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OFFICIAL Elizabeth Warren is awesome thread

ChrisL68 said:
Detroit is the result of collectivism?
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Broken Detroit clearly is. The industry didn't stop making cars in America, they stopped making cars in Detroit. The manufacturing component moved to places that have the ability to differentiate what belongs to producers and what belongs to local government.

eta: Wait, are we honestly debating that industry doesn't cast its vote against irresponsible local government (which is to say, not a free market approach) with its feet? Behold the grand migration from California to Texas, as one example among many (e.g. Toyota...of all things, an auto manufacturer).
 
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Sounds like you're saying Detroit is s result of modern free markets. It's not we only get wine from California or France either.
 
jhmd2000 said:
Well, here goes. I tried to explain that we've never actually "tried" my ideology, since everything we've ever done has been a hybrid (the reference to 1789---an important historical marker---was that was the moment of the least amount of American government possible, as it was in its infancy when everyone remembered that we just fought a war to liberate us from unresponsive, distant oppressive government. If there was any possible answer to that question, that was it as a matter of fact. To you guys, this apparently meant another weary venture down the path of historical self-flagellation).

Since the question is impossible to answer, any answer would be ripe for dissent. One could argue 1789, one could argue 2015 (how much freer a market can we have when I can go online and buy Chinese goods wholesaled in Washington State and delivered by North Carolinians in brown and white trucks? One could argue any cross section market in between).

If we take the question with all of its defects, I would be glad to put the "results" of the free market against the results of collectivism. But again, it was always a silly question.
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Kansas is testing out some new freedom.
 
jhmd2000 said:
Broken Detroit clearly is. The industry didn't stop making cars in America, they stopped making cars in Detroit. The manufacturing component moved to places that have the ability to differentiate what belongs to producers and what belongs to local government.

eta: Wait, are we honestly debating that industry doesn't cast its vote against irresponsible local government (which is to say, not a free market approach) with its feet? Behold the grand migration from California to Texas, as one example among many (e.g. Toyota...of all things, an auto manufacturer).
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Manufacturing in Detroit got burdened with pension and legacy costs, which were a standard free market benefit at the time, as well as aging infrastructure. Is the US collectivist because some jobs are done cheaper by Chinese or Indonesians? I can show you a bunch of mothballed textile and furniture plants in small towns in NC which have become ghost towns. Collectivism too?
 
ChrisL68 said:
Manufacturing in Detroit got burdened with pension and legacy costs, which were a standard free market benefit at the time, as well as aging infrastructure. Is the US collectivist because some jobs are done cheaper by Chinese or Indonesians? I can show you a bunch of mothballed textile and furniture plants in small towns in NC which have become ghost towns. Collectivism too?
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Public sector pensions---the ones that drove Detroit into bankruptcy---are hopefully not your idea of the free market at work. If so, we need to work on our definitions.

The free market is the individual's best chance to demonstrate their autonomy: it's the one vote left that actually counts. If people---people like you and me---wanted to pay for Detroit public sector employees to have above-market, unsustainable pensions, cars would still be made in Detroit. Where was the car you drive made? If we want bloated public sector pensions siphoning off of the private sector, we would have them. We don't. The market said enough is enough. Significantly, the plague our political system created and was unable to cure (bloated, unsustainable public sector pensions) was ultimately cured by the free market. I say Huzzah and good riddance.

"The free market" is not a get-out-of-real-life-and-economics-free card. No one ever said that it was. When a factory closes in North Carolina and moves to China, it's because labor prices make it more efficient. I believe that in many ways that is a good thing, because North Carolinians can leverage their higher quality of life to invest in the future and innovate. People stuck behind a machine making $3 and hour with no bathroom breaks belongs in the past in this State. We can and will do better.
 
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Everywhere has public sector pensions. Detroit just lost the tax base to sustain them.
 
So how does the free market benefit the worker?
 
PhDeac said:
So how does the free market benefit the worker?
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It gives them the opportunity to start their own company so they can become a millionaire and fuck over the poor saps who didn't start their own company.
 
PhDeac said:
So how does the free market benefit the worker?
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The worker is a worker 40 hours a week. He is a consumer throughout the week, and the free market is the engine which makes affordable food available to him and his family, affordable housing and affordable transportation. When the government interferes with the market, you see bubbles disrupt the market's corrective forces. See for example among many, your industry.

eta: "The worker", solely in that capacity, will have more options in a freer market with competition for pay and benefits than in a centralized system where his options are more take it or leave it (or worse, where it is basically a graft and corruption operation).

The free market is not the omnisolution to all of life's ills (which is why we've never tried it exclusively; it's been a hybridized approach ab initio, as it should be). It is nonetheless the best system we have.
 
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The government interfered with the free market with that 13th Amendment. Did that disrupt corrective forces?
 
jhmd2000 said:
Public sector pensions---the ones that drove Detroit into bankruptcy---are hopefully not your idea of the free market at work. If so, we need to work on our definitions.

The free market is the individual's best chance to demonstrate their autonomy: it's the one vote left that actually counts. If people---people like you and me---wanted to pay for Detroit public sector employees to have above-market, unsustainable pensions, cars would still be made in Detroit. Where was the car you drive made? If we want bloated public sector pensions siphoning off of the private sector, we would have them. We don't. The market said enough is enough. Significantly, the plague our political system created and was unable to cure (bloated, unsustainable public sector pensions) was ultimately cured by the free market. I say Huzzah and good riddance.

"The free market" is not a get-out-of-real-life-and-economics-free card. No one ever said that it was. When a factory closes in North Carolina and moves to China, it's because labor prices make it more efficient. I believe that in many ways that is a good thing, because North Carolinians can leverage their higher quality of life to invest in the future and innovate. People stuck behind a machine making $3 and hour with no bathroom breaks belongs in the past in this State. We can and will do better.
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but it's ok for the Chinese? literally the same thing you said about higher expectations of health care in the US
 
Yeah. It's not in the past because Americans are choosing to pay Chinese workers stuck behind a machine $3 a hour instead of paying American workers who demand higher wages and better conditions because they're mandated by the government.
 
jhmd2000 said:
Well, here goes. I tried to explain that we've never actually "tried" my ideology
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Really? Why not? Why does your super smart ideology not get a go to see how it works? Ronnie Alzheimer's did try something somewhat similar... How'd that work out anyway? (Answer: Not well.)


Follow up. I think Kansas under Brownback just tried your bizarre and deluded utopia and it has failed miserably. Maybe I'm wrong and you differ in hard ons with Brownback's ideas for an economy. If so, please let me know how you differ from Governor Brownback. Thanks, e-friend!
 
PhDeac said:
The government interfered with the free market with that 13th Amendment. Did that disrupt corrective forces?
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Query: do I have a discussion with someone so incredibly disingenuous as to assume that he is the only person in the discussion in favor of the 13th Amendment?

Answer: No. I won't do that. Instead I elect to leave that person undisturbed, so that they are free to cast their lot, as well as their hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow, behind a leader [sic] whose primary message is one of a hopelessly stacked deck against her fellow man and that he is powerless to better himself in this country that hates him (a country which permitted that so-called leader to become a millionaire herself against the headwind of racism against the 1/256th of her which might have been Comanche). Yes, let's all bet on her message of "No, you probably can't."

No, there are more interesting people to converse with (note that in this case that includes deacvision7. Yikes.)
 
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deacvision7 said:
Really? Why not? Why does your super smart ideology not get a go to see how it works? Ronnie Alzheimer's did try something somewhat similar... How'd that work out anyway? (Answer: Not well.)


Follow up. I think Kansas under Brownback just tried your bizarre and deluded utopia and it has failed miserably. Maybe I'm wrong and you differ in hard ons with Brownback's ideas for an economy. If so, please let me know how you differ from Governor Brownback. Thanks, e-friend!
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People in the countries where they try your approach end up floating to this country on a door in the hope that they might not get eaten by a shark and drift onto a beach to have a shot at doing it our way. Try harder, sport.
 
PhDeac said:
Sounds like you're saying Detroit is s result of modern free markets. It's not we only get wine from California or France either.
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That second part isn't a sentence. As to the first part, affirmative. The free market wisely punished foolish political decisions that the political system was incapable of regulating. No, you can't have an unsustainable pension you didn't earn, even if you can dupe 51% of the voters to agree. 51% of the voters can't reverse the rotation of the Earth on its axis, either. There are limits to popular idiocy.
 
Production has become decentralized in different industries. Detroit isn't the only one.
 
PhDeac said:
Production has become decentralized in different industries. Detroit isn't the only one.
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Right, but "Detroit" isn't an industry. It is a failed city-state, where its departed industry thrives elsewhere. Why?
 
Because of over reliance on that industry and a tax base that bailed for the suburbs.

If you can't acknowledge the clear role of government in regulating markets as evidenced in the 13th Amendment, you're not going to have an open discussion acknowledging the role of government in making sure workers and consumers aren't exploited by free markets.
 
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