Hi Chris, On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 3:57 AM, chris peck <chris_peck...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Thanks Telmo > > > That sheds a little more light on where you're coming from. I watched those > videos with interest and found the Austrian school fascinating. Apologies in > advance for the length of this post and for the howling errors in reasoning > it undoubtedly contains. I’m just a beginner!
I'm glad you liked them. I'm just a beginner too, so we're on the same boat. > So the Australian school sees the interest related activities of a central > bank to have a distorting effect on the pool of information available to > market participants and that this distortion is responsible for booms and > busts. i.e. Artificially high interest rates gives investors the impression > that people are saving for future consumption, when in fact they might not > be. And so on. Yes. > But the central banks are not secretive about the > fluctuations in interest rates they impose, the exact increases/decreases > they make are available and are frequently reviewed. The reasons they are > imposed are out in the open. In other words, it should be possible to adjust > for central bank activity and invest wisely. Why doesn't that happen? My impression is that interest rates vary wildly and with short notice, and that central banks are constantly falling pray to the law of unintended consequences (trying to control a system that is too complex for them to fully understand). Checkout the Euribor historical data, for example: http://www.euribor-rates.eu/euribor-rates-by-year.asp > As far as I can tell, the spectre of market fundamentalism lurks behind the > scenes in the Austrian school. > The view is that the market behaves > rationally in the absence of regulation. It doesn't entertain the idea that > human understanding is inherently distorted and fallible and that errors in > judgement arise quite naturally. I depart from the Austrian school at this > point. If distortion is just part of the human condition then an argument > for regulation re-emerges. Ok, but you believe that this can be fixed by giving a lot of regulatory power to other (fundamentally flawed) human beings? I find it more believable that a large crows will converge towards rationality than that a small group of people with a lot of power will act both more rationally than the crowd AND in everyone's best interest. > Of course, if the central bank is the only source > of distortion then it needs to be gotten rid of. But is it really a major > culprit? In my view, the total of all regulatory activity is the major culprit. In my home country (Portugal), the economy is in shambles because of regulatory activity. The energy sector, for example, is considered of "national importance". So the government has been regulating it heavily for decades. Now we have some of the most expensive energy in the world, businesses are going bankrupt, factories are not viable. Upper middle class people cannot afford to keep their houses warm in winter. The oligarchy that controls the several public-private partnerships is more powerful than the elected leaders. Now you can argue that it doesn't have to be this bad, that there is a nice middle ground. I will argue that it will *always* get this bad, due to human nature. Just look at how regulatory creep is essentially turning the USA into a police state (something unthinkable a few years ago). Sometimes things really are slippery slopes... > Boom bust cycles existed long before central banks, so they can not be a > necessary cause. I agree. I'm not accusing the central banks of causing boom bust cycles. I think they're inherent to capitalism, and the price we have to pay for freedom. > And we see wild 'boom busts' in decentralized systems like > bitcoin. Why? You say the hope is that it will just 'settle down'. I say it > is behaving as any decentralized system would. > Its acute in bitcoin because > it is the classical fiat currency. It is anchored by nothing but perception > of value and is therefore blown this way and that by the naturally distorted > perceptions of those who participate in it. Sure, but the bigger it gets the more inertia it will have, right? If you look at the Forex market, you'll see that you need enormous leverage to make a profit from the fluctuation of the big currencies. > > Like you I wish the system was more equitable. But is bitcoin equitable? I > don't think so. From its conception it creates a natural bitcoin aristocracy > because as time goes on it gets harder and harder to mine coins and, as > usual, an individual's ability to gather resources depends on the power they > already have. Rich people can afford bigger and better computers to crunch > numbers, me with my zx81, well … im screwed. And that has happened. The > majority of bit coins are owned by the minority of participants. If bitcoin > were to become a global currency an oligarchy is already in place to wield > injustice upon the 99.9999% of us. The only way to achieve equity is through centralised control. We've been through that, I pass... It is possible to buy bitcoins with dollars. Mining is not terribly lucrative. Sure, the first movers are (already) getting rich, but why not? And how could this oligarchy be worse? Ok, let's assume they have most of the money -- this is already the world we live in. A very small percentage of the population controls most of the money. But in our world it's a double-whammy: they also have the power to regulate, so they can decide, for example, that if you want to watch porn in the UK you will have to put your name in a government list. I dream of post-scarcity. To get to post-scarcity we need technological and scientific progress. My belief is that the fastest way to get there is through free-market capitalism. I might be wrong. Sorry for ranting so much :) Telmo. > > > > ________________________________ > Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 11:58:47 -0400 > > Subject: Re: Capitalism : the way of creating wealth OUT OF THIN AIR > From: jami...@gmail.com > To: everything-list@googlegroups.com > > Nobody raised the point that we are living in the aura of some obsolete > dream about a world that is long gone and 'apply' the same words to regulate > our lives in an advanced (completely changed) world (system) 2-300 years > later. The world changed. > > We are obsolete. > > Nobody 'owns' NATURE, the environment (agricultural(?) and mining(!) > products), forests, prairies and their ecosystems (from wood to wolves) nor > 'water' and should not 'sell' those items for profit. It is only the > activity to bring them about that may charge for reimbursement. Not even the > access to it. > It is not different from 'owning' persons. > We not only need a new law-construct, we need a new perspective. > > Freedom means to feel free to do ANYTHING without any infringement of > anybody else's freedom. > On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 1:15 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > > On 7/18/2013 2:27 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > Also, it's a funny moment in History to pretend that giving this much > power to governments does not have consequences. What if the economy > is saved but we end up living under a modern global Stasi? This > sounded like "conspiracy theory" stuff a few weeks ago, but what about > now? > > My hope is that bitcoin or something like that will finally set us > free from the criminals that have been running the financial systems. > I still believe in technology more than I believe in politics. > > > But it's technology that's enabling the global Stasi. If someone had to > actually listen to your phonecalls and take notes our privacy would be > secure. > > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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