Politics thread (USA Elections 2016) - Page 135

On June 23 2019 04:29 Loco wrote: In Mexico between 1960 and 1980-- twenty years-- the real GDP growth per person increased by 98.7%. In the 20 years following the implementation of NAFTA, however, it only increased by 19.7% -- this is about half of the rate of growth achieved by the rest of Latin America during the same period. The 80s onward saw a rise in the privatization and neoliberalization of the Mexican economy. It was known ahead of time that NAFTA would negatively affect over 70% of people and the plan was for it to be passed without people knowing. Some 2 million farmers lost their jobs/went bankrupt. Following NAFTA between 1994 and 2000, emigration to the US increased by 79%.

bullshit



Compare grey lines, opening the mexican economy was a good thing or we would be like the rest of center america and most of southamerica, Mexico has the healthiest economy im center and south america besides Chile that is much smaller and funnily enough had a quasi-fascist dictator that killed all the leftists.

In the first half of the decade, the US backed the highly corrupt and murderous Carlos Salinas de Gortari. NAFTA was implemented without the approval of the North American people, and it was a death sentence for the indigenous Mexicans. When the Zapatistas rose up as a response, not to seek power, but merely to say "we are here, please listen to us, you've made a mistake", the US put a price on their heads. They backed another man, Ernesto Zedillo, who continued the same politics of deceit. He was given millions of dollars by the US, not to improve the lives of Mexicans, but to wage war against a bunch of poorly armed, poorly nourished brown people who were defending their basic human rights. During his presidency, Zedillo faced the worst economic crisis in Mexico's history.

Salinas was indeed corrupt and murderous, just as every president has been and will continue to be for a long time, this flies over your head because you live in your pink bubble and that allows you to make retarded comments that would make latinamericans cringe like how good Chavez/Maduro are or that AMLO is the best president in the world.

FYI, AMLO's right hand, the mand behind the curtain is Manuel Bartlett, he is the one responsible of the electoral fraud that put Salinas in the presidential chair (the new elctronic system "failed), also he is a known murderer who can't even get into the US becaue of ties with cartels.

Zedilla wasn't even handpicked, he was an emergency substitute for Colosio who were murdered short before the presidential elections, and frankly he did an "ok" job regarding the time-bomb Salinas put in his hands, I suppose you gotta read a few articles about that so you can keep on teaching me about Mexican poliltics.

Not only did NAFTA result in this war on the indigenous population of Mexico and in the near destruction of the agricultural industry but the shift towards a commodity exports-driven economy has led to an increase in manufacturing, which has resulted in increased environmental degradation.

Economic progress in the 90s increased environmental degradation no shi!... I suppose we should have kept out economy based on manual-agriculture and be a banana-republic of 120 million people.

According to the CEPR, "NAFTA also increasingly tied Mexico to the U.S. economy, at a time when the U.S. economy was becoming dependent on growth driven by asset bubbles. As a result, Mexico suffered a recession when the stock market bubble burst in 2000-2002, and was one the hardest hit countries in the region during the U.S. Great Recession, with a drop of 6.7 percent of GDP. The Mexican economy was even harder hit by the peso crisis in 1994-95, losing 9.5 percent of GDP during the downturn; the crisis was caused by the U.S. Federal Reserve raising interest rates in 1994."

well duh... we are highly connected to the US economy, they are our biggest customers, if they hurt we hurt too and that is ok.

On June 24 2019 06:07 Loco wrote: Morales is much better than AMLO. I don't have much to say about AMLO. He might be more of an opportunist than I had thought, or he might be constrained by circumstances. I'm leaning towards the former because his relationship with EZLN is not good. He had a 86% approval 100 days after he got into office, so it shouldn't be too surprising that he's playing the long game and not doing anything radical, especially when you consider that he's the first left-wing president in 70 years. I haven't followed what he's been doing in the last few months though but I see his approval rating has dropped a bit. From what I know his government passed legislation that treats corruption as a more serious crime, and it gives the state power to confiscate criminal property, and to more efficiently and aggressively prosecute money laundering. I don't know how well they have been using that power. He travels on commercial planes instead of taking the usual presidential jet so Occam's razor would have me think he's not that likely to be "corrupted AF". For the most part he's been following a typical neoliberal agenda so he holds no special place in my heart. His concession to Trump on immigration reflects Mexico's economic dependence on the US, which I've just highlighted. As Chomsky put it, "The point of NAFTA was to lock in the so-called reforms by treaty, so that even if there is a democracy opening — that hated danger — they won’t be able to do much about it, because they’re locked into these arrangements.” I think it's one area where he really does wish he could do better but he has to compromise somewhere in order to get a better deal in the new NAFTA.

the PRI has ruled Mexico for almost 80 years, they are a center-left party, in fact they rely heavily on indigenous/farmer's votes, we call it el "voto verde", the cities, especially industrious ones usually vote center-right (PAN), AMLO's party is MORENA, which is basically the old PRI, many of the old corrupt dinosaurs of the PRI fled to MORENA because they foresaw their party collapse.

Nobody gives a shit about the EZLN in México, they became irrelevant long time ago and AMLO hasn't even approached them.

I think its shocking that you believe that traveling in public planes and not private is a sign of honesty... that populist shit is designed to fool uneducated people, what in the actual fuck, do you also fall for politicians kissing babies?

Here are a few things about AMLO that might change your mind:

1- One of his main proposals it the mayan train... a tourist train that would cut across all of the mayan jungle, it would be the biggest ecocide in the history of México.

2- The center-right party candidate energy proposal was green energy, solar panels in houses etc, AMLO's disagreed, he rejected the proposal of putting wind energy in a very windy part of Mexico, he said those things look ugly... so his energy plan is build 3 refineries

3 - Mexico doesnt allow lobbying, so the cash-cow in corruption is giving contracts to private companies, (health, construction etc), Its illegal for the government to give contracts without a "competition" to see who offers the best price.... well over 70% of AMLO's public projects were given directly, that is far more than any other president in history, so far he has been the most corrupt president in history at least in this imprtant metric, and remember his competition is filled with actual murdering drug dealers lol.


Dude you are discussing about mexican politicians when you can't even read spanish with an actual Mexican who has lived here all his life... this is ridiculous I'm not going to argue with Spitfire about politicians in Bulgaria

BTW I think I forgot to answer Stroggoz how the state-meddling changed the tuition prices.

It's exactly the same as the 08 real state bubble, the state incentivizes lending by guaranteeing/derisking it for example:

until 2005, when Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which made it so that no student loan — federal or private — could be discharged in bankruptcy

You can discharge creditcard debt if you declare bankrupcy but student loans remain, obviously this derisks it, incentivices lending which increase demand so the price goes up and that is only one of the many forms in which the state subsidizes these loans, lately many retarded politicians are talking about wiping all student debt... which is not only unfair to the ones who didnt take or paid their loans but it also creates a massive incentive to loan more.


So there you go, if the government kept their hands out of upper education Tuition prices woud have kept with inflation and the US wouldn't be in this bubble

You used the data for current prices. That's not real GDP. You have to switch to constant prices, that is the measure that adjusts for inflation. Here I've done it for you, you're welcome.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/...=2014&locations=MX&start=1994

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/...=1980&locations=MX&start=1960

I've given you facts as to why your country is in the situation that it is in, I'm not discussing Mexican politicians with you. I told you I don't like AMLO, he doesn't represent my values at all, I was just doing some geopolitical relativizing. There is nothing for you to change my mind about. What he plans to do with the Maya train is absolutely disgusting.

You've used that 'your not from mexico' argument a few times now, it doesn't have any validity, i mean i've read reports from economists studying in mexican universties that say the complete opposite of what you say and is consistent with what CEPR's report says. But also i talk to highly educated people in new zealand in political science that don't even know real wages have stagnated in our economy, as they have in mexico.

The graph you link is from the World Bank and is measuring GDP per capita, the one from the CEPR is from the IMF and is measuring Real GDP per capita. Both graphs are correct, but real gdp is a much more interesting statistic because it takes inflation into account. Hence why it's called ''real', gdp', because those are the real numbers. Like if the world bank actually measured gdp for venezuala in the last few years it would be the richest country in the world from hyperinflation, but obviously that means nothing.

Same with wages, and real wages. Of course wages increase, impossible not to unless you had zero inflation. But real wages are the more interesting stastic, as it is measuring true purchasing power.

The comparisons you make between latin american economies are fine for analyzing the differences for those nations subjected to NAFTA and those that are not, they all were subjected to structural adjustment programs from the IMF though, so it doesn't make sense to compare them to see what the structural adjustment programs are doing. what economic historians have been studying and comparing are countries that have undergone liberalization and those that used protectionist-mixed economy policies to try and climb out of poverty. The difference is big, take a look at p9 of the report loco linked.

On June 25 2019 06:48 Baalim wrote: lately many retarded politicians are talking about wiping all student debt... which is not only unfair to the ones who didnt take or paid their loans but it also creates a massive incentive to loan more.

Let's not improve anything because it's unfair to the people who had to live in the previously unimproved circumstances. Flawless right-wing logic.


Or as some random dude put it, "are you also mad that you spent $3000 on a Gateway computer in 1998 and now everything is cheaper and faster? Grow the fuck up"

Life is not a zero-sum game dude. But if you're a long-time poker player you are much more likely to have internalized it as such.

until 2005, when Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which made it so that no student loan — federal or private — could be discharged in bankruptcy

That's just a small part of the act which is just private industry driven weakening of bankruptcy protections. Less people declaring bankruptcy means more people are forced to somehow pay off debt, which is more money for credit card companies. Likely you saw the "Consumer Protection" part and assumed it was some sort of liberal nanny-state type initiative, but naming it that way was just a complete sham. Its pretty much the exact opposite.

On June 25 2019 07:01 Loco wrote: You used the data for current prices. That's not real GDP. You have to switch to constant prices, that is the measure that adjusts for inflation. Here I've done it for you, you're welcome. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/...P.KD?end=2014&locations=MX&start=1994 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/...P.KD?end=1980&locations=MX&start=1960 I've given you facts as to why your country is in the situation that it is in, I'm not discussing Mexican politicians with you. I told you I don't like AMLO, he doesn't represent my values at all, I was just doing some geopolitical relativizing. There is nothing for you to change my mind about. What he plans to do with the Maya train is absolutely disgusting.

true those are the correct graphs.

You literally said he was the best president in the world, and yes its fine if you change your mind but you were so quick to make a ridiculous claim because you thought he fitted your ideology.

On June 25 2019 07:34 Stroggoz wrote: You've used that 'your not from mexico' argument a few times now, it doesn't have any validity, i mean i've read reports from economists studying in mexican universties that say the complete opposite of what you say and is consistent with what CEPR's report says. But also i talk to highly educated people in new zealand in political science that don't even know real wages have stagnated in our economy, as they have in mexico. The graph you link is from the World Bank and is measuring GDP per capita, the one from the CEPR is from the IMF and is measuring Real GDP per capita. Both graphs are correct, but real gdp is a much more interesting statistic because it takes inflation into account. Hence why it's called ''real', gdp', because those are the real numbers. Like if the world bank actually measured gdp for venezuala in the last few years it would be the richest country in the world from hyperinflation, but obviously that means nothing. Same with wages, and real wages. Of course wages increase, impossible not to unless you had zero inflation. But real wages are the more interesting stastic, as it is measuring true purchasing power. The comparisons you make between latin american economies are fine for analyzing the differences for those nations subjected to NAFTA and those that are not, they all were subjected to structural adjustment programs from the IMF though, so it doesn't make sense to compare them to see what the structural adjustment programs are doing. what economic historians have been studying and comparing are countries that have undergone liberalization and those that used protectionist-mixed economy policies to try and climb out of poverty. The difference is big, take a look at p9 of the report loco linked.

I mean that I dont take pride in nationality or culture, what does that have to do with this?, reports that say the opposite of what specifically NAFTA? its a long subject if you want to talk about it.




Well there are many countries there with different levels of "liberalization", and the best performing one is Chile which is the most free-market of all latinamerica, they signed free trade deals with the US in 2003, and are pushing for free trade agreement in all america, lowered tariffs to all countries without a trade agreement etc.

On the other side the most protectionist left leaning countries have been Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and now Bolivia.

what report loco linked, linkitylink

On June 25 2019 13:46 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On June 25 2019 06:48 Baalim wrote: lately many retarded politicians are talking about wiping all student debt... which is not only unfair to the ones who didnt take or paid their loans but it also creates a massive incentive to loan more. Let's not improve anything because it's unfair to the people who had to live in the previously unimproved circumstances. Flawless right-wing logic. Or as some random dude put it, "are you also mad that you spent $3000 on a Gateway computer in 1998 and now everything is cheaper and faster? Grow the fuck up" Life is not a zero-sum game dude. But if you're a long-time poker player you are much more likely to have internalized it as such.

The public paying for the debt of others is unfair to the ones paying and to the ones who paid or didn't go into debt, period. If you believe its the best course of action despise the unfairness or not, is a different argument.

The point is that is the cause of the raise of tuition, is the derisking of lending, obviously the possibility of a bailout derisks lending.

On June 25 2019 20:40 NMcNasty wrote: Show nested quote + until 2005, when Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which made it so that no student loan — federal or private — could be discharged in bankruptcy That's just a small part of the act which is just private industry driven weakening of bankruptcy protections. Less people declaring bankruptcy means more people are forced to somehow pay off debt, which is more money for credit card companies. Likely you saw the "Consumer Protection" part and assumed it was some sort of liberal nanny-state type initiative, but naming it that way was just a complete sham. Its pretty much the exact opposite.

It is the government interferance in the market through corporate lobbying which makes lending much more attractive artifially increasing demand thus prices.


Why do you people still dont get it, I support the FREE market, not businesses, corporations manipulating the government through lobbying to distrupt the freedom of the market is the anthithesis of what I support.

On June 26 2019 01:46 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On June 25 2019 07:01 Loco wrote: You used the data for current prices. That's not real GDP. You have to switch to constant prices, that is the measure that adjusts for inflation. Here I've done it for you, you're welcome. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/...=2014&locations=MX&start=1994 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/...=1980&locations=MX&start=1960 I've given you facts as to why your country is in the situation that it is in, I'm not discussing Mexican politicians with you. I told you I don't like AMLO, he doesn't represent my values at all, I was just doing some geopolitical relativizing. There is nothing for you to change my mind about. What he plans to do with the Maya train is absolutely disgusting. true those are the correct graphs. You literally said he was the best president in the world, and yes its fine if you change your mind but you were so quick to make a ridiculous claim because you thought he fitted your ideology.

I linked it under CEPR, top of this page you quoted me and its clickable. Mexico ranked 18th of 20 Latin American countries in growth of real GDP per person at the time.

As a matter of fact, no, I didn't think he fit my ideology. He was called the Bernie Sanders of Latin America, that's about what I knew of him, and unless you think that I believe Sanders is an anarchist...

It doesn't matter what I said or thought about AMLO 6 fucking months ago, it had absolutely no relevance to the current discussion. You used it to distract from the facts that I presented. Which is fine, I'd be pissed too if my ideology didn't fit the facts, so I understand.

On June 26 2019 02:32 Baalim wrote: Why do you people still dont get it, I support the FREE market, not businesses, corporations manipulating the government through lobbying to distrupt the freedom of the market is the anthithesis of what I support.

You don't "support" it. We can only express support towards something that exists. Free markets, as you believe in them, do not exist, and have never existed. They exist in your imagination, as a theoretical construct, a kind of Platonic form. If you were to be precise, you would say that you have faith in them, because you cannot point at it in the real world. Markets always have constraints: rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. But really, you know this: that is why you talk about a libertarian republic now when push comes to shove. It's just that you haven't managed to put two and two together and realize that that is a political project in nature, with its own set of constraints, competing and guarding itself against other political projects which in the real world cannot not manifest.

I can say that I support ethical consumption under capitalism, or ethical slave-owning, and put glitter around the word "ethical", it doesn't change that I'm being illogical and fooling myself.

On June 26 2019 02:19 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On June 25 2019 07:34 Stroggoz wrote: You've used that 'your not from mexico' argument a few times now, it doesn't have any validity, i mean i've read reports from economists studying in mexican universties that say the complete opposite of what you say and is consistent with what CEPR's report says. But also i talk to highly educated people in new zealand in political science that don't even know real wages have stagnated in our economy, as they have in mexico. The graph you link is from the World Bank and is measuring GDP per capita, the one from the CEPR is from the IMF and is measuring Real GDP per capita. Both graphs are correct, but real gdp is a much more interesting statistic because it takes inflation into account. Hence why it's called ''real', gdp', because those are the real numbers. Like if the world bank actually measured gdp for venezuala in the last few years it would be the richest country in the world from hyperinflation, but obviously that means nothing. Same with wages, and real wages. Of course wages increase, impossible not to unless you had zero inflation. But real wages are the more interesting stastic, as it is measuring true purchasing power. The comparisons you make between latin american economies are fine for analyzing the differences for those nations subjected to NAFTA and those that are not, they all were subjected to structural adjustment programs from the IMF though, so it doesn't make sense to compare them to see what the structural adjustment programs are doing. what economic historians have been studying and comparing are countries that have undergone liberalization and those that used protectionist-mixed economy policies to try and climb out of poverty. The difference is big, take a look at p9 of the report loco linked. I mean that I dont take pride in nationality or culture, what does that have to do with this?, reports that say the opposite of what specifically NAFTA? its a long subject if you want to talk about it. Well there are many countries there with different levels of "liberalization", and the best performing one is Chile which is the most free-market of all latinamerica, they signed free trade deals with the US in 2003, and are pushing for free trade agreement in all america, lowered tariffs to all countries without a trade agreement etc. On the other side the most protectionist left leaning countries have been Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and now Bolivia. what report loco linked, linkitylink

I havn't really read anything on chile FTA, though you must admit liberarlization was initially a disaster in the 1970's. If you just liberalize the economy and export raw materials, it can result in high growth rates, but the nation will stay dependent and never industrialize. Like Indonesia has pretty big growth rates, but the economy as whole is not going anywhere. It's model is just to export the insane amount of resources it has, perhaps workers get 1% of that, and the rest goes to the ruling class in jakarta and the MNC's. There is no initiative to create a high tech industry and protect it from the rich nations until it can be competitive. You cannot expect poor nations to develop when the playing field is tilted in favour of the rich nations, who as you know protect their own industries, and get subsidies. (the poor nations have been told not to do this, but the rich nations do as they please). Most of the studies i've read are on east asain economies, like South korea, Japan. Both pursued protectionist policies, and protected their core industrial part of the economy until they could compete with the developed nations. The japanese car industry never would have took off without protection, it was unprofitable for a very long time before it became competitive. This has been studied a lot in economic history since the early 1990's, britain pursued protectionist policies, protecting it's wool industry in the 16th century (that was the high tech industry back then), until it could compete with other nations in europe. Then it protected it's textile industry in the 18th century when more advanced industries in India were out competing them. Britain adopted free trade once they had become a super power and had crushed the rest of the competition. Japan and America escaped British imperialism and so were able to pursue their own economic policy. Again, America was highly protectionist in the 19th century, they pursued that policy so they could catch up to Britain. This policy came from Alexander Hamilton's infant industries argument, which can be found in 100 level economics textbooks today.

The basic worldview we get from economic history is that trade liberilization is fine if both countries start off on equal footing, and have already industrliazed. Countries like venezuela failed to adopt policies similar to South Korea, they did not try to industrialize but continued to try and make money off their raw materials. Ownership simply shifted from capitalists towards to the state. Protectionism without a plan to industrialize is not that great of a policy for any developing nation.

Any nation in africa or latin america could be as rich as south korea though, if they became independent and pursued the similar policies as south korea did instead of just blindly listening to the advice from the IMF/world bank. South Korea had one of the worst dicatorships in the world in the 1950's and was poorer than North Korea at the time. Their main export was human hair for wigs, and the country was dismissed as basically being completely hopeless and incapable of escaping poverty.

Well no one really know's what a free market is, if you take david ricardo's definition of a free market, it would be a lot different from our own. Would he think limited liability corporations as interventions in the market? Or how about child labour laws. Early 19th century free market economists thought the only value of a kid is what they can rent themselves for on the market, but i suspect most modern free market economists are not in favour of four year olds working in coal mines; they at least think there should be some labour regulations there.

On June 26 2019 02:32 Baalim wrote: It is the government interference in the market through corporate lobbying which makes lending much more attractive artificially increasing demand thus prices.

See I would guess that the standard libertarian position is that the bankruptcy laws themselves is the government meddling and curbing/eliminating them is a step back toward the natural order or something. Discharging student debt is similar to a bailout in that mindset. If the government is interfering in the 2005 act its not really with the market just its own previous laws. I think your opposition to the act is quite non-libertarian. You would be voting along with the liberal wing of the democratic party.

On June 26 2019 03:46 Loco wrote: I linked it under CEPR, top of this page you quoted me and its clickable. Mexico ranked 18th of 20 Latin American countries in growth of real GDP per person at the time.

Disingenious to present the slowdown as a Mexican phenomenom when Latinamerica overall had half the growth in the 80 to 20s.

Latinamerica does seem to overperform lately in comparison but depending on the metrics given the dates, its very likely Brazils explosion is skewing that number before its economic collapse.

Altho the article is reasonable and there were many things wrong with NAFTA that the article doesnt even go to and the neoliberalization of Mexico, like the corrupt privatization of telecoms that created Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world for a couple of years.

Don't mistake my overall support for liberalization of the market with how NAFTA was implemented, if that was your argument as its Stroggoz then we would be on the same page, but you aren't arguing that we should have protected the economy and liberate it like S.K. did, you are arguing that we should have kept it closed like Cuba.

It doesn't matter what I said or thought about AMLO 6 fucking months ago, it had absolutely no relevance to the current discussion.

It is relevant, you literally said he was the best president in the world without knowing anything about him, it shows your dogmatic view of politics and economy.

On June 26 2019 02:32 Baalim wrote: You don't "support" it. We can only express support towards something that exists. Free markets, as you believe in them, do not exist, and have never existed. They exist in your imagination, as a theoretical construct, a kind of Platonic form. If you were to be precise, you would say that you have faith in them, because you cannot point at it in the real world. Markets always have constraints: rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. But really, you know this: that is why you talk about a libertarian republic now when push comes to shove. It's just that you haven't managed to put two and two together and realize that that is a political project in nature, with its own set of constraints, competing and guarding itself against other political projects which in the real world cannot not manifest. I can say that I support ethical consumption under capitalism, or ethical slave-owning, and put glitter around the word "ethical", it doesn't change that I'm being illogical and fooling myself.

The good ol' your ancap hasnt existed ergo your ideas are invalid, says the other anarchist LMAO ... in before "but Rojava!", you are a joke.

Of course I dont have an example to point out and I've said many times that markets wont be perfectly liquid/efficient at least in a near future, and I defend libertarianism because its a more palpable aproximation, I dont see why you are so hell bent on "defeating" an-cap, I've sait it many times that is possible that libertarianism outperforms it, but that I'm concerned about the containment of a small state, so to simplify stuff, assume I'm a libertarian.

On June 26 2019 14:33 Stroggoz wrote: I havn't really read anything on chile FTA, though you must admit liberarlization was initially a disaster in the 1970's. If you just liberalize the economy and export raw materials, it can result in high growth rates, but the nation will stay dependent and never industrialize. Like Indonesia has pretty big growth rates, but the economy as whole is not going anywhere. It's model is just to export the insane amount of resources it has, perhaps workers get 1% of that, and the rest goes to the ruling class in jakarta and the MNC's. There is no initiative to create a high tech industry and protect it from the rich nations until it can be competitive. You cannot expect poor nations to develop when the playing field is tilted in favour of the rich nations, who as you know protect their own industries, and get subsidies. (the poor nations have been told not to do this, but the rich nations do as they please). Most of the studies i've read are on east asain economies, like South korea, Japan. Both pursued protectionist policies, and protected their core industrial part of the economy until they could compete with the developed nations. The japanese car industry never would have took off without protection, it was unprofitable for a very long time before it became competitive. This has been studied a lot in economic history since the early 1990's, britain pursued protectionist policies, protecting it's wool industry in the 16th century (that was the high tech industry back then), until it could compete with other nations in europe. Then it protected it's textile industry in the 18th century when more advanced industries in India were out competing them. Britain adopted free trade once they had become a super power and had crushed the rest of the competition. Japan and America escaped British imperialism and so were able to pursue their own economic policy. Again, America was highly protectionist in the 19th century, they pursued that policy so they could catch up to Britain. This policy came from Alexander Hamilton's infant industries argument, which can be found in 100 level economics textbooks today. The basic worldview we get from economic history is that trade liberilization is fine if both countries start off on equal footing, and have already industrliazed. Countries like venezuela failed to adopt policies similar to South Korea, they did not try to industrialize but continued to try and make money off their raw materials. Ownership simply shifted from capitalists towards to the state. Protectionism without a plan to industrialize is not that great of a policy for any developing nation. Any nation in africa or latin america could be as rich as south korea though, if they became independent and pursued the similar policies as south korea did instead of just blindly listening to the advice from the IMF/world bank. South Korea had one of the worst dicatorships in the world in the 1950's and was poorer than North Korea at the time. Their main export was human hair for wigs, and the country was dismissed as basically being completely hopeless and incapable of escaping poverty.

Absolutely, economic liberalization needs a careful plan that requires protectionism until the country is industrialized or its resources will just be syphoned with only the corrupt state to benefit that will steal and squander the easy profits.

There are many examples of this in México as loco mentioned obviously Mexico couldnt compete in agriculture with the US, and even worse ones like the fact that Mexico sends oil to the US so they refine it and then they re-sell it to us as gasoline because we didn't have the proper infrastructure (many refineries were planned and paid for but the government stole the money).

On June 26 2019 16:46 NMcNasty wrote: Show nested quote + On June 26 2019 02:32 Baalim wrote: It is the government interference in the market through corporate lobbying which makes lending much more attractive artificially increasing demand thus prices. See I would guess that the standard libertarian position is that the bankruptcy laws themselves is the government meddling and curbing/eliminating them is a step back toward the natural order or something. Discharging student debt is similar to a bailout in that mindset. If the government is interfering in the 2005 act its not really with the market just its own previous laws. I think your opposition to the act is quite non-libertarian. You would be voting along with the liberal wing of the democratic party.

I'm not defending bankrupcy laws, at least not the ones that delete debt, I could see strong arguments about long term debt freezing etc (to minimize exploits), what I'm arguing against is the assymetric debt legislation that creates moral hazzards in the market that will generate another bubble like in 08 that banks will exploit.

who do you think is creaming their pants with these debt-striking talks from politicians? the fucking banks, they are going to lend money to anybody wanting their idiotic women studies degree raising the price exponentially and when it gets out of control the public will pick up the tab again.

On June 26 2019 21:27 Baalim wrote: The good ol' your ancap hasnt existed ergo your ideas are invalid, says the other anarchist LMAO ... in before "but Rojava!", you are a joke.

A strawman and an ad hominem in so few words only warrants the lowest amount of effort on my part:





^

Wanna know what's funny? I couldn't find a single picture of anarcho-capitalists in real life for this post. I had to use this one even though I didn't care for the meme because no matter what I put into Google images I couldn't find a group of an-caps together. So, to get things straight: Rojava anarchists/communalists have successfully built a stateless society against all odds while fighting (and defeating) the most dangerous terrorist group on the planet with very limited resources, but they're the joke (or I am because I think there are things to learn from them). We're supposed to take you people behind your computers more seriously. We're supposed to think that our best bet to build a better society is in the hands of people who can't even show up to a place together and take a picture. Sounds legit. Seriously though, no reasonable person is certain about their views. We're all making bets. But a reasonable person can be quite certain that an ideology that has received so little attention -- something that's so obviously ahistorical and inflexible-- isn't worth the time. There have to be better bets than that...

You know that even if I'm wrong and you guys are 100% correct because you have superhuman intelligence and you are way ahead of everyone else, you'd still need people to rally behind your ideas in order to change things, right? Yet in 65 years or so since this political philosophy took form you haven't done shit. How do you justify your belief that this can work when these ideas are just as fringe as they have ever been today and it only exists on the internet? The closest thing to your ideology actually doing something out in the real world (outside of the neo-fascists that just "had a little gap in their logic" which we shouldn't mention) are the right-wing billionaires who are pumping a lot of money into think tanks that actively misinform people in order to stay in power (with the help of state funding too, of course). From this alone, even someone with 0 knowledge of political economy could know not to be fooled into investing any energy into it. It doesn't pass a basic sniff test.

I dont see why you are so hell bent on "defeating" an-cap

There is nothing there to defeat. You can't even stay on topic and make a counter-argument when it comes to the things that you supposedly care the most about. You give me lazy logically fallacious one liners instead. You can't be consistent as to what you think is best; you flip flop between two different positions constantly. Current capitalism is good when you want to show that "communism is bad", but it becomes awful crony capitalism when that becomes convenient. You're an "anarchist" except when it's not convenient. It's so confused. You just "downgrade" to a libertarian position when you think it is easier to argue for, but when you find out it isn't, you fall back to being an "anarchist" (voluntaryst).

Anyway, it's clear that even just discussing these ideas in any depth validates and nourishes your delusional self-importance and I shouldn't be doing it. What you need is less internet debating and more hitting the books. If everyone ignored an-caps, you'd be forced to change your mind sooner or later, or at the very least come together for the first time in history and start doing some actual thinking as to why no one takes you seriously.

**If the people of LP want to join me in boycotting all talk of free market capitalism, I'm in.

We can still talk about the REALITIES of capitalism, oligarchies and approaching monopolies?

FREE MARKET CAPITALISM



I'm in