On BOG and other Monopolies

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Parodite
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On BOG and other Monopolies

Post by Parodite »

I have very little disagreement with Mr.P. about government always being the naturally biggest enemy, in reality and practice or potentially, of a free society. A growing concentration of power and money in the hands of a central government is always a reason for big concern. For starters, it always overspends and debt is its natural state.

But I don't agree with Mr.P. that big overspending gvt (BOG) is a democratic-liberal-atheist conspiracy and overspending just a typically bad habit of only leftists. In my view it is the natural state of the throne: anyone who sits on it gets corrupted. Mildy or severely..but always.

Now BOG means big business. Any new CEO/POTUS and its red/blue management will tend to make sure that the profitability of that BOG business continues and even grows. Shielded away from free market competition this is relatively easy of course. All you need to do is sell dreams and get away with the promises you couldn't keep.

The GOP and DemP are primarily labor unions for their political workers and business affiliates, and all workers want always more... not less. Even if your ideology tells you that BOG is wrong, that it should be downsized in every way... the vested interests of any politician as well as business people who fare well by state operations and some of its regulations are simply too strong to fight effectively against. The maximum achievable is paralysis; when push comes to shove... no politician can sell a politics that tells people and businesses who are state-dependent (business monopolies sucking on state-titty via regulation is a separate interesting case) that state-titty will be removed from their mouths; nobody votes for a politician who tells them he will make their life more miserable in the short term, but with a promise that things will get much better "in a decade or so". Even if a cure by an objective standard is a real cure but needs 10 years of transitioning, sacrifices and healing... most voters wont buy it anymore. Maybe unless... politicians who want to downsize BOG lead by example once they are in power, and in front of the troops.

It occurs to me that not only BOG is a monopoly and the worst in kind, but that BOG also promotes monopolies in the free market (I'm afraid Mr.P. says told you so) in various ways. This phenomenon is often called oligarchy, but the basics are: a cancerous spread of concentrated malicious power that destroys and consumes living cells, or turns cells into slave-cells. The opposite of a free, diverse, healthy society. It is a society that suffers from cancer. BOG is a form of brain cancer... but cancers can occur anywhere in the body and be as lethal as BOG brain cancer.

Found this article about monopoly in economics and its relationship with government on a site called "Library of Economics and Liberty", worth reading:
A monopoly is an enterprise that is the only seller of a good or service. In the absence of government intervention, a monopoly is free to set any price it chooses and will usually set the price that yields the largest possible profit. Just being a monopoly need not make an enterprise more profitable than other enterprises that face competition: the market may be so small that it barely supports one enterprise. But if the monopoly is in fact more profitable than competitive enterprises, economists expect that other entrepreneurs will enter the business to capture some of the higher returns. If enough rivals enter, their competition will drive prices down and eliminate monopoly power.
[........]
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Monopoly.html
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noddy
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Re: On BOG and other Monopolies

Post by noddy »

I feel an overwhelming desire to quote CD.


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Re: On BOG and other Monopolies

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noddy wrote:I feel an overwhelming desire to quote CD.


Viva the gridlock baby
I'm sure you are right, but who is "CD" ?
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Mr. Perfect
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Re: On BOG and other Monopolies

Post by Mr. Perfect »

Great post Parodite. Best post I've read in many years. Most people wander in the desert aimlessly looking for root causes then get mad at me for making fun of them, but you are very close to the root.
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Re: On BOG and other Monopolies

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Mr. Perfect wrote:Great post Parodite. Best post I've read in many years. Most people wander in the desert aimlessly looking for root causes then get mad at me for making fun of them, but you are very close to the root.
Thanks for saying that, I feel reassured. There is an important difference between you and Milton Friedman and it may be the only one: he remains polite. ;) 8-) But really.. he never lowered himself to name calling or ridicule. He always and consistently described people who believe in bigger government... as civilized and well intended people, but that more often than not... the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, especially when too much power and money is transferred to central gvt. MF is dearly missed.
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Re: On BOG and other Monopolies

Post by Mr. Perfect »

Parodite wrote: Thanks for saying that, I feel reassured. There is an important difference between you and Milton Friedman and it may be the only one: he remains polite. ;) 8-) But really.. he never lowered himself to name calling or ridicule.
You have to get people's attention and do violence to bad ideas. So we do disagree there.
He always and consistently described people who believe in bigger government... as civilized and well intended people,
I definitely disagree with him here. It's tremendously naive. Big government people believe in state slavery, and slavery is tremendously evil. Evil needs to be bashed in the skull, knee capped, etc. And I'm willing to do it.
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Re: On BOG and other Monopolies

Post by Parodite »

Mr. Perfect wrote:
Parodite wrote: Thanks for saying that, I feel reassured. There is an important difference between you and Milton Friedman and it may be the only one: he remains polite. ;) 8-) But really.. he never lowered himself to name calling or ridicule.
You have to get people's attention and do violence to bad ideas. So we do disagree there.
Well, him and his ideas got loads of attention... how you explain that? Always polite... reason being his weapon... and it did quite some violence to bad ideas.
He always and consistently described people who believe in bigger government... as civilized and well intended people,
I definitely disagree with him here. It's tremendously naive. Big government people believe in state slavery, and slavery is tremendously evil. Evil needs to be bashed in the skull, knee capped, etc. And I'm willing to do it.
I understand your sentiments. Often feel the same. My favorite character, the one I can best relate to is the Hulk in The Avengers.

30lGrarz3MQ

Let me know when you start capping evil democrat knees etc. :mrgreen:
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Re: On BOG and other Monopolies

Post by Simple Minded »

Parodite wrote:I have very little disagreement with Mr.P. about government always being the naturally biggest enemy, in reality and practice or potentially, of a free society. A growing concentration of power and money in the hands of a central government is always a reason for big concern. For starters, it always overspends and debt is its natural state.

But I don't agree with Mr.P. that big overspending gvt (BOG) is a democratic-liberal-atheist conspiracy and overspending just a typically bad habit of only leftists. In my view it is the natural state of the throne: anyone who sits on it gets corrupted. Mildy or severely..but always.

Now BOG means big business. Any new CEO/POTUS and its red/blue management will tend to make sure that the profitability of that BOG business continues and even grows. Shielded away from free market competition this is relatively easy of course. All you need to do is sell dreams and get away with the promises you couldn't keep.

The GOP and DemP are primarily labor unions for their political workers and business affiliates, and all workers want always more... not less. Even if your ideology tells you that BOG is wrong, that it should be downsized in every way... the vested interests of any politician as well as business people who fare well by state operations and some of its regulations are simply too strong to fight effectively against. The maximum achievable is paralysis; when push comes to shove... no politician can sell a politics that tells people and businesses who are state-dependent (business monopolies sucking on state-titty via regulation is a separate interesting case) that state-titty will be removed from their mouths; nobody votes for a politician who tells them he will make their life more miserable in the short term, but with a promise that things will get much better "in a decade or so". Even if a cure by an objective standard is a real cure but needs 10 years of transitioning, sacrifices and healing... most voters wont buy it anymore. Maybe unless... politicians who want to downsize BOG lead by example once they are in power, and in front of the troops.

It occurs to me that not only BOG is a monopoly and the worst in kind, but that BOG also promotes monopolies in the free market (I'm afraid Mr.P. says told you so) in various ways. This phenomenon is often called oligarchy, but the basics are: a cancerous spread of concentrated malicious power that destroys and consumes living cells, or turns cells into slave-cells. The opposite of a free, diverse, healthy society. It is a society that suffers from cancer. BOG is a form of brain cancer... but cancers can occur anywhere in the body and be as lethal as BOG brain cancer.

Found this article about monopoly in economics and its relationship with government on a site called "Library of Economics and Liberty", worth reading:
A monopoly is an enterprise that is the only seller of a good or service. In the absence of government intervention, a monopoly is free to set any price it chooses and will usually set the price that yields the largest possible profit. Just being a monopoly need not make an enterprise more profitable than other enterprises that face competition: the market may be so small that it barely supports one enterprise. But if the monopoly is in fact more profitable than competitive enterprises, economists expect that other entrepreneurs will enter the business to capture some of the higher returns. If enough rivals enter, their competition will drive prices down and eliminate monopoly power.
[........]
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Monopoly.html
Well said. You are on your way to a Mr. Perfect apprenticeship...... ;)

Exactly why I find it so humorous when the True Believers talk about "the Left" or "the Right".... Ideology rarely survives intact beyond the campaign stage into actual administration.

Or as the ORZ saying went: "My ideology sucks when it gets applied to your life! Often... it even sucks when I apply it to my own life... so I usually don't!"

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights. H.L. Mencken

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods." H. L. Mencken

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.
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Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive.
William F. Buckley
Mr. Perfect
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Re: On BOG and other Monopolies

Post by Mr. Perfect »

Simple Minded wrote: Well said. You are on your way to a Mr. Perfect apprenticeship...... ;)

Exactly why I find it so humorous when the True Believers talk about "the Left" or "the Right".... Ideology rarely survives intact beyond the campaign stage into actual administration.
Compare California with Idaho.
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.
John Galsworthy

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive.
William F. Buckley
Pragmatism is just another idealism. Moderation is it's own ideology. I point one finger...
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Re: On BOG and other Monopolies

Post by Parodite »

The concentration of wealth and power in various forms is a reality. Governments want to grow bigger, as do successful businesses.

Monopoly should not be demonized, but recognized as a normal phenomena. That is to say: everybody wants monopoly. The only thing that keeps most of us becoming the reigning monopolist... are our competitors that also battle for monopoly. Remove a species in a diverse competitive ecology.. and other species will increase in number, coming closer to the ideal of dominating the forest. But only for so long and up to a point. Monopolies are never forever: new competition or just the sum of various entropic forces will tare it down eventually.

In fact monopolies are very vulnerable, especially if you compare them with a diverse ecology consisting of many competing elements. So if all of your worry and dislike concerns monopolies like BOG, concentration of 90% of all capital in the hands of a 1%, financial mega-bubbles... don't worry too much. Just watch and wait till the walls come tumbling down on their own. Monopolies are always ticking time bombs. As there are many in the Universe... super novae for starters.. the big bang itself. Boom Bust... Big Bang. Nothing weird going on.

The Universe only once had a truly Monopolistic Boom Bust Big Bang. Since then.. what you see is the emergence of smaller and smaller booms and busts.. multitudes of smaller and bigger bubbles merging emerging.. on all scales in fact, while the hot soup as a whole is cooling down alias "expanding".

The difference between say a super nova explosion or a volcanic eruption and organic life forms, is that the latter are very complex heat control systems. The whole point for living organisms is to not just explode and burn up in a second, but rather to channel and use energy through a complex web of structure and function and maintain that structure-process over a longer period of time. Loads of non-linear checks and balances to make that happen. One could baptize this unique feature as the ability to self-regulate. I think it is fair to say.. that without self-regulation.. we are-not.

Now that poses an interesting conundrum. If in fact we only exist and live by the grace of the ability to self-regulate... not just as "something we need to do to survive" but on a much more fundamental biological level as something that we are.. then it begs the question in what sense deregulation is good for us. Biologically (and socially) deregulation would simply mean the end of us. Culture and moral values are simply form and part of the same self-regulation that is not just needed.. but essential to what we are.

Self-regulation means that our regulation applies to our selves only. Basically, it is what our genes do. Selves as individuals as well as the group/society we are part of. We cannot "regulate" the cosmos, or more general.. the bigger environment. You anticipate the environment while self-regulating.

In the case of crime in society... even the most fundamentalist free market libertarian will agree that we need laws, enforcement of law, courts of law and police forces to do the job. It is not that we want the environment to be regulated in order to be able to manage crime, but rather to regulate the behavior of individual criminals. Law then, is the social extension of individual self-regulation.

I think this distinction between regulating the environment (not possible by and large) and self-regulation (individual and social) is very important. I am in favor of a free market, in the sense and way that the market is our common environment. Controlling, wanting regulate the environment always means a military-political dictatorship. But a society without individual and social self-regulation...simply disintegrates immediately.

If you don't like BOG, destructive financial bubble boom bursts too big too fail and go to jail...and want to do something about it, it may therefore be better to focus on social- and self-regulatory issues, exactly as is done with crime. Economic and financial theories are fine as helpful tools of analysis.. but in the end in as far as regulation goes... better leave the environment alone because it can't be regulated except in dictatorships.. and instead regulate it socially and in a criminal context.

For instance, people are used they might be fined if they drive faster than the maximum speed. The cost is also higher the faster you drive. It is accepted because it makes sense that people don't drive too fast on streets and high ways. It is OK if you still drive too fast.. as long as you pay your bills for speeding and don't hurt anyone: the bill is then just a form of taxation. Similar social regulatory mechanisms can be implemented via a progressive on taxation on wealth. There can also be taxations on various other forms of irresponsible behavior and risk taking when it hurts others. To drive a bank into the abyss and financially ruin its customers but saying sorry and goodbye with 10 million of bonuses in your own pocket...also deserve a re-think in this context. As long as crimes don't hurt... they will continue.

How to socially regulate politicians. Of all monopolies, BOG is the biggest danger IMO. It clearly is not enough anymore to just cheerlead and vote for another Yes We Can nail polishing moron in the future. The nature and the fate of the BOG Beast is not in the hand of the POTUS. He is a powerless puppet. Cry-baby over Obuma as much as you want, the Beast is just laughing.. people buying into that diversion serve him perfectly. I have some very good ideas how to slay the Dragon... :P Will sell it to the highest bidder. It is an old Greek idea...a gem.
Deep down I'm very superficial
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