patrick.net

In a capitalist society, you need to have fairness.

How do you define 'fairness"? Same result for everyone or same rules for everyone? Equality of condition, or equality before the law?

The first is socia!ism, the second is classic liberalism (as in 19th C.)

RE: fairness

The world is never fair to losers. Therefore, the only way to be fair is to win.

I define fairness as being the same rules for everyone.

Right now they are completely fucking (1) Homeowners (2) Savers and (3) Taxpayers.

In a "fair" society, the banks would be required to help the people they fucked over, while at the same time be on trial for fraud. The government and Fed would also need to be held accountable for their mismanagement in the form of impeachment.

These moves would improve sentiment, as the people will feel that someone is backing them up. Right now, they feel as they've been kicked and left out in the cold to die.

If this is the type of system we are trying to protect, then fuck it. Let it burn.

It is called Capitalism Without Failure, aka socia!ism for the rich.

Peter:
lol. Yeah, but it's damned hard to win when yesterday's rules were backgammon and today's are poker, and tomorrow's might be Cricket.

Fuzzy: My definition, too. If I can't write insurance policies on whether you are going to blog three times today, rather than five, sell it to somebody else, and collect the cash, pay out a little interest, then declare bankruptcy when you blog the fifth time 'casue I don't have anything backing the policy, but Lehman Brothers can do that (why? well, 'cause they can), it's not fair. In the first instance it's called bookmaking. In the second, a CDS.

But don't confuse fairness with justice. Fairness may be served by letting everybody off the hook equally. Justice would prefer that we hang up the perps by the short hairs. One problem there is that we have a limited supply of short-hair-hangers and the perps (of one degree or another) constitute a quarter of the population.

lol. Yeah, but it’s damned hard to win when yesterday’s rules were backgammon and today’s are poker, and tomorrow’s might be Cricket.

So there are no rules.

RE: fairness

A perfectly fair Society is a Myth ! It can never happen.
For that to happen , all the citizens need to have equal oppurtunity, IQ , capital , background and information. Any imbalance in one of those causes the system to move away from euilibirium. Ex : Imbalances in IQ causes information to be processed differently and thus affects decision making even in a perfect democracy.Some people can make better decisions for themselves .Others can really screw themselves up. IQ is a bell curve and you cannot fix it.The powerful always take advantage of others.This has been true through out our history without exception.
The question is , how much room the system gives them to take advantage ( No regulation , jungle style free markets, communism..etc??)
Forget about a perfectly fair society. Just accept the reality.
Instead, we should strive to make the society as fair as possible.

Exactly. Don't fight inequalities. Join the right side of the inequalities.

So there are no rules.

Oh yeah? Just you try some bookmaking and see how fast you are incarcerated. You would need bail, they would get bailed out.

It is like playing poker when certain opponents get to declare wild cards after they see what cards they drew.

Having no rules does not mean you can do whatever you want. You just need a different mindset.

"Rules" are guidelines for reactions to actions.

Right now they are completely fucking (1) Homeowners (2) Savers and (3) Taxpayers.

Who'd have thought that those three would turn out to be the "bad guys" in need of punishment, thus having thier wealth removed and handed to reprobate like overspenders, corporate looters, and assorted political cronies.

By the way, you are not being "fair." You left "responsible renters" off the list. :p

Fuzzy,

I like PlanB, too. But I think I need to read it a few more times to see if there are any holes in it.

It's always been pretty clear that the crisis will not be over until houses trade at the trendline that represent real historical value and sustainable prices with 20% down required.

I think one big question is whether the scheme will work based on the value of Case-Schiller TODAY. The index can still drop, since prices will take some time to stabilize. I think the biggest challenge for PlanB would be to synchronize all the moving parts of the proposed system, and avoid disruptive speculation and gaming during the process.

Headset, I would include "responsible renters" under the "savers" category.

And of course a perfectly fair society is just an ideological goal, but it should still be strived for. And really, our government isn't even trying anymore.

I still maintain that while they socialized our financial system, rewarded crooks that should be in jail, and fucked over the American public, they forgot the most important wild card of them all. The people need to believe in them. If that trust is lost, the whole thing collapses.

They are on the brink of this now. One more shot to the face for all of us will eradicate all trust.

Now people should fully understand why we have the right to bear arms. It is not for domestic violence incidents, but to overthrow our own government when they stop representing us.

justme, I would propose that some standardized metric be used which can calculate where the bottom would end up being with ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL.

For instance, Stockton right now might already be at it's bottom. San Jose is nowhere near it's bottom.

This shouldn't be that hard to figure out. It would basically be the point at which both the banks and the homeowners feel like they're getting fucked. That would be the sweet spot.

Fuzzy, I think what you are referring to could be called the Pareto-optimal point of homeowner pain versus bank pain. :-)

Know we just need an objective measure of pain.

Know -= Now

Fuzzy,

And of course a perfectly fair society is just an ideological goal, but it should still be strived for. And really, our government isn’t even trying anymore.

Totally agree. Also agree that rules should be the same for all, but just as important is that the rules are sensible and equitable in the first place. Defining what is meant by sensible and equitable is what political life is SUPPOSED to be about, I think.

snmr, IQ is an initial condition of each person in the dynamical system that is the world as we know it. I agree that IQ is not "fair", but neither are mutations. Some aspects of life will always have no rules, I do not think we can do anything about that. Fairness to me is that people get to be the best that they can given their natural abilities.

And of course a perfectly fair society is just an ideological goal, but it should still be strived for. And really, our government isn’t even trying anymore.

Sometimes, striving for an impossible ideological goal does more harm than good.

In my view, the problem now is that they are getting bad or at the very least subpar deals for the tax-paying public. This is a real problem.

We are getting exactly what we deserved for putting those creeps in public office.

All citizens get the government they deserve.

I still think IQ is just another measure developed by underachievers to make themselves feel good.

Fairness to me is that people get to be the best that they can given their natural abilities.

Ever wonder why 'fairness' and 'fairy' share so many consecutive alphabets?

All citizens get the government they deserve.

Are you blaming voters or democracy in general? Or both?

ONE measure of unfairness in a society is wealth disparity.

If there is a sustained bubble in wealth disparity based on historical trends , we know that the society is no longer fair.

In a fair society, wealth bubbles should not exist too long as equal oppurtunity and competition should diffuse it very soon.

Maybe we should have an index (based on historic data) on wealth disparity just like case-schiller housing index, to measure fairness :-)

"Maybe we should have an index (based on historic data) on wealth disparity just like case-schiller housing index, to measure fairness"

That's not a bad idea at all. At least then I would have a reasonable hedge against getting fucked out of my job, house, and savings.

And right now, I'd be long on unfairness for sure.

If there is a sustained bubble in wealth disparity based on historical trends , we know that the society is no longer fair.

All bubbles are unsustainable.

Throughout history, except during a few shocks like communism, wealth disparity tends to widen by itself. This is due to the human hierarchy.

In a fair society, wealth bubbles should not exist too long as equal oppurtunity and competition should diffuse it very soon.

Quite the contrary. Asset bubbles allow certain ordinary people to obtain otherwise unobtainable wealth. So if one wants "fairness" one better pray for more bubbles.

Peter P says :
When Asset bubbles allow certain ordinary people to obtain otherwise unobtainable wealth.So if one wants “fairness” one better pray for more bubbles.

I don't believe its fair when ordinary people can obtain otherwise unobtainable wealth.
I don't think it results in reducing wealth disparity in anyway.
When ordinary people can make money easily due to asset bubbles , think of the powerful and well connected.

When ordinary people can make money easily due to asset bubbles , think of the powerful and well connected.

True enough. This brings us to the question... why would the powerful and well-connected allow a 'fair' world?

Asset bubbles create Zero Sum games where the winners are mostly lazy, undeserving, reckless, corrupt, powerful or well connected.

No wonder, the corrupt and powerful love asset bubbles.

So? What does that mean for us?

Contrary to popular belief, there is no greater force out there to right wrongs. We just have to live with the human tragedy.

Peter P says :

True enough. This brings us to the question… why would the powerful and well-connected allow a ‘fair’ world?

Thats why i mentioned in my previous post that a Perfectly fair society is a myth. There is a constant struggle between corrupt, powerful and well-connected and the rest.

Its now time for the rest to kick some ass. Its way past the pain threshold.

Its now time for the rest to kick some ass. Its way past the pain threshold.

Yep. Let's make the world more unfair for other people. :)

Contrary to popular belief, there is no greater force out there to right wrongs. We just have to live with the human tragedy

No , there is actually a greater force, the evolutionary force.
We have evolved to deal with these kind of problem in jungle by always having some people who have the fairness genes in them.It keeps the species surviving.
We could never have gotten out of the jungle to where we are today, without the good genes countering the evil genes. The bad and good are part of the evolution which keeps the species going.

At the risk of sounding a bit philosophical, i would say that it all boils down to the struggle between evil and good.

I know many folks who have fairness genes in them. They get disturbed by unfairness irrespective of whether it hurts them or not.
I find those guys disproportionately in forums like partick.net :-)

At the risk of sounding a bit philosophical, i would say that it all boils down to the struggle between evil and good.

The struggle is between opposing forces, not necessarily evil and good.

If humanity preoccupied itself with good and evil early on, we would still be living in caves.

OPEC trying to organize Emergency Meeting to cut production.

Can somebody tell them the world doesn't care what they do, OPEC only matters when oil prices are going up.

Can somebody tell them the world doesn’t care what they do, OPEC only matters when oil prices are going up.

But they care what the world does. The last thing they want is demand destruction because of high price.

OPEC trying to organize Emergency Meeting to "cut" production.

Why would they want to raise prices now ?

Do they really want to increase the already existing movement to go to alternative energy ?
My guess is that they have accepted the fact that the alternative energy train has already left and they cannot stop it.
In the meanwhile, milk everybody as much as they can.

They do want excessive inventory either. They are walking a fine line.

In the end, all cartels fail.

All OPEC wants is highest possible value for their oil.

I don't believe they care about alternative energy.

This world has shown very little progress towards alternative energy.

In another 4-5 years we will again be talking about peak oil.

In another 4-5 years we will again be talking about peak oil.

Hopefully. Or else we are in really deep shit.

Just an oily note here. In the mid-80s my wife was in the geology department of a midwestern university and had a prof who had been deeply in the Oil & Gas industry. He maintained that it was the strategic policy of the US to use up other countries' reserves of oil before using our own, and so we would be "the last man standing."

OTOH, the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of rocks. The Petroleum Age will end, OPEC knows it, and has to play for time, 'cause they damn sure haven't been investing in economic alternatives for their countries.

TOB:

Exactly.