Bitcoin Forum

and that the bail out money goes to these private people, who then charge interest on it?

No.

Its not a Jewish conspiracy either just in case that's your follow up. 

Same answer for New World Order, Trilateral Commission, Communist Party, Bilderbergs and umpteen other people who do not own the Fed.

indeed, everything is taken care of.
Do not worry !

This short video will bring you peace of mind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhZFYGFbTPA

wow - d-e-f-e-n-s-i-v-e

You are right.  Sorry.

Well, it's owned and managed by both private banks and the government, which is in turn 'owned'(/corrupted) by private banks.

So, although indirectly, yes.

sources:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/FederalReserve_System.png
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/

edit:

Oh and to answer your follow-up question. The bail-out money went to private banks. The thing you just suggested happened is a very accurate description of what private banks are in business for. So that's another yes.

My understanding is that it is a privately owned corporation, but their corporate charter is a federal statute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act) rather than an ordinary corporate charter.  The member banks are the shareholders, but being a shareholder doesn't confer the usual control that a normally chartered corporation would have.  As in, the "owners" can't change the bylaws, etc.

1) It is all a matter of perspective. If control and ownership are not synonymous, then it is irrelevant who owns it, but more appropriate who controls its actions. From my understanding the FED acts independent of government whose interest should be, the prosperity of the people.  If the Fed was under control of government it would let the "owners" audit the books. 

2) Or an Al-Qaeda funding body (can't prove it just saying), the question did not provoke anything to do with religion.

3) If you think of the New World in Historical terms, the world that materialised out of the monarchies and dynasties of Europe and Asia, then America and Australia are classic examples of the New World.  The reins of powered are very much rooted in the central banks of the world.  We are living in the New World now it isn't a conspiracy, the next world order "the conspiracy theories hype" won't be calling it the new world order, it'll have a new name. We are in the New World now, and it has an Order to it that isn't working to the benefit of the people, and can't be changed through democratic processes, so no need to call it conspiracy, it is fact. 

Max Keiser did a very well job of explaining why people like myself can't give a shit about no illuminati or bilderberg or whatever conspiracy you can come up with: we clearly don't NEED any of these conspiracy's to prove that we're all being exploided by a small elite group.

http://youtu.be/nd7v5MSRdpw

Not to feed into conspiracies but it is not (new world) order but rather new (world order). A change in the way the world is run.

The point is the same. It's not a conspiracy, it's just plain facts. The world is being run by an international oligarchy.

I know what you mean.  I spent time in Singapore and London - the class of people who live at the top there have no country or race.  They have billions in capital and are free to live off their investments close to tax free while their maids pay taxes.

Question is; isn't that how capitalism is meant to work?  People who inherit capital live tax free off investments.  Their investments create jobs for the peons.  The peon's salaries create demand for products which leads to economic growth.  All seems to be working as planned.

It is owned by Dick Cheney. Sleep well.  ;D

You mean this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund), right?

No - thats an implementation detail.  As is the ECB and the Fed.  I meant that there is indeed an oligarchy of rich powerful people who are beyond taxation and largely beyond the law.  But that is how you would expect things to work...in any game there will be winners and inheritance means that some people are born certain to win.

Right, an implementation detail of international central planning. In other words, the world is being run by an international oligarchy.

Not run by them but seriously influenced.  If millionaires formed a political party, they would have the overwhelming majority of Congress, the Judiciary and the Presidency.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/06/if-the-millionaires-party-ever-gets-its-act-together-watch-out/ They haven't but you can't expect those institutions to act hard against millionaires can you?

Likewise you can't expect much action billionaires disapprove of.  

And you wonder why I'm an anarchist?

Anarchism wouldn't' make any difference.  The rich and powerful will still have the men with guns. 

And the poor, who are by definition more numerous than even the praetorian class, will also have guns. If it comes to a shooting war... well, there's a reason kings don't have a lot of power anymore. ;)

Yes. it's exactly what Marx predicted would happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx#Economy.2C_history_and_society

Just like there can never be a millionaires party, there can never be a praetorian party. Some poor will support one party/clan/religion.  Others another. The poor are not a single group and don't approve on one another. Its always been the way and always will be.  

The answer is YES. It is supposedly a public/ private entity what ever the hell that is.. but the simple truth is that the whole system revolves around the golden rule.. "he who has the gold makes the rules" the ultra wealth make the rules that line their pockets at everyone else's expense.   

Marx got a lot right in terms of analysis.  Its the politics he got wrong - he didn't expect the middle class to split and the working class to join in the split endlessly voting in alternative middle class parties.

Praetorian class. The "men with guns."

George Orwell actually wrote a great article on this issue, a couple of years before he wrote 1984.

He agreed with you, and said that the emergence of guns (muskets) shifted the power from the view to the many. From the elite to the people.

However, with the emergence of weapons of mass destruction (the atom bomb had just been invented), he predicted that since the power would shift back from the many to the view. Makes sense, he argued, because it would put the weapons back in the hand of the elite.

And look at what happened.

I haven't got the time to find the article for you right now though, sorry.

And that's why the second amendment to the US Constitution doesn't specify muskets. ;)

But Marx was wrong - they don't operate as a single class.  They bicker and dispute and form political movements and the poor split as well.  The disadvantage of anarchy is that guns are the only way to settle these disputes.  Democracy is a nicer way of doing things even if your particular idea will never be voted for.

I suppose that's why McDonalds and Burger King employees are always shooting each other? Or Brinks and ADT?

No reason to change the subject.

I'm not. You said that guns are the only way to settle disputes. That's clearly false.

You are being silly now comparing political disputes in an anarchy with selling burgers. 

Anyway, turns out I was wrong.  The Bilderberg are the true owners and they own google as well now.

http://www.infowars.com/google-berg-global-elite-transforms-itself-for-technocratic-revolution/

Take away the state (monopoly on violence) and I would argue that we might indeed see some 'wars' between nowadays peaceful competitors. Kinda like how we have drugswars in Mexico at the moment. Since it (drugs) is not regulated, the competitors are not peacefully competing with each other at all. Intead, they're fighting violently over who gets to sell their stuff.

But I agree, we're drifting way to far from the original topic.

Yes, the FED is privately owned, although in a indirect way, and yes, they're fucking us over big time.

Governments exist to provide certain services to their citizens. Restaurants exist to provide certain products to their customers. The differences in which services or products should be provided do not need to be decided with guns in either case, and to think so is silly.

Governments do not exist to provide services to their citizens. They exist because their citizens want a safe environment with clear laws and will use violence to ensure they get that.  It's not a service - you can't decide that you don't want it.

I respectfully disagree, as did several gentlemen some 230-odd years ago:

That "safe environment" is the service which governments ostensibly exist to provide.

I don't know about yours, but mine put it in their "mission statement":

If the "capital" in capitalism is referring to Money (capital) that is created out of thin air then yes this is how it works, and you are being naive, thinking the system is creating wealth.

But if it is the right to pool capital in a free market you are referring to then No, it is not meant to have a central controlling oligopoly.  

The Cantillon Effect is a 17th century principal that explains how wealth is extracted from the last spenders of money (the pour) and transferred to the creators of money (the "oligarchs") and how the benefits trickle up relative to your relation to the top,  this principle alone explains how the system is failing humanity globally.  

The benefits enjoyed today are enjoined as a result of human ingenuity and the little bit of the free market that still exists, despite the system we have in place today.  

Myrkul = Illuminati stooge trying to cover the conspiracy up.

We know your game Myrkul!

It's the other way around; it is the play on word that is causing people to believe it is so farfetched it is a crazy conspiracy.

Like the anti globalisation movement, actually they are a globalisation movement they are people who are globally conscious and want to be globally responsible, they protest to stop the exploitation and poverty causing actions of a few oligarchs, but the media has them confused, they actually portray them as anti globalisation when they are protesting against global exploitation. 
 

Mine came over with men with pointy sticks on horses, killed anyone who disagreed and the 1% still has the families who took the land in 1066.  They didn't leave a mission statement.

Maybe you could learn a lesson from mine, then? ;)

They did, that's why the French revolution didn't spared to Brittan, and that is why we have pseudo democratic governments controlled by Oligarchs today.   

Like they kept the monarchy, they will keep a token parliamentary democracy for tourists to visit after things change.

Here's a pretty good explanation of the whole matter of the FED, its origins, etc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF0-Pm1Q-nM

Its a very difficult question to answer. The true answer is that almost no companies are really privately owned in the united states. Basically only drug dealers  :P.

what we are really dealing with here is a sliding scale between more government influence is less government influence. The federal reserve is about as far along this scale as you can travel without being considered a fully governmental agency.

I'd actually argue that drug dealers have a higher chance of being "controlled" by the government than the Fed does. Mostly because the drug dealers (usually) can't afford to buy politicians.

It's a hybrid setup. It is a cartel of private banks in partnership with the gov so that it has the force of law protecting their monopoly to create the base money for the nation's money supply. Ben Bernanke is its mouthpiece. The government hangs off its jocksack. The US military is one arm, DOH the other. It's asshole is where the money gushes out on top of us. It's dick is in our ass. Its eardrums were designed by the NSA. Its toes are testing the waters of world domination. It has horns coming out of its head. A cavity search might reveal a giant gold nugget. It smells like 3 day old pee. Its brain is composed of unknown material. Certain very few members of congress try to beat it down, but their blows just glance harmlessly, frustrating them. Its a one trick pony. It smokes a cigar every month lit with an 84 billion dollar bill. This cigar smoke causes much pollution and harm. It speaks gibberish. It does NOT have have tofu the size of texas.

But apart from that, you love it, right?

omg totally

In china, the central bank is totally controlled by the government, that is for sure  :D

Yeah, contrary to popular belief (especially within the US) it's pretty much accepted within the academic world that Marx' theory on economics and scarsity was right. Just like those of Adam Smith and Malthus were probably right. Three models, moreover, that are in fact not contradictory, but can supplement each other. Again, contrary to popular belief.

I don't think Marx mentioned a middle class at all though, did he? (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

You could of course argue that this makes him wrong on the politics, which might indeed be the case.

Alternatively however, you could argue that his original theory is simply still in the works. The middle class seems to be disappearing if we carry on like we are doing right now. And when I hear about the envisioned ideals of a lot of AnCaps within the bitcoin community, what I hear is exactly what Marx described as the 'capitalist phase'. Although a lot of AnCaps don't seem to realise this, of course...

So, in a pure capitalist society, who would be exploited, and how?

The working class. As to how, I suggest you read it yourself.

This is a fairly accurat abstract, I guess:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx#Economy.2C_history_and_society

People with access to capital would exploit those in need of it; until an equilibrium had been reached (this equilibrium could be in the form of unions, or mechanisation and the resulting balance would be one between cost of production and consumption of production.)

At some point the relationship would change from parasitic to co dependant (same as biological evolution), this is the shift Marx predicted would happen in the most industrialise and civilised states. 

Ironically now we are being exploited through the likes of the capital behind the central banks, not the entrepreneurs or the typical capitalist Marx envisioned.

Marx thought through the free market a little further than Adam Smith, where Adam Smith saw the result of land lords exploiting there tenants as the mechanism to fuel homesteaders he stopped. I suspect he never questions humanity developing the whole world (or the possibility of continued exponential growth of the humans.) Marx on the other hand saw a point where access to land was one mechanism where the capitalists could keep the parasitic relationship between capital and labour alive.

Ironically Marx advocated the Central Bank model now being used to perpetuate the parasitic imbalance he sorts to expose and overcome.     

Wouldn't they more accurately be described as exploiting the entrepreneurs? After all, the workers don't have to buy the equipment they use, or pay for the space in which they work, or take the risk that all the money they spent in developing the product would be for nothing, if the public doesn't want it. If the company they work for goes bust, they can just get a new job. The entrepreneur is out a lot of money.

Rightly so there is a balance there and a reward for risk undertaken by the entrepreneur. Marx didn't disagree with that, he just expressed labour should be valued at a fair market price not an artificially low manipulated price.

Capitalism exploits the labour vs Communism exploits the entrepreneurs.   

Indeed, and in a pure capitalist society, where everything is decided on the market, the price of a person's labor would necessarily be valued at a fair market price.

Yes.
I don't like the term Capitalist any more it implies Capital as Money controlled by authority as opposed to the free market, I prefer Free Market Economics or Laissez-faire
The only capitalists around today are the oligarchs behind the central banks, they control capital, the rest of us just respond to the manipulation thinking it is a free market.

After Bitcoin I see only 1 hurdle to overcome in achieving the pure Free Market Economy. And that is redefining land as property, and solving Marx's dilemma.

G. Edward Griffin agrees. http://youtu.be/lu_VqX6J93k?t=26m45s (http://youtu.be/lu_VqX6J93k?t=26m45s)

tl;dr

I know. Everyone knows the Illuminati owns the Fed, and guess who's just made chairman of the board.

Hah, they're not that stupid. They have *two* political parties and all of the rest.

True - the one big objection to democracy is that people often end up choosing between ways to make the rich richer rather than to level the playing field. 

Pft, the drug dealers *become* the politicians (or at least their descendants do).

And the biggest fault with "leveling the playing field" is that it's generally done in accordance with the Japanese proverb: 出る杭は打たれる。 Literally: The stake that sticks out gets hammered down.

Myrkul... who are your Illuminati handlers? We deserve to know!

Oh, quit playing, Bonkers. You know I report to you!

^^^^^^
 ;D ;D ;D ;D
touche!

The Athenians realised if you had a true democracy you would need prosperity or the average voter would bring the state and economy down. 
The reason people vote agenised there interests is all a result of capturing someone's imagination.   

The dream that everyone can be a millionaire in the US, is one.

And in Toronto Mayor Rob Ford captured the imagination and got the average Torontonian to vote agenised there interests with these 4 words: "Stop the Gravy train"

Does anyone else want to know how far these nested boxes will go?

Maybe this one will crash the site. Let's find out.

As properTy? Land ís defined as property?

Did I misunderstand you?

Spelling who would have thought it could confuse people, yes "property"

One question, though: Isn't land already property?

There are more of us than there is of them

Yeah, this was actually my question as well, apart from the spelling. Land is defined as property?..

Not in my tribe ! :D

King's had armies.

But today, the people in power have militaries with more destructive power than you could even think of.

I have often been amused by the very notion that guns alone will help people for example against their own government in the US.
France, Britain, Pakistan, India, China.

In all of those countries, I must laugh in the same manner. Germany, not so much anymore. We have problems financing our military here.

YOu see, if it was all about guns, I would agree. BUt it is about fighter planes, CX gas canisters, Special Forces, helicopters, cruise missiles, drones, tanks, paralyzing gas and so on. The disparity of power is by far greater than before. 200 years ago, people could take arms and win. Today, any government has the means to massacre them all in a strike, if they wanted to.

You can for example see Syrias Assad fail horribly at that, since he does not want western forces in his country. He could have just massacred them all with his means. We will see how that turns out...

Here is a 3:15 minute YouTube clip that does a fair job of introducing the problem.

http://youtu.be/QdbyUy-DN80?t=11m59s  

(Stephanie Flanders at @14:30 incorrectly separates capitalist and entrepreneur, otherwise I think she does a good job, there is nothing wrong with entrepreneur using capital, but there is a problem when a monopoly is mistaken for entrepreneurship. )

Ultimately Property is a human meme, and what ownership is and isn't changes with consciousness.  
Take slavery for example, people used to be property and then it changed over time and now most of us agree people aren't property.

And if you go back to the Khoisan or Bushman from Sothern Africa for example, just out of interest genetically when you trace the human mitochondrial DNA, they come closest to being direct descendents of the first humans.  

Interestingly when the Duch settled in Southern Africa they could not make slaves of the San, as they would die in captivity, I would speculate it was because life is more than just a motive for food and warmth, but life is best understood when you are free to explore it.   Bushman culture has no concept of property, they just live in the now. (If you have Netflix a movie that gives you some insight is "The Gods Must be Crazy." A comedy about the introduction of a coke bottle to a Bushman tribe.)

By contrast the Bantu people from Africa had evolved the meme of property rights they often used cows as money in large triads they also arrived in Sothern Africa around the time of the Europeans and fought each other. It is this population group that spared through Africa and were traded as slaves in Europe and North America.    

While the Bushman living in a desert, where water is incredibly scares and not having adequate water is a life or death situation saw drinking water as communal property and a right. As nomads they would berry an ostrich egg shells filled with water and mark it with a stick so other nomads and tribes could use the resource. Whenever they encountered the marked stick in the ground, they would fill it up if they had water or drink from it if they didn't, never abusing the resource, in effect they had empathy for other humans traveling in the desert and used that collective empathy to maintain an inter-communal man made resource.  

To get to the point, if one can create a monopoly on something, one destroys the free market, usually the free market finds an alternate and monopoly dies out. Today monopolies only exist because we create them with law, they cannot exist in a free system.

Getting to the problem of property rights which are considered individual's rights, and as a right that is not directly linked to "a man’s right to his own life" to quote Ayn Rand, it shouldn't be considered to be and individual right.  Property Rights only come into existence when one has the ability through force to prevent access to a land and make it exclusively yours thus denying mans right to use that land to benefit his own life.  While I would agree the act of homesteading is creating value (even another form of property), it is denying man access to that land.

We are at a time today, where the central banks (owners of the means of exchange) manipulate peoples labour and savings, effectively enslaving them, ( a problem  Bitcoin can solve with quite effectively), We still won't have a free labour market while labour and entrepreneurs are subject to the monopoly of land owners.

So in conclusion I would define property as that which is created, without infringing on individual rights and can be exchanged in a free market.

That causes quite a few problems, the most obvious of which is IP.

Creation alone is not enough to make a thing property.

I won't argue the definition is half baked, and I won't disagree the idea is radical, but then so was abolishing slavery. Hell even a fixed money supply will "causes quite a few problems" to our current system.

While I make a living creating IP, it is only the laws that make ideas as property possible, if the laws didn't exist I would still do what I do, only I would just employ a new business model and partners to monetise my IP (ideas).    

The meme of property is as damaged as current monetary system; I was just making the point that we are moving in the right direction, fixing the medium of exchange fixes half the problem.  

Agreed, although I was referring to the act of creation in reference to property as a right

Have you read Stephan Kinsella's "Against Intellectual Property (https://mises.org/document/3582)"? He goes rather in-depth into what property is, why it is, and why IP isn't property, but land is.

I'd agree IP isn't property, not that I would admit it publically for fear my licensees will stop paying me royalty's. But I'd go one further and say land ownership is not a property right either, and will not admit it publically for fear my tenants will stop paying rent.

Have you read  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon) book  What Is Property? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is_Property%3F) 

I have. In comedy value, I'd rank it right up there with Marx (either (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx) one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_marx)).

I have trouble agreeing with this statement. What about the network effect (ie. google, ebay, and yes, bitcoin)? What about the self-reïnforcing mechanism of surplus value and scaling?

I don't know, you might be right, but I'll have to think about this one a little bit. Any reads you can recommend?


Ah, so you're actually saying land should NOT be defined as property then? It seemed like you argued the exact opposite in the initial (misspelled) post. In this case I absolutely agree!

Although, I would actually like to propose an alternative. (I think.)

How about defining land as public property, as opposed to not defining land as no property at all? 'Cause the latter seems rather unfeasable; we might all want to live in the heart of London or Paris or whatever.

By having the government manage it, we could have the good aspects of the market (incentive to contribute to society in exchange for a nice place to live) without the bad (the posed problem of surplus value of land a.k.a. neo-feudalism).

For this to work we obviously need to get money out of politics first, since governments are privately owned at the moment, which would therefore completely defeat the purpose of making land 'public' property.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

In the Tory-Bilderberg Trotskyite thermonuclear Pentagon-Communist's  Federal Reserve Printing Company empire of the Union of ZioNazi Socialist Republics all land ALREADY IS "public" (FedResCo) property, this is why you must pay tax-rent to the imperial Federal Reserve Printing Company to hold onto it.  Otherwise one of their state or city corporations must evict you and repossesses it for them.

Not only that there is now the precedent of "Eminent Domain" which permits local corporate-soviets to appropriate land not only for "community" Trotskyite FedResCo projects but the fancy private projects of their elite-Menshevik minions as well.

Permanent war is the old fashioned term for "communism", that's why they used to call normal, temporary wars "acting in the common defence". Of course none of the preemptive permanent offensive wars of the ZioNazi Communists are "defensive" any more. This is why once-heroic warriors have now become commodity "war fighters" since that mundane job is now a permanent standing commodity export.

You fool.  You utter fool.  You left out the Freemason-Jihadis and the Kalahari Vikings  >:(  Get your act together!

No.

This is a silly thread.

Actually, this is a brilliant thread. Thanks to this thread I have come to realise what I think is the error in the thinking of a lot of AnCap's and Libertarians.

Those guys seem to think that the Fed is owned by the government, hence the government is fucking us over.

The reality however, much like I have stated on the first page of this thread, is that it's more like the other way around. The government does not *really* own the Fed, because the government is itself owned by private banks.

It's the private banks that own the fed directly.
It's the private banks that own the fed indirectly through regional fed's.
And it's the private banks that own the fed indirectly through the government.

It might be the government that is the wizard of oz, but it's the private banks that are behind the curtain.

It's the private banks they should really be after.

No....

The government is owned by the private banks, and they're using it to fuck us all over.

Since private banks do provide a useful service, it would be silly to get rid of them. Instead, we should make them unable to fuck us over with the government by removing the government. The natural result of a central locus of control is a battle for domain over that central locus. Decentralize the control, and nobody can gain the central locus and use it to benefit himself.

You know better than to say something that silly.

Not really that silly. "Pwned" is about right

Well, it's more like an unholy marriage, but the governments are definitely not the "man" in the relationship.

The Federal Reserve Bank is a quasi-private institution that is given monopoly powers by the U.S. Federal Government.

The Fed, in attempts to smooth out short-term economic fluctuations per keynesian economic theory, loans money to large private banks at close to 0% interest rates in an attempt to stimulate the economy.

Much of this "free money" goes to risky mortgages to people who would not otherwise qualify, but the vast majority of it goes into the stock market and the massively risky derivatives market. The risk is on the taxpayers but most of the profit goes to the banking executives. A tiny (insignificant) amount trickles down into the hands of the working class and lower.

Obviously, this system is a massive failure.

With Neo-Keynesian economics, the housing bubble popping is a REALLY BAD thing and the response is to re-inflate it so that home prices go back up, home builders get their jobs back, etc., which is "Good." This makes sense to your Average Joe watching the Evening News. 

With Austrian economics, the housing bubble popping is neither good nor bad; it is a reflection of an overbought situation in the housing market. It means that sectors which produce goods which are less desirable to the public at that point in time (housing and fraudulent mortgages) will be downsized and other sectors in higher demand will pick up the slack. This is an understanding of an economy as a living, breathing organism with complex interrelated parts and systems.
Unfortunately, with organizations like the Fed which have far too much power, and banks which have been propped up "TBTF" by the government time and time again, bubbles grow FAR bigger than they ever would in an economy which is permitted organic sector realignments as necessary. So this bubble popping has disastrous results and the knee-jerk reaction is to instantly attempt to re-inflate it again, partially via Fed monetary policies, and partially via irresponsible government fiscal policy.

The Fed is quasi-government at best.  The most accurate identification is the Fed is a cartel of banks.  The Fed does not fall under any of the 3 branches of government: judicial, legislative, or executive.  They do not receive funding appropriated by Congress but are subject to Congressional oversight (lol).  Federal Reserve Employees are not part of the US Civil Service System and are not covered by government employees’ health insurance or pension programs.

So to the OP, yes, you could very well view the Fed as being privately owned.

You have misunderstood the situation.
The Fed is a "private organization" that is given powers above and beyond those that are available in the private sector. So the fed is a "quasi-private" organization. It is neither private nor public, it is in the gray area.
Sure, some "libertarians" might mistakenly think that it is directly owned by the gov't, but that's no better than mistakenly thinking "Oh, it's owned by private banks, so the "an-caps" should be going after the banks." The Fed does what it does on the authority of the federal government. It has the power to control how much legal tender is printed; legal tender that is recognized by the federal government as legal tender. It also controls interest rates. If I started a business tomorrow I couldn't just decide to do these things, any more than you can just decide how the "an-caps" classify the Fed.
The Government started the Fed, it is a quasi-private institution, the government can end it or audit it, but it's not going to, because the Fed is the only reason that the government can continue spending as much as it does.
You can blame the banks but half of them would have failed years ago without the fed, and the other half would be a hundredth of the size because they wouldn't have gotten the easy money/capital to gamble billions on derivatives and HFT schemes. There would be big banks without the Fed, sure, but the Fed completely redefined the meaning of "big."

Sometimes people say "Lol I just entirely disproved all the libertarians/anarchists, because they say that there would be absolutely no such thing as fractional reserve banking without the Fed, and that's not true!" (Ignore for a second that no one actually makes that argument; the argument being referred to is completely mischaracterized.)
I can do stuff like that too. "I just entirely disproved all black people, because I just heard this one black person mispronounce 'fifty' as 'fitty," and that's incorrect!"

The lexicon he uses seems odd and outlandish to many because it is orders of magnitude superior to the Orwellian one consumed by the masses when defining the terms used to accurately describe the current global economic and political situation we are in. The Orwellian masses are utterly confounded when they encounter it.

If he condemns the Tory-Bilderberg Trotskyite thermonuclear Pentagon-Communist's  Federal Reserve Printing Company empire of the Union of ZioNazi Socialist Republics, there is no valid reason for not condemning the Freemason-Jihadis and the Kalahari Vikings.  Each is a real as the other. 

We have to be alert...perhaps he is a sock puppet?

You're all right. I was painting a too simplistic picture myself.

My point, however, is that the (American) government is at the moment not functioning like it should be. It's not a government by the people for the people. It's a government of the banking cartel for the banking cartel.

Thís is what needs to be fixed. We need to get money out of politics, I think. Abolishing government althogether is too radical, since we do need government for a lot of reasons, just like we (might) need private banks.

(I'm northern European and I think my own government has been doing a pretty decent job. So that's probably why I feel this way.)

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/
http://no-consent.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/crony-capitalism-obama-300x225.jpg


Sorry, I think I'm missing your point?

How are we gonna decide who gets to live on the Champs-Élysées? What has the Tradegy of the Commons got to do with this?

There is an awful lot of history behind how the Tory-Bilderberg Trotskyite-communist Rothschild-surrogate ex-gold Pharaohs ended up reconquering America in  1913 after it's failed Revolution and Civil War but it all goes back to the mistake of putting the stupid words gold and silver into the Constitution (even though they are irrelevant there) and the common misperception of idiots who confuse a "wealth" of some sort of a silly metal commodity with a "money" that is an economies' token of it's people's Prime Resource. After their black slaves were freed

According to the Constitution however, it is mandatory that the US Congress and it's Treasury ALONE be the sole owners, profiters from and operators of it's money and borrowers of it's debts.


Thus (above) the US Mint alone under the supervision of the Congress's Treasurer/Treasury must be the sole issuer and renter of it's money and the sole lawful authority as to the setting of the value of whatever it is that they decide to "coin".


The criminally private, for private profit Federal Reserve Printing Company is totally and completely corrupt and illegal.


One might see some sort of a chicken and an egg problem, and they would be totally correct, as the power to print money from nothing is the power to buy politicians to let you get away with doing so, and also to force them to do everything and anything else you wish them to. Only a public organization like the US Treasury should be doing this, and profiting from the lending of new money for the taxpayers.

Even though reconstruction was ended Ford was booming and the country was prosperous, the criminal Tory-traitor Wilson put the US into receivership to the Tory-Bilderberg Rothschild Surrogates in 1913 making all Americans white and black, bond slaves to the slave traders of Jekyll Island once again.

Once again I see you are covering up the Freemason Jihadis and the Kalahari Vikings.  They are every bit as big a threat as your Tory-Bilderberg Trotskyite-communist Rothschild-surrogate ex-gold Pharaohs.

I worry what your real agenda is.

The Fed is privately owned because there's nothing federal about it.  The Fed chairman is not a paid by the federal government the way public servants are.  In fact, it's difficult to find out who pays his salary.

My point: If all land is held "in common," the people who use that land have less care for it. Think about it: Would you throw a Styrofoam cup onto your front lawn? Yet, many people litter while driving down the road.

As to your other two questions:
Yes, we can't all live on the Champs-Élysées (even if all land is held in "common"). That's why, to prevent conflict, we recognize two ways of acquiring land: Original appropriation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_principle), and voluntary sale. That way, land goes to those who value it most.

There is a third way of acquiring land: aggression.

Kind of completes the loop really, libertarianism is a painfully naive, undergraduate "philosophy" that would collapse into mayhem withing minutes.

In reality, Libertarianism is just a cheap attempt by drug users and cock-suckers to legitimise their dismal lifestyle.

So you oppose the belief that people ought not initiate violence? why ought people initiate violence?

Maybe you missed it:
We don't recognize aggression as a valid means of acquiring land.

Lol! and how do you plan to *enforce* the non-recognition of violence?

As I mentioned, your ridiculous system would collapse into mayhem within minutes.  Or perhaps you wouldn't recognise a bunch of crazed drug-addicts beating your empty skull in with baseball bats.

fed is a private institution governed by public citizen
or
a public institution governed by private citizens?


sorry for my bad english, but i would to tell you the same one thing.

perhaps is you that don't recognize anything ;)

let me do ONLY 1 exaple:
there are Big Countries governed by AN ALTERNATION OF OPPOSITE PUPPET GOVERNMENTS where Joung FAT ASSES take FIREARMS AT SUPERMARKET and dressin MIMETICAL way to SHOOT WITHOUT A REASON other people in the streets, in the office, in the bus, at school,
because they are a-lot-of-different-drugs-addict with the brain full of pharmacy stuff and meth...
And this schizophrenic are without any control, and there is no way to prevent them. No government that can do anything.

there are big countries where, after death penality they discover the innocence of a men, that pollute the same soil they live, that make war in asia for OIL a and after they spit on their veterans with P.T.S.D, that make war for peace and be violent to prevent violence, big country that are THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS and go to others sayin' "you cannot develop nuclear technology".

Perhaps you want to tell this when you speak about of a system that will collapse in some minutes, (ALREADY BEGUN TO COLLAPSE IMHO).
and where their citizen detain firearms in almost each house killing themselves, their families, their friends,
instead to fight the powers that make they sick.

In these Big Countries the only law is the LAW OF THE JUNGLE: peoples that win are peoples that have more power/money.

From "neanderthal age" to now, the "system" is always the same. No progress. No civilization. No education.
Only technological progress in the hands of peoples that have the same brain of aggressive monkey.
The framework change, but in the world there is "anarchy" (in the way you think) from century ago to now.

In the past, the more physical strongest peoples makes the rules. Now, rich peoples makes the rules.
That's anarchy intended by mainstream media, political puppet, an ignorant peoples.    

regards

 

Can you be more specific? Who are they?

Take a look at that I was replying to:

I used to live in a student dorm. I did my best to keep the common room clean, because I felt it was a social obligation to do so. A social obligation to the community, so to say. My own room, however, I'd treat however the fuck I felt like. Sometimes that meant it was a uge mess. But I don't really think either your road/front lawn example nor my public/private room examples are the best examples in regards to the tradegy of the commons.

See, the funny thing is that you seem to use the tragedy of the commons in the exact opposite way as I would. To me, the tragedy of the commons proves that we need regulation. How else are we gonna stop the seas from being overfished? How else are we gonna stop global warming? How else are we gonna stop the rainforrests from being cut down? All of these things are perfect examples of the tragedy of the commons; it's perfectly rational economic behaviour for anyone to fish for fish, fly a plain or cut some wood, but if everyone starts doing it, it would end in disaster. That's why we need regulation.


Ok, who should I buy the land from, then? From the guy who ownes the land right now? How did he get to own it? By buying it from someone else? How did that guy get to own it then? If we go back far enough, someone must have just claimed the land at some point. Land was always there, nobody created it, so at some point somebody must have just declared the land to be his, almost certainly by using force upon those who disagreed. And now we have to pay for it to get it back? No. Fuck that. Somebody used force to get it in the first place, we can use force to take it back.

Land was always there, it was created by no one. It should therefore be owned by either no one, or by everyone. You shouldn't be able to claim it anymore than you should be able to claim the air we all breathe, or the water in all of the rivers and all of the oceans in the world.

Now, how do we get to decide who lives on the Champs-Élysées? I propose we let the market decide, BUT without any indiviual profiting from it. Whoever is willing to pay most gets to live there, but WE THE PEOPLE get to spend the money on something WE THE PEOPLE want to spend it on. This could be schools, hospitals, bridges, a policeforce, or whatever we decide it to be.

Also, I got to agree with bonker, just because you don't want violence to exist or even won't use any violence yourself (ever), that does not mean nobody else won't either. If you believe that, that to me seems like a very naïve worldview to be honest.

Yeah I know what you wrote there. I was just wondering how the following dots vitally connected each other:

wahhabis and salafis , Freemason Jihadis, almost all world fiat money

i agree with you. but the fact that someone use violence, it's not a justification at all, for who accept this bad thing like a normal and civil thing.

I like tit-for-tat as a moral standard myself, in part because "[it] is [] a highly effective strategy in game theory for the iterated prisoner's dilemma": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

I would not hit anybody on the head, but if somebody hits me on the head, I will hit that guy on the head as well. I will not do it harder, I will not do it twice, but I will hit the dude on the head.

This approach to interactions can be seen as a parallel to the eye for an eye approach from Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, where the penalty for taking someone's eye is to lose one's own (cit from tit for tat wikipedia).

one thing is the self-defense, but...
what you say is an illusion for yourself but IS NOT TRUE,
because if someone hit you on the head, probably you are dead and you can't do anything.
So, is better to avoid all violent situations because you have not any control on when, where and what bad can happen to you.
Pro-Violence or not, it's the same.
I want to live without any paranoia.
And when i will die, i will die without having lived in paranoia or without doing any violence on nobody.
I know that this is only my opinion... an opinion from my very limited point of view.
regards

As is common with people who espouse communist views, you have a social view of the world, and act socially. I have a sad (from your point of view) fact to relate: You're a rarity. Any system which relies on your view being in the majority will fail, and fail horribly. This is not theory. This is established, historical fact. But there is a ray of home in all this: In a system of private ownership, people who wish to act socially, can, and may aid others as they see fit. You just can't force others to do so.

The answer to that is the same in all cases: Overfishing? Private ownership of the seas will allow (and encourage) the owners to prevent overfishing, as that will cut into the future profitability. Rainforests? Private ownership of the land will allow people who wish to, to conserve that land in it's natural state. Global warming is a much larger issue, and deserves it's own conversation. Suffice it to say that if we're going to change anything about the global climate, it needs the full cooperation of the entire planet, not just a few governments.

As I said, there are two legitimate ways of acquiring land: Original appropriation (Declaring, by occupying first, that land to be his), or voluntary sale. Allowing people to come along and take land by force equates to no property rights at all, and war of all against all.

Well, you're entitled to that opinion, but land belonging to nobody causes strife, and land belong to "everybody" causes strife. Only when land belongs to "somebody," can there be peace.

Sounds nice on paper. What happens if 50% of the people want to spend the money on a hospital, and 50% on a school? Which half is right? And, to make matters worse, where are you going to put it?

Tsk... Just because I don't consider violence a legitimate means to gain property doesn't mean it won't happen. Just that it is legitimate to resist violence with violence. Vim Vi Repellere Licet.

I don't hold communist views, thank you. Neither do I hold a social view of the world really. I do, however, think that almost all people have a social aspect to them. Likewise, I think almost all people have an individualistic side. Therefore, I think socialists and liberals are both right, and both wrong.


If we're gonna privatize the seas, are we gonna stop the fish from swimming to each others parts of it? If not, you might as well catch all the fish in your area, your 'neighbours' fish will come swim to you, and you'll just catch that the next day. And why do you think the rainforrests are being cut down right now? Its because that's the profitable thing to do. It will make you more money to tear it down and grow or build something else. And why does global change deserve a whole other conversation? The whole point of the tragedy of the commons is that it's supposed to be bigger than any individual.

Sorry, but all of this seems to me like the tragedy of the commons 101.


Well, all land seems to be taken by now. I was only born a couple decades ago, and it was all taken by then. How is that fair? It is not, so yeah, I'll take a war of all against all over one sides suppression. Even better would be to agree that 'land' can not be privately owned at all of course.


I honestly don't see how privately owning land would bring peace. This sounds like something somebody who owns land would say. Like telling your slaves that freedom would only lead to war, it's best they just keep working peacefully and adhere to the rules that benefit the owner.


Is this your counterargument against democracy? If it's EXACTLY 50/50 we'll vote again. This seems like such a rare occurrence it doesn't even matter at all though... What happens if a presidential campaign ends EXACTLY 50/50? I don't even know. Doesn't even matter, since it realisticly impossible.

Where are we going to put it? Wherever we (the people) want to...

There are absolutely arguments to be held against democracy, but I don't think these are it.


Ah, I think we thought that you said that Libertarianism was able to prevent conflict. But what I think you meant to say is that Libertarianism would prevent conflict if EVERYBODY would be a Libertarian, including those that don't benefit from it.

See that's the same with every ideology. If EVERYBODY was a communist, communism would work just swell. If EVERYBODY was a fascist, fascism would be jolly good. I could go on, but you probably get my drift. If you ask me, every ideology has a one-sided worldview - including Libertarianism. There are different types of people, different worldviews, and different conceptions of freedom that are all perfectly coherent. I don't think imposing yours on others provides any more freedom or peace than them imposing theirs on yours.

Oh, but you do. You want all land held in common. Georgeism is just eco-communism.

Well, first: Sea plots would likely be much larger, entire "fishing grounds," for just that reason. It's much harder, and much more disruptive, to fence off the seas.
Second: The rainforests are being cut down now because politicians are cheaper to buy than private landowners.
Third: Global climate change deserves it's own conversation because it is a much more complex subject.

And anyone born after 2140 will have to earn their bitcoins by providing a service to the community. In fact, that's the only way to get them now.

Let me explain. If land is owned by nobody, anyone can come and take it at any time. I could justifiably force you off your land. I'd say that's "strife." If land is owned by "everybody" and some organization is going to come around and collect rent, they'll have to force me to pay, because I won't want to. That also qualifies as "strife." On the other hand, if someone wants to buy my land, they need only offer me enough money to convince me to sell it. Voluntarily. Peacefully.

Well, any other result means that the majority has enforced their will on the minority. That's just might makes right. So when you say "WE THE PEOPLE," what you actually mean is "WE THE STRONGEST."

I'm not imposing my views on anyone. Merely resisting their attempts to impose theirs on me.

Hmm, if you put it like that I guess I do hold some communist views. I do think capital should be privately owned though, so I'm far from a communist. I think a balance of power is probably best.

Capital property: liberal (individual ownership)
Property of land: social (public ownership)
Intellectual property: anarchy (information should be free)


1. Ok. Lets for a second pretend I think this is a good and realistic idea. How are we gonna decide who gets to have the North Sea. I'd like to have it? Can I just claim it? I call North Sea! Just like that?
2. So apparently it's more profitable to cut that shit down, right? Apparently cutting it down will make you more money than leaving it in tact! Why else would anyone want to bribe a politician? They're not gonna bribe him to do something that will lose them money? It's clearly more profitable for any individual to cut down the rainforrest, while it is potentially devastating for humanity. Be honest for a second: how is this NOT a tradegy of the commons?
3. Ok lets "hypothetically" presume for a second that it is indeed the burning of fossil fuels that ruins the environment. Would that mean it qualifies as a tragedy of the commons, and thus requires regulation?



Yes, but anybody can choose to not use bitcoin, or make another cryptocurrency. Plus, nobody just claimed bitcoin. People put actual time and effort in making them. That's the difference.

You cannot choose to not use land, or make new land. Nobody actually ever made the land most people own nowadays. It was claimed/stolen from the public domain, almost certainly by using violence.

Let me ask you something. Are you either a white American or a white Canadian? If you really believe what you say, you should probably move back to Europe. Because your ancestors clearly stole a shitload of land from the Natives. Using violence. Either that or they bought it from someone who did. In any way, according to your own ideology, you shouldn't be there, since you got it unrightfully, no? At the very, very least you should be ok with the Natives taking it back violently. You can't seriously think you can just take land (or anything else) using violence, or buy it from someone who did, and afterwards denounce everybody else from using violence because it's morally wrong.

Just to be clear: I'm arguing that this isn't only true for Americans. Almost certainly ALL land was violently claimed at some point in history. So, those who own it now still don't rightfully own it; it did not start out rightfully.


You must see what is wrong with that first sentence yourself. For the rest: the peace you speak of is like the peace slave-owners liked to have. There might not be any fighting but there's not exactly freedom either.


WE THE MAJORITY would be a better way to put it, yeah. But I also think that a true democracy can only function if the rights of the minority are protected, much like the constitution seeks to do.

edit: In fact, I take this back. We the people is just right, if you take the social contract and popular sovereignty into account, along with the constitutional process in a democratic republic.


Right. But if I don't believe land can be anybodies private property, you'll probably still violently get rid of me if I step on the land you call 'yours'. Where's my freedom to believe what I want to believe, and act accordingly? You are imposing your views on me, namely, the believe that land can be private property.

Like I said, there are different worldviews, and different conceptions of freedom that are all perfectly coherent. And every ideology thinks it proposes the one and only true version (just like religions by the way).

^^^^^^^
Jesus, just look at the length of this mush!

If you can't write a decent argument in 1 sentence then your ideas are junk IMO

I have bad news for you. Land is "capital property."

Have you ever fished the north sea?
First appropriation requires use. Can't just "call" it.
Oh, I agree with you that it is. But if you owned a large portion of a rainforest, would you sell it cheaply, or get as much as you could for it? And if your neighbors did the same, would it still be profitable to cut it all down?
The answer to the tragedy of the commons is not regulations. The answer to the tragedy of the commons is to internalize the externalities. By private ownership.

Do you think homesteading is as simple as saying "that's mine," or drawing a line on a map? No, that's how governments claim land. A homesteader works his land, or at the very least marks it out somehow. To say nothing of actually getting there, which can be a lot of work, as well.

So, you own your mother? And your sister? "Your" can be used to establish relationship without implying ownership. If land is not owned by anyone, that is to say your rightful claim to be there is not recognized by society, when I come in and kick you out, you have no recourse. That sucks pretty hardcore. And I don't see how my having land makes you a slave.

How are the rights of the minority respected by majority rule? If you want the rights of the minority to be respected, you must have a proportionally representative system. Like capitalism.
Well, that depends. If you're just visiting, there's no need to be rude to visitors. If you decide you'd like to live there rent free, though, you'll find that rather tough with my boot up your ass.

It's not actually. And I don't think it should be regarded or treated as such. That's the whole point of this discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factors_of_production

I could go on to discuss all of the other stuff you said but I don't really feel like this conversation is going anywhere right now. The fact that you consider(ed) land to be capital is actually pretty much exactly what i think is where you any I have a difference of opinion, and since I don't think either of us is gonna convince the other we should probably just leave it at that.

You're probably right, there. I'd just tell you that land is simply a type of fixed capital, you would say that's just the buildings and other improvements on the land, I'd say those improvements wouldn't be very much without the land they're on, you'd say that the land is still separate from the actual fixed capital, I would point to all the other types of capital that include land in their definition, such as "natural capital (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_capital)," and eventually we would just throw up our hands and call the other one an idiot.

So let's skip all of that. If you define capital as "the material property needed to produce something," then land is included. If you define capital as "the already-produced durable goods that are used in production of goods or services." then yes, land is excluded. Obviously I prefer the broader first definition, you the more narrow second one.

But even using your definition, the three factors of trade, "land, labor and capital" must all be privately owned for free trade to occur.

Nah i think it will reach a point where it collapses in on itself and sucks my screen into the next dimension.

This debate is silly, as well as off topic.

There is no such thing as allodial title in the modern world.  All property is community consensus, but one with the rules (mostly) already spelled out.

This thread isn't even debate. Its naive, childish nonsense that belongs in a high school debating club.

Ah, thanks for injecting some sense into this high school debate. I was unaware.

(Doesn't necessarily make it silly to question the modern community consensus though, does it?)

So just in case some comes here looking for a real answer, here's my take on it:

First, a segment from this article:

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/federal-reserve-bank-ownership/

From the actual Federal Reserve Board


That's all fine and dandy.

The next big question is: why, when the Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by Congress must congress pass a law to audit the Fed?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/25/us-usa-fed-audit-idUSBRE86O1IX20120725

Again I quote:


Wait, what!?  Compromise their independence????  :o  They control the damn money supply of a country?! On which planet in which universe is not auditing them a good thing?

2 years ago, before I knew about bitcoin, my blood used to boil when I read things like this. Finally the people spoke. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to Satoshi. Thank you!

I'll leave you with:

A bitcoin a day keeps the Fed at bay

Just chipping in...

To those of you who are still of the impression that the Fed is not privately owned, and that government is the problem, I urge you to watch the documentary The Secret of Oz: http://youtu.be/swkq2E8mswI

Before you dismiss me as some leftist statist or whatever, the documentary is made and narrated by Bill Still, a libertarian: http://still2012.com/

Please watch.

What about those of us of the impression that the Fed is "privately" owned, and that the government is the problem?

Monopoly is the problem, the market is the solution.

Sorry, that was a dumb typo. I'll fix that. (The Fed is privately owned indeed, is what I meant to say.)

Edit: Fuck never mind it was not a typo at all.

To those who think monopolies won't exist on a free market, I'd say: I think you are very wrong.

Define a monopoly for me.

No, that is way offtopic. I'm willing to have the conversation, but not in this thread. You can make a new thread if you want? I'll be back in five.

Regardless, I'd suggest you watch the documentary. I think you'll like it. http://youtu.be/swkq2E8mswI

No, this is completely on-topic. I contend that the solution to all the problems presented by the Fed is to eliminate it's monopoly on the creation of money, and open that duty to the free market.

Your counterclaim is that monopolies would still exist on the free market, with the implication that they would be just as bad as the Fed. In order for me to show this claim to be fallacious, I need you to clearly delineate what you mean when you say "monopoly."

I would like to excuse myself for leaving the conversation earlier, and falling to respond, things seemed to be going a little feral.
As for monopolies lets all agree to use this definition (don't edit it) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

I have clarified my thinking somewhat, after reading a great article that introduced another problem. The underlying point was why we need Free-market anarchism, and the argument the author was debunking was Free-market anarchism evolves into the Statism we have now and will end up at the same place again. (even countering the argument we still have a Free-market anarchism between states and the evolution process is still refining) I think he did a s#!^job, but I totally agree Free-market anarchism is the most efficient and effective solution and should be the apex of market evolution, but why isn't it, and how did we wind up so wrong?

While I did agree we needed Free-market anarchism.  Should we have Free-market anarchism we could technically never have a monopoly, without some form of intervention (collectively agreed force or a perverted meme).

So I don't agree government is the problem, I think the problem is the individual and there is the source of the problem. Our society has evolved with Memes that have been in play and instilled over many generations even since prehistoric times.  It is these destructive memes held by individuals that have allows Free-market anarchism to fail, humanity and technology would have evolved so much faster had we not become deluded by them. The natural evolution from roaming tribes to war lords to Feudalism to "Democratic" and Fascist governments is the expected evolution from people who have these memes. 

Free-market anarchism is in my view just the human extension of the laws of Nature and universal physics. So monopolies are in whatever forms they appear just a natural evolution of some deep rooted meme, and they will continue to be a problem until our individual memes are corrected. 

Actually, the "government as legitimate monopoly on force" meme is only as old as Machiavelli.
https://mises.org/document/1092/Myth-of-National-Defense-The-Essays-on-the-Theory-and-History-of-Security-Production

Now, as to monopolies, I think the definition provided (A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity) is a good one. The article further points out: "Monopolies can be established by a government, form naturally, or form by integration." I'd say the latter two are just versions of the same thing: Market forces make it more efficient for one company to provide that commodity. In a free market, the former one would not be possible. So we're just left with "natural" monopolies to worry about.

Given the particular commodity that we're talking about (money), a natural monopoly is possible, but not something to worry about. For the only way that a provider of money, in the free market, can become the sole provider of money, is to provide the best, most stable, most reliable money. The moment it stops doing that, it opens itself up for competition, and that competition will be fierce.

I'm not sure what we are talking about here. Monopoly's on money, or monopoly's in general?

In a free market, I think monopoly's in general will almost certainly develop over things that are scarce. (Car's, food, computers, etc.) This is not a good thing, because it centralizes power.
Since you can use anything as money though (hence it is not necessarily scarce) I agree with you (Myrkul) on the money part.

Adrian-x: Yeah you could say that some meme's are a problem. However, there is absolutely no way to be sure that your meme is better than any other meme, since that thought itself would be (part of) the meme. Therefore, you should not able to force memes on anyone nor remove them. Neither do I really think you could be able to do so; a totalitarian society would be the closest thing to accomplishing such a thing. I'd say that shitty meme's are just something we need to deal with as best as we can.

Well, to stay strictly on-topic, we should limit the discussion to monopolies on money. Specifically, the service of providing the commodity that is used as money in a marketplace.
This is patently and provably false. The computer market is one of the least regulated on the planet. Cars have only safety and emissions regulations to contend with (and many companies voluntarily exceed those regulations). Food, similarly, has only health and safety regulations, and a few labeling requirements. You chose the worst possible examples for natural monopolies, since all of those industries show robust competition, in a largely unregulated (free) market.
Well, at least you can see some sense.

Actually I was not talking about natural monopoly's. I was talking about monopoly's from integration - why did you choose to let that one out?

Plus, I'm pretty sure that all of these markets are regulated, since monopoly's are illegal in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

Also, it is illegal to kill your opponent, so that's another regulation. Sounds silly? The drug market is truly unregulated. The free market turns out not to work very well there. Violence works.

Sigh.
It doesn't matter if the monopoly is formed via competition or merger, a natural monopoly is still a natural monopoly.

That outlaws cartels, not monopolies (please take note, that is the proper pluralization). And "pretty sure" is a poor basis for argument. Monopolies are anything but illegal in the US. You just have to go through proper channels to establish one.

The reason violence is the dispute resolution method of choice in the drug market is because of the regulations making participation in that market illegal. They have no legal means of resolving disputes.

I was just saying you can't argue with evolution, and if you trace our current economic system back through the millennia, you will come to a point where 2 single cell organisms start cooperating for a benefit that is greater than each is capable on their own.  

Play the whole evolution tape from primordial soup through to today and it will result in the same outcome, why? Where did natural selection go wrong, (Free-market anarchism has a built in safety mechanism that prevents parasitic relationships form forming, so how is it that the parasitic relationship with the planet is allowed to persist and to add insult to injury it is fed and propagated by the very pour people who are being impoverished by it?)  

Well when you try and see where we deviated from the natural laws of physics, (or Gods plan) we see it was at some point where a very destructive meme took hold. As an atheist I love the bible, so I will draw an analogy I think the meme occurs the moment Adam and eve get thrown out of the Garden of Eden.  

so yes I think people will wake up soon, but the problem is not easy to see.

I agree with everything, you said, but I have a hard time reconciling how money controlled by a Protocol and Maths, could be considered anyone's monopoly.  

> ...The moment it stops doing that, it opens itself up for competition.
I would argue "it" doesn't have a monopoly if it is not in control of the Money, IE the monopoly only exists if it relinquish controlee to some higher principal, and if they deviate from that principal then there monopoly is lost.

I have got to run but look forward to reading the above and about these exciting ideas over the weekend.

Well, "bitcoin" could be considered the bitcoin developer's "monopoly" if it gained all of the market in digital currency. That's really unlikely, considering the amount of competition it already has.

Hi Darren,

The Federal Reserve System has a dual mandate. Its monetary policy largely targets the federal funds rate. This rate is determined by the market and is not explicitly set or mandated by the Fed. Therefore, the fed tries to set the effective federal funds rate with the targeted rate set up by the market by adding (or subtracting) from the money supply through the open market operations. Usually, therefore the Federal Reserve System adjusts the federal funds rate by 0.25% at a time (or even 0.50%). The open market operations allow the Fed to decrease or increase the money supply in the banking system to balance the dual Federal Reserve's mandates, which is to (1) maximize employment and (2) stablize pricing in the market place.

Monopolies. Not monopoly's. Got it. (English is not my first language.) For the rest, I'd argue that cartels are from a consumers perspective the exact same problem. As long as prices are fixed, I don't care if it is one corporation doing the job, or several that are colluding. Same difference. Centralization of power.



Actually, I'd wish you would question your own dogma's from time to time. The fact that you are only here to prove other people wrong, instead of trying to actually progress your way of thinking, is exactly why I do not like to argue with you at all; there is not really a point in doing so.

Also, I'm not American so excuse me for not knowing what the exact laws of that country are.


"The law's treatment of monopolies is potentially the strongest in the field of antitrust law. Judicial remedies can force large organizations to be broken up, be run subject to positive obligations, or massive penalties may be imposed the people involved can be sentenced to jail."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Monopoly_and_power


Wait, so we dó need a state in order to legally resolve disputes then?

Also, the drug gangs are not really "resolving disputes", are they? They are killing their competitors in order to monopolize their trade. And they are doing so in area's where the state has lost all it's power to do something anything about it. No policeman dares to get involved in large parts of northern Mexico, and new majors are being killed the same day they get appointed.

It's not because there are states that such violence happens, but because of the failure of states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Failed-states-index-2012.png

(I'm lucky enough to happen to live in one of the sustainable states by the way, which is probably why I think we need them.)

This is a valid point, but in a free market, the same things that would topple a natural monopoly would topple or disintegrate a cartel. In addition, there is the possibility of internal strife. A cartel is less of an issue than a monopoly.

As I said, you have to go through proper channels to get a monopoly in the US.  If you don't, the penalties are harsh. But if you do, the benefits are enormous. And just like you can't go into a smoke shop and ask for a bong (it has to be called a "water pipe"), you can't call it a monopoly. It's a "government contract."

No. They need peaceful means of dispute resolution. Such as arbitration. But since any participation in that market is illegal, and punished by the government, it's difficult for them to get it. My point was that the drug market is anything but "unregulated." It's been regulated to death, in fact.

Now, a side note:
I am not here to "prove people wrong." I am in fact here to see if my ideas can be knocked down by anyone else's. If you can prove my logic faulty, I will discard it, and take up the superior point. The plain fact is that nobody has been able to prove me wrong yet, and I don't see much hope in you doing so. But I wish you the best of luck in trying.

Such as?


So we agree that the market is currently regulated to avoid monopolies then? (And yes, it is regulated to enforce certain monopolies as well.)


By whom? How would this work? Elaborate please...


Yeah? Who is doing the regulating in Northern Mexico?

The answer is: nobody. That's the whole point. It's a failed state (in that region).

You forgot the all seeing Illuminati  :o

You can't look at one area in isolate.  The profit margins for the cartels are massive becomes the US with it regulation on illegal drugs is the largest importer of said illegal drugs.  Billions of dollars worth of drugs flow inward and billions of dollars flow outward to drug states like Mexico, Columbia, etc.   The higher purchashing power of Americans becomes a multiplier effect.  Americans (on average) have more disposable income thus prices are higher so the cartels gain a massive economic advantage over the state trying to control them.   Now if the cartels were legal businesses they likely would use that economic advantage in different ways (supporting candidates, lobbying, making smaller competitors uneconomical, etc) much like major corporations do in the US.  However cartels are criminal enterprises.  They leaders are already facing life sentances for hundreds of violations of the law.  At that point the more efficient use of power is direct ... violence, death, terror.   

If the US (for good or bad) legalized drugs do you think Americans would still be buying product on the street corner shipped in from criminal enterprises in Mexico?  Hardly.  Much like 99.9999999% of Americans don't buy illegal alcohol or tobacco either.  It would be mass produced by major corporations, the supply would go up, prices would go down and the economic power of the cartels would be greatly diminished. 

DeathAndTaxes: what you are saying seems to be besides the point, to me.

This is my question. If there would be no state monopoly on violence (=regulation), what would stop me from killing my competitor instead of improving my product? A bullet is surely cheaper than investing in actual innovation is.

Well there never has been a stateless (post-state) society so there are only theoretical answers.  If most of your customers are law abiding they may choose to not support your unlawful (in natural law sense) actions against another.   The question also becomes IS killing a competitor lower cost and lower risk then arbitration, licensing, marketing, or other non-violent means.  I mean trying to have your competitor killed could get you (or someone you care about) killed.  Once again all theory but if private security forces replaced police states then you could find your security contract revoked per a condition in the contract.

Still I wasn't really talking about the lack of a state. We have never had a post state society so it is all theoretical and any theory is just that.  I was just pointing out the power of the cartels is a direct result of regulation, namely the prohibition on certain substances, not a lack of regulation as you seem to claim. 

The US government through ineffective regulation created the cartels and the criminal violence problem in Mexico.  The cartels and the power they have simply couldn't exist without the massive profit margins and massive barriers to entry created by the actions of governments.  If governments wanted to they could end the cartels tomorrow.  As an unnatural market they simply can't exist without the continued support of governments. 

Well, let's start with the things that a natural monopoly must worry about as much as the cartel does:
Competition. If the monopoly/cartel raises prices enough that a new competitor can undercut them and still make a profit, then that new competitor will appear to take advantage of that situation.
Customer dissatisfaction. If the monopoly/cartel provides a poor enough product or service that the customers are willing to pay more for a superior one, then a new competitor will appear to take advantage of that situation.
Alternatives/new technology. This is somewhat of a subset of the first point, but it's separate enough to warrant being it's own point. The monopoly/cartel need not only worry about someone coming along to provide the same product or service at lower prices or better quality, they must also worry about someone coming along and providing a competing product or service. For example, let's say one company managed to get a monopoly on fast-food hamburgers. They bought up or out-competed every other burger joint in town. They would still be competing with fast-food tacos, pizza, and chicken. Additionally, one of their out-competed rivals might switch gears, and sell frozen hamburgers, that the consumer could microwave at home.

Now for the additional worry that a cartel has:
Infighting. A cartel is, as I mentioned in another thread, somewhat like a wolf-pack made entirely of alphas. At any time, one of those members could turn on the others, and by utilizing one of those methods that I mentioned earlier could bring down a monopoly, squeeze out some extra profits at the expense of the other cartel members. For example, if Burger King, White Castle, McDonalds, and Hardee's/Carl's Jr were the members of a cartel which set hamburger prices, one could cut prices and "steal" business from the others, or refocus on service or product quality, and likewise "steal" business from the others. Or they could start selling frozen burgers (White Castle already does this, Harold and Kumar could have just gone to Wal-mart, instead), or branch out into Pizza (KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, for instance, are all part of one company, Yum! Brands.)

No, not to "avoid" monopolies. To ensure that only the right people get monopolies, and to protect those who do.

Well, Let's say you were a drug dealer. You had your "turf" staked out, your favorite corner where people came to you to buy their drugs. Now, let's say another dealer "muscled in" on your turf, and one morning, you walk out to "your" corner, to find him and two big tough guys standing where you usually do. You go up to him, and you say, "Yo, this my turf, man, go get yer own corner." He replies, "It's my turf, now, punk. Piss off."

At this point you have several options: You could try for a peaceful solution, you could shoot him yourself, or you could go to the cops. Let's assume that you're a more enlightened drug dealer than is average, and you know that shooting him yourself will only start a war between his gang and yours, and going to the cops will, at best, still mean you need to get a new corner, because the cops will be watching that one for a while, and at worst, land you in jail right next to your rival and his buddies. So you opt for a peaceful solution.

Let's further say that I am an arbitrator (I am, by the way) and offer services to the drug dealers in the area (I don't, but only because I don't know any). You come to me, and ask for my assistance in resolving this turf dispute between you and the new guy. I accept, and proceed to offer my service as an arbitrator to the new gentleman, offering a peaceful solution, one that does not end up with him dead or behind bars. Now, we're starting to strain credulity, but let's assume that the other drug dealer is also wiser than average, and sees the benefit of my proposal. He agrees to arbitrate the dispute, rather than deal with the issue in the typical violent manner.

We then go to a room, and discuss the problems. It is discovered that the new guy was pushed out of his turf by yet another dealer, and just needed a place to conduct his business, and that's why he's taken over your spot. I suggest that the particular intersection where you do business has four corners, and he can simply take the opposite one, which is closer to his home anyway. He accepts, and you get your corner back, and he has a shorter "commute." Everybody happy, nobody dead. This is just off the top of my head, understand, and may not be entirely accurate, it's certainly grossly simplified. But it gets the gist across.

I'd say the Sinaloa Cartel is doing a pretty good job of "regulating" the drug economy in Mexico.

...same as ripple of opencoin !

watch out!

Uhm. No. There, you're wrong. Somalia is post-state, and if it's a bad place to live, that's mostly because of how awful the State was before it collapsed. They have a functioning polycentric law system, which pre-existed the state, and picked up right where the state left off when it collapsed, and life has greatly improved since the collapse of the State.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeer

If I'd have a monopoly and any of the above would happen, I'd just buy them up and have all of that annoying 'competition' over with it. Either that or I'd buy up their suppliers.

This actually happens all the time.


You have just explained why infighting would not be a rational thing to do if you'd have a cartel. If you believe that you are able to figure this out a priori, but those who'd own a cartel would not, that strikes me as very naive.



That is what I said.



It does get the gist across. You don't seem to properly understand scarcity. You can't just make up a new street corner and have a happy end. What if all the corners are taken? Like they probably would be in real life?

Also, what if the dude with the two strong henchman decides that he'd rather not have a competitor across the street at all, and tells you to fuck of?



Right, so you agree that somebody will use force to establish power even in the absence of a state then? In that case we agree.

That is why I prefer a state over the alternative.

People still go to BP.


I would say so, yes. Ignoring the drug-cartel example I can't think of any way to prove this in any way, so I'll just say it's my opinion, for now. Maybe I can come up with something better if I think a bit more about it. (Or maybe I'll find that I'm wrong.) But for now, I'm gonna go ahead and say that it is probably much cheaper.


What's the point of having a contract if there is no state? (Or: what is the point of having a state if it can't enforce it's law?)


Oh? Sorry, that's what I thought. My bad, I guess.


I think it's both. The regulation made them rich enough to defy the state, resulting in a failure of the state (absence of state power and thus regulation), leading to cartels. 

Buying up competition just provides incentive for new competition to spring up... specifically to be bought out. Rinse, repeat.
Could you do me a favor and explain exactly how my explanation of why infighting ("stealing" customers) is the rational thing to do is an explanation of why it's not?

That's not in the least what you said.

You're telling the capitalist he doesn't understand scarcity? You must have access to the good shit. I told you it was a simplified example. If you don't like that, look up arbitration on the Googles.

People will certainly try. If not prevented, they may even succeed. And set up another State. Which is why I prefer AnCap over the alternative.

Also, legal remedies are typically only taken when there is an abuse of a monopoly. It's not illegal to have a monopoly, it's illegal to use it in ways that gain you an unfair position that you wouldn't otherwise have. Of course, I agree that problematic monopolies typically only arise due to government interference. But the solution to problems created by government being more government is nothing new.

If I am the only maker of gerbil hearses in the market, I have the monopoly. Legally, that doesn't mean anything needs to be done about it unless I use my monopoly position to lock out new entrants or to destroy competitors to my small-mammal-vehicle tire division.

Is it cheaper after 33% of your workers are shot dead and one of your buildings is burned to the ground? Not to mention risk to yourself. Wars are expensive. Sensible people try to avoid them.

This is where the types of monopolies start to make things complex. Sort of like the "capitalism" confusion, the various meanings attached to the word cause this sort of confusion. A natural monopoly is not prevented, nor specifically allowed for, in any law.
A coercive monopoly, on the other hand, is explicitly outlawed, unless you have specific permission and charter from the big coercive monopoly itself. And like I said, you can't call it a monopoly, you have to say "government contract"

Ok, instead of replying and rebutting everything that was said, let me try to explain this as simple as I can.

1) Take a finite resource. A scarce resource. For this example, I will use corn fields. I could have also gone with oil(fields) or some type of metal or farmland in general or street corners or anything else that is finite. But I'll go with corn fields for this example.

2) In order to keep this simple, let's say that the entire planet holds a maximum of 1000 equally sized corn fields, all of them owned by individual farmers. These farmers are competing with each other in order to sell their corn.

3) At some point, a couple of things will happen.

Some farmers will realize that cooperating with their neighbors gives them an advantage over all other farmers. They can - for instance - share tractors and other equipment, hence lowering the production cost per square mile. This will enable them to sell their product cheaper than the competition can. Hence, they decide to merge their farms/corn fields.

Other farmers will probably innovate in some other way. This will enable them to lower production costs, which will help them out-compete their neighbors. At some point, the neighbors just can't compete anymore, and they will go out of business. The innovating farmers will have made a lot of money though, so if they're smart - and they are - they will buy up their neighbor's land.

Either way, after a while, every farm will have to merge in order to remain able to compete with all the others. Hence, after a while, the initial 1000 corn fields will have merged into 500 bigger corn fields.

4) Because scaling up will always enable the farmers to out-compete the competition, step three will repeat itself over and over again. Until, at some point, there will be only a handful of huge multinationals holding all of the corn fields in the world.

This is not necessarily a problem yet, I think, but...

5) At this point, the multinationals would be foolish to compete against each other. People need corn, so they could just collude and ask whatever they please instead. They could fix the prices into oblivion, and there would be nothing anyone could do about that. Nobody can start a new farm to undercut the prices, provide better service, or innovate in any way, because all of the corn fields are already taken.

The multinationals could even merge into one even bigger multinational, but like I said,  it doesn't really matter at this point. Monopoly or cartel; same difference.

Now, you could argue: "People could switch to grain, hence there would still be competition between the corn multinational(s) and the grain multinational(s)." That would obviously be a false argument, because the corn multinational(s) and the grain multinational(s) could collude with each other just as well, or even merge to form an even bigger bigger multinational.

Bottomline: when scarcity is an issue, an unregulated free market will inevitably lead to a lack of competition, and thus price fixing.

I see this fallacy all the time. People see economies of scale, and because they increase efficiency to a point, assume that they continue to increase efficiency indefinitely. The natural result of that train of thought is that economies of scale, left alone, will result in monopolies for everything. Yet, we don't see evidence for this in the real world. Standard Oil, the poster child for this kind of thinking, had, at it's peak, only 88% of the refining market. By the time the regulation came through, they were down to 61%. How to explain this?

Well, the simple answer is that this line of thought is wrong. A slightly more detailed answer would be:


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Economies_of_scale.PNG/330px-Economies_of_scale.PNG

Very few things result in this natural monopoly, because the markets are so large. Notice, as well, that the curve turns up at some point. This is due to diseconomies of scale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale). The market doesn't need your regulations. It's self-regulating.

I don't know whether this is true, since you didn't provide any source, but even if it is - and it might very well be - I don't think this example says anything. People are still discovering new oil today, so the market was not saturated yet, like it was in my corn fields example. I'm guessing this was the case in your example. Somebody just found new oil. At one point the market would be saturated though.

And even if this was not the case, a monopoly or cartel might have still been the end result. It wasn't exactly the end of history, was it? Bitcoin dropped 10% today. Given your flawless logic I assume you've sold all of it, and are not gonna buy back in, right? Surely the trend could never reverse again.

Also, it's astonishing how the biggest corporations on planet earth seem to have no problems with these economies of scale you are mentioning, isn't it? Even though that flawless theory is based on such elaborate research:

• Kelly Essentials, DIT Publishing, Perth 1999
• Blodget, Henry (2002-01-02). "excerpt". The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual. Atlas Books / Slate. Retrieved 2002-01-03.
• Wherry, Rob (2006-09-27). "The Harder They Fall". SmartMoney.

I'm sorry about the sarcasm, but you're argumentation is a joke. You cherry pick your sources with the sole intention of reaffirming your own preconceptions, and are not really interested in any other point of view except for debunking it (and doing a bad job at doing so). And the worst part is that you have a very supercilious way of doing it.

You didn't read, did you? They didn't have 88% of the drilling. they had 88% of refining. That means the people who found new oil came to them to refine it. (I misremembered, btw, it was actually 64%, not 61% when the regulation came through.)
As for the source, here you go: http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
You can track down the references yourself, if you have a mind to.

Uh... what? I take this to mean that you assume that they could have gone from 64% back up to 88% or more?

Well, they have government to regulate their industry, and keep competition from horning in on their business (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture), don't they? They still suffer from diseconomies of scale, but with the competition kept out of the market, their inefficiency doesn't limit their size. If not for the regulations raising the barriers to entry, they could never expand beyond their "ideal" size.

Your personal incredulity of the science of economics does not mean that I am failing to debunk your fallacies, or even doing a poor job of it. It just indicates that you are unwilling to examine any other point of view.

This right here is the crux of the problem with many regulations.  Some regulations do not create this issue though.

Yes, that is what I meant.


This is your assumption, and I disagree because I have yet to see solid proof of this hypothesis.

Edit: wait, sorry, I'm not 100% sure whether I'm understanding you correctly. How are any of these (https://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue) corporations not suffering from diseconomies of scale exactly? Or are you suggesting that they are?


Economy is a social science, not an exact science, like many people seem to think. And since it is a social science, you should wonder whether we should call it 'science' at all. The father of modern science (=scientific method) will explain to you why this is the case, if you really care: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper#Philosophy_of_science.

As opposed to a growing number of scholars, I don't think economic 'science' is totally useless myself. But you need to apply it in a very different way than you do exact sciences. If you drop a ball in an enclosed environment, you will be able to measure the velocity it falls with, how long it will take to hit the ground, etc. Do it again, and the outcome will be exactly the same. This is one of the main reasons the result will be scientific.

However, if you start a business, or fuel the economy of a country in some way, or anything like this, and it turns out to be a succes, that does not mean you can just do it again. There are way to many factors involved to be able to point out what caused the succes with certainty. Maybe it was a specific aspect of the policy. Maybe it was some other aspect of the policy. Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was dumb luck. You can not know this for sure, and you can not repeat the experiment since the conditions will not be exactly the same.

The usefulness of social sciences (including economics) lies in the discussion itself. Someone will pose a hypothesis, and that hypothesis should be studied. On what basis did he/she draw these conclusions? What other possible causes may have influenced the result? Etc. On basis of this discussion, everybody should make up their own mind. Nobody can prove anything in any scientific way, however.

I am willing to examine an other point of view. I have just done so yesterday, although I must admit I have not put hours and hours in it because it seems to be a waste of time. This is because your point of view seems extremely one sided; your argumentation is weak and relies on a handful of very shaky sources and cherry-picked data.

This is a problem. Assertions become adopted because they support a desired action and become accepted fact. Then even when better, more descriptive theories come along, the old ideas are impossible to budge. In the case of real science, look how quickly the luminous aether, Newtonion mechanics and other outdated models were replaced (even in the face of strong opposition often). For comparison, Keynesianism is stubbornly holding on in the face of almost overwhelming circumstantial evidence of its abysmal failure. 

So through my Bitcoin inspired education I would like to add / amended your statement.
Keynesianism died in 1971 with the abolishing of the gold standard, Neo-Keynesian economics died with the Monetarists during the Reagan and Thatcher revolution.  It is during this revolution that Hayek's, Austria free market ideals are perverted by  Milton Friedman who leads the creation of the Monetarism model we have today.

In my view the very worst of the negative side effects of central planning materializing the very worse possible outcome of the free market serving the needs of humanity.

The result is a separation of a sustainable system into to mutually apposed conflicting systems. Ecosystem and Economic system.

"The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein

Alpaca John, if I were to Critique as objectivity as possible the outcomes of modern economic theory coming out of the dark ages it would be:

Experiments:
Capitalism born out of Feudalism (the principal of free market provides greatest benefits)
Capitalism failed to deliver (catalyzed by resorting to force in WWI)
Socialism was born (catalyzed by the end of WWII )
Communism born alongside Socialism. (Abandoning free market)
Communism failed (lack of free market benefits)

We have tested combinations of socialism and all hybrids variations are about to fail.

Yet critics blame Capitalism (free market principles) as the problem while objectivity it is the the glue in every  marginally successful system tested.

They look at the exploitation of human and natural capital that happened during the industrial revolution and blame human nature.  When in fact the issue is a combination of memes not human nature. The most perverse being the concept of property rights, being a human right.

Well, they could, but if you look at what caused them to lose that market share, you'll see that it's not very likely that they would. Every time Standard Oil failed to capitalize on new technology, a competitor did, and so snagged a little bit more of their market share. The large company was simply too inflexible, and couldn't keep up with the more "nimble" smaller competitors. Then you have to look at what got them the 88% in the first place. They competed on quality (thus the name, even, selected because it indicate that their oil was all standardized, and of the same quality), before Standard, heating oil was basically a crapshoot. the refining was shoddy, and the quality of the product highly variable. There were fires, even explosions, resulting from varying, and thus unpredictable, quality of oil. Standard fixed that, and then all the other companies (the 12%) met their quality standards, and the competitive advantage that Standard had was gone. Then they had to compete on price. In fact, refined oil prices "fell from over 30 cents per gallon in 1869, to 10 cents in 1874, to 8 cents in 1885, and to 5.9 cents in 1897." So you can hardly say it was bad for the consumer.


They are (well, at east some of them are), in that their per-unit cost of production is higher than it absolutely needs to be. In a free market, a competitor could take advantage of that, and snag some of their market share from them. The bigger company would then be forced to "trim the fat," and get costs down. You can visualize this by looking at the graph I posted, and imagining that the bottom axis is "% of market served." If a company pushes past the bottom of that curve, in an attempt to serve more of the market, that opens up an opportunity for a competitor (Imagine a line coming in from the other side of the graph) to undercut them and make a profit, pushing them back to the bottom of the curve. Now, CEOs know this, and they also know that if they can secure 100% of the market, it doesn't matter what their costs are, because they can charge whatever they want. But as the graph shows, at 100% of the market, the cost would be very nearly prohibitive, so the only way they can keep a competitor from undercutting them is to prevent the competitor from competing in the first place. (Again, this is somewhat simplified, in the real world, that curve changes drastically for production of each item, changing shape, and moving around, and for some, the bottom of the curve does lie at 100%.)

As for proof of this, you need only look at Amazon. Until recently, they have been vehemently against making internet sellers collect sales tax on the items they sell. They are forced to collect taxes on items they sell in states where they have physical presence, however, and so as they move into more states to supply their same-day-delivery service, their per-unit cost is rising due to tax. A competitor could take advantage of that, by servicing same-day delivery to states that Amazon hasn't reached yet, and only having to collect taxes on those few states, thus keeping their costs low. So to prevent that, they now have switched sides. The marginal cost of collecting all the taxes, not just the ones in states where they have physical presence is minor, now, compared to what they already pay. But, by forcing that smaller competitor to collect all those other taxes, and thus suffer the same costs as they do, they can keep the competitor out of their hair. The marginal cost for the competitor of these new regulations is much higher than that of Amazon, possibly removing the ability of the smaller company to compete at all.

It doesn't get more textbook than that.

Meteorology is a science, and the system that it models is chaotic, and hard to predict. The weather man is never 100% correct. Does this mean that meteorology is not a science, or that it is merely an inexact one?

You judge a model in an inexact science, such as meteorology or economics by how well it predicts the behavior of the system it models. And Austrian economics has been vindicated time and again by correctly predicting market behavior. Keynesian economics, on the other hand, fails miserably. So, which model do you think we should adopt?

"If goods don t cross borders, armies will." - Frédéric Bastiat

Property rights are required for capitalism to function. How can someone agree to trade something that isn't his?

I am not sure I understanding you correctly?
I agree that is the crux of the matter, however I don't understand your qualifier "Some regulations do not create this issue"
I question your assumption and would say that regulating the money supply and creating inflation, and providing solvency stimulus to keep inefficient oversized corporations viable is prissily the issue created by regulation of the money supply.

(just a meme not fact).
This is the Dogma that gave Keynes advantage over Hayek, they were debating apples and oranges. Mises, so elegantly discounted every economic mathematical model proposed for the same reason.

Human Preference is a social science, and Human Preference is key to understanding at what point, to use previous examples, people stop buying corn and start buying grain, and at what point they substitute grain with sorghum, and when do consumers give that up and consume seaweed, - this is why  monopolies are hard to maintain.

How individuals determine value is irrational, (this is as true of 2 year olds as it is of stamp collectors or a gold bug), it is largely circumstantial time and need dependant)  given this as a fact any economic calculation that involved a fixed value (defined by consumer demand) should be considered a stoical science.   (Scientific models are rejected wrongly because opponents add Human Preference to make their argument.)  

Mathematic principles derived from the laws of nature can be defined and are therefore considered science.  Take meteorology for eg.  The principle of air moving from a high pressure to a low pressure is science. There are so many factors like the surface area on all the leaves on the trees the wind moves past, and given that will affect the speed at which the air will travel are not understood this  does not negate the scientific principal. (Given just this one unknown an accurate predictions will always be wrong); and depending on the time, place and circumstances the measurements are taken one may even get the direction of the wind wrong - but the scientific facts the direction of air flow will move from a high to low pressure will always be correct. Likewise It is in this scientific fundamental market principle that supply and demand determine the direction of price, it's just we can't measure it accurately because of human preference, but like meteorology, we know the science behind high and low pressures is sound, we can know the principals behind supply and demand are equally sound.  

source: http://mises.org/econcalc.asp

its intended to critique socialism but its actually literally the exact same phenomena at work that prevents companies from growing too large.

I agree that monopolies are not good, and I agree that when you have one you can institute price controls and understand that is the source of your concern. 

I would like to challenge your assumption that the free market is the cause of monopoly. I would like you to consider the definition of monopoly, in relation to the state, any state not just the US, Germany or otherwise. 
By lobbying government and affecting the law, you can create a monopoly, Fiat, being the most obvious and bank's who own the institution that controls it being somewhat central to this discussion.  But other monopolies exist that are granted by the state; Intellectual Property by its definition takes an ethereal idea and through law creates a physical monopoly. Many believe this monopoly is necessary and is the sole drive behind innovation (just a meme not fact). 

Another monopoly is Land. The state by granting property rights of land to one farmer, is denying another labour the right to farm the land (state sanctioned unemployment). Almost everyone argues this monopoly is the sole driving force behind the fee market (just a meme not fact).

I would also like to challenge you objection to the use of violence, it is and should always be a measure of last resort, it shouldn't be illegal, just avoided at almost any cost. When you attempt to eradicate Direct Violence through Law it materialises as Structural Violence in society. Almost everyone believes violence is wrong, but we give power to a state to uses force (resulting in violence) to prevent violence. (just a meme not fact) yet People overlook the irony, as they believe it is a means to an end.
as Richy_T couldn't put it more bluntly, I would add you don't need to be sensible to want to avoid it. All lesser competing mammals, reptiles, and insects know the limit when mounting a challenge of finite recourses, be it a mate, or territory in the wild. They know how far to push and when to stop before you need to prevent a compromising injury (a war).

To the point of Drug violence, and the profitable street corner, innovation has created a better system, a virtual street corner (Silk Road) where everyone competes on equal footing, the result is the consumer gets better service and more competitive pricing. The trend is free market solves problems most effectively.   




Corporation and healthy competition is what happens in a free market.

I question you resulting prediction. While I agree business may have the objective to achieve a monopoly, and reduce the farmers to slaves, the free market does not give them a mechanism to achieve that goal, as illustrated with the Silk Road example or consumers changing their eating habits Corn - Wheat. 

I share your concern though. As prises are sticky, corporations who have influence with the central banks can manipulate the money supply and force a boom bust business cycle, and the corporations can snap up the valuable properly during the peak insolvencies, as has been happening since the early 1900. 

I would say "scarcity" is a function of demand, not supply the value is created by what the demand side is willing to do to obtain what is scarce. If the Demand is grossly asymmetric and incurable then you need to address how the monopoly is allowed to exist.

I agree with everything myrkul has to say as to why monopolies are not practical to maintain, and would disappear when one eradicate government . where I agree with Alpaca John is, if you can get a monopoly, you can affect controlee and price manipulation, and where I disagree with Alpaca John is I don't believe it is possible to ever regulate or prevent monopolies through State control, ultimately someone convinces someone that a monopoly would be good for the people, and when it becomes law the working class suffer.   

As I see it:
Alpaca John: is using the scientific method to prove that a monopoly is likely attainable through the use of capital, (proposed a solution - regulation is needed).   
Myrkul: is proving a monopoly is highly unlikely due to Human Preference, ( solution - markets self regulate)

Adrian-X:  both are correct - Alpaca John solution is wrong; Myrkul: solution is correct but insufficient.   (Solution the property, given by God or the gods, or the big bang, [land air and water] is redefined in a new meme as something other than a commodity)

This is interesting. Now, which meme would you prefer replaces "Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, therefore, space, being scarce, must be allocated, and the fairest means of allocating space is that the first occupier has a better claim than all subsequent claimants, and this claim can only be transferred voluntarily," ie, private property, homestead principle, and voluntary sale?

And, given that the current understanding of voluntary trade is founded on that meme, how would you structure an economy based on your meme?

Having lived in third world country and seen what corruption looks like, this discussion while enlightening, misses a very visceral component.  The poor people involved in these situations have very little in the way of improving their station.  Even with this blatant inequality government is still a necessity.

Also, it was stated that lower mammals, insects, lizards, etc. know how to establish a balance naturally.  That isn't exactly true.  There is natural order to things including a food chain.  These animals are kept in check by natural predators.  If left unchecked they will cause an imbalance in the ecosystem and the correction will be severe. 

The state has had to bust up monopolies before.  ATT owned all of the infrastructure that our telecommunications traffic traversed in the United States.  If the government had not stepped in and broken them up there would have been no incentive for them to do so and how could anyone enter the market after that?  Of course they had a "government contract" after WWII to provide POTS to everyone in the country but that's only because they were already covering 95% of it.

I would argue you we don't need Capitalism, we need something new something better, we need a hybrid of individualism, Laissez-faire markets, and to address Marx's (and Alpaca John's and my) concerns with Property. IE: effectively he who has a monopoly on the land rights controls the labour.

Pure Capitalism has failed with the pre WWI power States dividing up all the Land in the world.

The resulting "Victors" of WWI failed to create a Global economy with symmetrical trade benefits based on productivity, John Maynard Keynes saw the global inequality and resulting conflicts and predicted WWII would be a result. Keynes economic insight saw him alienated after WWI, he worked on a solution independently, and by chance WWII was largely driven by his economic predictions, he was the Man with the solution to the problem after WWII.  

The resulting compromise of the 2 World Wars was more diversity and individual State interests (& the UN), in effect free market among states, and socialism to manage the markets within the State.

WWI was a power struggle to control recourses, WWII was a power struggle to control trade, It looks like we are in a currency war now, and the net result looks like the players in the game are new with the goal to collapse nations and implement a new centrally controlled Fiat Currency as a global reserve and have control over trade and recourses, only this time the forses are not just States but the Multinationals Alpaca John is concerned about, the market brand monopolies who control recourses, and WTO trade policies. They know no Boarders; they get there power from their proximity to the big central banks and new money pre inflation or trade imbalances and in imbalances in legislation in different regions.  


I think you are confusing the cause, I don't see free market as the problem, I see the " biggest corporations on planet", as having leveraged the economic system to their advantage, using existing Monetarist policy and resulting fanatical instruments.

This is a result of a prevention of Laissez-faire Markets controlled by a Central Bank.
In effect we are seeing the best feature of capitalism hybridised with the worst feature of Marxism A controlled Central Bank.  

In short people who have new ideas often just stop having old ideas.
 
In effect we need to mimic the systems we see come from out of Nature, taking the most effective free market ideals and hybridise them with insights and understanding of Marx's concern with how property is owned.
  

So... you're saying that the State is the "natural predator" of the businessman?

Um. That wasn't pure capitalism. That was (at best) State capitalism. But I feel we might be falling down the definition hole here. Pure capitalism is simply this: Private ownership of the means of production (land, money, machinery, etc), and competition of producers in a free market for profit. For a society to be called "pure capitalism" that principle must be applied to all industries, including defense and justice, two industries which the State traditionally monopolizes in the name of the public. Thus, in order for "pure capitalism" to exist, there must not be a State. And it is precisely this monopoly which caused the failure of the markets built around it.

Almost 70 years before WWI, Gustave de Molinari outlined the conditions which inevitably caused it:

I am not sure how to do it effectively, but I believe there is a problem in your proposed solution and I believe a new and alternate and better solution is possible. 

I'd like to test your assumption (A) on which voluntary trade is founded, I believe we were trading stone tools well before we had developed the property meme. In fact access to the rocks weren't restricted i.e. the quarry was free for all, no individual lay clame to the property; the value came from doing the work, and the resulting benefits of the division of labour that perpetuated the practice of specialisation and trade.

(B) is a fact not a choice.
(C) your proposed solution is an existing meme and it has opposition in some schools of thought. On first glance it looks fair if space is not a finite resource, and individuals need X space.

How would you propose solving the problem if space was finite, and the occupiers of the space increased exponentially?

I dont have a good one, - culling is one, innovating to multiply the space is another. The optimal solution is probably a market driven solution, however, it creates a monopolistic relationship where the growing number of occupants are subject to supply and demand, there innovation finds a solution, but the first occupier, doesn't need to innovate as he has self proclaimed monopoly.  i.e. the first occupier took something that belonged to everyone and by taking it away from everyone made it his.

My referents was to mammals, insects, lizards, etc. of the same species, interacting not how they interact across species in the ecosystem. Eg. Young male lions will leave the pride before they are injured by the dominant male.  And a challenger to the dominant male primate, will back down before being injured.       

I agree Adam Smith's Capitalism has never evolved linearly, but I think the path of colective evolution inevitably leads to the same place.

I see America as slightly different, in that it was a reaction from the collectivism (existing State structures) and in its self, a new structure founded on Individualism. It proved to be more resilient and efficient and effective than the existing colonial State structures at the time. (Ultimately evolving into the exact structure early pioneers originally sort to escape)

I think there are memes that drive the natural evolution of Collectivism and ultimately the State. I suppose that if we change the meme at the core we can evolve to a state of cooperative Individualism.

OK, here's how it works: You start with physical reality:

Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and space (at least, usable space) is finite. Likewise, two people cannot make use of the same space (land) at the same time, and there's only so much land on any one planet.

Then, you move on to the logical conclusion from that physical reality:

Therefore, space, being scarce (finite), must be allocated.

Now, we move on to a statement of preference, based on that logical conclusion:

The fairest means of allocating space is that the first occupier has a better claim than all subsequent claimants, and this claim can only be transferred voluntarily.

As Stephan Kinsella points out in "Against Intellectual Property":

Now, I'm open to alternatives, if you can present a resource allocation strategy that is demonstrably fair, non-arbitrary, and prevents conflict over scarce resources such as land.

Two problems though. First, most of the land available was not acquired on a "first occupier" basis. Secondly, and this is a problem (arguably) with both systems is that land can be over-claimed causing those who must make use of the land bound into serfdom to those who "own" the land. A third potential conflict is with those who have no need or want to "own" land but only to make use of it on an occasional basis (nomads, cattle drivers etc).

As a libertarian, I have difficulty reconciling this. Personal property, no problem. But real property and "intellectual property" are much more thorny issues and it harms the discussion that people tend to knee-jerk their responses (even those whose arguments I usually otherwise admire). I think the system we have at the moment is probably "good enough" but in a purely intellectual consideration, I assert that it's "not easy" to answer.

You're right, that is a problem.
Certainly none of the currently government-controlled lands were gained justly.
But is it a problem we can do anything about? In some cases, yes, in most cases, no. So the fairest thing we can do is to, in those cases where we cannot determine a rightful owner, simply call it a blank slate. Government lands go "up for grabs," and everything else is given to the current owner. By and large, everything in the private sector was acquired by voluntary trade, even if the original owner wasn't actually the original owner. What's done is done, and we can't change the past. All we can really do is move forward, and hope to build a fairer future.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you mean the oft-repeated criticism of the absent landlord, that's not really the problem you make it out to be. You can buy land from a landlord.

That's less of a problem in modern society, but there's no reason that a nomadic tribe couldn't claim their entire range, and a first-occupier rule would cover that. Just because you're not in all the rooms of your house all the time doesn't mean the rooms you're not in are not part of your house.

yes it is

You can. In the case that the landlord is willing to sell. If he can keep you subdued and funding his lavish lifestyle by not selling and requiring tribute from you for working "his" land, even, perhaps to the degree that it is hard to save to move elsewhere or if that is not an option for other reasons, then there is an issue. This was more of an actual problem in feudal times but there are aspects in the  current situation.

It comes down to a liberty thing really. If I come across land lying fallow and I could farm it to feed myself, by what logic is this disallowed? Because it is some corner of your 10,000 acre estate, portioned out by a king a millenia ago?

Part of the issue is that the population is not a static thing, people are born and die. It complicates allocation of limited natural resources. Particularly when those resources are not being limited by nature.


That wouldn't fly for more than a couple of days. Nomads can range for hundreds of miles and might not return to a place for years. (titular) Wars were fought in the US over such things. I'm not saying I have an answer though, I think there's just more subtlety needed than the "winner takes all" model and this is reflected in current laws to some degree (right of way etc)

Here is an interesting read:
http://www.minds.com/blog/view/46206/who-owns-the-federal-reserve

It doesn't matter if FED is privately owned or publicly owned, it's the way they create money problematic

In principle, anyone who is trustworthy and own some valuable things can create money. If you have lots of gold, you can issue money (backed by gold), if you have several house, you can also issue money (backed by assets). People can use those money to exchange things, because it has value, anyone can come to you to redeem gold or house, it is perfectly working

In such case, you can spend the money created by you but you must keep corresponding assets as mortgage. If you spend the underlying assets (gold or house), your money might worth nothing if someone come to you to redeem those assets

But the problem with central banks' money creation is: They don't have any asset back the money they created

For example, FED is creating 80 billion dollar a month to buy government bond and MBS, when they create those 80 billion dollar, these money are backed by nothing. But after they purchased government bond and MBS with these money, they have some corresponding items in the FED's balance sheet: The government bonds and MBS are FED's asset and those newly created money are FED's liability

This is quite absurd. Imagine that anyone doing this: He created money by copying and use those money to buy several hundred houses. And his balance sheet record those money as his liability and record those houses as his asset. Although he has good accounting discipline, but that still counterfeiting, in any kind of law in any country, this is illegal. Why it becomes legal when central banks are doing this?

Ok, even central banks get the permission to do this through some complicated political work, it still created some problem: Now everyone in society will become very dependant on their relationship with central banks. The closer you get to those big money printed out from central banks, the better you are. This will create a twisted structure of the society that most of the rich people are banking/financial related workers who actually contribute very little to the production of real goods/services

The problem is the monopoly authority given to them to create money .... without competition, and backing of legal thuggery to coerce and compel sole use of their shit monetary product, the opportunities for racketeering are boundless, as witnessed.

People are ignorant, as long as they get money, they don't care. If you have the right to print money, you could eventually bribe anyone (with printed money)