Federal Employee's Donate To Ron Paul More Than Anyother GOP Nominee

YoMama

LOL - Yes an opinion backed up with a lot of detailed criticism of right wing ideas that you, among others, seem unable to address let alone refute.

 

I think you are very vague

 

YoMama

That caused more laughter – but if they are so vague that should make them easy to refute, but instead you have spent the last few pages, evading even having to address them, in fact just calling them ‘vague’ seem like yet more evasion

 

Ron Paul wants to limit the federal government and end the wars. He is the only candidate that I feel supports the constitution and I am sure that most of the people who support him started looking for anyone in government who opposed what was and is going on. He wants to cut spending. We wants to make the too big to fails cry uncle and back off of the people's money.

His platform is very simple end the wars and cut spending. I wish a young physically beautiful person were running that has his same platform that Ron would endorse unfortunately there is not such a candidate. His real problem is not his ideas it is his physical appearance. If Santorum or Bachman were to take Ron's positions they would win instead of focusing on gay marriage how stupid of them. I can't believe that none of the candidates running get this. They are loosing support by being the morals police we are in real serious trouble in our country.

 

YoMama

And yet more evasion

You repeat the same tired stuff over and over but you never actually address any of the criticism of your views.

Just saying Ron is great does not make the criticisms go away it just highlights that you seem unable to address criticism that totally undermine these right wing ideas.

OK YoMama your chance – can you address the criticisms of the ideas? Or will you run away? Or will you evade once more?

 

Wow, okay, let me dig in here-

As for petroleum products, here's a 3 page, more in-depth analysis - http://resources.alibaba.com/article/281176/Oil_Price_History_and_Analysis.htm

I can't view the graphs (maybe it's my browser..?), but the information is fascinating and revealing. Among other things, the author shows that the US price-controls imposed on our own oil production during the rapid increase in OPEC prices during 1973-1974 might have helped in the short run, but did not allow the free market to react to the higher prices by encouraging more efficient use of oil. The very act of imposing artificial prices on the product resulted in the US being behind Europe when it came to better insulation and more fuel-efficient cars. (this is on page 2). There is much more to that article and I could highlight many parts of it but in the interests of time/space, I'll move on to the next point. (yeah rereading this before posting, I kind of failed on the time/space thing, lol, but oh well)

You link to an article that's a blog...that's fine, there are a LOT of blogs that are better than 'real journalism' these days. But the unnamed author does not give any links. (S)He states, "According to a study, the rate at which Europe gets its crude oil supplies is actually lower than the prices at which the USA gets it. What study is this? Where is the link? He doesn't even tell us who made the study, so how can I verify this?

You called me out on my assertion that US intervention into oil prices wasn't as dramatic as European...perhaps so. I'll let that one go, and stipulate that you may be right. However, that is far from the only way the US government encourages and promotes these unhealthy, environmentally unsound practices that use petroleum-based products like they're going out of style.

This article goes into farm subsidies in general, how they are targeted to benefit the largest, wealthiest farms. The article names Tyler Farms as receiving $8.1 million dollars in subsidies...for a farm that has 40,000 acres. Why do the taxpayers need to support this farm?

It's not a bug, it's a feature. And it incentivizes farms to continue using practices that are not environmentally friendly, because why shouldn't they? What they are doing is working for them...they don't have to clean up after their messes, they get a bunch of money from the taxpayers, and there is no reason to fix something that works just fine for them.

Here is a pdf that shows how our government policies helped cause the problems we have with CAFOs. It's a long read, but it's worth the time to look it over.

These policies that encourage big farms and CAFOs to continue their methods of production also encourage the use of petroleum products, in addition to the other environmentally unsound practices listed in those links. Again, why change your practices when they get you lots of money? Government incentives and regulations harm the economy and harm the environment. More of the same will not help, not unless you can find a moral superman that is impervious to bribery, and then keep him in charge forever. Otherwise even the most altruistic regulation will eventually become bastardized and twisted to the point where it is a mockery of its original intent.

I read where you linked to your 'free market=plutocratic tyranny' thread. You give no details, and sorry but I'm not buying a book just because you say it's going to give me details. Link to something I can read without forking money over for, please. Otherwise, what you wrote is opinion, and just like you claimed I didn't made claims without backing them up, well, there ya go, you did the same exact thing. Only at least I did back my claims up, you just dismissed what I did it with.

Speaking of that, you dismissed my link to the railroad story on the basis that it was from mises.org. Please find some other reason to refute it, find something false about it, before you throw it in the trash. Disliking the site it's at is not valid proof of its lack of authenticity...not unless you can show a marked tendency of the sites' authors to provide false evidence (and having an economic theory you disagree with, when that theory is exactly what we're debating, does not equate to 'false evidence').

You mentioned that in a free market, the wealthy would move to take over the political arena. What exactly do you think we have NOW? What libertarians (and Ron Paul) are aiming for is a rigorous defense against using wealth to dictate politics. Meaning that property rights would be defended for everyone, not just the wealthy. Same with civil rights.

The claims that the free market was to blame for our problems might be believable, if we actually had a free market. There is so much government intervention into the market that any paltry attempts at 'deregulation' do NOTHING to actually form a free market. Get rid of the federal reserve, and then we can talk about how the free market is working...right now, that one institution completely negates any current item you might prop up as an example in America of 'free market gone bad'.

As an example, after WWI there was a boom in the economy, caused by the inflationary money printing that the Federal Reserve had implemented to pay for the war. The bust that followed it occurred in 1920, and the newly elected President Harding, in his acceptance speech, said, “I would be blind to the responsibilities that mark this fateful hour if I did not caution the wage-earners of America that mounting wages and decreased production can lead only to industrial and economic ruin.” He cut government spending from $6.3 billion in 1920 to $5 billion in 1921, slashed taxes for everyone, and, since the Fed was less than a decade old and was still getting its feet wet (I guess it just didn't know any better yet...), it didn't respond with any control on interest rates, absurd money printing, or anything else to 'fix' the problem. The recession was over within a year. Contrast that to the Depression (also caused by profligate money printing, which doubled the money supply between 1923 and 1929, creating the artificial boom of the 'Roaring Twenties'). The practices of the government in the 30's in response to the Depression are arguably the reason why it lasted so long. It was only after the war ended, the troops came home, and government spending was cut once more that the Depression really came to a close.

Let's see, you linked to a Krugman post (which was full of slander and unsupported claims...not a very good piece to cite when you're claiming that I'm giving unsupported claims). He argues that "Liquidationist views played an important role in the spread of the Great Depression—with Austrian theorists such as Friedrich von Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter strenuously arguing, in the very depths of that depression, against any attempt to restore "sham" prosperity by expanding credit and the money supply." Really? Where, exactly, did the 'liquidationist views' come into play during the Great Depression? Hoover spent a lot of taxpayers' money, wound up doubling spending, imposed a tariff that backfired, built the Hoover Dam, created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and then the Federal Reserve also reacted in arbitrary and inconsistent ways (see here). Whether you believe they 'helped' or not, you can't claim that they didn't respond at all...therefore, any claims that it was the fault of the 'liquidationists' are unsupportable, because malinvestments were not, in fact, liquidated in the manner that Ron Paul and libertarians in general support.

The whole concept of the Federal Reserve is fallacious. The real wealth of a country is in the goods and services its people produce. When the Federal Reserve creates money and inflates the money supply, prices adjust accordingly to reflect the new monetary value of the real wealth of the country. The problem is, that the first people to get this 'new money' are the richest of us (or the richest of other countries, as the case may be), before the price adjustments have occurred, so they get to use that money when it's still valued at a higher rate. Those in the lower middle class, or on fixed incomes, don't see any increase in their income until it's already been in circulation for a while, and has already affected prices...that is, if they see any increase in their income at all. This system is designed to siphon wealth away from the middle and lower classes...whether intentionally or not doesn't matter, when the end result is that there is wealth redistribution towards the upper class because of an institution that, even if it were made up of the most altruistic people possible, inherently creates this disparity by the very operations it is designed to perform.

And then there's this, which so elegantly highlights what else the Federal Reserve is doing with its powers. These are not altruistic people. This is not a good institution. This is an institution by the 1%, for the 1%, so to speak, and it is not operating in the best interests of the American public.

Then there's the practice of fractional reserve banking...lol. Never mind. I'll get into that one later.

That's probably enough of monetary policy for now. On the drug issue...bah, I closed out the link and I forgot the title of the thread, so I'll go off memory. You seemed disapproving of the fact that libertarians believe that all drugs should be legal (debatable that all libertarians think that way, but okay), when you believe that marijuana should be legal because of its health benefits. All right, so what about ecstacy? What about heroin? What about meth? I'm not saying we should promote these substances, but to criminalize them and throw people in jail for using them if they do no other violent behavior is not right, and it severely limits medical research that can detect possible alternative applications. Not that many people sniff glue, and yet glue is widely available. Not that many people inhale those cans of air that you blow out your computer with, either, because of risk of death...and yet that, too, is still available. If someone wants to get high (whatever sort of 'high' we're talking about), then they're going to find a way to do it, and making it illegal is not going to stop anyone...they'll either do it illegally, or find some (most likely dangerous) substitute. By legalizing them, that does not mean throwing bags of cocaine out into schoolyards, or holding someone down and sticking needles in their arms.

Look at cigarette smoking. Since it's so addictive, shouldn't we have more people be using cigarettes now? No, that's silly, because once the health risks became widespread knowledge, the use of cigarettes became less desirable. They aren't illicit, so you don't get the 'thrill' of sticking it to the man...so it really becomes just a personal choice. If a drug is openly available, people will look for the best product at the lowest price. If a product gets known for 'bad trips' or fatalities or other undesirable side effects, people will look elsewhere to get their high. That's assuming that the states just magically all wave the legalization wand, with no regulations and no oversight whatsoever. Ain't gonna happen.

In fact most of this isn't going to happen, even should Ron Paul become president. It would take a massive overhaul to turn the country in that direction, and even if the majority of people decide that the Austrian theory of economics is the way to go, it would probably take decades to get to that point, and longer to implement. Realistically speaking, all I can expect from a Paul presidency is for our country to get out of the wars it perpetuates and to not have any bill pass that impacts our civil rights...and maybe some people pardoned that never should have been put in jail in the first place. That's enough for me. No one else will do these things except Ron Paul, that is painfully obvious.

 

That's enough for me too and thanks for all that typing you did.

 

I've enjoyed our talks, Balbus, thanks for the opportunity to learn a little more through researching your claims against Paul and libertarianism.

 

Kashta

The reason why the charts are not there on the site you link to is because this seems to be a cut and paste from another site http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm that seems to be the original

It seems to be written by one James L. Williams, and seems to be his personal opinion based on his own analysis - how in-depth that was I’m unsure. Of course that’s fine but….

The pertinent bit for us is in this discussion is a small section about the pros and cons of price manipulation in the US (US Oil Price Controls - Bad Policy? – note the question mark and timeframe 1973 to 1981)it points out that while keeping the price down in this period certainly had the short term advantage of making the recession less severe it may have had longer term effects because higher prices may have given Americans the possibility of becoming less of a consumerist society.

But it is a far cry from your thesis that all government intervention is bad and the market should decide. I mean as pointed out other countries through taxation put up the price way above the market price (and still do) so as to encourage a less wasteful approach to oil (they achieved what you thought was needed by going against the market). It just seems to me that the US took the wrong turn.


*

I have been a long term campaigner against farm subsidies and other agribusiness practises - many on the left are (and have been for a long time) so I’m don’t think this helps your case that the only way is your right wing free market dream. In many cases the problem is too little or not good enough regulation.

 

kashta

LOL this is another case of evasion. OK first have you ever heard of libraries, I use them all the time they are a public service (paid to a large extent by taxation). It means that you don’t have to pay upfront for education; you can gain knowledge by withdrawing a book from a library. Of course many free marketers believe in getting rid of such public libraries. But you don’t need the books i mention to understand the argument.

That’s why there was even more laughter as I come to your next point – thing is I don’t claim the piece to be anything else than my opinion, my argument, my view, my thoughts - what I’m asking is if you have any rational and reasonable counter arguments? Just saying you aren’t going to produce any because you basically can’t be bothered, doesn’t seem very reasonable.

As to it being the same as your ‘claims’, actually I think not. I’m saying you are making assertions that already have outstanding criticisms against them, here you haven’t even produced any criticism because, you seem to be saying, you can’t be bothered.

Thing is that is debate, someone presents an argument, others seek clarifications, ask questions, put up criticisms etc and the presenter, gives more detail, answers questions and defends their ideas.

The problem with virtually all the right wing libertarians I’ve meet is that they don’t seem willing or able to answer questions or defends their ideas from criticism.

Free market = Plutocratic Tyranny
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=353336&f=36

 

Kashta

Sorry I didn’t just dismiss it – I pointed out that I don’t like the Austrian school of economic thinking because of “its emphasis on theoretical logic over empirical evidence.” In other words it seems to put more faith in its ideology than on the realities of the world. They argue that they have a perfect theory that would work perfectly in a perfect world – the problem being that we haven't got a perfect world.

I then posted a link to a critic of the school. I know that your dislike of that criticism sent you into a rather directionless rant but it didn’t address the actual criticisms.

The article you linked to basically said that there are good capitalists and bad capitalists and that sometimes they are they are both. I don’t thing that comes as a surprise to most people. The danger is the power and influence that wealth can bring and how it can be lessened or contained, it seems to me that the policies that right wing libertarians would like to bring in, would increase the power and influence of wealth while lifting many of the constrains on it.

As to the site yes I don’t like it but as I’ve said I don’t like the Austrian School, (but i do read articles from there occasionally) by the way did you know that the founder of the Ludwig von Mises institute, Lew Rockwell was once Ron Paul’s congressional chief of staff?

 

Kashta

Thank you - exactly my point, the neoliberal free market ideas that came to dominate much thinking during the last 30 years didn’t produce what they claimed but something closer to what I do in the 'free market=plutocratic tyranny' thread.

Unsubstantiated assertion that already has criticism outstanding on it.

Thank you again - this is one of the major criticisms of the right wing free market ideology – a pure free market has never existed and for the reasons I outline in the 'free market=plutocratic tyranny' thread it is never likely to happen.

The claim that these ideas would work perfectly in a perfect world comes up against the problem that the world isn’t perfect.

Sorry but from your rant it seems clear you hadn’t read the post.

*

Well once again you don’t seem to be addressing the criticisms just making similar assertions as the other Paulettes.

 

To clarify

Linking is fine as long as it is not excessive and is more about further reading rather than instead of that persons own argument.

I’d refer to the politics forum guidelines

This type of thing is good - “In my opinion X is wrong because it would seem to cause Y and would very likely bring about Z etc. I think that A would be better because it would likely cause B and C etc”

Where Y, Z, A, B, C are explanations of that persons ideas and views.

This is bad – “That’s wrong and this is why –link-. This is right because –link-. Here is an article – link - that shows I’m right“