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An economic policy with no empathy
A social policy that assumes the bad side of humanity reigns over the good

I don't care for narrow minded people and their ideological pet projects

Remember kids government is bad, unless a stranger is sticking something in your vagina without your consent

Every rich white university student loves Ron Paul becuase their idea of struggling is a part time job.

Good riddance to bad rubbish

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Nah - I want a sword and a longship so I can take stuff from people weaker than myself.

What's all this "Labour" rubbish?

Go down to the shore and get some more Irish thrawls, find a pretty one and she might even cheer you up.

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Libertarians might be well meaning, but their words are as credible as those who insist all computer programs should run in real mode, and we should do away with this bloat called an OS.

In other words: utter bunk.

Let's hope any replacements have a more practical and realistic worldview.

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And that, of course, creates no wealth in itself.

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I just imagined some 2nd year libertarian sociology student calling you naive, and you punching him in the face.

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You can't create wealth, just amass it - that's true of individuals and nations.

"Wealth Creation" is what we call extracting wealth from other countries - it's all about Viking in the end.

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Is that the Law of Preservation of Wealth?

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I don't know, did I invent it, or are you quoting someone?

To me it seems obvious - gaining wealth is about trade, buying low and selling high so that you have more than either the guy you buy from, or the one yo sell to.

You get richer, they get poorer.

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Quoting? Hardly. Mocking, mostly.

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This is blatantly wrong and I don't understand how you can have such an opinion. If wealth is zero sum, then logically India, Africa, and South America must be poorer than ever before in world history since us Westerners are so rich. But they are not, South America and India are richer than ever before as well.

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To have trade/exchange you must have some thing to trade or vend. The thing can be appropriated or created through the investment of labour. Without labour, we cannot even begin the "game".

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Thanks for clearing that up.

Well, the distribution of wealth is more equitable than in the past, and goods in general have become devalued (hence the massive inflation of the last few hundred years)

Western Nations are not that Rich - we just have more junk than ever before. In meaningful ways we are much poorer, and the "Third" world is consequently richer. Bear in mind, in the past, wealth was so prevalent in the West that private companies could afford vast private armies in addition to all the workers, flunkies, clerks and whores they could keep track of.

What has changed is the overall quality of life of the world's population - but that's the result of industrialisation making everything cheaper, not people or Nations getting richer.

Think about it - how is China getting richer?

By making the US poorer, and then extending credit to make us even poorer.

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Labour generates product - not wealthy, it is trade that generates wealth.

Consider the farmer with a plow - what is the plow worth?

Is it worth the amount of grain the farmer can plant using it?

The amount the smith and carpenter made it for?

The price of the raw iron?

Or is it's worth wholly dependent on who is buying or selling it?

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Define "junk", I hope you are not talking about smartphones and computers. To classify the greatest tool ever created by mankind as junk is absurd....

This is just religious morality shaming. The fact is that people own more wealth in "things" than they did before.

Again, this just reeks of a Christian morality thing. The culture has become more materialistic and you wan't to spin that as "poorer" because it's immoral.

People are paid more, people get more of what they produce than in any other century of world history. This is all just nonsense, complete nonsense. You can make a shaving blade that costs 10 cents, but if you are living the life of a serf in the 1600s, you can't even afford that, you are spending all your time on just putting food on the table.

Nope, I am done here. I will wait for someone with an actual degree or experience in economics to pick this apart. If this is a serious question, I am just walking out of the thread. My own thread.

Government debt is not bad, that's a dumb idea that people think because personal debt isn't good for them. As long as the US government is trusted to pay it off at some point in the future, there is no problem.

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No offense, but this is hogwash. The "junk" you're referring to is wealth. Material wealth. Something that can be both produced and destroyed en masse.

Meaningful how?


Um... They can afford that now even easier than before.

That would suggest that wealth is static, which is absolutely ridiculous. Wealth can be created literally out of nothing. Lady Gaga can fart into a microphone, record it, then watch sheeple buy it and praise on facebook.

China is getting richer by manufacturing lots of low priced junk, i.e. creating lots of wealth out of raw materials.

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But to get it or store it may take different amounts of effort ie fat is a useful form of energy as it is accessible, dense and minimal problems to convert in the human body compared with protein.

Same applies to energy in the economy. Wind is accessible when it blows, need some sort of storage to make it more useful. Sure a joule is a joule, but it doesn't mean there isn't a cost to create, transport or store that energy.

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That has to do with nation tolerance for private armies. Now modern US soldiers are extremely expensive, and several times more expensive than say China's soldiers, but a lot of companies could easily have 5.000, and the largest around 40.000. Doesn't sound that much, but using wwii standards (that's equal to well trained war lord militia I suppose, gear wise: gun, food, tools, clothes), we're talking 5-600.000. Would eat up the entire profit, but it would work.
It's also worth remembering that a company like East India company would immidiatly be cut to pieces today, by anti-monopoly laws. They would've deployed about 40.000 of those wwii soldiers at 1857 (which were a profitable year) anyway. Too big to exist today, yet less than 10% of the possible force.
Had 24.000 soldiers when they got dissolved.

Name in what meaningful ways we're much poorer.

And who gets poorer in Fordism (the fundamental idea behind today's salary policy, compared to the one that's paying your worker as little as possible)?

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I'm curious to know where you've found your economic theories... But I do have a creeping feeling that this idea just reveals a low economic knowledge...

The wealth of a country depends on how much is being produced in said country. If the country produces more, the country's wealth increases. No international trade needs to be taking place at all for that to happen, of course.

Economy is far from a zero sum game. For England to get richer, France doesn't have to get poorer. In fact, a richer France means an even richer England, while a poorer France makes a poorer England.

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Never beyond impossible but always a direction to having the goverment eliminated. But that is just a goal, a take on things.

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Product = wealth. More product = more wealth.

As to the price of the plow, it's got two different ones:

The first is the plows natural price, which is the cost of the labour that produced it as well as the costs associated with getting the plow from the producer to the one who needed it.

The second price is the market price, which may be the same as the natural price, or it may be higher or lower. In a market economy, the market price tends to gravitate towards the natural price.

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Meaningful how?

Well, consider the money.

What is a modern penny made of? Steel washed in copper-nickle when 20 years ago they were copper alloy. The most expensive modern coins are made out of various nickle alloys, not gold.

We are rich is products - over expensive but useless clothes, gadgets we don't need - but poor in useful things or skills.

I don't have an iPhone, I manage.

The gulf between what I write and what people read is something I occasionally find quite disturbing, to wit ACIN's post.

Again, not just a Christian.

This sort of thinking is predicated on Adam Smith's concept of Labour as modified by Marx, but it no longer applies because Smith was talking about Artisanal Labour, when today much Labour is (comparatively) unskilled, and many people have no actual trade or marketable skills at all. This is why so many people have unstable careers and have to keep changing jobs.

You also missed something about the plow, it's also got a base cost - the iron and wood have an inherent value based on what you can do with them.

The real point is - it's not the Labour, it's the time.

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Throughout the ages the majority of coins was made out of non-precious metals, sometimes not out of metals at all. The coin itself doesn't really matter. Only its buying power does.

I'm not sure why you dismiss them as useless. Cars, fridges, clothes, computers etc. are anything but useless. They enhance our quality of life. Charlemagne would probably trade half of his kingdom for a functioning fridge.

You can also manage without a house, a car, a fridge, a tv, a pc, or even clothes. Ultimately, all you need to sustain yourself is about 1500 calories worth of food. That would be about on par with the quality of life enjoyed by a slave in ancient Babylon, but yeah you can manage. We can manage without lots of things, but why would we want to? A life of misery is hardly something valuable. Wealth enhances our lives to the point where they are actually fun to go through.

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Hey I heard a Neocon say on the radio that, in addition to threatening israel, Iran should not have nukes because then they can raise the price of oil without worryuing about retaliation.

Are there really people who believe that war is justified because someone who sells you something raises the price? Am I the only one who sees the irony of people in a "capitalist" country saying this? What a bunch of fat greedy babies we have become

I only mention this because so many conservatives were appalled at Pauls thoughts on Iran policy. It is, afterall, very unpoular to admit that a country might hate us because we have sodomized them on several occasions.

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Most coins were made out of copper, tin, silver and gold.

At worst, coins were copper or tin washed in silver.

I suggest you look up monetary policy in post-Anglo Saxon England or during the latter Roman Empire.

The further your actual value is from the face value, the weaker your treasury is - because it can't afford to hold the necessary metal for striking coins.

I was thinking more of the three TV's and two XBoxes many "poor" families have - that's "junk".

Um, yes, but the XBox is just a very expensive toy, and one that just doesn't last.

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Adam Smith used nail making for half his examples. Most of the other examples were farming. Oh, and that greedy baker, of course. Plus some scots picking fancy-looking stones on the shores.

Not exactly highly skilled jobs, eh?

Anyway: this sort of economic thinking is mainstream today. You're the one coming up with the slightly whacky take on what wealth is.

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Actually - it was pin making and that is highly skilled when you are doing it by hand. I'd like to see you make the head of the pin, attach it to the wire stem and then sharpen the end.

Baking - likewise, highly skilled. Ditto farming.

The fact that you don't realise this just proves my point, you lack the skills and therefore do not appreciate the value of the craft, you assume those jobs are easy and your job is harder because you have a profession.

Smith was wrong, and as Marx was essentially responding to Smith he was wrong also.

This is a basic problem today - lack of useful skills.

If someone tries to tell me a profession is the same as a craft I might scream - or just declare you all beyond redemption.

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Copper was by far the most popular method for coinage.

There's more to the world than just England and Roman Empire.

Like I said, only the buying power is what matters. The Chinese used paper money loooooong before the modern age and without any trouble.


This is rather subjective. One man's trash is another man's treasure.


Thankfully the new one is just a store away.

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This all has zero relevance to the simple fact that wealth is created through labour worked on the products of the land.

You seem to be barking at the moon right now - not arguing against anyone. Well, not me at least.

By the way:

Adam Smith wasn't the one who removed the quality of labour and replaced it with quantity - that dubious honour goes to David Ricardo. Personally though, I find the technologically drien theories of Erik Reinert, Carlota Perez, etc, much more meaningful.

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That's intentional. The thing is if the metal price gets above the coin value, those coins will magically "disappear" and some new precious metal traders will appear. 1 SEK coin from 1967 is worth 20 SEK today because of the silver content. That's about 2,5 times more than the inflation btw.

Precious metal content of the coins always seems to go down with time, increasing inflation. Finding a new vast amount of gold and silver caused inflation (the Spanish painfully learned that). Lacking those precious metals created heavy copper coins (up to 19,7 kg) instead. Interestingly, that caused the European development of the paper money.

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Copper is a high-value metal.

There was Europe - China and Asia at the time. Read up on it - instead of being glib. English coinage in the 1100's was a really problem for Henry I in a European context.

China was a Monolithic Command-State - the value of money was set by the Emperor

And here - the problem.

I didn't was he was DID I?

No - I said his Capitalist theories were wrong because they were predicated on an Artisanal economy.

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