agrippa1

I'm comfortable with you lumping him into the mainstream of social "scientists." Here is a "value neutral" quotes from Prof. Domhoff's essay, concerning the nature of CEO's in general: No, no value judgment there, just on objective, and empirically supported statement of fact. Of course, anything that puts the issue into a larger context of the process of wealth creation is a red herring. The wealth exists now, thank you very much, so we'll take over now and figure out how to distribute it. And don't ask how more wealth will be accumulated, once what we have is gone, because that is a red herring. Not sure how a social "scientist" defines "vast majority," but 52% seems a little low to me. That's the percentage of Americans in the top quintile of wealth in 1998 who started in the top quintile in 1988. Only 55% in the second quintile started in the first or second. 40% of those in the third quintile rose, with 12% rising to the top quintile. 47% in the bottom quintile rose, 22% to the fourth, 12% to the third, 7% to the second and 5% to the top quintile. But let's not let mere facts get in the way of our ideology. (source: New York Times) A "savage" in this context is a person who is not able to provide for himself, who lives day by day, consuming what he produces, finds, or is given by those with the wherewithal to produce. It is pejorative, and I'll take the hit on that, but the truth is that most people in our society would not survive long without the productive expertise of a relative few. And no, he doesn't say, explicitly, that we should take the productive wealth of those who produced it, and give it to those who didn't. But what then is the purpose of this essay, merely to "reflect on observable phenomena," with no goal further than the general edification of the populace? This quote is telling: Tough to "get organized" and "exercise power," huh? Sounds like a challenge to me. Can't exercise power if you don't have it, and, according to Domhoff, you don't have power if you don't have wealth. Is he advocating the bottom 80% organize to get their fair share of the wealth of the top 20%? And if so, by what means? Governmental action, i.e., by the point of a gun? Of course, Prof. Domhoff would never openly say something to this effect. I don't have an antipathy for working class people, I am simply stating a fact. The janitor in a factory has productive capacity, by virtue of his factory job, far beyond his natural capacity. I don't share your antipathy for the rich. Countless folks would be without jobs without the business acumen, intelligence, courage and tenacity of the CEO. A CEO can do physical work, an unskilled janitor can not run a successful business. (edit: awkward wording, and reduced spacing; sarcasm)

You don't have to read past paragraph three to see through the premises of Prof. Domhoff's "argument:" So virtually all of the valuables owned by low-production (i.e., low-income) families is defined out of the concept of "wealth." Brilliant. What follows is a statistical analysis, which, in typical socialist fashion, treats wealth as if it was a natural resource, which has been unfairly distributed between the evil rich and the virtuous poor. Never is there any discussion of the source of wealth - the productive capacity of the smallest sliver of society. Domhoff argues that wealth is the source of a person's power, without once considering the possibility that a man's intelligence, diligence, tenacity and courage are the fountainhead from which his power and his wealth flow. As with any "humanist" he believes that the productive capacity of each man is the the common property of all men, that is, that the productive are the rightful servants of the unproductive. He would take those factories built through the process of rational vision, planning and effort, and redistribute them to the loudest, neediest savages of society, and then, we presume, demand more factories when those have been driven back into the dirt from whence they sprang, through neglect and incompetence. Instead of asking who has more power, the janitor or the CEO, you should be asking: Who is more productive, courageous and rational? Who can turn the sum of their efforts into a factory employing hundreds of men, and whose life effort consists of a line of dirt and sawdust being pushed along by a broom whose very construction is beyond his conceptual grasp? And who, therefore, would a rational man select to run a factory and decide the best allocation of resources: The man who has been successful allocating resources and raising the total productive capacity of his society? -- or the man who sits on the sidelines covetously counting other peoples' money and dreaming of a utopia where the productive are yoked and the unproductive freed from the "wage slavery" of capitalism? If you still think Domhoff is a brilliant sociologist, you'll love Hillary's piece on "Shared Prosperity" in Monday's WSJ. Enjoy.

It's not that it's a different kind of emergency. The difference is that essay deals with putting your life in jeopardy for others in an emergency situation. If the question of this thread were: "would it be morally justifiable to volunteer to monitor a quarantine, knowing that your life would be endangered?" (or some similar) then "The Ethics of Emergencies" would apply. I think the original question could be restated as "Does the state have the right to use force against those who unknowingly or unwillingly endanger others' lives?" I believe the answer has to be yes.

What's "global warming," and what can it do for me?

How do you feel about: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." ? Perhaps some floating concepts are valid concepts that have broken free of their mooring contexts through paraphrasing and/or sloppy editing? Another is "those who are willing to trade freedom for security deserve neither," an oft-spouted bromide which broke free from Franklin's original context: "Those who are willing to trade essential freedoms for a little security deserve neither security nor freedom." on edit, added: On second thought, is seems a lot of floating abstractions are random observations that gain apparent credence from the recognition of an example (or imagined, or potential example) in which the observation seems to hold true, or else just "feels" right. Two examples are: "no better time than the present" and "patience is a virtue." This may be related to the primacy or word epistemology, but may be a primacy of concept; the feeling that if it is written, it is true.

I think you're wrong here, about this being "nonsense." A rational investor, faced with a declining value of his dollar, will adjust his choices appropriately to maximize long term wealth. This means inflation, which decreases the current value of future cash holdings (compared to other future holdings), will marginally shift the investor towards investing sooner, rather than later. The effect of this quicker turnaround in investment is an increase in the velocity of money. More velocity means more a faster exchange and and an upward pressure on overall economic activity. If a large number of people started packing their mattresses with cash because they were afraid of banks, what do you think would be the effect on the market as a whole? The "frivolous spending" argument is invalid, unless you're willing to apply that same argument to any circumstance. (It's the primary argument used to defend central planning, for instance) The big screen TV example could have come right out of a Hillary commercial for nationalized health care. A better example, with a little respect for the individual consumer, would be investing his extra money in grain futures, or Apple computers. In that case, his quick conversion of cash into some other stable or growing investment, would serve him well. Spending does increase if cash is devalued, but that doesn't (and isn't meant to) justify deficit spending as a means of increasing inflation.

There is one possibly beneficial effect of inflation: it puts pressure on people to either spend or invest cash. Under inflationary conditions, money does indeed burn a hole in one's pocket, out of which falls the steady trickle of change stolen by the deficit spending of the government. It would seem that anything that spurs spending and investing is a positive force on the economy.

I guess I have to concede on that point. If the citizens of a certain area want to pay low temporary prices rather than see a competitive store, then that's their right, and it's the buyers, not the predatory seller, who create the anti-competitive environment. Thanks

Thanks, you're right, this is predatory pricing, not price-fixing. But you say it's a false concept. How about a definition then: Setting a price artificially low (i.e., below the cost of the product being sold) for the express purpose of preventing a potential competitor from succeeding in a given market. I've read Cap a few times over the past few months, and I don't remember it addressing the impossibility of monopoly formation in a free market, other than in the long term broad market context, and, of course, in discussion of a successful free-market monopoly, Alcoa. Your point about small guys at all other locations is good, except, again, it ignores the limited time context required for anticompetitive or predatory pricing. Predatory pricing can operate almost real time with price changes intended to undercut a local competitor. If a small guy starts up in one location, how long can he survive with pred pricing in place? Unless you get a coordinated, widespread attack by a bunch of little guys all at once, all the big guy needs to do is react as each comer tries to enter, until people learn their lesson and stay out. If he keeps his profits reasonable, their incentive to enter based on long term lucrativity, diminishes.

I don't disagree with this discussion, but what do you have to say about local or regional price fixing. A large corporation must grow from a small company, that is, it must start out with a limited scope in terms of size, business area and location. To take a simple example, let's assume that some pro-union do-gooder wants to fight back against WalMart, so he opens a Mom&Pop in his home town to compete. Let's also assume he's discovered some business principles and made some strategic alliances that allow him to compete successfully with Walmart on price and quality. He opens up and is flooded with customers happy to see better prices etc. Things go along just fine, then one day, no customers come in. He looks across the street and sees a big sign on the front of Walmart: "50% Off Everything!!!" He waits it out. Weeks go by, and the sale continues. He consults his wholesalers and they agree to temporary price breaks to keep him afloat, and he drops his prices by 50%. Customers flood back in. A few days later, no customers. He looks across the street, knowing what to expect, and sure enough: "75% Off Everything!!!" He waits it out. His distributors can't take any more price cuts. He drops his price to match Walmart, and six weeks later goes out of business. The next day the Walmart sale is over. Walmart is able to do this without suffering a loss because it can recoup its profits at its 20,000 other stores. On the broader scale, a Walmart could charge high prices as long as a large competitor doesn't emerge. If a large competitor emerges, Walmart lowers its profits to subsistence to make competition not sufficiently profitable to justify a reallocation of capital resources. If the competitor is regional or local, this advantage is even easier to realize. The problem I see with the anti-monopoly argument is that it's based on steady-state conditions. A company can't operate at a loss for a long time or over it's entire range of business. But it can target unprofitability strategically over a short period or a small area, in order to keep competitors out. Once the coast is clear, it can raise prices again and return to high profits. (BTW, I use Walmart only for emotive purposes. I don't shop there, but I admire their anti-union stand, and I would shop there if there was one closer to me.)

*** Mod's note: This topic was split from another one *** Not quite sure I understand (and a reference to an article or book would suffice). Why is pegging the currency to the dollar a mistake from a free-market point of view? Is it only because the dollar was no longer pegged to gold? I mean, if the dollar had still been pegged to gold, would pegging to the dollar have been a good idea? Or is pegging to any standard a mistake, from a free-market point of view. thx

It's a little more complicated than the price of gold under fiat currency, but inflation is related to the gold standard. Once we depegged the dollar from gold, the government could start deficit spending without having to sell gold. Turns out that the cumulative GDP loss due to inflation is based on federal debt. Inflation is expected deficit divided by GDP. This relationship is not explicitly apparent in the short term, but it becomes evident over a long period. As Greenspan wrote:

That's not quite true. The value of the dollar is usually based mainly on the faith people have in the future performance of the American economy. This future performance is discounted by some no-risk growth rate to the current value. Only if there is a total collapse in the U.S. economy will the the value drop to an inherent value, which is the amount of currency plus debt divided by the gold reserves (and any other tangible assets). This faith in the American economy allowed gold to drop to under $300/oz in the late 1990's. You can't argue that the purchasing power of the dollar increased by 150% between 1980 (gold at $750+) and 2000 (gold under $290). In fact according to CPI, the dollar's value fell by over 55% during that time. (This could be construed as meaning that the faith in America's future increased by over 300% during that period.) The same is true of stocks, which are valued more by their rate of growth (profits) than by their inherent capital value. It's only when a company fails that its stock's value falls to the value of its tangible assets. Interestingly, GDP isn't tracked before 1929, which makes it very hard for the layman to analyze exactly what happened in the run up to the Depression.

Maybe you object to the use of the word "tyrant." Okay, how about this: Soros and Buffett endorse the use of force against men to make them do their (Soros' and Buffett's) will. Soros is clearly a tyrant one of these other-people-forcy things, as his manipulations of monetary systems and of our political process [sic] has shown. He may not want to rule from a state-sanctioned office, but he clearly wants to have a great controlling influence on the lives of his fellow man. Whether he believes that desire is a moral obligation or if he just wants to rule his fellow man is the subject of psychologization (?). The result is the same. Buffett, by saying that he believes he should pay more taxes, rather than just paying more taxes (he can, you know) and keeping his mouth shut, is obviously implying that everyone else should also pay more in taxes. This universalizing of his personal moral code is a classic collectivist/altruist attitude, and implies a willingness to have force used against his fellow man to make him comply with Buffett's will. Again, Buffett knows that he needs not sit in office to wield power in a statist nation, which is what his pronouncement supports. But, you're right, we digress...

It's clear the bomb was intended to send a message to Japan, a message of assured total destruction if they resisted surrender. There are two premises which form the context of such a message: First, Japan must be assumed to be building an atomic bomb, or to at least have knowledge of the technical obstacles, including the amount of time needed to purify the material. Second, the message must be unambiguous, not just to the Japanese leadership, but to the populace. The bombing of a city was necessary to eliminate any question as to whether this was a man-made act of destruction, as opposed to, say, a volcanic eruption (eliminating Mt. Fuji as an option, for instance). The three day waiting period was necessary to allow the message to sink in and to imply a tempo. The bombing of the second city was necessary to remove any doubt that we had more than one nuke. This was critical, in case they were close to completing a project of their own. If we had dropped a single bomb, then nothing, their engineers would guess that we were months from building a second one, and we might have left ourselves open to retaliation. This might have led to a nuclear conflagration, especially if others were close to having the bomb. By dropping the second bomb three days after the first, we were implying a hammer-beat of destruction. I don't know the details, but I assume we told them that the third beat would be Tokyo. It was a bluff, but a well-played one, and they capitulated, rather than risk the next blow. In hindsight, the U.S.'s use of the bomb should be viewed as a shining example of our basic humanity. Never in the history of the world had a nation assumed such an overwhelming military superiority over the rest of the world; never had such a nation acted with such balanced, rational restraint against an aggressor; and never had a nation acted with such magnanimity in victory as the U.S. acted towards Germany and Japan (contrast the Soviet Union's rape of Eastern Europe). Had we not used the bomb in this manner, had we not stepped out to be the first (and only, so far) nation to use the bomb, we would have opened the door to a future nuclear holocaust: The terror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated to every rational person in the world on a concrete, perceptual level the absolute assuredness of mutual destruction, and ensured that the world's leaders could not pull a fast one on it's peoples, convincing them with abstract arguments that nuclear war was feasible.

I see you understand the concretes. Going to the conceptual level, you do agree that it steepens the slope for everyone below him, right? This is altruism unmasked - Buffett, the great humanitarian, wants to give more to the IRS. That's such a great and noble thing for him to do, therefore, let's make all rich people give more. Thus the false concept of altruism, i.e., giving willingly to that which you value, is warped into the true concept of altruism, i.e., an unaccountable gov't taking from those who produce and giving it whatever it whims (or whatever profits the pull-mongers). And thus, the professed love of man (philanthropy) is revealed as the hatred of man. If Buffett wants to give more to the federal government to squander on pork and payoffs, then he's welcome to it. Less for the rest of us to pay. While he's at it, maybe he can convince Soros, who made all of his money off the blunders of central planners, to give, too. There's another wannabe tyrant waiting to rule. BTW, just curious, I assume you have a job. Is the man who created that job, wealthy? I assume you own a house, a car, a television (etc.) are the men who created that house, car and television, wealthy?

There's no moron here, just a wannabe tyrant. Buffett is saying this because he doesn't need to rise to through the ranks to get his. He has his and he's willing to pay extra to keep the rest of us down. There are three types of collectivists, those who want to rule, those who want to be ruled, and those who want both (academia).

((WARNING -- BOOK SPOILER)) Yet another Hollyweird disappointment. I bought the book after watching the movie - way too political for the Hollywood lefties - too much inference about collectivism and anti-conceptual savage mentality. If you're wondering why he is Legend, forget about about the movie, the cure, his sacrifice for humanity... the theme of the book is the rise of the savage collective in a world devoid of rationality, and the last stand of the last rational mind. The "legend" he refers to is the hated, terrifying "I." The book could well be a prequel to Anthem.

Great, another pundit.

My mother and her family were in a Japanese POW camp in Indonesia when the bombs were dropped. Before then, word had reached them that the Japanese were going to exterminate their prisoners as the Allies drove them back towards Japan. So from my point of view, absolutely, positively, yes, the bombing of Hiroshima was necessary. So the argument is that the difference between being invaded by the Soviets or by the U.S. is "simply politics" ??? If anything, this one reason could be given as the single justifying factor for using the bombs. We took the lives of a few hundred thousand, but in doing so saved the lives of the entire nation (or, at least, the Soviets' share). So from the Japanese' point of view, absolutely, positively, yes, it was necessary. (It's no coincidence that the Japs have been one of our closest allies for the past sixty years. They understand the hell from which they were spared by our "power politics") Agreed, the use of fire-bombing would have been as destructive as the nukes, but, would have dragged the war out, taken countless American lives, and left the Japanese nation subject to enslavement and slow murder by the Soviets. So from the point of view of all but the hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing America-loathing academia and assorted fellow traveling freedom-haters: absolutely, positively: Yes.

The clarity of the transmission is not puzzling, nor is the "confusion" as to the origin of the transmission. At that range the signal-to-noise ratio of the received transmission would be quite high, making for a clear, steady, intelligible audio signal. To block background noise, radios use squelch, which is a threshold set just above the noise floor, below which received signals are blanked. When a signal rises above the squelch setting, it is unblanked, but what is heard is the signal audio plus the background noise. Automatic gain controls amplify the audio signal so that all received transmissions are at about the same audio level. If the signal is weak (just above the noise floor) this means that both the signal and the background noise are amplified, resulting in a very noisy, or garbled, or "hissy" audio signal. If the signal is strong, however, the automatic gain adjustment does not have to amplify as much, so the apparent background noise is much less. The clarity of the signal received in this case indicates a very strong signal, and supports the original assumption that the signal was coming from a nearby source, that is, the Iranian speed boats. The fact that there were no other attempts to answer the U.S. ship's warning also supports the assumption that the signal came from the speed boats. To believe otherwise is to believe that a secondary source was transmitting the responses to the U.S. ship, and that the speedboats were maintaining radio silence, and were willing to let someone else speak for them (assuming they were listening to the channel). The U.S. ship would not normally be using direction finding equipment in the radio band, so the direction and thus the source of the transmission is necessarily unclear. To state that we can't be sure of the origin of the transmission is technically true, but the conclusion that the signal is likely to have come from another source is not supported by the evidence. Of course, the press, eager to show evidence of a "rush to judgment" as Ron Paul so vigorously accused last night, was quick to jump on this statement by the admiral, probably made in response to an absolutist question from a politically motivated "reporter." The inference here, that the statements of the Iranian military can be used as evidence of a U.S. fabrication I find particularly despicable (though not surprising). The idea that Iran just happens to tape all operations of even small boats, and that they create and maintain synchronized audio records of all operations is implausible. Of course nobody ever accused our press of critical thinking.

...And that's "just" the concrete upon which all higher conceptual abstracts of "price" are based.

I think people are confusing the verb with the noun here. There are various methods for coming to a price. They include: the seller set ("lemons, 5 for $1") and the buyer set ("hey, buddy, $10k for your Mustang"), which are "take it/leave it"; the (blind) bid/ask process (used in the stock market); the haggle (an iterative process of seller set and buyer set); the auction processes (both buyer and seller side); and probably some others. I believe these are all derived from the presence or absence of competition, either between buyer and seller, seller and seller, buyer and buyer, or any combo of those. These are all ways to price an item, but there is only one actual price. The result of the pricing process is the price, that is, the measure of money (or other valuable) paid to the seller for his product. The bid and ask prices are conceptual prices, or potential prices only, not the actual price, and represent a price the buyer or seller is willing to pay or accept for the item. ("Strike price" as far as I know, is a technical term applying only to market options, and is the price at which the option may be exercised. I think Bob means "price" here, not "strike price.") One of the insights that became explicit for me only in reading Rand last year was the concept that a price always represents a monetary value less than the value of the product to the buyer, and more than the value of the product to the seller. That is, the price represents a point at which both buyer and seller increase the value of their possessions. It's always win/win in the free market.

I'm not so sure this is donations/private industry solutions issue. If I were an aspiring climatological engineer, and got the donations to build, say, a high-altitude sulfur ion dispensing rocket (one solution already proposed, to spur cloud formation and thus increase albedo), would you be okay with me firin' that sucker up, and tryin' her out? What if I sent it up and somehow managed to create a superstorm that swept into Southern Cal and killed 100,000 people? (Okay, maybe a bad example) I think an argument exists to regulate any attempts to affect weather until simulations can be run, and small scale experiments set up. The introduction of controlled inputs to the Earth's atmosphere would take our climate models out of the reactive phase, and into the proactive. This implies a gov't role, and properly so, since destructive weather, although unintentional, must be regarded as a use of force against fellow citizens without their consent. But, yes, I agree that man is the proper solvent for such a problem. The question is an interesting one, because it leads us naturally to the more general question: If warming was shown be as serious a threat as Algore claims in his schlockumockery, should we only act if it's found that man caused it? Are we willing to see Northern Europe and most of North America glaciate for the sake of preserving Mother Nature's will? The Algores of the world seem to be saying that if it's man's fault, we should place our minds on the sacrificial altar, rather than address the problem rationally. But, if it's nature's fault, then that's just hunky-dory, and we all just have to live with it. I reject both propositions, and, if GW turns out to be a serious threat, regardless of its cause, I see this as a tremendous opportunity to finally tame one of the most unpredictable forces of nature using our rational minds. The knowledge gained would likely lead to innumerable new opportunities to expand the creative and productive potential of man.

Read Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology to get a better answer.