Congress with a Supermajority

Bruce Perens

Fri Oct 17 11:12:54 -0700 2008

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Dancing in the streets.

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Fri Oct 17 12:02:57 -0700 2008

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With no way to pay for the party.  I think at best, it means warm and cozy fireside chats and a New New Deal.

Congress with a Supermajority

Bruce Perens

Fri Oct 17 12:06:36 -0700 2008

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Turning down military spending would be a good first step to recovery.

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Fri Oct 17 13:19:17 -0700 2008

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And maybe, just maybe, doing the one thing the extreme left and the extreme right can agree upon right now:  Bringing the soldiers home and using the department of defense for, gasp, defense.

Congress with a Supermajority

ssclift

Fri Oct 17 18:13:40 -0700 2008

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Except that you don't have an extreme left in U.S. politics.

... and nothing to lose but your chains... :)

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 12:15:53 -0700 2008

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Dancing in the streets...to some oldtimey ragtime band like it's 1932 again...

Welcome to the New New Deal and the closest America will ever come to full socialism since the pols won't hold back like back in the 30s.

I have a mission for you, Bruce, if you chose to accept it. Next time you get a few hours of downtime I want you to read The Road to Serfdom and then report back to us how that will not happen under St. Obama and his merry band of ragamuffins.

Or if you really want to see the effects of the Democratic proposals under our current economic climate you could become a student of history...

"Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it"—George Santayana

Congress with a Supermajority

atrius

Fri Oct 17 12:54:10 -0700 2008

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Don't you know that's blasphemy? ;)

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President4242

Fri Oct 17 13:20:43 -0700 2008

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The problem with The Road To Serfdom is that even capitalism is a form of collectivism (capital has a tendency to get concentrated into the hands of the few, no matter what system you use to do it, barring use of force and taxes to redistribute it).

And the problem with NOT electing Obama is that you get McCain- same socialism, slightly more militaristic and will cost you more in the long run because the difference between paying for something with taxes now and paying for it by borrowing now is more taxes later for years worth of interest paid to bankers.

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 15:45:34 -0700 2008

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...is that even capitalism is a form of collectivism (capital has a tendency to get concentrated into the hands of the few, no matter what system you use to do it, barring use of force and taxes to redistribute it).

You have to prove that and not merely assert it as fact.

I, on the other hand, can show how the opposite is true and how using force and taxes (same thing really) actually has the opposite effect than is intended, namely causing capital to get concentrated into the hands of a few.

Or I can just cite the definitive work on the subject and challenge those who wish to become part of the Body Politic to disprove the argument.

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Fri Oct 17 16:27:39 -0700 2008

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You have to prove that and not merely assert it as fact.

First you have to understand what I'm saying.

I, on the other hand, can show how the opposite is true and how using force and taxes (same thing really) actually has the opposite effect than is intended, namely causing capital to get concentrated into the hands of a few.

Uh, no, using force and taxes ALSO is about causing capital to get concentrated into the hands of the few, usually.  Save of course things like the Bahamaian "generation lands" where slaves were given land upon emancipation, and Mexico's big reset back in the 1930s.

Or I can just cite the definitive work on the subject and challenge those who wish to become part of the Body Politic to disprove the argument.

Somehow, I doubt it fits my argument- that any human-run economic system WILL become collectivist, whether using taxes and force or not.

Congress with a Supermajority

ssclift

Sat Oct 18 06:31:26 -0700 2008

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Have a look at some of the recent market microstructure work.  Simulation studies of ideal economies are quite instructive, and a recent result (I'll have to dig for the reference) indicates that in the presence of any mis-pricing, i.e. any goods that exchange hands at different prices, the market always concentrates wealth into the hands of a single agent.  So bid/ask spread, retail/wholesale prices, anything like that cause wealth concentration.  The addition of taxation restabilizes the system.

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Sat Oct 18 12:31:44 -0700 2008

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The addition of taxation restabilizes the system.

Doesn't it always...

Evenly Rotation Economies are fine and all but don't work so well in modeling The Real World™ or as a tool to set policy precisely because they are only valid in an 'ideal economy'.

Kind of sounds like they assumed away competition to me.

The real question is can they prove it empirically.

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Tue Oct 21 11:28:00 -0700 2008

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Kind of sounds like they assumed away competition to me.

Competition doesn't exist in the Real World.  Any hint at true competition is often fake when you dig through the layers of ownership and find the same set of venture capitalists behind both sides.

Congress with a Supermajority

The Baron

Mon Oct 20 07:16:28 -0700 2008

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Or I can just cite the definitive work on the subject and challenge those who wish to become part of the Body Politic to disprove the argument.

Care to? I'm interested. On the other hand there are plenty of sources that disagree.

Congress with a Supermajority

mcrbids

Sun Oct 19 00:49:05 -0700 2008

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... the difference between paying for something with taxes now and paying for it by borrowing now is more taxes later for years worth of interest paid to bankers.

How does it make sense that a government borrows currency it's charged with creating in the first place? Why would a government create money, then borrow the money it creates (at interest) in order to effect a change?

It's a stupid system. If a government is entitled with creating a monetary system (as the congress is tasked with via the constitution), then why would it borrow money it created in the first place?

This is an assinine system!

The US Govt. should print money for its own use. There is no use for literal taxes if you accept inflation! If the US Govt. spends so much as to cause inflation of its own currency, then the inflation is, itself, a tax and this isn't a problem because we accept inflation today, anyway. (The dollar has lost almost half its value since 1980 if you DON'T include the last year)

It's stupid - the idea that the creator of the US dollar has to borrow the US dollar to do it's stuff....

Congress with a Supermajority

David Leppik

Tue Oct 21 11:17:34 -0700 2008

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How does it make sense that a government borrows currency it's charged with creating in the first place? Why would a government create money, then borrow the money it creates (at interest) in order to effect a change?

One word: inflation. Printing money creates it much more than borrowing.

The US Govt. should print money for its own use. There is no use for literal taxes if you accept inflation! If the US Govt. spends so much as to cause inflation of its own currency, then the inflation is, itself, a tax and this isn't a problem because we accept inflation today, anyway. (The dollar has lost almost half its value since 1980 if you DON'T include the last year)

One word: hyperinflation. Every country that's tried to pay off its debts by printing money has ended up with hyperinflation, economic collapse, and usually regime change. Germany after WW I might be the most famous example, but there are so many examples it's hard to say.

Congress with a Supermajority

Bruce Perens

Fri Oct 17 16:25:48 -0700 2008

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I see no evidence that anyone is planning the degree of control over the means of production that Hayek was afraid of.

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President4242

Fri Oct 17 16:32:45 -0700 2008

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Then why was the bailout needed, if not to continue New York and Wall Street's control over the means of production?

Congress with a Supermajority

Bruce Perens

Fri Oct 17 16:42:01 -0700 2008

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I am not making an assertion that the bailout was needed. However, I suspect that some of the people behind the bailout were well acquainted with the Meises reference linked to above.

But what are you asking for here? If you eliminated the companies involved, which were investing in real estate rather than industrial production, you would not shut down the stock market. And there's more than one stock market, anyway.

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Fri Oct 17 17:07:55 -0700 2008

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Only one that seems to count- and while it's true that a majority of the companies investing in money (I have some grave doubts about using the term "real estate" when it comes to the housing bubble) are not the majority, they are an extremely large plurality.

And none of them invest only in real estate- they invest in a lot of other stuff besides, and constitute a tax on innovation.

Congress with a Supermajority

Bruce Perens

Fri Oct 17 17:29:18 -0700 2008

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NYSE/Euronext? NASDAQ, the London, Tokyo, and Shanghai exchanges are pretty big too, and could take over its function without much changing. The next 10 or so exchanges after those each manage about a Trillion dollars, and could also fill any vacuum.

Maybe it's the market makers you're concerned with?

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 17:09:21 -0700 2008

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I see no evidence that anyone is planning the degree of control over the means of production that Hayek was afraid of.

That's actually his main point, the degree of control isn't the end itself but the only inevitable result.

There is only one destination once you start down that road.

Congress with a Supermajority

Bruce Perens

Fri Oct 17 17:13:29 -0700 2008

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Oh come on. Post World War 1, many countries enacted programs you'd probably label as socialist, starting with government funding of public roads and proceeding to one-payer health care and social welfare programs. And they did not all end up in the same place when World War 2 came, or now.

Congress with a Supermajority

Daniel Colascione

Mon Oct 20 01:44:48 -0700 2008

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You appear to be a reasonably intelligent person who nevertheless supports conservative policies. I've heard lots of arguments about why your system is theoretically superior, but you ignore all the evidence that shows that socialist policies actually work, while pure capitalism leads us to problems like the present.

How can you, as a rational, thinking human being, ignore the objective fact that Europe's policies have not only made it an economic superpower, but given it the best quality of life on earth?

In science, if our theory tells us we should see outcome A from a given experiment, yet we see outcome B, we don't rail about the moral inferiority of the experiment; instead, we change the theory. Isn't it time to accept that yours is not borne out by reality? Or will we need another world war to convince you of that?

Congress with a Supermajority

rubycodez

Sun Oct 26 10:56:02 -0700 2008

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Hey Mr. rational, how come population of Europe over twice the U.S. but combined GDP is about the same?   Maybe socialism makes them all a bunch of slackers putting out half what they could?  And will their "quality of life" endure severe recession or depression or is it really unsustainable, have to wait and see.

We don't have capitalism in the U.S.A. anyway, but controlled and manipulated markets, so you can't make an argument about where "pure capitalism" leads.  And in response to "economic crisis"  we  (USA) just became the biggest socialists on the planet, by dollar value.   The current problems have to do with certain kinds of dishonesty and misrepresentation, in making pyramid schemes giving illusion of false wealth and false appearances of a good investment. The socialist countries are on board with those scams too, and so have their bailouts.

Congress with a Supermajority

Daniel Colascione

Sun Oct 26 12:24:31 -0700 2008

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RFK on the GDP:

Too much and too long, we seem to surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross domestic product - if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and advertising for cigarettes and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of our forests and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts rifles and knives and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the Gross Domestic Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither wit nor courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Congress with a Supermajority

rubycodez

Sun Oct 26 17:42:38 -0700 2008

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yes, bad with the good in GDP and anything else man does.  Europe engages in all those things you mention without exception, cigarettes to nukes.  Plenty of all that in south asia and China too.

But I mentioned that GDP comparison because you mentioned "economic superpower".

It seems to me  many  things are identical  regardless of label of "socialism", "communism", "capitalism".

Congress with a Supermajority

atrius

Fri Oct 17 12:56:05 -0700 2008

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I suspect that very much depends on who you are. I personally won't be dancing in the streets. I'll be wondering where the first shot at what I hold dear will come from.

I really hope...

zogger

Fri Oct 17 13:57:33 -0700 2008

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..they aren't so stupid as to so much as think about dorking around with the second amendment, and just let that whole subject go. Just accept what we have now as some sort of compromise default and deal with it. This nation is polarized/angry/annoyed, all of that as few election time periods I can recall (maybe 68 sort of comes close), and that would just be too much. I'll also add in what I think could happen-no clear winner after election day, and a multi month long drawn out process to figure it out, with the polarization increasing daily. I think the blackbox voting plus the election fraud attempts and all the new voters, etc, are going to make this *quite* the interesting election.

Congress with a Supermajority

Matt T

Fri Oct 17 23:16:58 -0700 2008

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Yes, some will dance in the streets, until they realize that their choice was really the same as the others choice.

The Dems have held a majority in both houses for two years, right? And yet not a single significant change in foreign or domestic policy was passed. The current Rep. administration is passing hugely socialist/fascist stuff, at the end of the term when normally nothing happens, and when the likely successor will be from the opposite party.

This is choosing between Tweedledee and Tweedledum; both are Tweedles.

Congress with a Supermajority

Daniel Colascione

Mon Oct 20 02:23:51 -0700 2008

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You demonstrate exactly the type of ignorance that has made America the laughing-stock of the world. Not only is our government wicked, corrupt, and incompetent, but the perception of a typical American is one of a willfully ignorant fool. You certainly fit that bill.

There are in fact huge differences between the two parties. One represents a transition to social democracy that history has shown results in the greatest human happiness for all. Europe today is a shining example of what that kind of thinking can do.

To see what the other party's policies will do, look at a seven-day chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. For your own sake and for the sake of every other person who lives in this country, wake the fuck up.

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Tue Oct 21 11:33:37 -0700 2008

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I'm sorry, aren't European banks actually in the same shambles ours are?

And how is Democratic transition to social democracy any different than Republican transition to social democracy, given that both are really crony capitalism in disguise?

Congress with a Supermajority

disco

Fri Oct 17 12:07:23 -0700 2008

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> What are the probable implications of such an event?

Uncontrolled spending and corruption.

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 12:16:38 -0700 2008

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So...business as usual then?

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asdfg

Fri Oct 17 12:27:45 -0700 2008

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tax and spend, as opposed to borrow and spend. Lesser of 2 evils I suppose.

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President4242

Fri Oct 17 13:32:40 -0700 2008

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By 32% if I'm right on what the bailout will do to the rate at which the federal government can borrow money.

Congress with a Supermajority

disco

Fri Oct 17 14:10:14 -0700 2008

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Yep, but worse. Think of the Republican-controlled twin-branches of 2000-2006, but this time with absolutely no veto threat (not that Bush vetoed anything). What do they say about absolute power?

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 16:02:11 -0700 2008

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The Dems at least had the ability to grow a backbone and threaten to fillibuster if the Repubs got too far out of line.

It's obvious after all the opposition to the 'rescue' that none of them care what We The Sheeple think on important issues anymore.

The only true check on unlimited power will be from the states who refuse to impliment what the federal government dictates to them (like the national ID card) which may turn out to be not that bad of a thing.

And maybe a Supreme Court that might start reading the Constitution instead of interpreting it but that's about as likely as St. Obama not going crazy on a socialistic agenda.

Congress with a Supermajority

pojo

Fri Oct 17 16:09:26 -0700 2008

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Where the heck were the Dems when the Republicans started spying on Americans, and started violating international treaties. I *do not* want any of these people to have any kind of majority. It seems that they do the least amount of harm by being in constant dead-lock!

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 17:15:19 -0700 2008

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They at least could have stopped it.

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President4242

Fri Oct 17 16:22:47 -0700 2008

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And the Republicans haven't gone crazy on a socialist agenda?

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Thomas Lord

Fri Oct 17 14:15:06 -0700 2008

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"Probable implications..." Random selection.

health care

A considerable amount of government money will be made available in the form of business and research grants for efforts to implement electronic medical records infrastructure. Lobbying will occur both to government, industry players, and the public encouraging that open source solutions be mandated in order to lower cost, foster competition, and to contribute to an infrastructure that has a chance of protecting patient privacy. Some good and many bad proposals will come from the open source community and it will be very difficult to separate wheat from chaff.

The worth of pharmaceutical patents will be weakened by lowering certain import restrictions and by advancing generics. Pharmaceutical stocks will under-perform the market and the total amount spent annually on private pharmaceutical research will shrink. The quality of pharmaceutical research and its effectiveness may, however, increase as the industry discovers new business models. (Hint: separate the drug manufacturing business from R&D and have manufacturers, insurers, etc. pool funds to purchase R&D. Make R&D products open source. The result is competitive manufacturing, needs-driven R&D, and competitive R&D. We can explain in a larger context why "exclusive rights for a limited time" is not needed to create incentives here and how payers can decide how much to spend on R&D (and how).)

telecom

The FCC will get a big shake-up. The new FCC will have a very different view of its mission and reach.

Some version of net neutrality will pass. The world will not end. In fact, hardly any change will be visible.

A decent chunk of (gov't subsidy) change will go away from some telecom carriers and more of it will go to hands that are digging trenches or building towers -- helping employment figures in some areas that badly need it (but not really creating a big nation-scale stimulus).

Most importantly, a lot of the graybeards and their progeny who are found on the various lists of Interesting People (e.g., Cerf, Farber) will gain a pretty huge amount of new political capital in D.C. They will, as a class, even though they don't agree with one another on many things, form a new working group that publishes white papers.

They will develop an interdisciplinary best-current-guess "master plan" for universal U.S. broadband. That is, they will look at where wireless is and what they foresee; where fiber; where coax; where copper etc. They'll develop some models for bandwidth and low-latency needs under a variety of assumptions. They'll propose a pretty good envelope calculation for working out what the efficient implementation of universal broadband looks like on a technical level and have some reserved but good suggestions about a business model. They'll avoid "second system syndrom" like the plague and, probably do a good job.

Their work product (with some catchy name -- "The _____ Reports") will have enormous consequence in policy and the actions of industry players resulting in some serious re-arranging.

The fighting will then resume in full with all of the players returning to the regularly scheduled activity of complaining that everyone but them is doing it wrong, etc.

(Rationale: they're already ready to try something like that and they already have the political capital but an Obama presidency and a D supermajority will represent such a favorable market for liquidating that political capital that they'll seize the moment -- especially before any more of them die of old age!)

Unions

Walmarts will become union shops.

Not a lot will change but union awareness and participation will go up.

Entitlements

As a percentage of government spending will go up.

Social Security will get back on track.

Cap and Trade

Shall not pass. A strong attempt will be made and Joe the Plumber will bring it down.

Voting

Voter-verified voting will become mandated. Open source voting machines will be funded directly by the federal government.

Economy

Yes, homeowners in bankruptcy can be granted a modified mortgage by the trustee which the creditor may like or lump as they see fit. Either this will result in a glut of bankruptcy filings in which case we'll see the Foreclosure Induced Bankruptcy Proceeding Expedition Act or it will result in more fiduciaries who proactively renegotiate mortgages. This won't be specifically bad but rather a case of "if you can't be fair, be arbitrary".

The now international recovery program mostly, kinda-sorta works. Lending picks up again but very tentatively. On the other hand, it's a lot more selective and informed and real growth starts to pick up again.

Wars

We'll definitely spend less.

Domestic Society

Racial hate crimes will go up for a time and then fall off considerably. A lot of the worst of it will be white on black crime.

random

The president's staff will look for a neutral way to participate (openly) in the blogosphere.

-t

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Fri Oct 17 15:44:30 -0700 2008

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The president's staff will look for a neutral way to participate (openly) in the blogosphere.

This weekend, when I have time, I'll be writing a major missive on this, still not sure if I'll post it here or on slashdot.  The way they fired me may not have been just, but it did expose a MASSIVE generation gap in how different generations think about government control of information, and what "public service" really means.  Luckily, while the final version of the grievance settlement had me promising not to sue and not to try to work for ODOT again and allowing me to "resign" with negative information purged from my employment record, there was NOTHING against me blogging about it.

That generation gap isn't absolute, but it is big.  I know many Baby Boomers who are comfortable in the blogosphere, but NONE that are in positions of great governmental power.  OTOH, almost all of the generations they are now going to be tapping for the grunt work of keeping the bureaucracy moving ARE comfortable with the blogosphere and semi-voluntary lack of privacy that represents (grow up posting the loss of your virginity on myspace, and privacy doesn't mean very much anymore), which makes it darn hard to keep your employees "on message" and spining all of the news your way, and totally impossible to stop leaks on items you THINK should be private.

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 16:22:49 -0700 2008

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More like having your loss of virginity filmed with a cellphone and posted on the internet for all your schoolmates to see...

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President4242

Fri Oct 17 16:29:10 -0700 2008

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More like having your loss of virginity filmed with a cellphone and posted on the internet for all your schoolmates to see...

That too.  A generation that is used to such things is not going to put up with businesses and governments that try to limit leaks and practice the art of the coverup.

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 16:09:06 -0700 2008

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What are your predictions about what will happen here on Planet Earth?

Just asking because it seems a bit more relevant...

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Thomas Lord

Fri Oct 17 16:11:31 -0700 2008

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pffft.

Are you saying that my predictions won't be true or that they are about unimportant things? In either case, why?

-t

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 16:33:40 -0700 2008

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I just think you have way too much faith in the self restraint they will show if they get a supermajority.

Any other election, yeah, you're probably pretty close but this may turn out to be 'black swan' election in which case all bets are off.

Congress with a Supermajority

Thomas Lord

Fri Oct 17 17:01:49 -0700 2008

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Ah. You mean, they get in, something bad happens, they over-react and everything goes to hell.

Well, I can't rule that out but zogger wanted my opinion of the most likely scenarios....

I think that the financial crisis means people are going to be more politically engaged than usual, for at least a while to come.

I think that the Internet radically changes the rules of that game.

I think that the grass roots matters more because of the Internet and is statistically better informed because of the Internet.

I think, therefore (and also because of observations external to this conversation) that a supermajority is not the tightly controlled unilateral governing force it once was.

I additionally believe that the US's "respectable intelligencia" -- people you'd want to see weighing in on policy -- is recently becoming rather organized, vocal, and influential -- thanks to the Internet. I don't mean that they hold unified positions on many things. I simply mean that the quality of discourse within which the government operates at high levels is going to rise sharply under the management style of an Obama. "The intelligencia" now possesses inexpensive (thanks to the Internet) ways to coordinate and speak with a single voice as a lobbying group. Simultaneously, it has inexpensive (thanks to the Internet) ways to reach grass roots ands so it's voice to policy leaders becomes more difficult to ignore.

A technocracy is erecting it's very own column.

A lot of the lunatic stuff coming out of the technocracy hightens the social responsibility of participating in it. A social technology of squelch knobs, so to speak, is good to keep well honed.

-t

Congress with a Supermajority

Matt T

Fri Oct 17 23:07:56 -0700 2008

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Please, define the management style of Obama.

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Thomas Lord

Sat Oct 18 10:52:23 -0700 2008

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I don't know about "define". I have opinions about his management style by seeing its effects in areas that I know at least a bit about.

For example, in tech policy (particularly telecom) there is a lot of semi-organized discussion among the technocrats who specialize in those areas. They scrutinize the FCC; they scrutinize the carriers; they scrutinize ISPs, etc. Their opinions vary on many things yet are fairly closely aligned on other issues. Their discourse is a bit deeper than just dorm room politics: it tends to be deeply informed on the subtleties of spectrum allocation, bandwidth management, etc.

In the larger political discourse, these technocratic types tend to sit across from opposite numbers within industry and within the FCC. Those vested interests often make arguments that sound good at the dorm room bull session level but don't stand up to scrutiny at the technical level. (Example: the arguments around Comcast's recently infamous IP throttling / deep packet inspection hacks.)

This is a bit of a problem in real life if the only representation of those debates in government is what comes out during hearings. So, you might have a guy from a carrier for the first hour then say, a Cerf or someone for the next hour, and the committee members have a list of questions that lobbyists help them right, and everybody names the various positions in the debate but precious little light is shed. The technocratic "voice" is weak in those cases.

I observed the Obama campaign go from no stated position and confessions of ignorance on the matters to starting to have some defensible, deeply informed opinions and policy proposals and this change happened after the Obama campaign allowed some big tech industry donors to introduce them to the technocracy.

That's evidence of a good management style in the sense that there were lots of voices eager to influence his policy proposals in that area and he evidently managed to find and pay attention to the better informed, more honest, more patriotic voices. Knowing who to listen to when, especially in a confusing arena, is good management.

---

Another area that suggests good management is the behavior of his campaign staff. That's always a very good test of a campaign because a campaign staff is a complex, highly challenged organization assembled in a rush job and always flying by the seat of their pants. Obama's staff had some big gaffs along the way (as did other campaigns) and he was swift, decisive, and effective at squelching those. Meanwhile, the media seems to find the staff at this late date to be almost boring in their discipline.

It's also worth noting that in many ways he has but in many ways has not been running the campaign that the D party leadership would likely have run. I have the impression -- as much as one can from outside the scene -- that there was indeed a pretty sharp party-internals power struggle with, for example, the Clintons. The Clintons matter, a lot, because there are many operatives throughout the party who are specifically loyal to them: they can't be simply shoved aside. At the same time, with a lesser candidate than Obama, they would have had much more influence (probably to ill effect) -- they had to be shoved "out of the way", even if not "aside".

The D party is itself a pretty large and moderately brutal bureaucracy, in other words, and yet its new leader seems to have quickly found himself sound footing on a solid platform within it.

That bodes well for his potential performance in the whitehouse. It stands in contrast to some of the embarrass-ourselves-constantly mode the McCain campaign and the GOP seems to be in.

---

His health-care plan, like is telecom policies, has evolved on the fly, keeps looking better, and seems to reflect input from some of the more informed and rational voices. It's still not a perfect plan, in my view, but it keeps getting better and again: signs of an open mind and intellectual bent skillfully applied in a noisy and chaotic political arena.

---

I could probably come up with others but you get the idea: he seems to be committed to things like science, reason and logic. He seems to listen well and to be good at seeking out reasonable choices of who to listen to. He seems to be able to bust heads without breaking them.

Seems like a talented executive.

-t

Congress with a Supermajority

Matt T

Sat Oct 18 17:28:53 -0700 2008

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I hope you are correct about him whether or not he becomes the next President. You and Perens seem to be firm Obama supporters, so I was hoping for more meat on his management accomplishments; real overcame adversity and led a team through the challenge with no backup/net type stuff. I agree that how the campaign has been run is a good indication of potential management skill, and that is positive aside from some reportedly uncontrolled supporters playing the racial angles to deflect attacks.

I'm more that bit skeptical, but then I am also in a state that is not contested by either party, so I may not have heard as much as you have heard. There were no commercials aired here until about two weeks ago, so my opinion is based upon what I have found on my own, and when. And then when the commercial contradicts itself (McCain offers no tax relief for middle class, then Obama offers three times the tax relief as McCain, as if three times zero is something), it does not remove the feeling that I am being sold a brand, much like a plastics company runs commercials about their support of modern life to get name recognition for their stock.

The fact that I first read on CNN Obama mentioned as a potential presidential candidate when he was not yet sworn as a senator flavored my opinion greatly. His name then remained in the news, despite no legislative achievements that I see advertised. When I look for what he has accomplished, I see safe political career choices, the same types of choices the led to Hillary Clinton become a senator for NY; support things that are not risky and gets others to support you. USASpending.gov is good, but that is co-sponsorship, not leading. The bills sponsored/co-sponsored are mostly good things, but not leadership. I also could not find the failures, the bills that he sponsored singly and failed. The failures would give a better idea of his true goals.

I'm stuck on the "tax relief" part of the campaign as that is what we hear the most from the commercials. I learned years ago that all politicians say that they will reduce taxes on the middle class. Considering that the Executive does not legislate the tax rate, any Presidential candidate stating that they will do anything to the tax rate other than sign legislation is at minimum overstating their power, but more likely trying to buy votes.

Again, I hope that I am incorrect, regardless of who is the next President. I am also skeptical of McCain and will likely not make my decision until November 4th. I am saying this he is not nearly as good as his supporters state.

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Fri Oct 17 16:21:40 -0700 2008

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Here's a better question- given that almost everything that Thomas predicts falls under the heading of creeping socialism, how does his prediction differ from yours?

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 16:27:07 -0700 2008

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I'm kind of doubtful about the 'creeping' part.

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Fri Oct 17 16:31:14 -0700 2008

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Oh, so you think that instead of Obama's stated health care plan, in which you get to choose your own doctor, he'll just put the entire country on Kaiser?

That's what I mean by creeping- I don't think Obama is going to change us to communism overnight.  In fact, given the current state of the economy, I have grave doubts that China will let us become communist for at least the next decade- perhaps the next century.  They need our interest payments.

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 16:56:26 -0700 2008

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I don't think he's going to start calling everyone comrade in his acceptance speech or anything like that.

I do think he will engineer a high enough level of failure into the system so they will have to be nationalized to keep them from complete failure. Just like they had to nationalize the banks to keep them from failing.

I was theorizing about this the other day on that other forum. One thing he wants is to require medical insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions and undoubtedly will impose premium caps. Medical costs for insurers will skyrocket and they will be unable to charge 'the pool' to make up for this so the only chance they will have is for the government to come up with a rescue bill to bail them out.

Now you have a single payer system because of a 'market failure' and not some overt political goal to provide health care for all citizens, they had to do it to ensure that Americans didn't lose health care benefits as its obvious that the private sector can't provide them without price gouging their customers.

That may not be their intent but, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Fri Oct 17 17:03:26 -0700 2008

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I do think he will engineer a high enough level of failure into the system so they will have to be nationalized to keep them from complete failure. Just like they had to nationalize the banks to keep them from failing.

And this would be different from Bush/McCain exactly how?  I thought that was the primary purpose of corporatism!

I was theorizing about this the other day on that other forum. One thing he wants is to require medical insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions and undoubtedly will impose premium caps. Medical costs for insurers will skyrocket and they will be unable to charge 'the pool' to make up for this so the only chance they will have is for the government to come up with a rescue bill to bail them out.

And that rescue plan will undoubtably be mergers- a reduction of duplication of effort in administration, which is more efficient.  One of the big arguments against capitalism and distributism I've seen is that duplication of effort.  But I have no doubt that McCain's version would do the same thing.

Now you have a single payer system because of a 'market failure' and not some overt political goal to provide health care for all citizens, they had to do it to ensure that Americans didn't lose health care benefits as its obvious that the private sector can't provide them without price gouging their customers.

Well, I kind of think that is obvious now, when you compare the results between America and Switzerland (or any actual working socialistic medicine country- could be Cuba).  American hospitals can't even handle uninsured customers without gouging them- you could stay in a four star hotel presidential suite for what most of them charge "uninsured" patients.  So no real difference there other than admiting to the problem.

That may not be their intent but, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Yeah, well, that's the case with freedom in general, isn't it?

Congress with a Supermajority

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 17:27:43 -0700 2008

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Dude, I'm not arguing for McBush here.

The only thing I'm saying that things like this are a lot more likely, whoever is in power, under a supermajority.

Just look how far the Rebublicans pushed their agenda under a mere majority and then imagine what could have happened if the Dems didn't have the ability to fillibuster whatever crazy plan Dubya came up with.

And then tell me that doesn't scare the hell out of you.

Congress with a Supermajority

President4242

Tue Oct 21 11:37:52 -0700 2008

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The faster the rise, the more dramatic the fall.

However, I think the Republicans pushed their agenda so far that the resources simply aren't there for the Democratic agenda.  Literally.  There is no way we can afford *both* our interest payments to China and a national health care system.

why nationalize?

Thomas Lord

Fri Oct 17 17:24:14 -0700 2008

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There's a lot of stuff it makes perfect sense to nationalize. Sorta. And that's where we're headed: something that looks to someone born in 1950 like socialism but someone born more recently like clever market making.

Here's the problem: a lot of basic things in the economy combine three properties: (a) as a matter of technological fundamentals, they are most economically effective at large scale; (b) they do not give rise to any natural monopolies; (c) they don't make sense as sanctioned monopolies; (d) they are services mainly concerned with managing information.

In such markets, the ubiquity IT efficiencies drive the profit margin of suppliers to $0, rapidly, and yet several such markets (health insurance, retail banking) are essential cornerstones of the economy. If nobody has incentive to construct an institutional incentive to run those essential but $0-profit businesses, they can come only from charity or the government (in any mostly-reliable form, at least).

Why not hypothesize, at least, that something like "privately owned bank" is essentially extinct because the fiduciary role of "bank" is efficiently priced to pay a consistent dividend of $0?

Rather, to restore market forces and competition to the equation, partition the fiduciary role of bank into pieces: ATM service, loan brokerage services, etc. Separate these business units into authentically separate businesses and run them independently. Do the "break even" book-keeping in the public sector.

-t

why nationalize?

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 18:05:29 -0700 2008

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Why not hypothesize, at least, that something like "privately owned bank" is essentially extinct because the fiduciary role of "bank" is efficiently priced to pay a consistent dividend of $0?

A bank has two roles, to store other people's money and to lend other people's money along with their own in the form of money invested in the bank as opposed to deposited.

Storing other people's money is profitable in that they charge a fee for the convenience of having checks and ATM cards, transaction fees, etc, etc, so you don't have to carry around a big wad of cash as well for the safety and security of a vault instead of keeping your cash under your mattress. This was the main role for which banks were invented.

Loaning money is also profitable in that they pay less for the money they borrow, in the form of term deposits, than they charge in interest to the people they lend the money to.

This is even without taking into account the extremely profitable legal counterfeiting they currently engage in.

To be unprofitable they would either have to charge less than it costs them to store and provide access to the money, charge less interest than it costs them to borrow money from their depositors or make a whole lot of bad loans.

I think its safe to say that the first two are taught on the first day in Big Pig Banker University so we can rule both of them out as likely causes for a hypothetical unprofitable private bank.

So all we have left is a single reason that a bank could possibly be unprofitable and that is because they made a whole lot of loans to people who were unable/unwilling to pay them back.

It is your argument that we should seperate out the unprofitable bad loan business from the profitable banking services and have the government provide this service because it is an "essential cornerstone of the economy"?

Luckily, the Powers That Be are also of this opinion and are in the process of socializing the bad loan sector of the economy for the "common good".

why nationalize?

Thomas Lord

Fri Oct 17 18:20:13 -0700 2008

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Bank A and Bank B operate identically except that Bank A relinquishes more of its profits than Bank B to pay interest to depositors. How can Bank B compete and pull ahead?

Lather, rinse, and repeat and what is the rapidly converged upon profit margin of both banks?

It is my argument that the fiduciary role of a bank is properly governmental or charitable and that all of the operational units within a bank are properly separate business entities in competitive markets.

-t

why nationalize?

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 19:37:25 -0700 2008

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Bank A and Bank B operate identically except that Bank A relinquishes more of its profits than Bank B to pay interest to depositors. How can Bank B compete and pull ahead?

Pay more in interest to depositors?

What you're saying is exactly how the market determines prices, there is nothing broken here.

You also don't take into account that the investors of both banks also want to see 'interest' on their money so profits will never fall to zero.

You could just as easily have worded it that Bank B pays higher dividends than Bank A, how can Bank A pull ahead?

The bank that pays the highest interest on deposits will get more deposits and the bank that pays the highest dividends on investments will get more investments. Voilà, a competitive market...

Plus there's all the other crazy crap they charge for.

why nationalize?

Thomas Lord

Fri Oct 17 20:07:34 -0700 2008

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You also don't take into account that the investors of both banks also want to see 'interest' on their money so profits will never fall to zero.

That's only true to the extent they can maintain barriers to entry to new competition and de facto collude among themselves to price fix. The natural barriers are quite low. The business of being the fiduciary of a bank is naturally 0 profit.

The businesses of operating banking services is a different matter including really core services. Those cost centers naturally make profit. We bundle them with unnatural rigidity, though, and reduce competition among them by giving banks per se a corporate identity.

-t

why nationalize?

Uncle Entity

Fri Oct 17 20:39:26 -0700 2008

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Don't get me wrong, I'm all for throwing banks to the laissez-faire wolves.

But you seem to think that in an environment of zero profit something not only should exist but will exist.

You don't need artificial barriers at all that because as soon as the profit falls below some other industry then investors will put their money there. If investments banks start paying less than Coca-cola people will put their money into Coke.

There are natural regulatory mechanisms that work quite well without putting a gun to my head and forcing me to pay for some unprofitable aspect of banking instead of trusting me as a consumer to place my money into the goods and services that I deem necessary.

Profit is unmatched by any other human invention in efficiently allocating scarce resources to fulfill the most urgent wants of society. No matter what the wanna-be central planner politicians tell you.

Absent government intervention or pigheadedness profit will never fall below simple interest.

why nationalize?

Daniel Colascione

Mon Oct 20 02:05:20 -0700 2008

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Ignore your emotional convictions and look at the macroeconomics here. In any truly competitive market, price and profit are both driven to zero. The only thing that prevents price actually going to zero is the real cost of production, and the only thing preventing profit from going to zero is imperfect competition.

In the case of the financial industry, the cost of production is very, very close to actually being zero. You just need to pay for branch offices, personnel, the president's Bentley, and so on. That's why Lord says it's a zero-profit industry. In principle, it should be a damn-near-close-to-zero price one too.

The problem is that as price trends toward zero, capitalism becomes increasingly bad at efficiently allocating resources even when the aggregate cost of a given industry is huge. The problem is inherent in human nature.

By nationalizing the naturally zero-cost, zero-profit part of banking, that of actually storing money, we can use capitalism to much more efficiently allocate the remaining services. Capitalism is much more comfortable, as a system, in finding the natural price of ATM services or of teller wages than finding interest rates.

Congress with a Supermajority

Spider

Fri Oct 17 16:56:38 -0700 2008

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It is always easier for any political party to "play god" when they have a large majority in the seats of power.  The Capitalistic Society as we all new it is in tatters, why? People got too greedy.  Will it recover? probably but with changes. It doesn't really matter what "history" books said what will happen to Capitalism.  Governments have rarely learnt from history apart from reciting a quotable quote from some obscure thinker from the last century.   The Democrats have campaigned with the slogan "time for change", lets hope they can deliver those changes for the USA should Obama become President.

left-wing ascendancy?

Alan

Sat Oct 18 00:04:48 -0700 2008

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activist government ... unchecked left-wing ascendancy...

I thought that it was a Democrat majority? What does that have to do with "left wing, let alone "liberal"?

I suppose those words must have a different meaning in the US than they do in the rest of the world.

left-wing ascendancy?

Matt Fulkerson

Sat Oct 18 13:36:04 -0700 2008

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 Those labels are commonly used in the US by Republicans to avoid having a meaningful discussion of the issues.