Forum Post: some demands for friday
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 21, 2011, 3:27 p.m. EST by joerauh
(32)
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Federal relief for consumer mortgages
Federal regulation of derivatives trading
Billionaire income tax increase
Securities transfer tax for all derivative trading
Constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood
it would be cooler if any of these actually attacked the root problem.
which is? not trolling, want to hear your opinion
the current banking system is not a free-market system, i.e., we have a gigantic central bank and plenty of regulation. one can attempt to regulate, and re-regulate those regulations, but as long as we have a gigantic central bank, the system will not function efficiently, as the system is distorted (bailouts being a major problem). in order to create an efficient and sensitive banking system, one would have to abolish the federal reserve as well as to entirely deregulate the system. what will then emerge is a free-market banking system, one in which banks will be sensitive to consumer demand and will pay for their corruption. relieving consumer mortgages just sounds scary to me. for the billionaire taxation: what is essentially happening is that competition is saving these billionaires from having to pay taxes (such as putting money in Swiss banks). yay for competition. however, the top 1% pays 38% of taxes anyway. The root problem for the taxation issue would of course be again the government. taxation is based on a unilateral social contract to which none of us ever willingly agreed (in my opinion its stealing and slavery, but that just makes me sound crazy, doesn't it?). in my opinion, the less spending money the government has the better anyway. plus these billionaires are the ones that support the rest of americas standard of living. we should thank them if anything... the whole corporation issue has nothing inherently to do with corporations. crony capitalism emerges from a system with a government. sure, corporations buy favors from the government, but one cannot buy without a willing seller. fixing this corruption means fixing the corruption of the government, i.e., reducing its power. if there was no government, such firms would not be able to have the power that they have.
I see. However there were more frequent crises before the Fed than after. The top 1% only pays 38% of Federal income taxes. it's 28% of all Federal taxes (still a big chunk!).
Absent a government, capital interests will still compete. They'll just use outright violence to do it more often. All businesses will resemble the drug trade. You can look at today's Russia for a taste. Not my cup of tea.
I can't speak about the number of crises before or after the Fed, but what I can say is that the the crises after the Fed were drastically worse than the ones before, the Great Depression being a lovely example.
Well, the government in this case is the source of coercion that enables big business to have the power that it has. Russia is certainly not a free market though, yes?
look into it - the 20th century has actually been better than the 19th century was. http://history1800s.about.com/od/thegildedage/a/financialpanics.htm
Russia is what happens when a market loses almost all controls quickly. It's not free now, but in the "shock therapy" after Perestroika, it arguably got too free (in terms of economic regulation) -- and all the assets got stolen by competing mafias.
The Panic of 1819 was caused by the issuing of fiat money, and getting rid of the gold standard; a central bank was created in 1816. The Panic of 1937 was caused by State-bank monetary inflation. A central bank was established right before the Panic of 1873. The Panic of 1893 was more issues with fiat money. All government bank related.
Well the government is a mafia, so I might say the assets were stolen by competing governments. If a terrorizing firm emerged in a free market, and decided to take over everybody, then we'd be right back where we are. We would still have police to "regulate" such businesses that go crazy in a free market, they'd just be private police. I don't think an established Russian government would have solved the problem of these competing mafia firms. It would have only made it worse.
(note, i was calling these "demands." but i agree, it's too early for demands. this is about showing anger.