Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:57:04 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Vadim Antonov <avg () kotovnik com> Date: September 22, 2008 4:27:41 PM EDT To: Frode Hegland <frode () hyperwords net>Cc: Russ Nelson <nelson () crynwr com>, Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, Ole Hegland <ole () hegland com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland Mmmm... I notice that people who like socialist (and semi-socialist) countries are those who didn't actually try to live there. Reminds me of these Americans which were traveling to Stalinist USSR and returned to write glowing reports about people's paradise. No beggars... did you check what they do with beggars? Good old USSRdidn't have much in a way of beggars too. These poor souls were caught by police and jailed for the crime of "vagrancy". Singapore does have world's most steep offences for petty crime (you can get caned there for something which would net some community serivce in US, as some Americans discovered
- and there's death penalty for _posession_ of drugs; in fact this nice country executes even more people per capita than US). Oh, and their government routinely lies about how many people they hang.The drug law also helps stability of political life there... as dissenters are often found to be in posession of things which they didn't have before
the arrest (this is a favorite of Moscow police, too). And, by the way, they do have mandatory military service. So if you happen to be born a male there you're out of luck - two most productive years of your life are stolen. (I do have first-hand experience of how *that* looks like - little different from prison, with abuse being doled daily from the top down). Life expectancy... well, if you look at the table, you'll notice that in modern developed countries life expectancy correlates with diet (fishinstead of meat and less bread), sun exposure, and less time spent driving a car (i.e. higher population density and/or smaller size of polity - and,
well, higher real cost of cars). It also helps to have Asian genes.Guess which state in US has the (by far) highest life expectancy - despite
not having stellar medicine insitutions and relatively poor population?As for Norway and its social programs... how does one spell "oil"? I think
Russ has better knowledge of what life really looks like there, so I wouldn't presume to comment on that. Regards, --vadim On Tue, 23 Sep 2008, Frode Hegland wrote:
I happen to be in Singapore as I write this. Politically, not such a free country maybe. Business has pretty great freedom here but one of the largest corporations in the land is government owned (Temasek). But you know what? I don't see any beggars - as I do in every large American city I have visited. The quality of life is fantastic, the food is wonderful, the people friendly, hardly any crime. Health care is 'socialized' here. A great blog post which you can confirm or criticize pice by piece if you want is this one, which I found through a simple search and it nicely summaries what I already know: "It's hard to imagine a country that could provide a more valuable example than Singapore. The Southeast Asian city-state is widely regarded as a health care superstar, especially when compared to the United States. Life expectancy at birth in the U.S. is 78 years; in Singapore, it's 82 years. The Singaporean infant mortality rate is a mere 2.3 deaths per 1,000 live births, versus 6.4 in the U.S. As some have noted, these trends persist despite the fact that the U.S. has far more caregivers: 2.6 physicians per 1,000 people, compared with 1.4 physicians in Singapore. The United States has 9.4 nurses per1,000 people; Singapore, just 4.2. Last≈but certainly not least≈is theissue of spending: the U.S. spends almost 16 percent of its GDP on health care, while Singapore spends a mere 3.7 percent." http://takingnote.tcf.org/2008/07/health-care-in.html http://snipurl.com/3sqw3 Quite similar to how I feel at home in socialist Norway. Personally I don't think that what states control is always all that bad and that the 'free' enterprise is always that great. I say that as an entrepreneur who is not fond of long forms to fill out or high taxes. :-) On 22 Sep 2008, at 15:07, Russ Nelson wrote:Frode Hegland writes:On 19 Sep 2008, at 22:08, Russ Nelson wrote:Frode Hegland writes:How about monopolies? With monopolies there is not much of a market.You decline to name a single monopoly created by free markets. I mustconclude that you agree that all monopolies are created bygovernments. If a government is setting out to create a monopoly, whyshould it create a market? I don't follow your logic here.A counter question is simply you believe in any government legislation on markets at all?Obviously SOME control of markets makes our lives better. The troubleis that governments cannot restrict themselves to only passing those laws. Once you let a government control markets, the political process will create controls which, taken in sum (and you MUST count them all up), make us worse off. There is a reason why so many parts of the U.S. Constitution say "shall make no law" or "shall not be infringed" or "No soldier shall" or "shall not be violated" or "No person shall be held". It is because the government very quickly learns to game the agreement between the people and the government. If you want to have freedom, you must STRICTLY restrict what yourgovernment can do. When people ask the government to do more (such aslegislate to control markets) we must shame them into withdrawing their request. I'm convinced that it's practically impossible to write down an agreement between the people and the government. Certainly thefounders failed. Instead, the people must resist their own governmentat every turn. Keep it small, keep it simple, keep it under control, or it will become your master.Tried to have a non-Starbucks coffee when you are out and about recently? That monopoly (and I am a fan of Starbucks) only has two real competitors: going to a restaurant and staying at home.Dunkin Doughnuts. My friend George prefers their coffee. McDonald's. I was eating there yesterday, and they offered me a FREE vanilla latte.Not quite coffee shops either one though. I can't see myself pluggingin my laptop in a McDonald's when I'm traveling to get some work done.Huh? You can get coffee. You said "tried to have a non-Starbucks coffee" and I said "yeah". Sorry, but the only way to win this point is to move the goal line after I've crossed it.I guess this answers my question above, you seem to think that there should be no legislation at all for markets. This would then follow that if one company screws you over your only recourse is to go to a competitor. Anyway, seems we are a bit apart on this issue but I amnot saying that governments should completely regulate all aspects ofthe market.Unless you can say what parts of the market a government should not regulate, then you are saying that governments could completely regulate all aspects of the market. If you cannot name any one part of the economic planning of fascism you would not tolerate, can you say that you are opposed to fascism at all? My goal here is to get you to realize that unregulation is a slippery slope to prosperity and freedom. Once you start to rule outregulation of one kind because any regulation makes you worse off, youfind out that eliminating other kinds of regulation also makes you better and better off. And where would you be then?? You'd have become a right-wing free-market capitalist, and no good (insert name of your social group here) would be caught dead advocating for free markets! Am I being too unfair? Are you letting social pressure stop you fromexamining your beliefs? Hey, we all do it. None of us enjoys findingout that we can no longer tolerate the beliefs of our social group. Are you a member of a pack (right or wrong), or are you a rational individualist willing to argue for what is right? I'm not going to judge you if you say "pack member", but you should be aware that that is what you're doing. -- --my blog is at http://blog.russnelson.com | Software that needs Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | documentation is software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 | that needs repair. Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog |Frode Hegland The Hyperwords Company 59 Brewer Street, London W1F 9UN, UK +44 121 288 6767 +44 (0) 207 3655 269 www.hyperwords.net richly interactive text Please consider the environment - do not print this e-mail unless absolutely necessary! Also, we recommend that you never use your computer monitor at more than 60% brightness to save electricity (unless you are working in a very bright environment, in which case you should turn down the office lights or draw the blinds on your windows). Please also turn down your heating and put on a sweater or turn down the air conditioning and take off your jacket, as the case may be. Traveling to and from work by public transportation (or walking or cycling depending on distance and circumstance) has been shown to significantly reduce the modern office worker's carbon footprint, as does becoming a vegetarian. Wasting company time by reading this email signature may force the company to hire more people and therefore double the carbon footprint your job should have taken (plus it will make the company generally more uncompetitive and hence more wasteful) so do not read this message.
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- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland, (continued)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 17)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 17)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 17)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 18)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 18)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 18)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 18)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 19)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 22)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 22)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 22)
- Re: Madness: Bailing Out Greed in Wonderland David Farber (Sep 23)