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Personally I find this article stupidly hilarious. > "Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the dest

Personally I find this article stupidly hilarious. > "Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism..." I'm sorry, I thought it was capitalism that just fudged the butter causing this economic crisis. I mean there was the whole mortgage deal (that only happened in the largely non-socialist US) that started screwing the economy up because the US doesn't have enough legal protections in place to stop people who physically don't have the money to pay a loan to get a loan in the first place. I mean there used to be the day in the US where if you had no money you'd get a credit check and then be refused like everywhere else in the world. The subprime mortgage fiasco caused the big swathe of mortgages defaulting. Basically this made the banks need to get their money back or face bankruptcy, then the NYSE went down the crap hole, gas went through the roof and then the mixture of shit vehicles, crappy prices, high gas price/low mileage and big debts caused chaos for the big 3 automakers in the US. I'm sorry, but correct me if I'm wrong, but that little summarization (essentially thanks to wikipedia) never once mentioned a country other than the largely non-socialist US. The US's major butter fudging caused all the economic problems in the more socialist countries like the UK. The funny thing is, is that if the US had nationalised health care (like the UK) they would pay approximately half what they currently do for health care and would result in them being twice as healthy. Ironically this would mean more americans would have more money to spend and would have less reasons to not spend it, which is exactly what the economy needs right now. On the side of Ayn Rand's background, she came from soviet Russia, which completely fucked up the whole socialism thing by preventing anyone losing a job or being unemployed. They avoided buying combine harvesters for farms because it would make some people unemployed not realising that those very people would become reemployed in other jobs... like fixing the combine harvesters. Now I have a cute little pet bunny balled up in a blanket in between my legs whom, much like me, cares little about Atlas Shrugged and any misconceived links to the current financial crisis and he only cares that the prices of his food and hay and treats have all gone up a couple of dollars thanks to the US.

yummyfajitas 18y ago
1) Plenty of other countries are having real estate bubbles bursting, for instance Ireland and Spain. 2) It has long been a goal of the government to increase home ownership and inflate the bubble. Regarding down payments, the government tried to help people unable to come up with downpayments to get a loan anyway. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020618-1.html http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020618-1.h... (Scroll down past the "hunt down terrorists" part.) http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/programs/home/addi/ http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/programs/ho... Our top free market politician warned us about the bubble-producing effects of this in 2002, and tried to put an end to it. http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-26/ron-paul-on-the-housing-bubble-july-2002/ http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-26/ron-paul-on-the-housing-bu... (Sorry for the paulspam, but it might be the one time it's relevant.)
jerf 18y ago
"I mean there was the whole mortgage deal (that only happened in the largely non-socialist US) that started screwing the economy up because the US doesn't have enough legal protections in place to stop people who physically don't have the money to pay a loan to get a loan in the first place." Exactly backwards. And I mean exactly backwards. There are, in fact, laws that forced banks to give out loans to those people. Laws which have not been repealed. Entire non-profit groups making sure those laws were enforced, and who have not learned anything from what happened. How is "government overriding the good sense of the mortgage industry by government fiat" capitalism? The mortgage industry was highly regulated. It couldn't hardly have been more regulated. The problem is that the "perfect government regulator" is a myth that lives only in our minds. Your argument, like almost everybody else, assumes that regulation always works, and thus, if something didn't work, it must not have been regulated. QED. A moment's clear thought will show that to be completely false. If you can handle the idea that a market made of people is imperfect, even must be imperfect, why do so many carry around the idea that a government made of people will somehow be immune? It's just people! Markets, governments, consumers, all just people. Government may not be 100% responsible for what happened, but they are 100% responsible for creating the environment in which it occurred. Nobody else had the power to force bad loans but the government. ... There is a great danger here. Months into this crisis and huge numbers of people still have no clue what happened. Forget ideology for a second; if you want to make good decisions, you need truth. The truth is complicated, and I can't lay it all out, but I can tell you that the idea that this was all caused by rampant laissez faire capitalism is an objective falsehood. Government was involved deeply and pervasively. What exactly that means, I don't know and I'm not trying to make a claim here. (I have elsewhere, but not here.) All I am saying here is that you need to know the truth before spouting off. Even as a little-l libertarian, I would feel a lot more comfortable with calls for regulation if people didn't implicitly treat it as some sort of atomic entity, where you either have "more" or "less", but that's the only dimension. That's wrong and frankly stupid. There's also good regulation and bad regulation and it's not usually obvious which is which. If we frame the debate that way, I'd be a lot less scared, but nobody does! It's all "we need more" or "we need less" and nobody talks about what more or what less, just "more" and "less". I'm "little l" because I'm not against all regulation, but I'm against bad regulation, and that is what got us here. Not "no" regulation. Bad regulation. It exists! ... so why does that common-sense declaration feel so subversive to say?

yummyfajitas 18y ago

1) Plenty of other countries are having real estate bubbles bursting, for instance Ireland and Spain. 2) It has long been a goal of the government to increase home ownership and inflate the bubble. Regarding down payments, the government tried to help people unable to come up with downpayments to get a loan anyway. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020618-1.html http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020618-1.h... (Scroll down past the "hunt down terrorists" part.) http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/programs/home/addi/ http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/programs/ho... Our top free market politician warned us about the bubble-producing effects of this in 2002, and tried to put an end to it. http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-26/ron-paul-on-the-housing-bubble-july-2002/ http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-26/ron-paul-on-the-housing-bu... (Sorry for the paulspam, but it might be the one time it's relevant.)

jerf 18y ago

"I mean there was the whole mortgage deal (that only happened in the largely non-socialist US) that started screwing the economy up because the US doesn't have enough legal protections in place to stop people who physically don't have the money to pay a loan to get a loan in the first place." Exactly backwards. And I mean exactly backwards. There are, in fact, laws that forced banks to give out loans to those people. Laws which have not been repealed. Entire non-profit groups making sure those laws were enforced, and who have not learned anything from what happened. How is "government overriding the good sense of the mortgage industry by government fiat" capitalism? The mortgage industry was highly regulated. It couldn't hardly have been more regulated. The problem is that the "perfect government regulator" is a myth that lives only in our minds. Your argument, like almost everybody else, assumes that regulation always works, and thus, if something didn't work, it must not have been regulated. QED. A moment's clear thought will show that to be completely false. If you can handle the idea that a market made of people is imperfect, even must be imperfect, why do so many carry around the idea that a government made of people will somehow be immune? It's just people! Markets, governments, consumers, all just people. Government may not be 100% responsible for what happened, but they are 100% responsible for creating the environment in which it occurred. Nobody else had the power to force bad loans but the government. ... There is a great danger here. Months into this crisis and huge numbers of people still have no clue what happened. Forget ideology for a second; if you want to make good decisions, you need truth. The truth is complicated, and I can't lay it all out, but I can tell you that the idea that this was all caused by rampant laissez faire capitalism is an objective falsehood. Government was involved deeply and pervasively. What exactly that means, I don't know and I'm not trying to make a claim here. (I have elsewhere, but not here.) All I am saying here is that you need to know the truth before spouting off. Even as a little-l libertarian, I would feel a lot more comfortable with calls for regulation if people didn't implicitly treat it as some sort of atomic entity, where you either have "more" or "less", but that's the only dimension. That's wrong and frankly stupid. There's also good regulation and bad regulation and it's not usually obvious which is which. If we frame the debate that way, I'd be a lot less scared, but nobody does! It's all "we need more" or "we need less" and nobody talks about what more or what less, just "more" and "less". I'm "little l" because I'm not against all regulation, but I'm against bad regulation, and that is what got us here. Not "no" regulation. Bad regulation. It exists! ... so why does that common-sense declaration feel so subversive to say?