6 ms·

Good free markets should be free. No government bailouts no problem.

marcinzm 6y ago
Then eventually things implode, society collapses, a dictator takes over after claiming they will help the starving masses and so on. Starving masses who have lost their life savings do not make for a good place to live even if you avoid being one of them. Society should be protected from the fallout of capitalism to a reasonable degree.
- anewaccount2021 6y ago
  If you lost your life savings on GME, you deserve to starve edit: the only way you could be losing your life savings on GME is with a dumb, arrogant short position. yes, you should starve...isn't this what a short sale is anyway? A bet that someone else will starve?
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    Personally I prefer to not be stabbed to death by a starving person who lost their life savings on GME so they can steal $10 from my wallet. Massive societal implosions tend to have a large blast radius.
    - girvo 6y ago
      So basically, “heads I win, tails you lose” for the institutional investors because you’re worried about the possible fall out?
      - marcinzm 6y ago
        The comment I replied to was "Good free markets should be free. No government bailouts no problem." Not "no bailouts for hedge funds doing shorts." See the distinction?
    - imtringued 6y ago
      I think you don't appreciate how angry people on WSB are. It's pure distilled anger. They want to relieve that anger somewhere and do it nonviolently. A handful of people losing money is the perfect pressure valve. If you deny them this opportunity to vent their anger then they are highly likely to stab you, not because they wanted $10 from your wallet, nah it's because they are still angry and want someone to pay for it and going by the events that lead to WW2 a lot of them considered a life to be an equally valid price.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    People on WSB tell you these things all the time: Never use margin trading. Only invest what you can lose. Remember, they have grown thick skin and know what losing money is like. It only takes one lesson to learn that.
- kazen44 6y ago
  actually, it has shown time and time again that unregulated capitalism is just not working for a majority of the population. The myth of the "free market" is in the same vein as the centrally planned economy of a socialist state.
- whb07 6y ago
  Protected by people with lofty ideals like yourself? Where are these high minded incorruptible individuals? Governments are the cause of mass starvation and murders, please see China, USSR, Germany, and on and on.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    >Governments are the cause of mass starvation and murders, please see China, USSR, Germany, and on and on. All caused by revolutions caused by massive economic issues and societal issues. In other words, capitalistic collapse of society leads to dictatorship which leads to horrible things. Like I said in the post you replied to. So thank you for making my argument for me.
  - lukifer 6y ago
    Governments also commit mass murder on behalf of the interests of private capital, ranging from feudal land enclosures, to the United Fruit Company in Honduras [0], to modern oil interests and the military-industrial complex. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
  - lmm 6y ago
    > Governments are the cause of mass starvation and murders, please see China, USSR, Germany, and on and on. Organised groups of people do these things, governmental or not - private corporations are responsible for plenty of similar occurrences, and so are NGOs (e.g. religious groups). Centralisation of power is bad, absence of checks and balances is bad, lack of accountability is bad - but insisting that limited-liability corporations be allowed to grow arbitrarily large is the opposite of avoiding those problems.
- slickrick216 6y ago
  I don’t know what the alternative is are you in favour of propping up private companies and keeping this status quo? That’s alternative of free markets. Right now they aren’t free. AOC and Ben Shapiro of all people agree for once. This is a stage 7 brundlefly economic system.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    "Free markets" are never perfectly free or even close to it. Only the writers of utopian libertarian science fiction think that. The question is how you manage that lack of freedom and to whose benefit you try to manage it. I prefer it be managed towards the general stability of society. Of course it will be managed in an imperfect way but I prefer the goal be a stable society. edit: The government intervening will never really make the market more free but it wasn't free to begin with (see robinhood today). So you lose a bit more freedom but you shift the benefit of the overall loss of freedom from "a bunch of rich people get richer" to "society as a whole get's richer and more stable." Not fully but a bit further.
    - LegitShady 6y ago
      While i agree with you in principle, there's a difference between "this market is regulated" and "this market will be bailed out at random on the whims of politicians, while this other market or firm won't" in which case we start to have issues.
    - slickrick216 6y ago
      My argument is government intervention is the problem. You can’t fix the problem with more of the problem. Say your house was on fire do you add more fire until it burns down and call that problem solved.
rmah 6y ago
Why?
Ericson2314 6y ago
...maybe if we have the one true Geiger Counter to call the debt jubilees
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lukifer 6y ago
  Are you familiar with the work of Michael Hudson? I just learned of "...and forgive them their debts" [0], and looking forward to reading it. While I'm generally in favor of debt forgiveness for 2021 America, in his talks he's primarily described jubilees in the context of regime change: a new conquering emperor, or an aspiring revolutionary leader, cancels the debts to secure the loyalty of workers and soldiers, and the nobility has to acquiesce at the point of a sword. What I can't figure out is how this could be done on a predictable timetable (as per the Biblical jubilee concept: every 7 or 50 years). In a conquest scenario, a lender might only withhold lending if the current power structure looked weak; but if debt forgiveness was institutionalized, why wouldn't they just cease all lending on Year 6 or Year 49? (Or, more likely: fold the probability of forgiveness into a usurious interest rate, so they collect the same income on average.) As it stands, I think debt forgiveness can only be done as a one-time solution to gross inequality and/or social instability; and that institutional reform (to not need jubilees) has to be done upstream (such as public banking, Georgist land trusts, etc). But I'm very open to being convinced otherwise. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42515482-and-forgive-them-their-debts https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42515482-and-forgive-the...
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    I am aware-ish of that and (edit, forgot the "and") Graeber's book but haven't read either. The Geiger counter randomized debt jubilee is a bit of a play on the scheduling problem. I do agree debt jubilees only make sense as a emergency post-hoc fix. If you think about it, UBI + good confiscatory taxes at the margins is basically a nice smoothed amortized debt jubilee. That's much better.
    - 6y ago

Then eventually things implode, society collapses, a dictator takes over after claiming they will help the starving masses and so on. Starving masses who have lost their life savings do not make for a good place to live even if you avoid being one of them. Society should be protected from the fallout of capitalism to a reasonable degree.

anewaccount2021 6y ago
If you lost your life savings on GME, you deserve to starve edit: the only way you could be losing your life savings on GME is with a dumb, arrogant short position. yes, you should starve...isn't this what a short sale is anyway? A bet that someone else will starve?
- marcinzm 6y ago
  Personally I prefer to not be stabbed to death by a starving person who lost their life savings on GME so they can steal $10 from my wallet. Massive societal implosions tend to have a large blast radius.
  - girvo 6y ago
    So basically, “heads I win, tails you lose” for the institutional investors because you’re worried about the possible fall out?
    - marcinzm 6y ago
      The comment I replied to was "Good free markets should be free. No government bailouts no problem." Not "no bailouts for hedge funds doing shorts." See the distinction?
  - imtringued 6y ago
    I think you don't appreciate how angry people on WSB are. It's pure distilled anger. They want to relieve that anger somewhere and do it nonviolently. A handful of people losing money is the perfect pressure valve. If you deny them this opportunity to vent their anger then they are highly likely to stab you, not because they wanted $10 from your wallet, nah it's because they are still angry and want someone to pay for it and going by the events that lead to WW2 a lot of them considered a life to be an equally valid price.
- imtringued 6y ago
  People on WSB tell you these things all the time: Never use margin trading. Only invest what you can lose. Remember, they have grown thick skin and know what losing money is like. It only takes one lesson to learn that.
kazen44 6y ago
actually, it has shown time and time again that unregulated capitalism is just not working for a majority of the population. The myth of the "free market" is in the same vein as the centrally planned economy of a socialist state.
whb07 6y ago
Protected by people with lofty ideals like yourself? Where are these high minded incorruptible individuals? Governments are the cause of mass starvation and murders, please see China, USSR, Germany, and on and on.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >Governments are the cause of mass starvation and murders, please see China, USSR, Germany, and on and on. All caused by revolutions caused by massive economic issues and societal issues. In other words, capitalistic collapse of society leads to dictatorship which leads to horrible things. Like I said in the post you replied to. So thank you for making my argument for me.
- lukifer 6y ago
  Governments also commit mass murder on behalf of the interests of private capital, ranging from feudal land enclosures, to the United Fruit Company in Honduras [0], to modern oil interests and the military-industrial complex. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
- lmm 6y ago
  > Governments are the cause of mass starvation and murders, please see China, USSR, Germany, and on and on. Organised groups of people do these things, governmental or not - private corporations are responsible for plenty of similar occurrences, and so are NGOs (e.g. religious groups). Centralisation of power is bad, absence of checks and balances is bad, lack of accountability is bad - but insisting that limited-liability corporations be allowed to grow arbitrarily large is the opposite of avoiding those problems.
slickrick216 6y ago
I don’t know what the alternative is are you in favour of propping up private companies and keeping this status quo? That’s alternative of free markets. Right now they aren’t free. AOC and Ben Shapiro of all people agree for once. This is a stage 7 brundlefly economic system.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  "Free markets" are never perfectly free or even close to it. Only the writers of utopian libertarian science fiction think that. The question is how you manage that lack of freedom and to whose benefit you try to manage it. I prefer it be managed towards the general stability of society. Of course it will be managed in an imperfect way but I prefer the goal be a stable society. edit: The government intervening will never really make the market more free but it wasn't free to begin with (see robinhood today). So you lose a bit more freedom but you shift the benefit of the overall loss of freedom from "a bunch of rich people get richer" to "society as a whole get's richer and more stable." Not fully but a bit further.
  - LegitShady 6y ago
    While i agree with you in principle, there's a difference between "this market is regulated" and "this market will be bailed out at random on the whims of politicians, while this other market or firm won't" in which case we start to have issues.
  - slickrick216 6y ago
    My argument is government intervention is the problem. You can’t fix the problem with more of the problem. Say your house was on fire do you add more fire until it burns down and call that problem solved.

rmah 6y ago

Why?

Ericson2314 6y ago

...maybe if we have the one true Geiger Counter to call the debt jubilees

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lukifer 6y ago
Are you familiar with the work of Michael Hudson? I just learned of "...and forgive them their debts" [0], and looking forward to reading it. While I'm generally in favor of debt forgiveness for 2021 America, in his talks he's primarily described jubilees in the context of regime change: a new conquering emperor, or an aspiring revolutionary leader, cancels the debts to secure the loyalty of workers and soldiers, and the nobility has to acquiesce at the point of a sword. What I can't figure out is how this could be done on a predictable timetable (as per the Biblical jubilee concept: every 7 or 50 years). In a conquest scenario, a lender might only withhold lending if the current power structure looked weak; but if debt forgiveness was institutionalized, why wouldn't they just cease all lending on Year 6 or Year 49? (Or, more likely: fold the probability of forgiveness into a usurious interest rate, so they collect the same income on average.) As it stands, I think debt forgiveness can only be done as a one-time solution to gross inequality and/or social instability; and that institutional reform (to not need jubilees) has to be done upstream (such as public banking, Georgist land trusts, etc). But I'm very open to being convinced otherwise. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42515482-and-forgive-them-their-debts https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42515482-and-forgive-the...
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  I am aware-ish of that and (edit, forgot the "and") Graeber's book but haven't read either. The Geiger counter randomized debt jubilee is a bit of a play on the scheduling problem. I do agree debt jubilees only make sense as a emergency post-hoc fix. If you think about it, UBI + good confiscatory taxes at the margins is basically a nice smoothed amortized debt jubilee. That's much better.
  - 6y ago