True, but so are "autocratic thug leaders."

You may not like who we sided with, and it's likely that our leaders didn't like them when we sided with them, but it's often not possible to remain neutral, and there is no 'good' side. As you can see, even your choice of words can create unintended complications. When you do try to remain neutral, one or both sides can interpret that as being biased against them, and you can still have blow back.

They certainly weren't perfect, but I wouldn't put too much blame on our country's past political leaders for the decisions they made. The political environment was more difficult then, with the implicit threat of nuclear war never too far in the background. More recently however is another story. We got into things knowing they would be messy, expensive, and unending. Now they pretend they didn't know and couldn't have known, or worse, that they're getting better when they aren't.

NATO and the Western nations cannot and should not sit back and idly watch when our way of life is threatened. A foreign policy of isolation does not protect us.

Note virtually all the conflicts we have been involved in outside the Americas have been in support of a United Nations or NATO decision. The US did not arbitrarily enter into these conflicts alone; we did so with the participation and support of other nations with whom we share a commitment to democracy and freedom. Likewise, we share a mutual desire to avoid regional conflicts expanding into something far greater.

In retrospect, certainly there have been some missteps. We have the luxury of viewing those events and the outcomes with hindsight, and hopefully we learned from them. We do not have the luxury of the same view of what the world would be like today had everybody made the choice to stay home, not engage in world events, and not protect our shared national interests. My belief is it would be a very different world.

What deregulation? There hasn't been any. What you mistakenly refer to as deregulation is mercantilism; the government giving special license and assistance to certain people. Government "deregulated" telephony but then both controlled it tightly and gave it money, while keeping away competition with licensing schemes. That's not deregulation, it is mercantilism.

The libertarian philosophy is one of total government removal. There would be no favoritism, no handouts, no special licensing to keep out the competitors. In a true free market, the consumer wins. In a mercantilist market, the guy who owns the most politicians wins.

Oh? Really? No deregulation? I thought that I frequently saw deregulation over the last seven years. But maybe I was just imagining all those news reports. Yeah, that must be it. I'm imagining it! There really hasn't been any. Just like I imagined the Enron disaster, which never happened.

I think cwtnospam adequately refuted this assertion. :D I must admit that I'm surprised that someone as intelligent as you, CAlvarez, could believe that there hasn't been any deregulation in recent years.

This ignores the mathematical truths illuminated by Dr. Nash with his Nash Equilibrium. The simple fact is, in a true free market, that is a market controlled exclusively by supply and demand, and nothing else, without any outside interference whatsoever, the consumer does not win.

Competition promotes winning, but it also promotes losing. Thus, it leads to win-lose solutions. Cooperation, on the other hand, promotes smaller wins enjoyed by a much larger share of players, leading to win-win solutions, from which the whole enjoys greater benefits. Unfortunately, a strategy based exclusively on cooperation tends to be ineffective in the long term. For this reason, hybrid strategies, those which combine the strengths of competitive strategies with the strengths of cooperative strategies, are optimum.

I actually checked out your links. Calling something a name, doesn't make it so. In proper usage (not in press releases or news headlines intended to be alarmist or attention-getting), deregulation means the removal of governmental controls.

Most of the examples you show describe precisely what Carlos described - Rule changes implemented by "bought" politicians and administrators in response to moneyed interests.

Enron did not occur due to deregulation. Much of what they did had never been regulated before. They just did what corporations have been doing for years, they just did more of it and it turned around to bite them, and, because of their size and prominence, made lots and lots of headlines.

The "deregulation" of the power industries by some states wasn't. It amounted to a set of rule changes (not elimination) that provided additional means for the maximization of profits that hadn't existed before. The new rules were written by and for the industry, and were passed due to lobbyists and campaign contributions to the politicians. The companies were never removed from PUC control.

Everything you state here is absolutely true.

It is also complete hogwash in the real world because it depends on complete knowledge, perfect altruism as part of human nature, and total incorruptibility by the political and regulatory entities.

And removal doesn't mean 100% removal. Remove 1 out of 100 rules, and you've deregulated, although to a small degree.

We'll just have to disagree on this one, but even if we agree that "much of what they did" wasn't regulated, then some of it was, or at least had been in the past.

I don't know how you could get less regulated than that!

Anytime you let the fox set the rules for access to the henhouse, you've got complete deregulation: If I can set the rules that apply to me, then I am not regulated by any rules!

You and I are using different definitions, so there is not much point in debating what deregulation really means.:)

However we define "deregulation", though, I do not believe that that is the real issue. What I believe CAlvarez is referring to (and I believe this also) is that the large moneyed interests are in bed with the politicians and other governmental entities and, in combination, do things which benefit both of them. This does not correspond to a "free market" or "capitalist" or whatever-similar-term-you-might-want-to-use system.

To use your analogy, I think the problem is that we have two co-operating foxes (government and business) in the henhouse, and the hens (us) are eternally stupid and keep looking to one of the foxes to protect us from the other one.

Close, but I think there is only one fox. The Government has been running with huge debt for decades, and for all of this decade so far has rapidly expanded upon it. Meanwhile, the real foxes have preached (mostly on Fox) that Big Government is bad, and that we need protection from it. Nations (especially the US) are losing their Sovereignty to corporations who serve no one but their richest stock holders. In this light, the lack of additional regulations can be seen as deregulation, because additional regulation is needed merely to keep up with the myriad of new or expanded tricks that corporations are getting away with as they claim constitutional rights that should be reserved for flesh and blood humans.

You and I will just have to agree to disagree. :)

I see government power, as practiced in the US, to be no less corrupt and prone to misuse than corporate power. The idea of giving an entity that has consistently demonstrated the corruption, incompetence, and dishonesty it has over the course of history, with no improvement as time goes on, even more power and control than it has now, just doesn't resonate with me.

What is complete hogwash is the assertion that "Supply and Demand" will, by itself, lead to optimal market conditions and maximum consumer benefit.

The Nash equilibrium is not dependent upon complete knowledge, nor perfect altruism.

A democratic government (or representative democracy, or whatever term you wish to use to refer to a government by the people) is only as corrupt as its citizens allow it to be.

Corporate power being wielded to the detriment of consumers and government corruption are two separate problems. The first may contribute to the second, but it is not the root cause. General apathy by the citizen population that is the root cause of the second problem.

Contrary to your entirely disingenuous implication, I have never claimed that.

Complete knowledge: Even when two economic entities co-operate in the real world, e.g., Boeing partnering with GE to build a new plane, they restrict the information sharing with the other to the absolute minimum required to maximize the individual profits of each. In order to co-operate optimally, they would have to share all aspects of their corporate information, e.g., proprietary info such as processes, capabilities, etc. In order to not lose any competitive advantages in the future, they do not share information optimally, thus they do not have "complete knowledge" to co-operate optimally.

Altruism: If and only if economic entities (individuals or corporations) are willing to forego the possibilities of "larger wins" for themselves in exchange for more certain "smaller wins" for themselves and thus, wins for the whole, can the "overall greater good" be attained. By any definition I can recall, this requires altruism (or possibly a disbelief in their abilities to achieve "larger wins" on their own).

Even though you didn't challenge the part of my statement dealing with "total incorruptibility by the political and regulatory entities", I will add that given human nature (or "corporate nature"), both optimal co-operation among, and giving up the possibility of "larger wins" by, economic entities will require some higher entity, i.e., government or similar, with a big club. Given the propensity of the club wielder to be corruptible and/or incompetent, achieving such an equilibrium is unlikely.

Nor did I imply that you said it. Had I intended that interpretation, I would have specified "your assertion."



No, complete sharing of knowledge is not required in order to cooperate. I'm not sure where you came up with that idea, but it is certainly not a requirement.

While I agree that there must be a measure of altruism in order for an entity to adopt a strategy with a measure of cooperation, I disagree that "perfect altruism" is necessary, as you claim. In fact, if perfect altruism existed in the scenario, it would mean that no entity was looking out for their own self interest at all, instead being concerned only with the well being of the group.

I addressed corrupt political entities in a separate post, as they are a political problem, and not an economic one, despite the fact that the problem can contribute to economic problems.

Not in the least. He actually helped confirm it. He quoted cases of mercantilism, not deregulation.

Whatever you want to call it, he offered examples of (significantly) reduced
regulation. If that is bad, then elimination of regulation is also bad. There's no asymptotic behavior.

They were all cases of both, and neither was good for the US or its citizens. Nor for that matter, the world.

Not at all the same as the free market.

Sometimes it shocks me that people don't understand this basic principle. A market can't be "a little free." It's either free, or it is not. A little regulation with some protectionism thrown in is much worse than either a fully regulated or a fully free market. And that's what we have in most examples of so-called deregulation.

The FREE market works, but we have not been allowed to experience it. The last thing government wants is for any industry to prosper without its "help."

Laughable. The FREE market without any regulation works for about 10 minutes before insider trading, corporate corruption and collusion, and many other factors destroy the free market and you're left with a modern version of Feudalism. In a Capitalistic society, one of Governments most important jobs is to maintain a free market. That's what anti trust laws are for, and if we'd had a government willing to enforce them over the last 7 years, we could have saved jobs and kept the dollar from its free fall.

Please try to use correct economic terminology when you attempt to make a point. The above is sheer nonsense.

What you are describing is the situation if today's non-free market system had all governmental restraints and controls removed.

A free market is an economic construct. Like pure socialism, like the Nash equilibrium, and so many other things, it cannot exist in the real world. Even though the politicians and others blather about how the US economy is a free market, anyone with even a modicum of understanding of economics realizes that those statements are simplistic propaganda only. It is not, it never has been, and it will never be.

In a free market, by definition, there are no barriers to entry, there are no monopolistic, or even oligopolistic, players, and lots more etc., etc. Collusion among producers doesn't matter in a free market because there are essentially infinite alternative sources for consumers. Ditto for insider trading. Ditto for corporate corruption. Etc., etc.

If you want to argue that the US (or other) economic and/or political systems are corrupt or inefficient or whatever, you will probably get a lot of agreement. But if you argue that a free market is bad and use the current system as an example, you only display your ignorance of economics.