.

Why aren't you rising up against your news channels? They siphon out the propaganda of whichever political party they owe their loyalty to. News should be fair and impartial, wouldn't you agree? Under no circumstances should someone be able to buy political office, nor should it be in their best interests to do so. It is up to those people who are intelligent and fair minded enough to see past their own political views, and want people to be aware of all the options available to them. To change things; are you one of those people?

no. there is no limit. but there are laws, as has been said, that limit the possible things you can say in public. Threats are also an obvious limit.

I don't recall supporting that. The only secrets should be things of national security. Presidents travel plans, names of active CIA agents,etc. Also larger governments are harder to keep transparent. The larger a government the more power it holds over it's citizens. The more power it holds over it's citizens the more that power can be abused. Also there is an obvious problem with letting the people who rule you, teach you. If you wish to change the conversation to me proving that the American system of government education and the agenda of the proponents of that system is NOT in the best interest of a intelligent society then I'll show you some proof.

The rich don't rule America. The days of the robber barons are gone, when will people understand this? Not every person who has money is some evil stinking, puppy kicking, baby eating bastard. All this really is just a thought forced into peoples heads. Instead of "Hey, the guy has a nice house and a nice car, I'll work hard to achieve the same success using my skills" we've become "That guy has a nice house and a nice car. He doesn't deserve that. I deserve it more than he does". We should work in competition with one another in order to improve ourselves and our society. Not use force to take from one group to give to another group.

Anybody who plays the lottery instead of saving and investing that money properly deserves to remain dirt poor. Every person who wins the lottery actually ends up worse than they were before they won. They suddenly have all this money and don't know what to do with it then suddenly go out and buy cars, houses, give money away like blow jobs in a crack house. They over spend their money and end up in debt. I agree that cutting education only perpetuates a cycle which is why I advocate private schools with subsidies to schools that take in poor family students or even scholarships for student who maintain high grades. Competition between schools drives up wages. More people become teachers for good wages (as the government currently, suppresses wages). On top of that the competition drives up the education value as parents will send their children to schools that are better than the rest. Different "class styles" would develop instead of this warehousing that they use now.

The rich aren't "powerful", they don't "rule" us in any way. If the rich were powerful then Bill Gates, Steve Jobs,and Mike Duke could make the government bend to their will and last time I check. Gates got his ass handed to him by the Clinton administration by having his company broken up and Duke's company gets about 1,000 lawsuits a day.


State control over "information" is even worse than biased information. You criticize governments spewing propaganda, yet socialist (and to some extent communists) advocate state control over all forms of media from internet companies, news, radio, t.v,etc. Something that is worse than the government educating people is the government telling people what is going on. This leads to Doublethink and Newspeak. Government is the problem, not the answer but, it is a necessary evil in order to keep society together. To me a massive government to "help" the people is as big of an oxymoron as shackling a man and calling him free.

If you were here during the presidential race you would have heard me accuse the news companies being biased towards Obama for treating him like a rock star instead of some inexperienced douche that he was. I get my news from everywhere, left and right wing alike. I listen to Rush, Hannity, Boortz, Beck, Bender (I know it seems a little right wing but, it's the only names I can remember at the moment). Fox news, Air America, CNN, Atlanta Journal, USA Today,etc. Amongst all of these I can get a central idea and from there I use my own critical thinking and research to come to my own conclusion. I take nothing at face value and I take time to learn about anything. I've read extensively on socialism, communism (true and faux), Libertarianism (socialist, conservative), Liberalism (Old and new) and a few other forms of government.

Accept nothing as the truth, unless you take the time to know it's the truth.

Okay I'll start off by saying that most rich people are bad people. Virtually everyone is a bad person. If they can pander to their own needs while neglecting those who starve to death in third world countries, how can that be construed as good? There is a gigantic divide between rich and poor which I'm sure you can't be ignorant of. A rich man, who can hire a better lawyer, for more money. Is less likely to be convicted of the same crime than a poor person. You cannot set the rules of society to be: whoever makes the most money is better off. It should be; whoever does the most for the good of the people.

It's pretty stupid to just say, "well if they worked a bit harder they could be the exploiters rather than the exploited!" It should not be that way, if the system is unjust then it should be changed. The system is not fair, it is unjust, therefore it should be changed. At least to make it more fair, rather than just saying; "hmmm well this is the way things are people should just make the best of it" leading people to continue to screw one another over for their own benefit.

Yeah you can say that Walmart gets about 1000 lawsuits per day, but it keeps on ticking along. As I have said before, as long as it is profitable for corporations to break the law then they will continue to do so. The rich are more powerful than the poor, are you honestly telling me you cannot see this? On a very basic level, a rich person has more options available to him than a poor person, more choice - more power.

Bear in mind that I would not advocate the communist systems of the past, they represented injustice in many ways and therefore were wrong. But people were fed and clothed, sure they were also taken away in the night to prison camps for no randomly, but is that any worse than the lottery of life capitalism offers?. But as I have said before; can you name a communist leader who was not just using the ideology as a vehicle for his own selfish desires?

People don't deserve to remain poor, they don't deserve to suffer just because they are ignorant. The system has made them this way, and they need to be re-educated. It is our responsibility as fellow human beings to make sure that they get a proper education. btw - when you say you would advocate government subsidies for education for poor people, have you gone back on your "I only want the government in charge of the military and law enforcement" line?

You seem terrified of a government with huge power, but if the people in the government are monitored properly, there should be less of a problem. If everyone has a limit on how much they can own, and how much power they can hold. Then why would the government misuse the money? If their performance levels are closely monitored and wise decisions rewarded, while foolish decisions punished. They will do their best to make the right choices.

Government is a necessary evil, but only in that in a Utopian society government would be unnecessary because we would just all get along ;)
That is never going to happen, and as long as capitalism is the prevalent ideology in the world. People will continue to die unjustly, the more people have the power to hurt each other for their benefit, the more they will do it, because they are flawed. There has to be a central incorruptible body, to make decisions for the benefit of all the people. An organization that has more power than anyone, in order to turn humanity in the right direction.

You are the exception rather than the rule in this respect, most people are ignorant. They will believe the propaganda, they won't watch different news channels to see different sides of the story. This is why the news should be fair and balanced. The current situation may be alright for you, but it is certainly not right for the majority.

The people who own the antique shop, tattoo shop, my local vehicle repair shop, any of the people who own any of the local coffee joints, or the little dinner in town sure are evil.

you got me there. I dislike the court system how it is now. When people can buy their way out of punishment, there isn't justice in the justice system. I believe the laws should be rewritten in simple English instead of "legalese". So anybody with a high school education can pick up a law book and say "Oh, okay" instead of requiring almost tens years of education in order to understand the cryptic language they write laws in. Also work on something the evens out the playing field like each man must represent themselves without lawyers in front of a jury of their peers.

I didn't say to become the exploiters. If I open a pub in town, how am I exploiting people? I'm paying people for working for me. I don't like it when people exploit others either but, using theft to "fix" the problem isn't the way to go either. We have laws and law makers, use them.

I meant power as in the ability to command people against their will like the government can. If a rich man murders a poor man, he'll go to trial and hopefully go to prison. If the government murders a man nobody can do anything. Again, laws and law makers, use them.

Trick question. True communism has no leader, no government (except for direct democracy).

Military, Law enforcement and Courts. The federal government should never take one step outside this box. Period.

You are correct, I am terrified of a government with too much power. Governments don't want to be transparent, they don't want to relinquish power, they don't want intelligent, critical thinking citizens. They want more power, more control, more influence. They don't want citizens, they want pawns.

This would be funny, if you seriously didn't believe it. Anything with humans involved will be corruptible. Any human with too much power will abuse that power. History has proven this to be a fact. You say how it's unjust for people to exploit others and yet, here you go saying you want to give a group of people complete control over everything.



It's still better than having the people who rule me tell me what the "news" is.

You'd be ignorant if you think that giving the government more control, and influence in your day to day life will turn out for the benefit of all instead of the politicians in the government. Politicians don't want the citizens to be intelligent, critical thinkers who ask questions. They don't want unbiased information to flow freely. They want to line their own pockets and the pockets of their friends. Politicians also don't want to give up power and return it to the average citizen. They want people dependent on the government to provide for them. They want lemmings, not people.

I could go on an anti-bush tirade but, I don't feel like it right now since we've high jacked this thread a long time ago.

On topic: Freedom of speech should have as few limitations as possible due to the issue of "Who gets to decide who can say what". Last thing we need is a member of the decency police trying to say what can and can't be said. "Offensive" and "obscene" are clearly subjective terms. Without a clear definition of what is obscene or offensive would result in people like George Carlin, Lewis black being silenced. Even opposing opinions could be determined offensive and have them silenced. Attempting to restrain the freedom of speech is an attempt to restrain the flow of information.

i dont really like the idea of "everyone is of equal value"its just not true.If a person is a lazy ass mofo and only collects welfare to pay for them they are not of "value"they are just a hurt on the economy/populace.Now a person who works hard and creats something lets say a ...scientist creates a new type of fuel so that cars dont kill the atmosphere then that person has a higher "value" as they have acually helped the world in a great way.Another example would be a doctor who finds the cure to cancer then that doctor has "value" as he has saved billion of lives now with this cure.This is why i simply canot see that everyone is of equal "value" as they are simply not some people sit on there asses and hurt the place they live in or some people go out and do great things to help the place they live in or the whole world.

The idea that could be hoped for would be a properly regulated government, as in a government that is under surveillance by another group and so on. If they're all watching one another, then unless everyone goes rogue at the same time, the people who are selfish enough to do it will be caught out, and thrown out of power. With large government comes large division of power; between a lot of people. Right now politicians do not want information to flow freely, but if the right people are in the right positions. Then it is in their best interests to be transparent and show the truth.

Education is essential and information should be free and readily available to everyone. The current societies we live in are founded on the fact that most people are ignorant. If that changed then it would go a long way toward a better future. How each person interprets information is subjective, and each "fact" should be scrutinized. Ignorance is stable ground upon which to rule, that is why those in power propagate it, raising awareness would not make for the easiest of times - but it is of great importance if humanity is to move forward.

Hope and government are never in the same thought for me. Unless, I'm hoping my government sits and does nothing. I'm actually happy when I hear that the senate or house is doing nothing such as when they go on break. Every time they intervene on anything, anywhere they are usually inept, waste money and do an all around bang up job at causing the American people to lose faith in their government. There is a reason why the Senate had an approval rating that is/was lower than Bushes when he was leaving office.



No argument here; for once we're in complete agreement. Information should be as abundant as air and as flowing as all the greatest rivers combined.

This is kind of a stupid and misleading statistic. While congress always has low approval ratings, a lot of people actually like their individual congressmen, who have good approval ratings(of course, some have bad, but if you averaged them all together, the result would be much higher than the congressional approval rating). Personally, I think this has a lot to do with the fact that congress is a group. It's easier psychologically to blame problems on a dehumanized collective of people that spends a lot of time debating, rather than finding out who in congress is responsible for what.

I think the government did do something positive when they responded to the financial crises. While bailouts are never desirable, sans government interaction, it seems very possible that large sectors of the financial markets would have simply collapsed altogether as a result of panic. Basically, the government was able to use resources to buy time for the market to rationally re-evaluate itself, and while the market suffered, it didn't totally collapse.

The banks weren't spending the money like they were supposed to. They we holding concerts and parties and other events instead of using the money like they were told. To me, that shows that the "crisis" was people screaming the sky is falling when it was just a light shower and that government intervention was never needed to begin with. Let the market find it's bottom, the longer you put it off the worse the end result will be since artificially keeping the market going is impossible for prolonged periods of time. The economy works in four cycles just like the seasons.



I believe the diagnostic term is "Mass Hysteria". Even I fell for it until I started looking at the numbers and hearing the hysteria perpetuated by people like Pelosi stating that we'll lose 200 million more jobs than people in the country every month unless the government throws around mind boggling amounts of money. Pelosi should be lynched for such blatant lying.

To me, all of this was a veiled attempt to expand the government and it's control over the average citizen. Anybody who paid attention to the market the other day would know that we are near reaching the bottom and next to nothing was done by the government. I would find this joke of an administration funny if it wasn't for the fact that for the rest of my life it'll be harder to open a business since apparently it's "evil" to be successful and not dependent on either someone to employ you or Uncle Sam.

The banks didn't fail because they held too many parties. They failed because they gave out too many loans to people who couldn't pay them back based on the assumption that housing prices would keep going up.

The economy does seem cyclic, and the point of the government intervention is not to change that but to make the hills and valleys less steep. During booms, the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates to fight inflation and potentially runaway speculation(many people complain that Greenspan and the Fed failed the US by not doing this well enough with respect to the housing bubble). When the economy is contracting, as it has been, government intervention in crashes basically provides some extra time for the market to realistically evaluate itself. Otherwise, you end up with a panic, where everyone is trying to get rid of their assets all at once, and things can get chaotic. In this case, what basically happened was that a number of banks thought they had more assets than they actually did, and then suddenly discovered they didn't. Once major banks start failing, investors begin to pull their money out of the banks to "put it under their mattresses" causing more and more banks to fail. The point of the government bailout is to provide some reassurance and give these people reason to think twice before acting impulsively.

History has shown that things that seem idiotic upon a little thought can and will happen during speculations/panics with regard to the economy(the infamous tulip bubble, for one). While it may seem like the Wall Street types cooked their own goose and should be left out in the cold to deal with it themselves, their fates affect the rest of us. Even conservative economists have to acknowledge this. In fact, this is the whole philosophy behind "Reaganomics" and tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations.

Essentially, we as a nation have decided that economic stability is important and something that the government should have a stake in. I think history has shown that this is generally a reasonable idea. Economic stability is an important contributor to political stability and military stability, which the government definitely has a stake in.

Really? Really?! I didn't realize that was the problem, Oh silly me. I was talking about after their "bailouts" they did nothing constructive with the money and yet, here we are with economists saying that the recession will be over by the end of the year. Bad management in business should mean the failure of that business. Now, we are stuck in a serious trap. Any big company can threaten that their demise would lead to large economic problems and the simple minded politicians will scramble to throw our money at the problem instead of actually fixing the problem.



Nationalizing companies isn't a method to make things "less steep" it's only a method of government control. Politicians want the state to nationalize oil companies to prevent gouging that wasn't occurring. Nationalize schools because in all honesty, private and home schooled children put their mass produced lemmings to shame which makes government schools look bad. Anything that can give the government one more ounce of power to say who can do what, when, where and how is all it wants. This was never about saving the economy, it's only about expanding control. They could have easily "backed" the loans the banks made between each other which was the original problem that started this whole "crisis". Instead of that, they just decided to take partial ownership of companies. The result of which was stocks in those companies falling to around $1 a share (actually, I just checked AIG stock...it's at .41 a share).



Economic stability is good but, state control only kills economic growth. The economy would definably be steady then, steadily declining. The gross incompetency of our elected officials and trusting them to run our economy will only result in the worst case scenario. These idiots already steal parts of our paychecks before we ever see the money, write tax laws that are damn near impossible to understand to squeeze every dollar out of our pocket. Then waste the money on useless pet projects and "cost of living" raises for these already ridiculously paid motherfuckers. They can't even get their "golden ideas" like Social security, medicare, medicaid managed properly. Top all that off with corrupt individuals being given positions of power, thousands of broken promises, blatant lies, the opaque nature of government, fear mongering, infringement of civil liberties. Yet, despite the constant failures at all levels of government. The average American idiot is in lock step with each other to give up more of our individual power, money and liberty to even greater idiots and expecting things to change.

We must stop this trend. If you want to live in a country where the government controls everything move to Europe or China.

Ideally, we don't want to bail anyone out. Bank failures aren't commonplace, but they happen, and sans a tough recession, those banks just fail. After all, the feds let IndyMac fail.

The financial sector companies got bailed out because they give out the loans that allow expansion and job creation.

The "Big Three" came very close to not getting bailed out. They weren't as essential, but apparently the government wanted to save the jobs. I personally was a bit torn on that one.

But on a larger scale, the point is that the whole system failed because the incentives were in the wrong places. Go back to what you say about capitalism in general: it works because it takes the natural desire for financial success and places incentives so as to produce a functioning market. Well, the financial system failed in this respect. There were financial incentives for people to do stupid things.

There were the subprime mortgages. Realtors didn't care because they got their commission regardless of whether the mortgage defaulted. Banks and the hedge funds they sold mortgages to didn't care because they could create "holder" companies and put these dangerous looking assets on those companies' balance sheets. Besides, as long as housing prices went up, there was more money to be made, and even when they stopped, it would be gradual, right? Unfortunately, this created a system where, when things started to go even somewhat badly, all of a sudden no one really was sure what their assets were worth, and panic ensued.

Additionally, you have credit-default swaps, which were intended to be like corporate insurance, being used for speculation. So now, things are even more unclear, and some financial entities have a financial incentive to see other entities fail. These contracts are also privately negotiated with no transparency, presenting obvious conflict of interest potential.

The long term point of the bailout is(or hopefully should be) to stabilize the sector somewhat to find time for the market to realistically evaluate itself and at the same time put into place regulations that make financial dealings more forward and transparent. Credit-default swaps need to be transparent. Companies need to accurately represent their assets. People should not be able to fabricate their income on loan applications. What pushed this from "tough recession where some companies fail" to "potential collapse of the financial sector" was that nobody had any idea exactly what was going on because companies were able to engage in risky high profit potential lending and speculating and obscure the records. Reforms need to make it so that if companies wish to engage in potentially reckless lending and speculating in the future, their balance sheets will reflect these assets with transparency so that the market can evaluate them accordingly.

The private sector's inherent system failed. Reforms are needed. The government is the only entity capable of enacting these reforms.



To much growth can actually be bad, which is why the FRB raises interest rates during booms. If the economy is growing incredibly fast it would mean that either an extremely large amount of material wealth is being created(someone invents new technology that drastically changes production, which is what happened during the industrial revolution, this method is not a bad thing) or things that already exist are becoming more valuable very quickly. If it's too much of the latter, then people who already have these things tend to hold on to them, because they are getting more valuable and they want to sell high. People who don't have them want them because the price is going up, and they can sell them later for profit. If this is localized to one thing you have a bubble. If it's widespread you have high inflation. If inflation is affect things like food that people can't not buy, then it hurts the poor and middle class, as their earnings become less valuable. And of course, when this widespread superbubble collapses, it is not a pretty sight. This is why inflation is monitored by the FRB, because it can feed on itself and create a volatile speculative market.

The idea of central banking and even of governments running corporate entities is not something new, nor is it something that goes against the constitution. The Feds run the Post Office, local governments run the Police, and no one complains. This is partly because these services are seen as necessary and no private company wants to run them. This is kind of what happened with the financial sector. It's important, and no one wanted to buy it, so the government stepped in. Honestly, though, they aren't trying to run the companies they invest in, but rather buy up the subprime mortgages right now to stop the uncertainty and chaos, and then sell them later once the market sorts out what the values of things should be. Of the $700 billion the government spent on bailing out the financial sector, they should get at least $500 billion back, and there is an outside chance they could make money.

The government's job is not and has never been to directly run the economy. They generally don't even try to. Their job is to provide a groundwork of rules and regulations that create an environment where incentives are in the right place for companies to act sanely and punishments exist for those who try to cheat via dishonesty.

Social Security needs to be phased out, I agree. Outright killing it would be fine with me, but the people who have already paid in would complain about not getting what is rightfully theirs.

I understand the some mean well when it comes to bailouts but, reckless business management should mean failure. I mean, any other company would be allowed to fail especially small companies like the ones working on renewable energy. Somebody proposed the idea to me about just changing the management as part of a bailout. This still doesn't solve the problem that uncompetitive companies still aren't competitive (such as the "Big Three") so they will continue to get bailed out because some bleeding heart politician will throw money at the problem. Saving the troubled unions means votes and politicians don't care about anything other than getting re-elected.

Ideally, that is how the government would work. Put incentives in the right places but, when it comes to the pattern of behavior with the government, it adds more to a quote by Ronald Regan



There is a history of failure by the government. So with such a record of failure by the government and the politicians who make up the Senate and House. Why are we trusting them to nationalize companies like A.I.G. (the U.S. government holds 80% voting power

They are essentially nationalized at this point saying otherwise is just semantics. We agree though that the government should nudge the market in the right direction but, recent history is showing they aren't doing that. It's been a slow crawl from "invisible guiding hand" to "majority control"

I don't trust the government because the facts point to the conclusion that I shouldn't.

So, actually in the case of AIG competent management wasn't what was needed to stabilize the market. It was too late for that. Basically, large amounts of liquid capital were needed, and that's what the government has.

I think you are seeing non-existent nefarious motives in the government being involved in the markets. It's not really a new thing. State governments invest frequently for the same reasons as private individuals: you make more money generally than if you just stash bills in your mattress. (A high publicity example was the Bob Taft scandal, although the scandal was not related to the general concept of government investing but rather corrupt officials embezzling money.)

What makes this different from Europe or Russia is that the government came in and made a market offer for AIG, rather than just seizing it by force(Russia) or starting a government entity and making laws saying that everyone has to use the government company(Europe). If either of these things start happening, I will be with you in opposing them and voting against any politicians who support them.

Another question is: what can the government even do with AIG? It's built to make money, and the government generally isn't interested in running enterprises solely for profit. If it is run into the ground via incompetence, well, it's a waste of money, but it's not really any worse than any of the many other methods congress finds to waste money.

The point of buying AIG and other bailout procedures was to give the market time to rationally evaluate itself. This recession was not caused by a mass destruction of resources, but rather, all the hedge funds thought they had more assets than they did. When confusion ensued, rather than let the panic take over and cause everyone to devalue financial assets further(and invest in gold or something, freezing up lending potential for expanding businesses seeking to create jobs and growth, that is, exactly what will help get us out of recession), the government came in and tried to make the crash landing as soft as possible.

Honestly, I just don't see how the structure of the government and the interests created will cause the government to want to do anything with AIG but sell it back later. While Hayek might agree with, it just seems to me like a slippery slope argument that doesn't have a lot going for it.