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To: koan who wrote (95689)	3/25/2009 9:33:56 AM
From: Sunny Jim	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

I think conquering starvation, whether it be children or anyone else is a noble goal. We should do it. We should also get control of procreation. Then we should conquer the weather.

To: koan who wrote (95689)	3/25/2009 10:51:51 AM
From: Claude Cormier	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

\|\| but I am very curious as to how those believers would deal \|\| with the starving children under the Austrian system of no \|\| governmental interference? I would do the same thing as I do right now, which is give a fair share of my revenus to local small charity organizations. In fact I would certainly give 2 or 3 times more since my tax bill would be much less than it is now. What are you doing now personally? Anything or are you saying like most that it is the government business not theirs. What would you do in a real free market system?

To: koan who wrote (95689)	3/25/2009 12:51:02 PM
From: John McCarthy	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Koan >>>>>>>>>> I was grinding my teeth-lol. >>>>>>>>>> Me too. You wrote: (1) but I am very curious as to how those believers would deal with the starving children under the Austrian system of no governmental interference? (2) Let the children starve-lol? (3) Government Can't let the people starve, nor should it. And government has lots of tools to help society work better. If the government is smart. If we have a stupid government then it won't work. Well - I figured it out. You are creating your own thesis and then attacking it. Here's a test: Frederick Hayek - I will give you the rest of your life to post me a link citing Hayek advocating the nonesense you wrote and which I just cited above. Frederick Hayek was a genuis and GallBreath was a professor. Its the only thing they have in common. regards John

To: koan who wrote (95689)	3/25/2009 2:01:29 PM
From: benwood	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

There are some gigantic holes in the so-called Free Market theory that I've never seen addressed. The number one hole in my view is unabashed human greed. People will make choices to collapse their neighbors/towns/cities/economy/nation/civilization in the pursuit of profit, future generations be damned. It is a positive feedback loop because it is impossible within the free market to rein in e.g. environmental damage in a manner which creates a strong deterrent to inflicting such damage because humans are involved, and humans are willing and capable liars, cheats, and prone to denial and other mental barriers. It's all great in theory -- e.g. mines being more "efficient" by pumping their waste into the Columbia River for two generations until, e.g. a 150-mile long lake known as Franklin Delano Roosevelt Lake in eastern Washington has so many contaminants that food for humans originating in that lake (i.e. fish) are toxic for the next one thousand years. But the Free Market chooses their products because they've "chosen" to be more efficient, so they persist whereas others which protect the environment fail. The free market simply has no mechanism to deal with that, and never will. Texaco dumping in the Amazon and children downstream getting tumors and cancers... bummer. Those humans who caused the problem are long gone, or unreachable by the judicial system. These aren't aspects that are caused by gov't interference which often has made the situation worse, but by inappropriate oversight by humans in any form -- gov't or otherwise. Deep down, the ultimate problem is that a certain percentage of humans will lie to achieve their goals, and the rest of us must have the will to monitor to protect ourselves (for the same reason we have a police force). And the Free Market theory, in my view, believes the environment is infinite, indestructible, and irrelevant. What's worse for us in the past 10-20 years is allowing those thugs to infiltrate gov't so that the former, inadequate oversight was turned into a rah-rah cheering section.

To: koan who wrote (95689)	3/25/2009 2:42:45 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

The point is not that you should not distribute welfare during inevitable recessions and economic depressions, but rather that you cannot create an economic recovery by increasing welfare payments to match the amount of GDP which has been lost in the downturn. The primary purpose of an economic downturn is to deleverage the economy relative to incomes. To the extent that this does not occur, the downturn has merely been postponed and made worse. .

To: koan who wrote (95689)	3/25/2009 4:08:30 PM
From: Joe Btfsplk	4 Recommendations Respond to of 116555

It's only been a fistful of centuries since surviving infancy was against long odds. The Austrians investigate how the structures of production came into fluid being, thus allowing an improving situation for a vastly increased population. Didn't happen overnight. The process is better measured in generations. Many subscribe to the notion that our material progress is simply a given. It's not. Were you to wade through von Mises, Hayek, et al, you might reassess your too common childish position. Charity requires something to give. In the hands of government it increasingly interferes with the evolving market developments that make it possible. You might also find enlightenment in history. Under Coolidge things were right peachy. Hoover and his Fed began the diddling that FDR wildly expanded, thus delivering expanded and extended misery. Further, in a "free" market we, in roles as both producers and consumers, spontaneously control the economic system to optimum effect. And, yes, the market needs wise and humble regulation of externalities. Given the kind of people we stuff in Congress and the WH, I despair.

To: koan who wrote (95689)	3/25/2009 6:18:23 PM
From: Little Joe	11 Recommendations Respond to of 116555

Well Koan, I will try to answer. First your post sets up a straw man, which is that Austrian Economists (A.E.) believe we should let children starve. This is a figment of your imagination. I know of no A.E. who suggests that it would improper for government to feed starving children or provide unemployment benefits to people who want to work or pay for schools, etc. You claim you don’t want to offend but you still manage to imply that the many on this thread who subscribe to the A. E. School are heartless people who want children to starve for their economic gain. So I for one am offended to be portrayed this way. My next point is not very important, but your suggestion Hoover utilized A.E. principles in supposedly doing nothing is just ignorance. That has been discussed and refuted so many times on this thread that I don’t think I need say more. At the heart of the matter is the belief of A.E. that free enterprise is the best economy. Now before you start to talk about George Bush, understand that A.E. would in no way consider him to have presided over a free enterprise economy and no president has for a long time. In fact it is my belief that the U.S. has been moving closer to a fascist economy for quite some time. A.E. stands for the proposition that the greatest good for the greatest number is achieved by a free enterprise economy, that is not heavily regulated, taxed or controlled by the government and that has a sound currency. It is a tenant of A.E. that there is a natural rhythm to the market from expansion to contraction and back to expansion. This is necessary for the market to do its work of efficient allocation of productive resources to the most productive persons in our society. It is not claimed to be perfect, just better than any other alternative. While you will have recessions ,they are usually be short, not very severe and often localized. When this natural cycle is interfered with productive assets and labor become misallocated in the economy and results in less efficient production, and less needed goods and services. The resulting crashes are more extreme because the misallocations of the economic resources of the economy have bee greater and there is more excess to correct. In recent years the government has not allowed a serious recession for years by keeping interest rates artificially low and manipulating the money supply, the government interfered with the price discovery mechanism and caused huge misallocation of assets largely into the financial and related housing industry. This could be seen by the number of young, untrained people who made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling financial products despite the fact that they did not understand the products themselves. Why? In large part because people were forced to take risks they otherwise wouldn’t because of Government mismanagement of our money which created situations where traditional safe interest rate vehicles were paying no interest. My clients are mostly Seniors and I can tell you most of them would not have been in the stock market and lost ½ or more of their assets if they could have earned a cruddy 5% on their CD’s. It also caused money to flow into the hands of the wall street banksters. In the meantime, proponents of A.E. were pointing out that this could not go on forever and predicting this disaster. They were like the Doctor telling his patient that if he doesn’t stop smoking he will get cancer. The patient ignored the advice and eventually caught cancer. And now the patient says what can I do and the A.E. Doctor says well it has progressed too far and all we can do is to remove your lung. That will be very painful and you still might die. The patient can’t handle the truth so he goes to see the Keynsian doctor who prescribes pain pills until the patient eventually dies. This is where we are now. We got here because of the insane economic ideas of people who think like you. So when you accuse others of being heartless or responsible for the misery of others you need to first look in the mirror my friend. lj