The central banks of every Western nation work closely in conjunction with each other. If they didn't, the whole thing falls apart, as evidenced by the Federal Reserve's multi-trillion dollar bailout of the European central banks. So no, there is not any competition among the Western central banks. But I suppose you think it's a coincidence that the president of the ECB was formerly the managing director of Goldman Sachs' international division. lol

Duh... so what? When and as things get worse the divisions will surface naturally. Do you remember what happened June 23rd this year? Google it maybe...

Also, for someone that was asking me some time back if labor practices in China are abusive, the sudden focus on Western countries in this reply is odd. :)

Basically, even if I accepted your premise that "they" are controlling the world economy, the scope out of "their" control is increasing.

But, you really don't want to define what you meant by hoarding causing artifical scarcity huh?

If WWII didn't give rise to divisions among the world's banking elite, why on earth would you think that Brexit will?

As for further defining something that most simpletons can grasp, I think your difficulty relates to you being more sophist than philosopher.

An educated child knows that there is a housing glut *and* a pronounced shortage of affordable housing, and that this is a discrepancy that the housing market has failed to address. And might also know that capitalism is essentially an honor system, and that in the absence of honorable people, it will function much like any other broken system.

Such unimaginative insults... you are quite a bore...

If honorable people are required then there was no system that was unbroken since the beginning of time. You are such an utopian... your constant atribution of tragedy to moral agency of someone else is so dangerous. You worry me, truly you do.

But, finally an example. Thanks, I guess. Though I expect you'll make yourself scarser soon enough now.


First to say, your comment about WW2 is kind of disingenuous? I mean, there was this thing called the USSR you know, and it had a bunch of countries under its sphere of influence... the Cold War was a fairly stable configuration for half a century more or less, but to imply that that balance of power stability is equivalent to no divisions among the world's anything is facepalm inducing. Unless you are the one being a sophist and excluding the communist systems from the financial elite a priori. But why would you do that? There were individuals with huge financial power there, which affected the world in many different ways.

Then to say, I offered Brexit as an example of the cracks beginning to appear. I'm not even sure the referenda result will be respected. So don't strawman my post as any kind of strong prediction that Brexit is it! For whatever meaning of it you want to ascribe.


When considering housing gluts and lack of affordable housing let us first be clear and give you the opportunity to jump in and go "no, no, that's not what I meant".

Given the context so far, here is the meaning I see you offering:

First, you are focused on the so called developed western world.
Second by affordable housing you mean something like half of current costs, or mortgages being at similar rates but lasting half the time, basically taking the purchasing power equivalent of whatever amount the average house costs, and cutting that in half to make it "affordable".

Then your thesis is: Hoarding of housing by elites - ergo, they buy houses but don't use them - is causing housing prices to go up. This is artificial demand and it therefore causes scarcity of housing. There is a contingent of potential housing buyers which are priced out of the market, and that inability to buy is dehumanizing to them.

I am referring of course to your statement which I will again reproduce in full:
"When scarcity is artificial, is it "life" that is dehumanizing, or the conditions imposed as a direct result of hoarding?"

Assuming this is correct, here's the kind of things I'll go into with you to explore the topic comprehensively. Please don't back out now that we are getting somewhere ok? :)

1 - natural contexts - shortage of suitable land, physical proximity to job sites, demographic trends, basic economic resources (time, labor, material, knowledge)
2 - higher prices and hoarding - other causalities like construction standards, increasing housing size, and changing mores (family size in particular)
3 - demand causing scarcity - other causalities like price control (topic where I expect you will again realize you have been reading me carelessly - in that I will agree there are "artificial" constraints "causing" shortages, just that those artificial aspects are only the cherry on the cake of all the pre-existing natural limits)
4 - the moral angle - what makes lack of housing dehumanizing? what is illegitimate or even malicious about hoarding?

How's that for a menu?

The ancient Greeks came up with some ingenious methods for dealing with corruption, like using a lottery to choose governing officials.

And hey, I'll bet you didn't know that the first 5 year plan was designed by an American industrial architect, or that it was GE that wired up the Soviet Union, or that Ford was supplying the Gorky plant throughout the Vietnam war, which was where the North Vietnamese supply trucks were built, or that American companies provided the Soviets with aluminum tubes and heavy water for their atomic weapons program, and the precision ball bearings that are necessary for the production of MIRV missiles, etc., etc., etc.

So the "Cold War" was nothing more than war profiteering without an actual war. Yes, it was dangerously risky, but hey, war profiteers gotta do what war profiteers gotta do, right?

And there were no leet bankers in the Sovirt Union, but there were, and still are, a considerable number of Jewish mafiosi, which, as you may know, are the crème de la crème in the world of organized crime.


Anyway, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you and say that I think everything you've said in this thread can be perfectly expressed with a single pic, so without further ado... ;p

Taxes and everyone gets it.

Not really, most big businesses underpay by a lot on taxes. If they paid their fair share and some of the inefficiencies on how the state is managed were kinked out, the government could afford it.

The main hurdle so far are multi-nationals shopping countries around in a race toward the bottom. That would have to be solved first and it is a tough problem.

Stricter control would have to be exerted on the price of rent, food, electricity and the Internet to keep their costs low.

Atm, we are definitely overpaying for rent and the Internet here (but rent is still better than in BC where foreigners bought a lot of the land without living in it which never should have been allowed in the first place). The electricity is provided by a crown corporation and its costs are very low compared to surrounding areas. Not sure about food.

Taxes would obviously still be on profits (not raw income) and would increase by income steps up to 50%. Atm, mean personal income is taxed at about 35% and 50% at the higher levels (lawyers, doctors, etc), yet many of the large businesses are not even paying 15%.

That would even out the playing field and the impact on struggling businesses would barely be felt as their profit margin are not that great (and hence, not highly taxable).

I disagree. I think many larger businesses are already making an absurd amount of money (even more absurd is that they are unsatisfied with an extremely high plato on their income levels, they keep expecting their profits to increase by a given amount every year and fire their top execs when it can't be managed).

They could comfortably soak up a minimum cost of living for everyone via increased taxes, provided that the minimum cost is kept under strict control and minimized (obviously, if you allow landlords, grocery stores, Internet providers and electricity providers to balloon their costs however high they like which they tend to do atm in some areas, then it could become unsustainable).

Do I call them or what? (< regarding your backing out)

I think it's rather that I subtly imply that evil is in everyone, and that power - especially political - corrupts much faster than money.

Whereas you, throughout the constant unfocused shifting of goalpoasts, remain focused on only one thing: that bankers are evil, especially the jewish ones of course. But thanks for not letting that surface so fast this time. Actually that's unfair, there is also the implicit message in "the world is bought and paid for" - that political change is impossible (and would harm you financially I assume) so let's not even try. Much easier to go at the bankers...

Which I guess disproves your 3 monkeys thesis quite nicely - afterall, I see the evil in you pretty clearly.



PS: Political lotteries are something I actually like. I do find the positions we coincide on to be interesting, despite our motivations being almost diametrically opposite. Do you know why political lotteries are completely unrealistic nowadays? It's not because they would empower the masses and the elites won't let them happen. It's because the same obssession with controlling others, that you exemplify in your exagerated fear of those with more money, causes the masses to distrust and emotionally reject anything so organic.

Except that I have no fear of those with more money, I simply find those who have managed to gain control of national money supplies to be loathsome creatures with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And the masses have no say in political matters, divided as we are. We'd have to pull together for that to happen

I quite agree with you that power corrupts moreso than money, but money properly leveraged translates to power.

As for Jews, I think they are the best of us and the worst of us, but Zionists I find to be mostly the latter, as I have very little tolerance for racists.

Indeed... thanks for the correction. It is clearly hatred, not fear.

Jobs are changing.

And true AI is still far away.
All this AI speaking is nonsense.

We struggle to make a decent OS ...

Dude, you don't need real AI to replace 60%+ of the jobs out there, you just need good pattern recognition, expert systems and occasionally, some machine learning (the specialized kind, not the general purpose sentient kind).

The bulk of the workforce does fairly repetitive work with very little creativity which is prime candidate to be replaced by automation.

Heck, they have computer programs that are as good at chess as the masters and we are on the verge of having self-driving cars. A lot of the activities we engage in are not as complex or as analytically intractable as we'd like to believe they are.

In some cases, it's a partial, but drastic replacement (ie, replace 10 cashiers by 10 automated checkouts and 1 surveillant) and in others, it's a complete replacement.

No, I pity them as I pity a rabid dog, knowing that they were born something very, very different.

Those who seek power are least deserving of it, something which an educated child also knows and appreciates -- but you, not so much.

That's a path with ever-diminishing returns, leaving us with an ever-increasing population of superfluous people with little or nothing to do. What do you propose that we do with them?