News Donald Trump's Popularity To Date

[Anarchy]

I'd never heard of [Godwin's law] before, so I looked it up. What I found that it says is that "the longer a discussion goes on on the internet, the more likely it is someone will compare someone else to Hitler or the Nazis." It doesn't actually comment on the potential accuracy of the comparison or the outcome of the debate.

It's generally used by progressives as a tool to avoid facing reminders that Hitler's policies went where the path of current American and British policies ultimately leads to.

I'll use Mayer's "they thought they were free" as a reference for that.

Mayer self identified as a progressive and neo liberal, so the poisoning of the well, that usually gets applied to Hayek's "Road to Serfdom", Mises' "Omnipotent Government", Flynn's "As we go marching" and Roepke's four works on the economic policies of the national socialists: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-...world-meet-free-market-economist-stood-hitler

"oh but they're right wing like Hitler"

Can't be used.

On closer analysis Roepke and Hayek were mild social democrats, while Flynn and Mises were classical liberals. Plus, arguing about the political leanings of the authors avoids examining the logic of their arguments.

Back in the 19th century, Bismark (certainly no soft fluffy humanitarian) had headed off the socialists by adopting several of the socialist policies, including old age pensions, state sector schooling and healthcare. In terms of the state pensions, Bismark created a Ponzi scheme, decades before Carlo Ponzi created his, and [ponzi] went to prison for it when it collapsed.

When anything is "free" at the point of use, price cannot act as a method of rationing demand (Check out the supply and demand curves in economics 101)
Demand for these services will therefore always outstrip supply (think of the fighting that breaks out when the january sales begin - people fighting over stuff that sat on the shelves all season at a slightly higher price).
and, due to the well known problems with monopolies, quality of service is likely to deteriorate and price increase over time.
For the pensions, all Ponzi schemes will collapse, it's only a question of when? not, if?

Now add in the problem of paper money being printed in ever increasing amounts to pay for those services. That reached its end point in Germany with the hyper inflation, wiping out any personal savings. In America, the collapse of the paper money is still to come. the dollar has already lost an estimated 98% of its purchasing power since the Fe'ral Reserve was established.

Most of the population is pretty ignorant about economics, and I'll include most people with economics degrees in that.

without that basic knowledge of real world economics, people who want to get things like state sector healthcare systems, state old age pensions and state sector schooling to work are left with what appear to be several options.

1) The people in charge are either bad or ineffective - replace them with someone good/strong who will make the policies work.

2) Some group is sabotaging the working or delivery of the policies - identify and purge that group.

3) The provision is being wasted on undeserving recipients rather than deserving ones - get rid of the undeserving.

In Germany in 1933, a sizeable minority thought that Hitler was the answer to 1), but not enough of them to make him chancellor. The faked "terrorist attacks" including the burning of the German parliament building (Reichstag Fire) soon convinced sufficeint people that there was an imminent threat to them, and that Hitler was the man to protect them, when in fact his thugs were orchestrating the terrorism.

In Germany, the subsequent answers to 2) and 3) were:

2) Joooooz (especially communist ones)
3) Disabled people, Joooooooz, and other "inferior" races.

The present day "issues" are very very similar in both America and Britain.
Try filling in 2) & 3) for the present candidates.

 

[Anarchy]

Add in a fondness ammongst some in Germany for the ideas that free trade had a winner and a loser [one of the fallacies of the mercantilists], rather than two winners.

and it followed that Germans wanted to be that winner,

Also the idea that everything should be produced in Germany [a policy of national autarkic production] - a relatively small area with few natural resources and a high density of population.

It followed from that, that instead of trading for those resources Germany did not possess, Germany must control them, and Germany must expand to give the German people sufficeint "living space" (Lebensraum).

These are exactly the opinions elaborated by Alexander Hamilton and his subsequent followers in America. They are the policies of the current ruling elite (both parties) and they make war inevitable.

They did in Germany, and they are doing so still in America.

War is un sustainable (The British government only finished paying off WWii debts last year! in the 1940s and 1950s Britain had the highest tax rates in the world, in order to service those war debts, the top rate of income tax peaked at 98%).

war and attempts at hegemony result in over reach and eventually the ever rising costs of new conflicts, taxes the economy that is paying for it, to death.

Sure, some people (cough, Lockheed Martin, JP Morgan...) profit from war. Check out who owns American TV channels. also check out who is funding which candidate's campaigns.

but the majority end up paying a very very high price for war and attempts at hegemony.

Scout, you were right on target mentioning Hitler.

 

[Stickler]

@scout86 ...Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh, among many others, have helped demonize welfare recipients explicitly, defined them as The Problem...keep lying for 30 years and people will believe you.

@Anarchy I'll never be terrific at economics, but capitalism is based on the presumption of unlimited expansion, right?
We are confined on a finite sphere.
Think we'd better figure out how to run a steady-state economy.
Otherwise we need to start working on tapping the resources and expansion room of the entire solar system to keep our economic model viable!

Regarding what happened in Chicago at the Trump rally that wasn't?
Chicago has been rocked with police brutality scandals...particularly the lethal and probably uncalled-for use of force on several black people by the police...as well as a history of torturing people into false confessions.
(No, I'm not kidding about that last, they'd dangle people upside down out of 3rd story windows and tell them they could confess or die.)
Easily over a thousand folks are already organized, networked, fired up, regularly demonstrating there to get the police department fixed and to get rid of the complicit mayor and city council. This includes shutting down the police credit union for a day, blockading roads in protest and lots of arrests.
...Trump's bigotry's getting REALLY obvious. Sending the Donald to Chicago was the equivalent of driving a gasoline truck full-tilt into a forest fire...
I think people really loathe Trump enough to get beat up and go to jail to protest him.

 

[Anarchy]

Hi Stickler,
I'll try not to spin off on a tangent with the dismal science

I'll never be terrific at economics, but capitalism is based on the presumption of unlimited expansion, right?
We are confined on a finite sphere.

Economics, in the sense that I follow it, is the "value free" science and logic of human actions and choices in a world of scarce resources and almost infinite desires.

It is "value free" in the sense that it is not trying to find out if something is good or bad, and it is not trying to sneak moral (normative) judgements in.

Applied to politics and public policies, the form of economics that I follow, would examine whether a proposal is suitable to attain the aims intended - for the target group?
and what its wider effects are beyond the target group?

The methodology of doing this gets very interesting - as human choices cannot be taken into the laboratory, a single variable cannot be isolated, There are only variables, the constants are things that are not mathematically useful like "humans act", "humans differ in likes, dislikes, aptitudes and abilities", "resources are scarce" and "there is a disutility to labour".

Humans also learn - so there can never be true repeatability of any experiment.

I love it, you get a really good workout on scientific methodologies and logic. It also ties in beautifully with understanding interpersonal boundaries and cognitive distortions.

but capitalism is

Capitalism gets used as a term of derision or a scapegoat for all sorts of things that people dislike. So much so, that I don't use the word. Sure I use the term "crony cRapitalism" which is pretty much synonymous with Mussolini's fascism, and present day public private partnership or that contradiction in terms, a regulated market. an example that we both agree on would be the FDA regulation and the resulting exorbitant price of meds.

an example of the confusion that the word "capitalism" creates could be
"Capitalism denies us choice"
"Capitalism provides too many choices"

or
"Capitalism perpetuates the institution of the family" - from the marxoids
"Capitalism is destroying the family" - from several of the churches

capitalism is based on the presumption of unlimited expansion, right?
We are confined on a finite sphere.
Think we'd better figure out how to run a steady-state economy.
Otherwise we need to start working on tapping the resources and expansion room of the entire solar system to keep our economic model viable!

Your full statement contains the basis of several masters courses and potential masters or doctoral theses. I'll try to pick just a couple of points.

Back in about 1976, there was a conference in Rome, where all sorts of government and academic bods got together to look at planning our future. Shock horror, they "discovered" that "the World" only had about 25 years reserves of: tin, copper, oil, gas... and pretty much everything else that comes out of holes in the ground.

This discovery or finding or what ever it was, lead to all sorts of government programs to find new "reserves".

What the delegates either didn't understand, or pretended that they didn't understand, was the word "reserve", has a very specific meaning, the exact definitions are set out in the rules of various stock exchanges. simply put it means a deposit that has been drilled to a sufficient density to accurately assess its size and exploitability (things like flow rate for oil and gas, or mineralogy, geotechnics and environmental for mining), and that it can be profitably extracted under current market conditions.

That level of assessment is very expensive (drilling rigs, lab testing, consultants reports...), and calculating future cash flows back to a value in today's money (a net present value), you usually find that proving up more than about twenty or twenty five years ahead, won't add anything more to the net present value. The resources that would be spent on proving further ahead are more highly valued in other areas of activity.
continued

 

[Stickler]

...in the book "the end of oil" author forgotten ATM...one of the things he talks about is the "proven" oil reserves of OPEC countries.

Apparently? OPEC rules are such that the countries are allowed to produce according to how much proven reserves they have in the ground. The thing is? No third party verifies how much oil they have in the ground. So they have a real monied interest in overstating reserves.
Oil discovery peaked in the 1960's http://www.reuters.com/article/oil-explorers-idUSL6N0PL2VD20140710...but you probably knew that.
We can figure out how to run a society off of wind/solar/ and especially wave, considering you can essentially make methane syngas ( that can run current vehicles and power plants ) out of air and water with enough generated electricity...and make it out in the middle of the ocean if needed...Plus we already have a natural gas infrastructure to handle same.
...or maybe we just need to properly utilize Trump's hair to build a space elevator... That is one amazing construction of hair right there.
...I'm dyscalculeic, this is why I doubt I'll ever master economics. Sociology is pretty similar, though, but I am only tangentially interested in sociology and social psychology.

We seem to have gotten off-topic from America's favorite fascist here tho.

Something I heard in passing...in a poll taken by...dunno, someone...only 29% of American women liked Trump. I was going to vote for him ( give the knuckleheads what they want and see how fast they cry! ) but I decided...no. If he wins I'd feel responsible for the atrocities he'd commit.
And he will, if elected.

 

[Anarchy]

continuation;

Ok
clearly the things that we dig out of holes in the ground, like copper or oil, didn't actually all run out in about the year 2000, and clearly, they are all ultimately finite - unless we find a cheap method of space travel to mine the rest of the solar system.

So how to ration them, to ensure that they go to the uses that they are most beneficial in, rather than being squandered on some use that some substance that is less useful could be substituted for?

and what about the needs of future generations?

I'll dispose of the last one first with a reductio ad absurdum - should the Saudi Arabs of the early twentieth century set aside and conserved dried camel dung, so that their descendants would have a secure supply of fuel to cook with?
Clearly we don't know what the future holds, and while we shouldn't ignore it completely, we shouldn't drasticize it too much either.

In an imaginary world where there was no oil in the middle east, a Saudi family with a big stock of dried camel shit, might have had a very valuable source of income. A speculator who forecasts correctly, can expect to be well rewarded.

How to decide what uses something goes into? and in what quantities? especially if thing has several different uses. and should it be recycled or mined a-fresh?
or perhaps synthesised using wind power;)

at a superficial level, the decision making comes down to
1) businesses and individuals decide for themselves
2) some person with authoritah decides for them

staying superficial, it is easy to believe that
1) will have un appointed people in big business dictating to everyone.
2) under a democracy, the people decide and the person with authoritah will (or should) see that those wishes are carried out

- and that's where the thinking about is usually allowed to stop

carry the thinking on a bit further, and things start to get interesting, and eventually it has implications for politics, and the likes of Trump

under 2), the person with authoritah only has skin in the game as far as getting elected and staying elected. But the authoritah that person wields, is very attractive to the big businesses.
As special interest groups, the businesses can offer big rewards and promises to the person with authoritah for favouring them... It's called corruption and it is hopelessly utopian to assume that it won't happen as soon as someone gets authoritah.

under 1) The businesses had better offer the sort of goods and service that people will choose to buy, and at prices that they are willing to pay. If someone finds a way to offer a product or price that the consumers like better. then they'll get the consumers money, and be able to bid resources away from the guys that the consumers liked less.

under 1) the individuals get to choose through their decisions to spend or keep hold of their money. the consumers choose who gets rich and who stays rich, and who has to sell up.

under 2) the person with authoritah gets to decide, and is almost certain to be swayed by offers of favours from special interest groups.
____________
what about synthesising and recycling, compared to mining?

Under 1) prices arise, as ordinary consumers freely choose what they want to spend the fruits of their labour on. If someone can turn raw stuff into things that consumers are willing to buy, and do it efficiently, they'll make enough profit to keep doing it and to expand

a loss indicates that something that people value more highly is getting turned into something that they value less.

So long as people are free to enter the market, producers will compete with each other to attract customers, and to bid for the resources to do that with.

Competition for the resources to serve consumers will (always imperfectly) indicate how best to exploit those resources to serve the consumers. We can slag off money values and profits, but they are the only information system that we have.

under 2) prices cannot arise (sure, they can be set or enforced arbitrarily) so there is no rational way to work out what should be made, in what quantity or how. This is the calculation problem (von Mises) and the knowledge problem (Hayek).

The decisions of the person with authoritah are forced on all, whether they are good, bad or indifferent.
Without the use of force - people would choose for themselves and producers would compete to attract them.
____________________________

Is there a good that people are willing to pay for, which cannot be provided competitively in a market? a good that requires the arbitary force of authoritah?

If there is such a good, then voting for or against the likes of Trump might serve some purpose. as whoever is elected, gets to decide how that good is apportioned. In other words, which groups are to be "winners" and which groups are to be "losers".

if there is not such a good, then Trump and the rest of them are simply an annoying irrelevance.

 

[Anarchy]

I'm dyscalculeic, this is why I doubt I'll ever master economics.

Quite the opposite!
Mathematics and equations tells you nothing at all about real world economics.
It is true that many in the current mainstream of economics are into drawing curves and playing with equations (the school of Lausanne and Leon Walras, and the mathematical Keynsians).

It's mathsturbation (maths - as in mathematics, turbation - as in to make cloudy, un clear or obscure) it it exists in a simplified and idealised fantasy world that bears no resemblance to reality - do too much of it and you'll go blind:geek:.

You have a logical mind. The "Austrian school" encompasses the economists who are still studying real world phenomena and they are doing it with logic. It isn't that they can't do maths, it's just that maths and equations aren't relevant to understanding economics.

Understanding economics in the wider sense of a study of human action and human choice, is essential to understanding why politics must always fail.
Amanda's summaries of Henry Hazlitt's "economics in one lesson" will give a flavour of it. Hazlitt was an American "Austrian" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-ama5rVMHxFmDf5QRdPbgyDeV60FnDZo

 

[anthony]

Its funny... my brother raised this yesterday seeing something on tv here, and said something along the lines, "Trump will either cause world war 3 or fix Americas business. Either one... because he's no politician, but a businessman."

 

[Justmehere]

In 1935, Churchill suggested similar of Hitler: "We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilisation will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the Great Germanic nation."

Being the focus of a cult of personality is a power that can be used for good or evil.... It usually turns out to be the latter.

 

[hodge]

So, Trump took every state doing primaries last night except Ohio. I wonder how many people are voting for him in the belief that if he becomes the nominee, Hillary will certainly defeat him.

Please, God, deliver us from Donald Trump.

 

[Justmehere]

Yep, I am sick of Trump winning. All his damn winning.

A Sanders vs. Cruz debate would be really interesting. I would enjoy seeing them talk about and defend their viewpoints. I believe that such a debate would be really good for the country too. That would be a real choice between two different ways of running the country.

Clinton vs. Trump? I would not want to even watch that debate. Would anyone else here?

Maybe there should be a Sanders, Clinton, Trump, and Cruz debate now? I'm so done with watching the parties debate themselves.

(Kasich is excluded from my list because has no mathmateical chance to be the GOP nominee. He would have to win more than 100% of the delegates left.)

There have been so many debates already this year and it's only March... Ugh. I can't wait until this election is over.

 

[scout86]

I'm trying to imagine a Trump appointment to the supreme court....