Are we reverting to Socialism again?

[Big Bobo]

-1
All those nice socialist ideas will bring society to stagnation
If people will get everything what they want, they simple will become lazy. It will be no motivation to work harder, to be smarter then another.
It will be no reasons to gain some wealth and pass it to your children
Pure socialism exists mostly in wild Africa, where people don’t have to do much.
If they want banana, they will go and take it.
But it didn’t work in Europe, where people had to fight with nature and each other.
It is nice to chat about socialism, when you have everything, created by capitalism.
For example Marx was writing his books, while Engels was pushing workers on his factories to work hard in order to get money for Marx
Or when you don’t have anything and you need and explanation why you want a take it from somebody else.


IMHO socialism is good only for aristocracy (in our days public servants ) and gangsters
Hardworking people don’t need socialism

What a curious mix of ignorance and delusion

[MortgageBroker]

MortgageBroker

my opinion is not any less acceptable than anybody else.

Firstly, there's the fallacy that all opinions are equally valid. Wishy-washy nonsense. In my opinion, of course.

But nobody stopped you from having an opinion, so what's your point ? I'm contending that your utterly fake observation about some socialists and their worth and the dignity of McDon... aaah, it's ridiculous to even retype it.

The difference between me and you is I go on the record, I publish my name, you hide behind a web-handle and play troll. nice....

Of course you go on the record. You're a shameless self-promoter. I keep my anonymity both as my prerogative, and because there's no reason to reveal it.

But both here and on the 'pin, I've given enough info that anyone who knows me would easily identify me from it. Not that it's a big deal.

And you clearly don't understand my job as i don't sell property

Don't act it. I never said you sell property. But by your own admission, you are a VI in the property mania. You are an integral part in this mess. I refer you to the link I posted earlier, and again below.

in fact, you should perhaps check some of the published record that is closer to my true feelings

Well I don't need to, because I read the 'pin already, but sure go on...

Top mortgage broker hopes for property crash

Deeter said the most important thing was to be honest with one's customers.

Commendable. So do you think you were being honest when you published this only eight months previously - moneytalk.ie - Your Home

after all, the banks were withdrawing those products around that time, were they not ?

or the effort to help those in trouble
Help at hand to avoid repossession - Irish, Business - Independent.ie

How did they get in trouble ? Some of them were taking advice from mortgage brokers.

It's interesting to see the chronological progression of those three articles, and correlate them with the property Ponzi.

We have not met professionally, and I've been a renter all along, so I'm not a disgruntled negative-equity former client of yours. But I despise what you and your industry (in all it's forms) are responsible for, to be honest.

I was really pissed off by your piece in the papers about buying the bank shares - totally irresponsible, and a terrible investment case (the Mars Bar thing). I accept that the newspaper may have made a mess of your original piece. But when you lie down with dogs... etc

I don't know why you were asked to do it, why you thought you were qualified to so it, or why you did it. I know, I know, you're entitled to your opinion. But some people not only read, they act on that kind of thing. Amazing, I know.

It seems to me that you've just jumped on the bandwagon of the whole thing to ''diversify'' your skillset or something, now that the mortgage gig is over.

And then you come on here and make some wide-boy remarks about ''Socialists I Have Known'' on the dole, and some unamusing sneering about their general sense of worth.

In my opinion.

ps You have been very gracious to me in a pm, and I acknowledge that sincerely.

I don't agree with your opinions, I think that's established, but i defend your right to that opinion, and to hold one. So for me it is an issue that you seem to think some people 'shouldn't' or 'can't' have a valid opinion, discount my arguments if that's the case.

on the single article (written about two years ago as something to stir conversation on a website, other posts with the same ethos of stimulating conversation were [and also penned by me] 'why you should ALWAYS use a broker) you mention again and again, but look at all of the other 99% of things I have said in the press, on the radio, and tv (if you do you'll be joining my mother in the list of two people who actually pay any attention what i do or don't say! lol) and you'll see that the tone and basis of them are all very different than the picture you are painting.

last september along with a guy name BertieBasher we started a PROTEST against things like irresponsible public spending (HCL scheme) - which was supported by lots of people on the propertypin and from p.ie too. but that isn't mentioned in the 'shameless self promotion' area of your post, i broke rank from industry -earning lots of enemies in the process- to stand up for what i believe is right, and in that respect so did many others choose to stand up that same day, back before there were protests every ten minutes.

I am about as anti-socialist as they come, that basis is upon the fact that i was a member of the socialist workers party in the past, and having fully studied up on the doctrine i found it to be out of touch with reality, and having been to countries lead by so called 'socialists' i found them to be nothing more than dressed up dictatorships in some cases and environments of utter corruption in others.

Regarding my ability or lack of it, you never bothered to ask me about any of my formal training, rather you are happy to attack it first and then not even bother to ask questions later!

'despising' me, and all in my industry really takes away from the root of what has been happening.

Monetary policy brought the flow of money into property, low interest rates, banks and the likes of me were conduits to the economy of that money, I've always taken the opinion that I am part of the problem, that island of 'responsibility' is a very unpopulated place, borrowers won't admit they may have been over extended, nobody seems to want to admit they were part of the problem. But think about it, if i was really able to 'force loans upon people' effectively then i would do the same now and make lots of money, the fact is that people wanted those loans, they won't say that now, but no loans were 'enforced' upon anybody. We are living in a world where people don't want to accept responsibility for anything, where we expect increased freedoms but without the responsibility that comes with it.

Getting back to the real cause, monetary policy, entitlement society, excess, political will being aligned with property developers, none of these have to do with mortgage brokering, in fact, the bubble was only made possible by politics, and therefore it is only partly a financial issue, in the larger scheme of things it is a political one, with the constant 'tinkering' with the system, not allowing markets to correct.

At the root of this likes quasi-socialism, with the sate apparently responsible for making things right, where a new wave of people believe they need to be 'saved' by the state rather than finding their own answers, and this only empowers politicians and the state even more. Well guess what, this is the real world, and politicians don't save the people any more than lions save gazelles on national geographic. the coming 'non-emergency-min-budget' ought to spell it out loud and clear for everybody.

regarding bank shares - i'll show you my balance, that's punishment enough, but even with that, i still believe in banks, i still believe in finance as being central to freedom and economic development, even beyond the rule of law. We had kings with rules and laws for millenia, but until banks came along the modern economy didn't exist, the conduit which allows for capital to flow (which is banks) is central to the way we live today, and i'm in no humour to move backwards in time in that respect.

So why don't you take me up on the PM i sent you and call me, in fact, i'd much rather buy you a coffee, you can talk marx, i'll talk friedman, you can talk socialism, i'll talk libertarian or capitalist. the underlying fact is that we are giving up ever more of our freedom in reliance upon an entity which doesn't have our best interest at heart.

you get your 'state control' and it will look more like 1984 than any landscape envisaged by Marx, engles or anybody else.

[MortgageBroker]

No it's not. Who controls the money supply? Who can counterfeit? Who sets interest rates? The people to blame are the central bankers who flooded the market with cash - we have been in an artificial boom since 2001.


The only way a boom can be set in motion is a combination of:

1. artificially low interest rates (making entrepreneurs think that savings are plentiful)
2. monetary expansion through either fractional reserve banking or central banking.

Nothing else.

there is a difference between 'central bankers' who are in fact extensions of political power, and 'local/national/multinational bankers' who are the likes of AIB etc. 'Central bankers' are indeed to blame, but by extension they are more into realm of politicians than that of your day to day banker. So 'bankers' is not really accurate, 'central bankers' is, and they are more aligned to politicians than your regular bankers.

[Hazlitt]

Other posters believe our policies should cater for the worst of the Human condition

Hi Leftfemme22,

Who believes that? I can't imagine anyone does.

I say ... we must as a species evolve beyond, greed, envy, laziness etc etc and in the mean time actively discourage it, not pander to it.

We need to evolve beyond laziness - how?
We need to evolve beyond envy - how?
We need to evolve beyond greed - how?

I am not sticking up for any of the above emotions or "ideals", but I think your call for all humans to "evolve beyond them" is not realistic. This could be an example of a strawman argument, where a fictional society, a "utopia" exists where people are perfect, and the society is perfect. And of course any current society or laissez-faire society cannot possibly stand up to this strawman argument. But the fact of the matter is that humans are not perfect. Socialists seem to think that they can take money or property from other people and redirect them to where THEY think it should be diverted, whereas liberals in the classical tradition see this as theft, and when jail is threatened if people do not comply, they view this as forced coercion. It is like saying (in my opinion), "yes I'm doing something morally wrong by taking something belonging to you, but I'm ethically justified in my actions because I'm giving it to some greater cause".... but of course the ends cannot justify the means. And "greater cause" is a subjective term, how can you measure the importance of a cancer research programme against the importance of education for young children?

What is wrong with trying to persuade people to voluntarily offer donations to charitable causes? Is this not appealing to peoples "better nature" ? Is this not asking the best from people? Socialists do not advocate "evolving" beyond emotions, they advocate taking and redistributing without asking for permission, hardly mans better nature.

I don't want this to evolve into a bitter war of words between capitalists and socialists, but like a previous poster pointed out - socialists do NOT hold a monopoly on generosity, kindness, and charity. To say otherwise is nonsense.
[COLOR="White"].[/COLOR]

[dublinclontarf]

there is a difference between 'central bankers' who are in fact extensions of political power, and 'local/national/multinational bankers' who are the likes of AIB etc. 'Central bankers' are indeed to blame, but by extension they are more into realm of politicians than that of your day to day banker. So 'bankers' is not really accurate, 'central bankers' is, and they are more aligned to politicians than your regular bankers.

Actually, the central bank has control of the interest rate at which all banks under it's jurisdiction (in our case all Irish banks are under the jurisdiction of the ECB). Another way of saying this is that the central bank tells other banks what to charge. Another name for this is a price control. And this is why we are in our current difficulties.

[Red Boyneside]

No it's not. Who controls the money supply? Who can counterfeit? Who sets interest rates? The people to blame are the central bankers who flooded the market with cash - we have been in an artificial boom since 2001.

Central bankers acting in the interest of the capitalists trying desperately to keep a dying system afloat.

What is the problem with getting paid less than the value of what you produce? In a free market, wages tend towards the marginal productivity of labour.

The problem for capitalism is that it creates a crisis of overproduction. People can afford less goods than are available, so either its extend credit or have a huge surplus of goods.

In any case point 2. hints at an archaic labour theory of value.

No it doesn't hint at anything, its directly dirived from the Labour theory of Value, best expounded by Marx in Capital and now freely excepted by the more realistic mainstream economists. Anyway, usuing the word archaic doesn't make it so, it just shows you are clutching at straws. Funny how people like me could see this crisis coming when the government and the banks and the mainstream economists couldn't eh? Especially with all our archaic theories and everything. The problem with people like you is that you've never bothered to study Capital, you just take someone elses word for it that its "archaic". There's an online course in Reading Capital, from estemed academic David Harvey here: Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey if you are interested.

I refer to the expansion from 2001-. Also, labour and capital are not humans, they are functions, so we cannot transfer wealth from one to another.

Labour as I use it is a collective term for the working class. Capital for the the Capitalist class. In Ireland for example int he 1970's, the distribution of the product of labour was 60/40 in favour of Labour. By 1999 it was the complete opposite. I don't know what it is now but I do know it hasn't narrowed.

[20000miles]

Central bankers acting in the interest of the capitalists trying desperately to keep a dying system afloat.

No, they set in motion a business cycle when they manipulate interest rates and the money supply.

The problem for capitalism is that it creates a crisis of overproduction. People can afford less goods than are available, so either its extend credit or have a huge surplus of goods.

Whenever business went bad, entrepreneurs claimed it was caused by one of two things:

• scarcity of money
• general overproduction

There cannot be general overproduction in a free market system if prices are allowed to adjust. There can be relative (ie shirts relative to shoes) overproduction, but only for a very short time.

This is what Say's Law set out to demostrate, and it still holds up today. For those of us who study Say's Law, it's not only clear that Lord Keynes failed to refute the Law, but he even failed to state it correctly.

No it doesn't hint at anything, its directly dirived from the Labour theory of Value, best expounded by Marx in Capital and now freely excepted by the more realistic mainstream economists.

No it's not freely accepted by the mainstream. They all use the subjective theory of value as first formulated by the Austrian economist Carl Menger.

Anyhow Marx's Exploitation Theory was completely destroyed by Bohm_Bawerk in Capital and Interest. For a summary see:[COLOR=red] Böhm-Bawerk's Critique of the Exploitation Theory of Interest[/COLOR].

In [COLOR=purple]Karl Marx and the Close of His System[/COLOR] Bohm-Bawerk also pwned Marx by highlighting the fact that capitalists with different ratios of capital to labour can earn similar profits - further dismantling the "exploitation theory".

Anyway, usuing the word archaic doesn't make it so, it just shows you are clutching at straws. Funny how people like me could see this crisis coming when the government and the banks and the mainstream economists couldn't eh?

Fortunately I'm not a mainstream economist! I'm also one of the loonies who takes a heterodox view. The economists at the Mises Institute were all predicting this bust for years now too. Mises himself called the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Especially with all our archaic theories and everything. The problem with people like you is that you've never bothered to study Capital, you just take someone elses word for it that its "archaic". There's an online course in Reading Capital, from estemed academic David Harvey here: Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey if you are interested.

Perhaps something shorter, a summary?

[Red Boyneside]

Whenever business went bad, entrepreneurs claimed it was caused by one of two things:

• scarcity of money
• general overproduction

There cannot be general overproduction in a free market system if prices are allowed to adjust. There can be relative (ie shirts relative to shoes) overproduction, but only for a very short time.

Maybe it all looks great on a page but the huge surplus of goods accross the world is testament to the Labour theory of value. Every year there are mountains of unsold produce. Food is destroyed while billions starve. Thats Capitalism.

The free market system simply doesn't work. Every time anything approaching free market policies have been implemented it has led to a crisis of capitalism. After WW2 (and before it as it happens) European Capitalism was on its knees, only for Bretton Woods and the Marshal Plan, Western Europe would have fallen to either Stalinism or genuine Socialism. The US had to prop up Europe through state intervention. Capitalism, without state intervention would have been dead at that stage.

BTW, I didn't say all mainstream economists, I said the sensible ones.

You want me to summarise Capital? Have you seen how long it is? Harvey's lecture series is the best you'll get I'm afraid.

[20000miles]

Maybe it all looks great on a page but the huge surplus of goods accross the world is testament to the Labour theory of value. Every year there are mountains of unsold produce. Food is destroyed while billions starve. Thats Capitalism.

Not very surprising after all, the West pays farmers not to produce. Food production is one of the most regulated industries.

Anyway, I fail to see how this example is a "testament" to the labour theory of value, seeing as Marx himself failed to defend it on theoretical grounds.

The free market system simply doesn't work. Every time anything approaching free market policies have been implemented it has led to a crisis of capitalism. After WW2 (and before it as it happens) European Capitalism was on its knees, only for Bretton Woods and the Marshal Plan, Western Europe would have fallen to either Stalinism or genuine Socialism. The US had to prop up Europe through state intervention. Capitalism, without state intervention would have been dead at that stage.

Yes, because Europe's capital stock had been destroyed in a war. It appears "State intervention" had already done enough for european capitalism.

I might add that capitalism does not require a massive State intervention in order to recover from credit-induced booms. For just one example see my discussion of the post-WWI recession. In fact the two prominent examples of where (Keynesian) government intervention were applied resulted in decade long slumps in the USA and Japan.

BTW, I didn't say all mainstream economists, I said the sensible ones.

You want me to summarise Capital? Have you seen how long it is? Harvey's lecture series is the best you'll get I'm afraid.

Cool I'll check those out then.

[dublinclontarf]

Maybe it all looks great on a page but the huge surplus of goods accross the world is testament to the Labour theory of value. Every year there are mountains of unsold produce. Food is destroyed while billions starve. Thats Capitalism.

The free market system simply doesn't work. Every time anything approaching free market policies have been implemented it has led to a crisis of capitalism. After WW2 (and before it as it happens) European Capitalism was on its knees, only for Bretton Woods and the Marshal Plan, Western Europe would have fallen to either Stalinism or genuine Socialism. The US had to prop up Europe through state intervention. Capitalism, without state intervention would have been dead at that stage.

What about socialism with it's underproduction and miss-allocation of resources, causing shortages of even the most basic goods, where in a country that was the bread basket of Europe(Ukraine) and had more arable land than the entire EU(as it now stands) was unable to feed itself(Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, China after collectivisation).
That was hundreds of millions of their own country folk who starved, not some basketcase African nation(e.g.Zimbabwe) thousands of miles away.

How is it a free market system when farmers are paid, by the EU, with money from "productive" areas of the economy, via the socialist CAP not to produce. How is it a free market when the EU limits milk production.

The EU is run by socialists, who have the vast majority in the European parliment.

You take something which is socialism through and through, and all the evils it entails, high food prices, shortages, even the destruction of food and call it capitalism?

Statism or socialism perhaps(little difference), laissez faire capitalism it is not.

Western Europe would have fallen to either Stalinism or genuine Socialism.

You mean like the Soviet Union fell, like North Korea would fall were it not the sheer terror the communists rule by?

You may not have noticed but WW2 was pretty big, all parties involved(except the US) were on their knees, you know, after having their countries destroyed. Nothing to do with capitalism, but the National Socialist German Workers' Party, aka the Nazi's.

So far Socialism has a pretty poor record since it's debut a relatively short period ago.

Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot,Castro, and even Hitler as he was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party we could include him in that bunch, since the Nazi's policies were completly collectivist, socialist.