me: > There are a lot of valid > things in it, but they are commonsensical. But the stuff about > Rothbard and the von Mises Institute at the start should tip you off: > it's right-wing stuff.
Dan Scanlan responds: > I find insights here and there in the right wing stuff quite often. There's > a point, I have noticed, where strong left views and congruent with strong > right views. It's not unusual to find two paths to the same conclusion. That's absolutely true, but it's always best to know what slant is being applied in an analysis as one reads it. me: > It also looks likes a "monetary crank" film: > there are a lot of things wrong with the world (stagnant incomes, > etc.) that can be solved by our monetary solution (the gold standard). Dan: > Again, being a monetary crank film doesn't bother me, per se. What does > bother me, i.e., what I don't understand, is how anyone is allowed to create > money by simply accepting a promise, then using that promise as a basis for > creating more money, er, promises. monetary cranks are ... cranks. While they may get the details right sometimes, the general perspective is wrong (IMHO). Money is a "promise," but as long as these pieces of paper (or bank accounts backed by them) are _scarce_, it makes sense. In a market society, people need something that's both a means of payment (allowing purchases) and a store of value (an asset). Someone has to supply enough of that something in order to avoid serious deflation or a return to barter. The main problem the cranks, Austries, Monetarists, gold-bugs, et al worry about is inflation. Since the people in charge -- including those at the "evil" Fed -- are also opposed to inflation, I think that inflation is not the result of the machinations of the state as much as the fact that sometimes the state elite can't get what they want. (I don't think Ben Bernanke wanted a financial crisis, for example. Similarly, Nixon, Ford, and Carter didn't want high oil prices.) Dan: > Here's one concept where I get lost. I don't know what this -- Austries' -- > means. Is this an economist's nuance or is this a verifiable phenomenon? I > don't know. "Austrian" economics refers to a species of the genus economics that sees markets as the best way to organize human life, sees the government as being at best a hindrance to market operation unless it is enforcing voluntary contracts, sees "entrepreneurs" in the market (but not in politics or any other realm of life) as demigods who never fail to produce the best results for everyone unless the guvmint interferes,[*] and see markets as always changing, as a dynamic process. (It's the last which distinguishes them from Milton Friedman's minions.) Saith the Wikipedia: >>The Austrian School ... is a heterodox school of economics that emphasizes the spontaneous organizing power of the price mechanism, holds that the complexity of subjective human choices makes mathematical modeling of the evolving market extremely difficult (or impossible) and therefore advocates a laissez faire approach to the economy. Austrian School economists advocate the enforcement of voluntary contractual agreements between economic agents, but otherwise the smallest imposition of coercive force (especially government-imposed) on commercial transactions.<< Dan: > Question: Is getting rid of credit the same as getting rid of Capitalism? > Jim, I really appreciate your time checking out this video and responding. I don't think that getting rid of credit is the same as getting rid of capitalism, but it would cramp the latter's style. Officially, at least, charging interest on loans is against Islamic law, but capitalism seems to exist in many if not the vast majority of Moslem countries. Yeah, the law is broken a lot, but still that does keep a full-scale capitalist-type credit system from festering. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. [*] See Murray Rothbard's book on the Great Depression, if you don't believe me. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
