lowing wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76frHHpoNFs&feature=related
please watch and comment. How can you argue against this?
Lowing,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1lWk4TC … re=relatedat minute 4:30
Friedman says he's in favor of a carbon tax... and it sounds like he would probably be in favor of market solutions like cap and trade.
So Lowing, does that mean that you agree with carbon tax and cap and trade to solve the problem of polution. after all if no liberal can raise issue with what he says, then I suppose no one else can either. So Lowing would you like a carbon tax? or should we just regulate polution? because the first one is a greed based solution and the second one is a half baked solution coming from the bureaucratic halls of ineptitude.
Personally why wait for the market to weasel out a solution, just regulate polution if local polution is a problem.
The rest is more general comments not directed at you Lowing.
Its funny to hear him say that the new deal was unwise but "necessary" seems he acknowledges that the idea that the market fixes everything doesn't pan out in the real world. Although to his credit he lays the blame for the great depression at the feet of the federal reserve system, but makes a mistake in statig that the federal reserve is a part of the govt when its really a union of banks that have been given control over teh monetary supply... in effect its a bank monopoly whose goal is to set the inflation rate at 2% annually. So that's error #1.
Milton basically says, greed creates demand, greed fills demand, wants and desires = greed, sure that sounds right. people are not angels, people act in their self interests, sure, people are ugly and nasty.... people in business are greedy, people in congress are greedy, consumers are greedy and all will trample you to death if teh conditions are right for a stampede, if you learned anything in high school, you learned that much.
As far as regulation goes, regulation moderates greed and the nasty effects of greed. and don't forget that regulation creates things like patents, and other regulations that bar people from entering the market place. If people, groups or corporations were permitted to act with unbridled greed within thiese artifical bubbles/spheres without regulation on their actions, we would all suffer for it. And as Friedman indicates At minute 0:55 of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTK2ul76 … re=related when he is talking about trucking in the video that there should not be a barrier to enter into trucking and I would say that that applies to other areas of the economy as well, although the union lead trucking industry was right wing whipping boy back in the 1980's ala
BJ and The Bear. Now if those barriers to entry to areas of the economy came down, then various regulations would be unnecessary because you would have permitted market conditions to exist in those markets. I would somewhat agree with that sentiment as a whole and I would include in that, the areas of medicine, pharmaceuticals, lawyering, accounting, stock brokering, every occupation you can think of, and include patents and other means for securing so called intellectual property or licenses to trade directly on stock exchanges etc etc. Then you have a market.... but you can't single out he message to get rid of regulation controlling the bad acts of people and corporations operating in legally created protective bubbles that bar entry to the occupation or use of the resource without first popping those bubbles. In miltons words "the most efective anti-monopoly leglistion you can possibly have, would be free trade." at minute 6:23
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTK2ul76 … re=related and in that he means getting rid of barriers to entry.
So, if you have protective spheres around market actors that prevent others from entry into the market or prevent people from using the courts to right harmful acts like in tort reform, then you need more and more regulation to protect the public. the two things go hand in hand. less regulation menas less regulation on both sides of the equation.
In other words, take his whole message as a whole, and cut out the selective hearing.... its just like the selectivity people show regarding the constitution, I want this part of the 14th Amendment but not that other part, or I like the first amendment but dam the second amendment.. but its clear to me that the American psychy is driven by selctive hearing.
The area that I most disagree with him is on the idea that govt should only regulate regarding externalities, but if the situtation is a contract situation between two people then the govt should play no role. He uses the example of air bags in cars saying govt shouldn't mandate those. Well he's wrong because there's an obvious power imbalance between the car maker and the consumer. Unless of course you get rid of tort reform which is a regulatory regime placed over the courts and the common law to redress injuries do to faulty cars, then there might be some market force to counter the power imbalance between consumer and car meker. Yes, tort reform is a regulation barring people from suing and protecting business interests, just the same as artificial regulation barriers bar entry into professions and fields of industry.
Finally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brBvdjoN … re=related at minute 0:00
Milton says minimum wage laws causes poverty... he way off of the rails on that one.... ROFL... at minute 0:45 he smiles, he couldn't even say that one with a straight face. But anyway, I found him hilariously ubsurd and a master of spin.