Exactly.  Mises talks about this in Human Action.  Also, Engles was a bourgeois and paid Marx a handsome salary to write articles.  This is because Marx refused to do manual labor, he'd rather starve (and came close a couple times).  It's interesting to see how much Marx got paid to write his Communist theories.  His stipends put him in the top 5% or so for income when he lived in Britain and in France.

You mean Sir Tim Berners-Lee?  The MIT professor?  So exactly what makes someone part of the dominant class and what makes them part of the "proletariat"?

It's ironic that you dismiss Mises because his writing simply serves the purpose of the capitalist class, which prevents you from actually reading his logical destruction of Marxian class analysis itself.  Marx was more clever than I give him credit for.  He couldn't attack the ideas of the liberal economists themselves, so he had to attack the very idea of logic itself.  His class analysis says that human logic is different for every class in society and therefore it's pointless to read works by the "capitalist class" because their logic can only serve their needs.  That way proponents of Marxian class analysis never have to actually defend their point of view or read any critiques of it.  It's invalid by the very definition.  Which, by-the-way, shares a trait with most of the fundamental Religions....

This would be like me claiming to have read every government interventionist economics text worth reading and yet not reading Keynes' General Theory. 

Which of his works have you read?

You are talking about spending not investing.  Remember, if we are to believe Keynes: saving = investment.  It's in his little equation thing on page 29 of General Theory.  If you're not a Keynsian, that's fine.  I think most economists would agree with this, even the Austrians.

Creating jobs is very easy to do, any fool with a few trillions of dollars can employ massive amounts of people (I'm not calling Obama a fool).  But where does the money come from?  We're 14 trillion dollars in debt with 61 trillion in unfunded liabilities, how can you seriously think that massive amounts of more spending is going to fix things?  Isn't this what we have been doing for the past few decades?  Or is simply a matter of spending "in the right places"?

What needs to happen is to actually grow the economy.  This won't happen by moving money from one part of the economy to another and assuming that more government spending will magically fix things, but by saving capital so entrepreneurs can have money to start new businesses that will then employ and grow the economy.  We need less consumer debt and more business debt.  

Also, at this point am I to assume you have no idea what "hoarding" means and are just using the word because it creates FUD validating your position?  I'm not trying to be harsh, but I've asked you politely three times to define this term you are using because I am genuinely trying to understand your concern.  If you can't or won't that's your prerogative but at least answer me.

Edit: P.S. If you respond to this I may not get a chance to reply for a few days as I will be out of town.  Don't think it's because I got scared off. 

I have a great amount of respect for people who are willing to go out on a limb and try new things.  I'm sure people thought the open source movement was doomed to failure, but look at Linux!  Also, Cory Doctorrow's take on copyright laws is enlightening and gutsy.  I've never paid for his material but am determined to do so in the future once I am more financially secure as I really like his writing and value it.  Also, I constantly talk him up to my friends because I like his attitude and appreciate his writing.  It will be interesting to see how people like Doctorrow actually fare and if it becomes a trend that catches on.  Probably the only way of actually changing copyright laws (if you disagree with them) is to make them irrelevant. 

I think you are right, and I certainly hope so, but on the other hand the information media are just as adept at spreading misinformation as real information.  It will certainly be interesting to see how the internet shapes politics and society in the next couple decades.  I'm not looking forward to trying to explain to my kids what life was like before the advent of the internet.  Heck, I can barely remember myself.

I've seen this before.  It's pretty good.  Do you read much Mises?

It might be apt here to say:  "No Frodo! Don't wear the ring!"

No, my advice is to invest.  Do you think SPENDING will fix everything?  Are you going to answer the question about how you define hoarding?

- Everything you read on the bitcoin forum is true

The hard part about this, Hawker, is we don't see the negative affects caused by the FDA.  It could be killing many people in horrible ways by being too slow and bureaucratic to release life-saving drugs on the market, but you will not see those deaths.  The deaths that stand out are the ones you see caused by bad drugs and impure food.  Economics is the art of the unseen as much as the seen, which makes it tricky.

Again, please define what you mean by "hoard". How is it different an saving?

Define "hoarding".  Do you simply mean "amass money or valued objects and store away", and is it bad?

You want the FDA to act out of self-less, altruistic motives to fairly and honestly regulate food and drugs.  You want humans to act outside of their nature which is inherently self-interested.  The absence of competing private agencies is because the FDA has a coercive monopoly on food and drug regulation and no (or very little) accountability to the people.  To prevent human greed from being a force for evil there has to be checks and balances.  What is the check and balance to the FDA?  Why is the answer more regulation and more power to government monopolies no matter what the question at hand or the evidence?

Honestly this undermines your whole position.  Private interests are trying to sue companies for fraud but failing because the government has given a monopoly on food and drug regulation to the FDA which isn't adequately handling the situation.  Why is your conclusion that we have to expand the government's power to solve this?  If the FDA isn't adequate why would you want to increase it's power?  Why not break up the government monopoly which caused the problem in the first place?

I understand what you are saying, but on the other hand you are attacking them for their consistency.  Wouldn't you expect a logically consistent ideology to have consistency among its think tanks?


Climate change is the kind of topic I generally avoid because the research is so polarized and the debates endlessly polemic.  However it is probably time I start looking into it.  Perhaps you can refer me to some resources?

I've thought about this but I'm not sure how to get three people on a video chat.  The site I mentioned only does two (I think).  Are you wanting to debate FlipPro?  Who would you choose as a moderator?  Most people on this forum seem to have very strong and polarized views. 

You should be careful about making claims you cannot clearly prove.  Perhaps you are actually bitcoin2cash?  Or maybe I am AyeYo? 

Also, I am fairly new to internet forums, but I've learned that the word "troll" is subjective and almost meaningless.

I haven't had a discussion with bitcoin2cash so I can't speak to all his positions.  I can say I agree with at least some of his points based on reading his discussions with other people.  I tend to disagree with his presentation, but I'm not him.  To each their own.

What I don't understand is people who attack libertarianism on the basis that it ignores reality and analyzes man outside of society.  The libertarian authors I read analyze man in the context of society.  As it should be done.  The significance of libertarianism is that it starts with the individual as the basic component of society and then analyzes the individual in the context of the broader society.