Does it have to be one or the other?

unarmedman wrote:You refer to libertarianism as the 'fairy magic dust of the free market', but continue to prop us the boogeyman of the inherently 'dangerous' employer...and the idea that libertarians are just all cool with that.

You haven't seen unimpeded free markets work in this country, because they haven't worked that way in 100 years.

And working conditions, pay rates, employee equity and the general welfare of the working poor were what, better before all this nasty regulation and unionization?

Markets, meh.

Markets only work for a few very specific, very fluid commodities. If you're buying hundreds of tons of sand or feed corn or potassium nitrate, then it doesn't really matter who you buy them from, and market forces will establish the price you pay for them, often standardized to the fraction of a penny from every vendor.

But if you go to the corner store and you need tomatoes, you'll buy the tomatoes if they look good, won't buy them if they look bad, and price variations of, say, 20-50 percent won't make any difference in the number of tomatoes you buy. That the same tomatoes are available a mile away for less will make no difference, because you're standing there in front of them, and they look good enough.

Markets are basically bunk for anything with a perceived value other than a commodity value, including labor. I get paid more than some engineers, less than others, and I'm pretty sure there's no market deciding that. I've set my rates at a level I can survive at, and which doesn't make me feel like a creep. Other engineers try to extract every penny they can from their clients, and they still get work.

Look at water. It's delivered basically free into the homes of nearly everyone, yet people will pay up to $20 a gallon for it if it's bottled for them, and many different brands of chemically identical water each have market shares at different prices. If markets were as infinitely powerful as libertarians imagine, then all those bottled water companies would go broke, or at least charge the same for their identical products.

Libertarians hang everything on the power of markets, but markets are basically bullshit. They only work in certain narrow classes of transactions, and pretending that they are everywhere and omnipotent is ridiculous. Extending the market model to public services and obligations like education, health care, police work, prisons, military support, fire and emergency response, etc. has been an unmitigated disaster, warping public policy and spending to the benefit of the corporations "competing" for the business.

Things needed as support and infrastructure for a whole society which require extensive investment and universal access are best handled by government, otherwise poor people (also poor neighborhoods, cities and states) get very little benefit from them, and everyone ends up paying more than necessary for them to support the unquenchable lust for increased profit.

Just look at incredible waste of the private sector war infrastructure and the insane incarceration rates needed to justify privatized prisons.

Quit appealing to market forces. They are bunk.

Steve, why would places like Hong Kong (which is basically libertarian in nature) be so successful then with almost no market regulations or rules? Why do they have such a high standard of living there? Keep in mind not that long ago, it was a pretty poor place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_kong#Economy

Also, yes, the market does determine what prices you charge for your engineering services.

syntaxfree07 wrote:See if you can find anything on "the cone". The cone is a triangular shaded area with the base stretching out towards land. The cone moved about a hundred miles west on the last day. It encompassed a few hundred miles, anyway.

You're 100% wrong on this one, Syntax.

I lived in the city of New Orleans at the time of Katrina. The computer models had Katrina taking dead aim at New Orleans and the Mississippi coast as early as Friday evening, Aug. 26, more than 50 hours before landfall. The "cone" remained almost stationary during that time. If you pay any attention to computer models, they generally "lock in" on a 100-to-150-mile area of coastline 48 to 72 hours before landfall, and they had done so with Katrina on an area from the New Orleans area to Biloxi/Gulfport. Although still in the "cone," Pensacola was "out of the woods," probablity-wise, long before Sunday night, Aug. 28.

Here's the National Hurricane Center "cones" that you're asking for:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/KA ... hics.shtml

Click on the "stop" button on the left for individual charts.

You can best believe that I was well aware of these forecasts and made sure we got the fuck out of N.O. Saturday morning, two full days ahead of the storm.

The reality, unfortunate or not, is that this Clocker Bob character is right about things some of the time.

chet wrote:Steve, why would places like Hong Kong (which is basically libertarian in nature) be so successful then with almost no market regulations or rules? Why do they have such a high standard of living there? Keep in mind not that long ago, it was a pretty poor place.

It is almost impossible to make the gateway port to a huge economy a poor place, especially when it has pre-existing business, administrative and technical infrastructure surviving from the British period. The explosion of the Chinese economy is what made Hong Kong, not free markets.

Also, yes, the market does determine what prices you charge for your engineering services.

No, I do.

steve wrote:

chet wrote:Also, yes, the market does determine what prices you charge for your engineering services.

No, I do.

You charge what you do to make a living. That's dependent on the cost of living. If prices go up for groceries, and products, in order to cope, I figure you'd have to increase your rate too, right?

Skronk wrote:

steve wrote:

chet wrote:Also, yes, the market does determine what prices you charge for your engineering services.

No, I do.

You charge what you do to make a living. That's dependent on the cost of living. If prices go up for groceries, and products, in order to cope, I figure you'd have to increase your rate too, right?

Yes, but he'd still be making a choice based on economic factors rather than have market factors impose that choice.

Which makes setting a price for a tertiary trade different to buying potatoes or paying your water rates.

Skronk wrote:You charge what you do to make a living. That's dependent on the cost of living. If prices go up for groceries, and products, in order to cope, I figure you'd have to increase your rate too, right?

Or I eat less and spend less on luxuries. My prices are my own business, and I don't give a shit what the "market" says about it. I know for a hard-boiled fact that I am not the only one.

Markets, pffft. They're an intellectual construction with only limited, buffered, usually-ameliorated application to real life.

Ron Paul edged John McCain to finish second behind Mitt Romney in the Nevada Republican Party caucuses today.

I don't feel like reading the fifty-or-so pages since I last looked at this thread to find out, but is anyone here aware than the Aryan Nation has officially endorsed Ron Paul for President? Boy, that speaks volumes for him.

Ron Paul reminds me of Lyndon LaRouche -- a nutjob who may be right about one or two things, but that doesn't compensate for the fact he's dangerously wrong about so much else.