patrick.net

some form of calamity? isn't this whole website devoted to 'some form of calamity' from the operation of the market?

the trouble is that govts are nowadays afraid to intervene meaningfully, and they've forgotten what they are for...

I see the government overcoming collective action problems and tweak around to make things a bit more efficient.

this viewpoint is mainly due to a conditioning effect. and it has nothing much to do with efficiency, it has more to do with social justice outcomes, keeping the voters happy (if they had a brain), etc.

some form of calamity? isn’t this whole website devoted to ’some form of calamity’ from the operation of the market?

Personally, I see the Bubble primarily as a direct result of irresponsible policies of the central banks (who are appointed by and acting on behalf of politicians after all) and federally sponsored (and implicity taxpayer insured) GSEs. Peter P may disagree with me here, but I see the psychological greed/fear feedback loop developing as a (possibly unintended) RESULT of lousy government policies.

the trouble is that govts are nowadays afraid to intervene meaningfully, and they’ve forgotten what they are for…

I disagree. The U.S. government is all TOO eager to jump in an intervene in plenty of areas it has no damned business sticking its nose into --like banning gay marriage, soft drugs, trying to ban abortion, subsidizing inefficient industries, setting arbitrary minimum/maximum prices, invading the privacy of non-criminals, pre-emptively invading a country that hasn't attacked us, etc.

Different Sean,

I know you don't believe this, but there *is* a difference between being FISCALLY conservative and SOCIALLY conservative. Libertarian doesn't necessarily = culture war neo-con.

This gets to the foundation of western property based economy. Easy to get into a slippery slope and start appropriating other forms of property ownership in the name of greater good.

oh well, bad luck. as long as it is demonstrably for the greater good. what we currently have is selfish, unenlightened self-interest.

you have to consider that the entire continent of australia was misappropriated from the native title holders only 200 years ago, only a few generations really, that's 6 million square miles for free. land was then parcelled out to favourites, sweeping land grants given to anyone with a title, whose descendants now have the luxury of selling it off in chunks. Freed convicts and settlers were granted tiny unworkable plots called 'selections' by way of contrast, as the soil was far poorer than European soils with lower yields. not to mention preventing the indigenous people from using the land in traditional ways for hunting and foraging.

similarly, in the US and the New World in general, the entire US was misappropriated from the indigenous peoples 400 years ago, who were ignominiously put onto reservations. now do you feel guilty?

note that the US govt retains 'eminent domain' over all lands, as the highest form of title. your 'freehold title', or 'fee simple' transfer, is only illusory control as the next strongest claim to title. similarly, all lands in oz, UK etc are owned by the Crown.

e.g. the state govt here was recently going to resume land for a $2bn desalination plant to solve the water shortage problem. they eventually shelved the whole project under environmental pressure, but they were quite prepared to do it. my message to the same govt is that if you are prepared to talk tough about land resumption for industry, you should do the same for housing, clearly for the public benefit.

40% of the planet's uranium holdings are in oz. proceeds from the 'wealth of the nation' should be returned to the nation, not to a couple of claim jumping miners. saddam hussein nationalised the oil industry on gaining power in iraq years ago, for the benefit of iraqis. (he nearly went broke waging war on iran with the proceeds, but never mind. using funds this way has to be informed by ethics as well.) presumably chavez is doing the same in venezuela.

Thus, unemployment benefits, some level of pension, healthcare, etc, makes perfect sense and overcome private sector inefficiencies.

well, yes and no. Unemployment benefits, pensions, free schooling, hospitals, roads, etc aren't really about 'inefficiency' under any definition of the word - more about omissions, oversight or couldn't-care-less by the market - i.e. meeting rights of citizenship. e.g. sometimes govt has to mandate that companies provide utility services to rural and remote areas altho that's not very profitable, but guarantees universal access to services at the same cost, sometimes using subsidies - so there is a SLA with the govt... for instance, dubya is trying to 'outsource' welfare to lockheed martin in texas - that is, the govt retains policy control over welfare, but services are delivered by an outsourced arrangement rather than by a 'bloated bureaucracy' (which implies all govt offices are held to be inefficient compared with a lean, mean corporate approach.)

i think the market is generally efficient at delivering goods and services to people that they genuinely want, and 'the invisible hand' works inasmuch as a company producing something no-one wants will go out of business.

anyway, adam smith was an apologist for the prevailing social order and a bit of a wanker...

I see the psychological greed/fear feedback loop developing as a (possibly unintended) RESULT of lousy government policies.

I still can't agree with this. it's as though the govt is expected to be responsible for holding people back and stopping them from exercising unenlightened self-interest and greed, and only by setting the magical interest rates. thousands and thousands of unenlightened micro-economic transactions are leading to a macro-ecomic disaster - as per tulip and dotcom booms - they arguably should have seen this coming, but it's as though they've created market-dominated rules limiting their response and then insisted they can only play by those rules foreverafter regardless of the outcome. it's almost like a giant laissez-faire laboratory experiment to see just how stupid people can be and how dysfunctional things will become - proving that self-interest does not guarantee good results in the community, and ultimately not for the planet vis-a-vis sustainability issues.

if they only have interest rates to play with, and it's important to keep them low to stimulate business post 9/11, then that leads to a housing bubble, so then you raise them top slow the bubble, which hurts business (and new mortgagors on ARMs for that matter), then you have inflation and wage demands, which also hurts business, so you should lower them again, etc etc. one lever is inadequate to 'manage' the whole economy. you need further policy responses by govt at all tiers to contain potential disasters when the market goes haywire.

HARM Says: April 5th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
Different Sean,
I know you don’t believe this, but there *is* a difference between being FISCALLY conservative and SOCIALLY conservative. Libertarian doesn’t necessarily = culture war neo-con.

i'm not sure i even appreciate what all the distinctions really mean.

I personally find all the categories a tad unhelpful and confusing, especially when used loosely. neocon, even in the current sense, can mean different things, e.g. in the context of US foreign policy, neocon tends to mean self-interestedly interventionist with hawkish views, operating unilaterally if necessary, which competes with ideas of liberal internationalism, realism, and non-interventionism. i could argue they are inappropriately insular, nationalistic and 'patriotic' in an unenlightened sense. but they tend to be advocates of larger govt and social spending as necessary.

i could argue very well that libertarians are philosophically the closest thing to a communist in the true sense as defined by Marx et al as you will find - supporting the withering away of the state, etc. - if not that, then an anarchist - so there is some ideological confusion there as well.

i am 'liberal' on a range of social issues, but not libertarian. does that make me socially conservative then? for instance, a 'liberal' may encourage gun control, because they think it's ultimately very harmful to a large society. but they may not mind soft drugs, unless they are independently and unbiasedly proven to do serious material damage to the person. they may dislike the effects of smoking for its costs and suffering. the ideological libertarian says it's ok to smoke and possess firearms. the neocon is ok with owning and bearing arms because it's a kind of socially and culturally cool and conservative thing to do in one particular culture.

this is not even to get into the history of thought on the matter, dating back centuries, and mostly forgotten and unconsidered in the mainstream.

i could then pull in left-right Marxist class theory, tough-minded vs tender-minded psychological theory, kohlberg's hierarchy of ethical development, the ability to take the part of the other, feminist studies and gendered power relations, etc etc. you can have a great old time...

i think it's necessary to formulate a grounded ethical position when dealing with 'being in the world' rather than a logical one, which hopefully then dispenses with the need for categories or rigidity, and can even be used to critique or expose those categories as being perhaps inconsistent, leading to unworkable outcomes or unnecessarily cruel.

this review of Collapse is quite interesting. like Guns and Steel, i might wait for the TV series, heh. i'm still trying to finish The Third Chimpanzee...

http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/02/08/kavanagh-collapse/index.html

the case of Easter Island is a chilling metaphor for the world, particularly if everyone does act in a self-interested and unenlightened way without regard for the wider environment - single-mindedly obssessed with gaining material 'success' to meet their esteem needs and to gain the esteem of others...

I loath Dubya. Hated him even before he was elected to his first term. Knew he would be a horrible president. Watch him fall through my low expectations, adjusted my expections lower, repeat…

hmm, the chimp who smirks - selected, not elected - by rigging the elections in 10 ways...

the Republicans have repeatedly put forward candidates that are an insult to the American people - Reagan, Quayle, Bush Sr, Bush Jr. Questions of election rigging aside, they seem to have worked out the formula that putting up an inarticulate but amiable idiot will win an election by presenting a folksy impression that will hook the voters...and leave the real backroom political maneuverings to the usual bunch of unpleasant sharpies whom no-one likes...

anyone know any good haikus?

I disagree. The U.S. government is all TOO eager to jump in an intervene in plenty of areas it has no damned business sticking its nose into –like banning gay marriage, soft drugs, ...

that's a good point. the Republicans have invaded the bedroom. what is it, god, gays and guns?

interestingly, pollies here are far too diffident to really engage in those issues. australians are either morally indifferent or just tolerant, and a pretty secular culture overall. so there's no god, no guns, that just leaves the gays, and nobody is too fussed there, either...

the big issues here seem to be about industrial relations, mostly...

Actually, Australia is already cutting a deal to export Uranium to China. So I don’t think democracy is much of a concern anyway.

PS

cool. we're going to sell uranium to china and india and all the other NPT signatories... actually, india hasn't even signed the NPT, but never mind... as long as they're good payers...

no democracy? no problem... poor democracy rating is no obstacle, as long as you can make the repayments...

testing

Courtesy of "Rainman18"at Ben's blog:

Bubblefucius say:
Man who carry risky loan sure to suffer broken ARM.

And...
Bubblefucius say:
Condo flipping like swift kick in the scrotum. Both painful and you left holding the bag.

And...
Bubblefucius say:
Low-ball offer today look higher tomorrow when you are on knees.

And...
Bubblefucius say:
Housing comps like instant coffee; both good until the last drop.

And...
Bubblefucius say:
Man use stated income to buy two story house; one story before and one after.

Not Haiku or poetry, but here's one of my all-time favorite REIC bullshit filters that resurfaces from time to time:

RE.Agent Says:

This asset bubble is different than all of the others - it will never slow down, or pop. The gains are permanent.

Also not Hailu, but worthy of remembrance:

‹^›_‹(ô¿ô)›_‹^›

(c/o Surfer-X)