well human beings always tend to think that they time they live in somehow transcends beyond its past. the ppl of 1800s and 2058 would say the same thing if they hold the same same view as you do. so i urge you to be more scrupulous in making any assertions that would uphold the alleged unique qualities of our time, for the world does change, but something in the world never change, for example human greed.:china:
US Financial Crisis/Bailout, China's Role
- Thread starter FugitiveVisions
- Start date
well human beings always tend to think that they time they live in somehow transcends beyond its past. the ppl of 1800s and 2058 would say the same thing if they hold the same same view as you do. so i urge you to be more scrupulous in making any assertions that would uphold the alleged unique qualities of our time, for the world does change, but something in the world never change, for example human greed.:china:
That's not really the fault of the government as much as the corruption of the government. The source of the corrupting element is the enterprises in question. So the root cause is the enterprises which actively seeks to corrupt rather than to exercise self regulation.
Still, the fact that the problems keep arising and arising again shows the markets do not regulate the industry or the industry lacks self regulation until there is enough problems to launch a Congressional investigation.
Car industries in Japan and Europe are also heavily regulated. In fact because of government regulation, their cars are forced to be far more efficient and safe, although some of the rules seem questionable like increased tax and registration rates for cars on engines based on displacement.
I like the sheer mental clarity and focus of Mr. Peter Schiff. A lot of his predictions came through, although he is far from the only one making those predictions.
In one speech, he compares the situation like this.
There is this remote island where six people are stranded. Five of them are Asians and one is an American. The Asians gathered to collaborate for their survival and assigned a role to themselves. One will fish, one will gather the fire wood, one will cook, one will gather the fruits, one will collect the water. All the American will do is eat. Looking at this tiny economy, the economists will say that the American is central to this tiny economy because his consumption creates the justification for this economy.
Peter Schiff argues that the five Asians are more than capable of consuming what they gathered and produced, and the sooner they get rid of the American, the faster they will progress. Schiff argues that we should not view US consumption as the engine of growth to the world, but rather, this consumption is more of a dead weight. The faster the rest of the world cuts off this dead weight, the faster the rest of the world will move forward. Scary thought. Schiff has been right before. This is like saying sooner or later, this umbilical cord of foreign credit is going to get cut. (Already there are others predicting the next big financial crisis, two in fact, is foreign investment drying up such as like investors will stop buying Treasuries, and the second, hyperinflation of the US dollar.)
Peter Schiff's strategy. Get your money out of the sinking ship. Put it somewhere else. Save and protect it for later. Then maybe, we can repatriate the money later and rebuild the country's wealth.
In one speech, he compares the situation like this.
There is this remote island where six people are stranded. Five of them are Asians and one is an American. The Asians gathered to collaborate for their survival and assigned a role to themselves. One will fish, one will gather the fire wood, one will cook, one will gather the fruits, one will collect the water. All the American will do is eat. Looking at this tiny economy, the economists will say that the American is central to this tiny economy because his consumption creates the justification for this economy.
Peter Schiff argues that the five Asians are more than capable of consuming what they gathered and produced, and the sooner they get rid of the American, the faster they will progress. Schiff argues that we should not view US consumption as the engine of growth to the world, but rather, this consumption is more of a dead weight. The faster the rest of the world cuts off this dead weight, the faster the rest of the world will move forward. Scary thought. Schiff has been right before. This is like saying sooner or later, this umbilical cord of foreign credit is going to get cut. (Already there are others predicting the next big financial crisis, two in fact, is foreign investment drying up such as like investors will stop buying Treasuries, and the second, hyperinflation of the US dollar.)
Peter Schiff's strategy. Get your money out of the sinking ship. Put it somewhere else. Save and protect it for later. Then maybe, we can repatriate the money later and rebuild the country's wealth.
FugitiveVisions
Junior Member
Well it seems to me that to discuss the issue of consumer safety and to make practical suggestions, we ought to at least examine the empirical evidence and not just talk about how the utopic government is supposed to function. All the evidence suggests that to the extent the CCP regulators have interfered in this area at all, it has exercised its power to the detriment of the very consumer whom it's suppposed to protect. This is not a conjecture, this is a fact.
It is my belief that without the ability of big government to pony up the interests of the corporations, the corporation would not have enough leverage whatsoever to market a dangerous product for long, or to sell an inferior product for a price above which the market demands. When people die from eating Taco Bell, the relatives of those people would be able to take their case to the courts and disseminate this information would quickly. This naturally deters any company from purposely making faulty products. Those who make the faulty products anyway would suffer total loss on their initial investments, which for a milk factory, would be a pretty sizeable amount of savings, and face the prospect of sitting in a cold jail for five years. The notion that the market can not adjust quickly enough to hurt the perpentrators is flat out contradicted by the case which you presented and the chinese milk scandal. The information was there, but the government chose to withhold it.
But the fundamental issue is the notion that the government ought to set a floor on the safety of products that don't affect third parties besides the direct user is wrong. Again, you have to realize that the added safety, which is entirely arbitrarily determined by the government, comes at a cost to the consumer in higher prices. When the government mandates that every car ought to have a airbag, it is saying that no car should sell for the regular price + $2000 or whatever the airbag costs. Why can't the consumer decide for themselves what level of risk they want to take? This paternal bs is both hypocritical and outrageous.
One more thing I just want to add about the failures of the financial industry is that there is a big agency problem, which is to say that the owners did a terrible job aligning the interests of management with their own, and two, there was already tremendous moral hazard in the system. When LTCM failed in '99, the government bailed them out. When the stockmarket failed in '01, the government set the fed fund rate to 1%. The American consumer and the banks see this, and they think to themselves, boy, if we make some risky investments, such as buying a house on adjustable rates with no downpayment or purchasing the securities backed by these mortgages, the government would surely keep the flow of easy financing coming in case we run into any problems. Well guess what, the Fed did not have the power of bail them out and those poor [censored] all had to default. It's the fact that there was tremendous moral hazard, which is even practiced to this day, that makes the market wildly 'irrational' sometimes.
FugitiveVisions
Junior Member
Good stuff. Check out the blog by David Goldman at asian times. He addressed my proposal which was posted here in one of the postings called "unfreezing credit, unscrambling eggs" (12/1). Generally a lot of focus on the big picture in terms of the sources of global capital and on the liquidity of the credit markets, the dollar, gold and banks.
Engineer
Major
:roll:
So you are expecting the culprits of corruption would just report themselves, is that it? And how would outsiders find out who is bad if bad people hide their bad things they do? Quit trying to dodge the question.
Nice try taking what I say of context again. It is not about capitalism or communism. It is expecting system to solve problems automatically will fail.
My point is on enforcement, genius.
Your point is to regulate the government by deregulating everything, and assume that a government with less power will have less corruption. You are expecting local officals will not go out of bound, such as not finding other means to get their dirty hands into your little streamline process in getting proper paper, such as making a business out of providing forged papers. Reality doesn't work the way like you have imagined.
Actually, CCP does have disclosure mechanism, but as we can see it isn't working too well. Again, there is the question of who is doing the disclosure. How will the third party know the culprits when the culprits themselves made sure things won't leak to higher government? How will you know the third party won't get in on the deal as well?
Don't mislead the public. Is this simple enough? :roll:
What I am hoping is that the government will enforce regulation better. You on the other hand, expect problems automatically disappear by just adopting your unicon system.
Is that the only skill you have? Taking what people say out of context and then beat on a strawman? :roll:
I am all for reining in local officals, but I don't see your solutions will improve things. China have to deal with the situation over the past 3000 years, and corruption is still as rampant as today as it was then. If 3000 years of fighting corruption isn't solving anything, your simple solutions isn't going to do anything either.
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FugitiveVisions
Junior Member
Yeah I expect the corrupt officials to turn themselves in. Uh, no dumb[censored]. I expect the victims of gov't crimes to report those crimes, and when they have a telephone, and when there's an independent judiciary, guess what, they can do that. Wow, I can't believe I need to actually explain this to any person with a brain.
There is no more point in carrying on this discussion. Maybe if you post a picture of your unicorn, I'll actually take a look at the rest of your postings.
Engineer
Major
Wow, you are beyond help.
Corruption don't often involve victims in that kind of sense. In cases like land grabs, yes, such victims exist, and yes there should be an independent judiciary to protect these people. But in cases like bribery, there is no defined victims. You are still not answerng the question of how your unicon system will discover corrupted individuals. If your mean of discovery is that things got bad enough that everybody now knows about it, then it isn't much of an improvement over the current situation.
You are right, there is no point to continue the discussion when you believe corrupted officals would turn themselves in just to satisify your unicon system.
RedMercury
Junior Member
Yes, there is no point to carrying on a discussion with a hardcore reaganite. Besides, this thread is getting way off topic.
If this is with regards to the milk industry, it is what the industry is doing, which is the intent to foil regulation. Corruption of low level inspectors is not the fault of the government, but to whoever is handing out the money for the corrupting.
Its like blaming the teacher for handing out tough assignments and the result is that the students are cheating instead. Who do you blame as the cause of the cheating, the teacher or the students?
Our concept of responsibility means that in this case, it is the students who are to blame, not the teacher.
Not. In real cases, the consumer lacks the technical education to understand what makes a safe car. Do you? You cannot tell how safe a car is from the outside, can you? You will be surprised how little the consumer knows and understands the product they are buying. And will consumer also care about the environment and other ecological issues? Hell no, they want someone else to do it except on their own.
If a DVD player fails, then it fails. Little harm is done because there is no consequence in life when it does. That failure also happens in the privacy of your own home. Not the same with a car, a boat or a plane. If there is quality failure the consequences would not only kill the occupant, but also maim or kill the people around them. If you have to wait for the free market to correct these issues, how many lives would have to be sacrificed before the correction happens. As for the "free" media as a countering device to corporate corruption, the media itself is often in the take---note the so called "reviews" you get in magazines.
The government is in charge of the common welfare. That means they have a responsibility to govern what is outside of the privacy of your own home for the sake of everyone. The government should not interfere on the kind and design of the game console I will buy to play inside my home, but they have an inherent right to govern all things and objects that affect the common welfare outside of your home. That means things like cars, aircraft, boats, guns. The protection of the environment for example, is one thing that requires a clear government mandate because the free markets can only dictate products, not companies. A company that dirties rivers and air with its waste can still produce top notch products, and when those products are exported to another country, the consumers of that product would have no idea, or could not care less about how that company dumps waste to the rivers. This will keep on going until something catastrophic happens to the local population.
So if the government decides to regulate the pollution, causing the price of the product made by that factory to go up, is that really wrong? It is by far the lesser of two evils. The consumer---and this is proven in the real world---only cares about the short term and to his or her immediate benefit. He or she is not going to choose Product B over Product A, because Product B is made in a more ecological manner and costs more. The ecological disaster that is happening in China is due to free global markets where consumers desire cheap products, and that provides a massive disincentive for Chinese companies to be ecological. Even when the company has made enough money to buy anti pollution equipment, they do not do so, and even when bought, they are not installed or operated.