3 ms·

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression was that there were a lot of foreign investments in Dubai real estate, not just (maybe not even primarily) the govern

by blahedo 16y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression was that there were a lot of foreign investments in Dubai real estate, not just (maybe not even primarily) the government. Certainly there were many people buying at the wildly inflated rates, ignoring the "proper price signalling" that you suggest might have solved the problem. Or are you suggesting that Dubai should have blocked the private investors from building the new hotels and condos until more of the unsold pieces were occupied? That might have been a good idea, but it is also not the unfettered market you're advocating in the rest of your post, so I'm not sure what you mean. "The market" is not a magic wand, its invisible hand not nearly so reliable as many, apparently including you, seem to think; and "socialism" is also ill-defined as "everything short of rampant unregulated capitalism". Dubai's market was pretty darn free, and its safety nets were effectively nonexistent and certainly nothing even remotely worth of the name "socialism".

brc 16y ago
Yes, there is (was) a lot of foreign investment in Dubai, but the government was effectively underwriting much of it by starting off and feeding the Ponzi scheme. The big headline projects (the world, Burj Dubai, etc) were all underwritten by the Dubai government. Perhaps I didn't make it clear enough in my post that I wasn't suggesting Dubai was remotely socialist. My point was that centralised planning in an economy leads to problems. Where I failed in my haste to post and move on, was that I omitted the next part is that most socialist economies rely, and expect, a greater amount of government control over the economy, right up to the point where you get 100% control of the official economy in the case of communism. The point I'm making is that excessive government interference in the marketplace leads to undesired outcomes. Everyone who is entrepreneurial should have this as a startup message on their computer or phone. It's so easy to mistake government money flows for real prosperity. What I'm suggesting is that Dubai World shouldn't have borrowed and spent so much money on non-productive investments. The [tenuous] link to socialism I'm trying to make is that the hallmark of any truly socialist government is that it spends too much money on unproductive investments (aka bridges to nowhere), not because they are stupid, but because they evaluate investment on things other than the ability to return their outlay and make a return in the future. My post was designed to look absurd, because I'm truly concerned about the reckless amount of government borrowing and spending taking place across the world. It's unprecedented in scale and will affect us all in the fallout. We all look at Dubai and think 'can't happen here' (wherever we might be) but so many places can end up like this.
- sesqu 16y ago
  > the hallmark of any truly socialist government is that it spends too much money on unproductive investments -- because they evaluate investment on things other So your means of identification of socialist government is that you don't agree with its valuations? Perhaps you mean to say that without stringent focus on a numerical performance measurement, like size of budget deficit or kLOC, optimization theory breaks down. I don't see how that would be particular to any form of government. That said, communal ownership does suffer more here, because it's an attempt at moving past local maxima in the poorly-defined utility space. Perhaps Jesse Schell's point system for people would be a sufficient compromise. The problem with borrowing in particular is that it leverages the assumption that your use for the money is valued by society. However, you can't nail down a worth and societies are fickle.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- 321sigh 16y ago
  Calling everything you don't like 'socialism' isn't an intelligent or responsible way to discuss borrowing or spending. Pretty much every developed nation on the planet has decided that some level of "socialism" is a good thing. It's not always a bad thing, nor is it some magic elixir. Kindly stop being a dishonest dickhead who claims everything bad is socialism, then pretends he didn't just say that when somebody points out that none of your examples were socialism. Literally none. You're just a completely and totally fucking ignorant loser. And you're not enough of a man to own up to the fact that you know literally NOTHING about a topic, despite the fact that you hold extremely fervent beliefs. You're just another ignorant fundamentalist. No different than the other religious crazies.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  >the hallmark of any truly socialist government is that it spends too much money on unproductive investments Care to name one of these hallmark "truly socialist governments"? I think this is a figment of your imagination. Socialism is one point on a slider and laissez-faire capitalism on the other side. If you slide the bar too far in either direction it breaks. Which is why no one does. Sweden has 52% taxes, free health care, free schooling, etc., etc. Are they one of your "hallmarks"? Because they are also very capitalistic. What you should really be worried, what is really causing world-wide problems is corporatism/fascism.

by blahedo 16y ago

brc 16y ago

Yes, there is (was) a lot of foreign investment in Dubai, but the government was effectively underwriting much of it by starting off and feeding the Ponzi scheme. The big headline projects (the world, Burj Dubai, etc) were all underwritten by the Dubai government. Perhaps I didn't make it clear enough in my post that I wasn't suggesting Dubai was remotely socialist. My point was that centralised planning in an economy leads to problems. Where I failed in my haste to post and move on, was that I omitted the next part is that most socialist economies rely, and expect, a greater amount of government control over the economy, right up to the point where you get 100% control of the official economy in the case of communism. The point I'm making is that excessive government interference in the marketplace leads to undesired outcomes. Everyone who is entrepreneurial should have this as a startup message on their computer or phone. It's so easy to mistake government money flows for real prosperity. What I'm suggesting is that Dubai World shouldn't have borrowed and spent so much money on non-productive investments. The [tenuous] link to socialism I'm trying to make is that the hallmark of any truly socialist government is that it spends too much money on unproductive investments (aka bridges to nowhere), not because they are stupid, but because they evaluate investment on things other than the ability to return their outlay and make a return in the future. My post was designed to look absurd, because I'm truly concerned about the reckless amount of government borrowing and spending taking place across the world. It's unprecedented in scale and will affect us all in the fallout. We all look at Dubai and think 'can't happen here' (wherever we might be) but so many places can end up like this.

sesqu 16y ago
> the hallmark of any truly socialist government is that it spends too much money on unproductive investments -- because they evaluate investment on things other So your means of identification of socialist government is that you don't agree with its valuations? Perhaps you mean to say that without stringent focus on a numerical performance measurement, like size of budget deficit or kLOC, optimization theory breaks down. I don't see how that would be particular to any form of government. That said, communal ownership does suffer more here, because it's an attempt at moving past local maxima in the poorly-defined utility space. Perhaps Jesse Schell's point system for people would be a sufficient compromise. The problem with borrowing in particular is that it leverages the assumption that your use for the money is valued by society. However, you can't nail down a worth and societies are fickle.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
321sigh 16y ago
Calling everything you don't like 'socialism' isn't an intelligent or responsible way to discuss borrowing or spending. Pretty much every developed nation on the planet has decided that some level of "socialism" is a good thing. It's not always a bad thing, nor is it some magic elixir. Kindly stop being a dishonest dickhead who claims everything bad is socialism, then pretends he didn't just say that when somebody points out that none of your examples were socialism. Literally none. You're just a completely and totally fucking ignorant loser. And you're not enough of a man to own up to the fact that you know literally NOTHING about a topic, despite the fact that you hold extremely fervent beliefs. You're just another ignorant fundamentalist. No different than the other religious crazies.
loewenskind 16y ago
>the hallmark of any truly socialist government is that it spends too much money on unproductive investments Care to name one of these hallmark "truly socialist governments"? I think this is a figment of your imagination. Socialism is one point on a slider and laissez-faire capitalism on the other side. If you slide the bar too far in either direction it breaks. Which is why no one does. Sweden has 52% taxes, free health care, free schooling, etc., etc. Are they one of your "hallmarks"? Because they are also very capitalistic. What you should really be worried, what is really causing world-wide problems is corporatism/fascism.