Failures in the free market were not responsible for the great depression in the US. It was due to an influx of people taking out loans to immediately put that money into the stock market that caused the crash. The free market would've corrected itself. Agree/disagree/discuss.
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Anonymous2007-01-20 13:58
>>1
Actually it was government intervention that lopsided the economy causing overproduction. Further government intervention prolonged the depression long into the 30s.
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Anonymous2007-01-20 14:04
>>2
But if you say that then what say you about how the government created the fed to regulate interest rates and dabble in the economy in the present day?
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Anonymous2007-01-20 15:14
I don't want to denegrate the free market but I dont think it works as well as libertarians would have you believe. There's a huge gap between what people want and what they get. For example, I want all video games to be 2D instead of that 3D shit, but 2D has died.
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Anonymous2007-01-20 17:07
>>4
There is only a gap between what you want and what you get if your interests are out of the norm. As long as there is a market for the product or service you are wanting (and often, though not always, there is), the market will be there to provide it for you. In this way, the market serves to effectively provide the interests of the majority of people. Since the vast majority of people want their games in 3d rather than 2d, the market has responded to that, providing the products that most people wanted.
If enough people really wanted 2d games rather than 3d games, what makes you think tons of companies would be jumping at the opportunity of producing 2d games rather than 3d games? Because there is simply likely no market for them so long as 3d games are there and so long as people prefer the latter form of game.
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Anonymous2007-01-20 17:35
>>5
Yeah, and thats the beauty of the free market. You are free to want anything, as long as it is what everybody else wants. Really individualistic. I feel similarities with US foreign policy concerning democracy (eg Hamas, Chavez).
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Anonymous2007-01-20 19:23
>>6
It is individualistic in that you are more or less free to do what you want. If you and a group of other people want 2d games, you are free to go and make them yourself. This is actually a good thing about the market. It works to ensure the happiness of a larger group of people in this way, all voluntarilly.
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Anonymous2007-01-20 19:24
>>4
Oh yeah, and you can also buy older/used 2d games if you want them. Sometimes older games are redone and sold in big value packs as well. You'll just have to look pretty hard to find them (or search online).
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Anonymous2007-01-21 0:05
>>7
"If you and a group of other people want 2d games, you are free to go and make them yourself."
This is true in almost any system. If you wanted to play pacman instead of tetris in soviet russia you were completly free to copy it or invent a new similar clone, all voluntarily. You might even get money and equipment free from the state.
The free market is not individualistic in the sense that you are forced to consume the lowest common denominator, or variations of it. And if you assume, as i do, that the majority are retards, then the free market is hell.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 1:03
>>3
Competing political parties now heavily criticise governmental economic policies which resemble those that initiated the great depression. This is innaccurate and essentially means we are in a perpetual government intervention induced depression. If currency was privatised and banks had no restrictions on interest rates the accuracy of capital and securities regulation would improve. In the Clinton era the government paid back it's deficit when it should have been taking out loans in order to allow faster growth, in the Bush era the government has been taking out too many loans causing interest payments to exceed growth. Finances should really be left in the hands of 1000s of harvard, oxforc, cambridge and yale school of economics graduates and life long experts and not a few senators who's actions affect 6 billion people.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 1:25
>>9
I want a ps3 with a surrounded sound wide LCD screen and I don't want to work, just play it all day and get free pizza and beer too.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 7:18
>>11
I want that too! We should form a party with the goal to minimize work needed and maximize leisure time! We can call it...the International Communist Party (TM).
Well, at least it sounds better than the parties that tells us that we need to work more for less if we want to compete with China. They can have my job. It sucks anyway.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 7:32
>>12
Yeah! Why do we have to work for things anyway? We should be able to accumulate infinite resources, including intellectual property, for 0 effort. God damn evil capitalists!
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Anonymous2007-01-21 7:50
>>13
Yeah, we should. That seems to be a worthy goal for a civilization, decreasing the effort needed for things to 0. The present system on the other hand wants to increase the effort, for less gain.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 8:55
>>14
Actually you could judge how much you value the rewards and dislike the work to determine the most valuable way of life and choose your career accordingly. Male porn stars earn less than stock brokers and brokers are probably trhe hardest workest in society. This is because no one wants to work as a stock broker and everyone wants to be a porn star, thus pornography companies don't have to pay much to get a male porn star, not much at all, whilst groups like NASDAQ have to fork out 6 figure incomes to gain the limited supply of stock brokers.
You will also find that people enjoy cleaning and labouring since it doesn't require much education. They are prepared to be paid less.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 9:24
>>15
Yeah, you are completly free to choose your career. Education is completly free, and there is no such thing as unemployment. Just pick a career that suits your preferences, any career. Everybody can be astronauts if they want to, because there is an unlimited supply of rockets. And santa exist.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 11:48
>>13
Well, that SHOULD be the end goal of any society. Now, as to how we get to that point, my money's on capitalism.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 12:04
>>17
I guess you like to play pyramide games also, and accept a lot of business deals from Nigeria.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 17:04
>>16
You failed to patch in the fact that you have to pay for education and most people can't be botherred to even go to community college. I guess education is that bad they prefer to be poor. As I sit here enjoying a richly scented Merlot with several 100000 $s of shares doing the work for me I wonder why people decide to become agricultural labourers and such like, each to their own I guess.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 17:08
>>16
By that of course I meant that the fact you have to pay for education adds to it's undesirability.
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Anonymous2007-01-21 21:37
>I want a ps3 with a surrounded sound wide LCD screen and I don't want to work, just play it all day and get free pizza and beer too.
Your expectation is unreasonable in that it costs too much effort for what you'd be paying. Making a lot of 2D games, however, does not have this problem
>>22
Does that make any difference as to whether some guy wants more of them or not?
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Anonymous2007-01-22 2:52
1d games suck
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Anonymous2007-01-22 3:53
If the 4th dimension is time, doesn't that mean that 2D games are actually 3D?<---never took quantum physics
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Xel2007-01-22 10:47
>>25 Well, the image on the screen progesses in the 4th dimension just like everything else, but it is important to remember that not all games have content that alters as time progresses. In this sense Majora's Mask is more four-dimensional than Twilight Princess. My two cents.
I dont get how time is just a normal dimension. We can't perceive other, higher dimensions but yet we live in the third dimension - so why should we be able to perceive the fourth?
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Anonymous2007-01-23 2:38
>>26
But yet for games that change as time progresses, that's mostly seen as a gimmick.
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Xel2007-01-23 3:47
>>29 "I dont get how time is just a normal dimension. We can't perceive other, higher dimensions but yet we live in the third dimension - so why should we be able to perceive the fourth?"
I think - but I am not sure - that just like a two-dimensional being could only perceive one 2D-slice of a 3D-object at one instant we can only see 3D-slice of a four-dimensional reality. Or some such. This is not my bag.
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Anonymous2007-01-23 3:57
Free market is overrated. The idea that a bunch of companies competing to win over customers is nice in theory, but in practice, large conglomerations emerge and proceed to stamp out competition, and sometimes you end up with a monopoly that can screw over the customers because they have already eliminated all competition (Eg. Oil Companies). I don't think monopolies are inherently bad, they can get things done more efficiently, but the fact is that greed gets in the way of that. Anti-trust laws were established because there was a need for them.
And I love how many idiots are taking any criticism of the Holy Invisible Hand of the Free Market as endorsement for Communism.
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Anonymous2007-01-23 6:33
>>32
I don't think anyone would call you communist. That is just hard truth and it's internal fault of free market economy that can't be fixed. Growth is the key problem, but you can't just go killing people and market routinely. Thomas Jefferson(feel free to correct if wrong) said that in order to ensure liberty we should have violent revolution every 20 years and he was right. Free market is overall best choice we currently have though. I think anyone advocating free market realises this problem, but it's just that there's no fix to it. If you think you can fix it without destroying civil rights and liberty then feel free to explain how.
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Anonymous2007-01-23 14:03
>>33
I'm forced to agree, Capitalism is the best system we have right now. I was mostly addressing the Libertarians who always treat the Invisible Hand like it's some comic superhero that always arrives just in time to save the day. It's not. It might always achieve equilibrium in the long run, but that equilibrium doesn't necessarily distribute the wealth very well.
And I don't agree with Jefferson. If you had a violent revolution every 20 years, you'd never have a stable, safe country that's necessary to growth. Civil war tends to be counterproductive.
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Anonymous2007-01-23 14:21
>>34
It doesn't have to be a civil war. It could just be the assasination of one politician who thinks he can get away with tyranny.
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Anonymous2007-01-23 15:01
I think if we had a civil war every 20 years, eventually we'd get pretty damn efficient at it.
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Anonymous2007-01-23 15:01
^ Of course, assassination works too
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Anonymous2007-01-23 17:23
You have to remember that in Jefferson's time, the USA was the closest thing to a democracy in the entire world next to Switzerland which is astronomically easier to defend than the open plains of the US and they still had legalised slavery.
The general idea of the people having such power over the government they can remove it by force if it annoys enough of them and this power continuing onto whatever government replaces the last one is a perhaps complete method of ensuring tyranny does not occur.
Jefferson was correct about that.
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Anonymous2007-01-23 21:27
>>38
FUN FACT OF THE DAY: PIRATE SHIPS WERE PURE DEMOCRACIES.
>>40
The political conditions of the era and increasing hold of the European governments over the Caribbean and general area that pirates operated lead to the demise of piracy. It's still viable (See South China Sea).
>>39
Fun fact: Pirate ships were what their captains wanted them to be. There were democracies and dictatorships(lol, pun). Sometimes crew mutined and killed the captain so new captain was chosen.
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Anonymous2007-01-24 17:57
>>41
Actually the pirates simply left with their fortunes and lived the rest of their lives in opulent splendour. Those pirate ships that were despotic tended to fight to the death and not succeed. They were succesful.
>>43
Fun fact: Pirate ships were populated by perpetually disgruntled hard angry tough no-bullshit thugs, their captain was what they wanted him to be.
The culpepper militia men of the american revolutionary war were of a similiar calibre of masculinity, except they possessed strong protestant moral libertarian values. As much as liberals enjoy hating and persecuting the christian right in america, they would be living under an actual tyranny if it weren't for the christian right. They should be on their knees thanking god such men existed, but I guess they don't have to since, like jesus, they died so we can have the liberty to disrespect them.
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Anonymous2007-01-24 18:06
>>44
I don't have an issue with the religious right as long as they keep their hands off my guns, wallet, and keep their noses out of my personal life in general.