darjen

I'm a pretty light sleeper. I can usually only get one decent night of sleep a week. Might as well spend it being up and doing stuff.

yeah, it seems like he is out of the norm. I've played with a couple different droids and loved it. still plan on getting one.

my question is can property rights be adequately protected by government? seems like history has proven that not to be the case.

the assumption that warlords would always appear in society no matter what is just that - an assumption. on the other hand, every government we have today was born by conquest and initially created by warlords.

I simply don't hold to the assumption that government will always be necessary in society to protect property rights. they are actually the biggest violators we have of property rights. people are capable of progressing beyond government, and I think they will once they finally realize what government really is.

you're right, our banking system isn't even remotely close to being based on voluntary trade and "free market". so I'm not sure how we can even discuss this supposed failure of the free market.

strangely enough, that's not what happened when harding kept his hands off the market during the major crash of 1920-21.

and why did the bankers get so much power in the first place? there is a LONG history of government centralizing, cartelizing, supporting, and regulating the market's major financial players.

you can have voluntary, free trade without government. whether it's called "capitalism" or something else can be a matter of discussion...

A fundamental flaw in the article:

"The banks, however, are another matter altogether, and this is where I think capitalism has hit a roadblock. The government has intervened to save many of them, and now, these bailed out banks want to hand out billions in bonuses to their non-performing employees. Capitalism gave way to welfare economics, and now the government has to intervene further to limit these looters from behaving badly by imposing taxes and regulations."

If the government hadn't intervened in the first place, and instead let these irresponsible banks fail, then the transfer of taxpayer money in the form of bonuses never would have happened.

What she's describing here is, in actuality, yet another flaw of government intervention.

The iPhone version of Reader is very annoying because it refreshes the page constantly when I come back to it. Thus I lose the place or folder where I was at.

I rarely travel outside of the US. Currently I do use an unlocked GSM phone, but only because it is very well integrated with voip and I don't have a voice plan.

I use Gizmo5 on my e71 over 3g. Better and cheaper than Skype.

Thanks for the response. How stealthy can they really be about it, though? If it's common knowledge that this is how the government will respond, would this time-delay effect be negated? Wouldn't everyone know that dollars are being pumped, and start raising their prices to compensate? Just trying to wrap my head around this stuff...

"But for a confidence-building public-works program to be effective in arresting an economic collapse, the government must be able to finance its increased spending by means that do not reduce private spending commensurately. If it finances the program by taxation, it will be draining cash from the economy at the same time that it is injecting cash into it. But if it borrows to finance the program (deficit spending), or finances it with new money created by the Federal Reserve, the costs may be deferred until the economy is well on the way to recovery and can afford to pay them without endangering economic stability."

Doesn't new money creation have the same effect as directly taking cash from the economy? After all, it does cheapen all available money. How, then, can he say that these costs are deferred?

the whole reason I bought an unlocked nokia e71 is to be free of expensive contracts and its great voip support, unlike the iPhone. if nokia stops doing it, I'm sure someone else will step up.

More like the downfall of crony capitalism, caused by the federal reserve.