A Lesson From Iceland

"Hey, look at Iceland!

Stuck in the economic doldrums just a few years ago, Iceland today is enjoying an explosion of prosperity.

In fact, Iceland is now one of the world's richest nations, according to the World Bank. And it's arguably the wealthiest European country.

The economy is growing rapidly. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has grown about 50% since 1995. And the benefits are being felt throughout Icelandic society. Unemployment has almost disappeared -- dropping below 2 percent.

As a writer for the UK Spectator bluntly put it: "Today, Icelanders are absolutely rolling in it."

So what happened? Lots of lucky lottery ticket winners? Nope. Beginning around 1990, Icelandic leaders -- inspired by visits from libertarian free-market thinkers like Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and James Buchanan -- instituted bold, fundamental free-market reforms.

Taxes were slashed, for both individuals and businesses. Personal income tax rates were cut from 33 percent in 1995 to 22.75 percent. The corporate tax rate was cut from 55 percent to 18 percent -- and a further cut to 10 percent is under consideration. A cumbersome income tax was replaced with a flat tax. Wealth and estate taxes were slashed. Major segments of the economy were deregulated. Numerous government services were privatized. Monetary policy was stabilized; inflation, which hit 100% in 1983, is down to 2-3% today. Government debt was hacked away. Private property rights were created for fisheries, a major Icelandic industry. And so forth.

Due to such market-oriented reforms, between 1990 and today Iceland rose from 26th to 9th in the Economic Freedom of the World rankings (a respected annual ranking of countries by the amount of economic freedom they permit).

The result: Iceland is enjoying the same remarkable progress that other countries around the world which have adopted similar policies have also seen.

Lesson, anyone?"

An excerpt from this issue of the liberator online:
http://www.theadvocates.org/liberator/vol-12-num-6.html#GBU
The liberator online is an e-newsletter provided by the Advocates for Self-Government.  You can sign up for it and have it delivered to your email box for free here: 
http://www.theadvocates.org/publications/liberator-online.html

Looks like socialism doesn't work.

yeah, iceland is pretty nice, though they still ahve problems with  inflation (~9% in 2k6), and a deficit on the current account balance, though this is getting better because someone built an aluminum plant there. There are also some somewhat special conditions when it comes to borrowing for icelandic firms, there are some large state-run funds which offer favorable loans to companies which they then invest in the rest of the world. The general population is also somewhat heavily debted.
60% of the export is based on the fishing industry, so untill recently (a large aluminum plant finished production just recently), Iceland, with its' 300k population has been had a pretty one-sided economy.
The icelandic currency is also very fluctuating, but that is to be expected when you have a very 'free' economy.

anyway, iceland is cool, it has a large growth of GDP, although it has been expected to fall this year, it will still be good. But i'd wait a bit before prescribing it all to "OMG NO TAXES WIII ^_____^".

certain credit-rating firms have also recently reduced the credit rating of iceland, albeit only by one notch from AA- and AAA to A+ and AA+ for foreign and local credit respectively.
another point to consider is the interest rate of the national bank, which is 14.25 percent, remarkably higher than most other places.

And how many people live on fucking Iceland.
Answer me that.

>>4

So less people = better economy?
I guess that's bad news for China and India.

Let's look at Chile!
Proof Libertarians don't care about democracy, as they the elite know what's best for everyone, and shook hands with Pinochet despite the concrete evidence of his use of torture and execution through the execution of a military junta.
Libertarians don't like democracy, because it gives people who disagree with them a voice and empowers them, so it'd be better in the eyes of libertarians to have a dictatorship in which the free market is championed, expression is free, but should you try anything to change the system or question the legitimacy of the few ruling over so many, you can enjoy your black bag.

No, no, just no. Iceland's economy functions vastly different than America's; they are not a major economic power. Maybe free market works in Iceland, but it simply does not work in the US. It's all right there in the history books. Look at the Coolidge administration in the 1920s. Coolidge was a libertarian who advocated laissez faire capitalism and the 1920s were basically a free market, industrial, capitalist economy. Nothing was regulated, banks, the stock market, they could do whatever the hell they wanted. And it didn't work. Exploitation ran rampant and the economy was incredibly unstable. And the modern view among historians is that this is what caused the Great Depression. Laissez faire just doesn't work.

Heh, especially you as a communist should be careful about proving something through fucked up history.

>>7
What the fuck?

>>7
Seriously that's not even worth responding to.

>>9
>>10
If I'm wrong it should be easy to respond to. Also, same person.

>>8
I'm not a Communist, Communism is retarded.

Blame it on the lack of Niggers.

>>5

not necesserily, but with a resposnible government who is willing to lend large amount of money to the public and companies in order to build up a good level of capital, it is easier for a smaller nation, with plenty of natural resources, to do very well. Recently the fishing quotas imposed by the US have also threatened the icelandic exports, and thus they have started focusing on biotech, high-tech, and similar stuff which do not relying on natural resources.
Rather than looking at iceland as a wonderful example of how we should all do things, we should look at it as an example of how a small state builds up a well-functioning economy based on a single or few resources.

>>11

>>8 was directed to >>6.

Anyways, economists disagree with you on "And the modern view among historians is that this is what caused the Great Depression. Laissez faire just doesn't work."

>>11
Ok.

>>6
Nothing has been presented to suggest there were libertarians supporting the rule of Pinochet. The only involvement of libertarianism in Chile were the libertarian principles used by the christian democratic party in restorring representative government by 1990.
>>7
The crash of 1929 was directly caused by the election a few months earlier of the open opponent of laissez faire capitalism, Herbet Hoover and his administration.

>>15
Did not Friedman laud the economic reforms (or rollbacks) of Pinochet, and does not libertarians suck Friedmans cock so much that their mouths seem fish shaped?

>>16
Friedman was not a libertarian. You cannot support someone who says "you have the freedom to own property" and says "you do not have the freedom to criticise me" and be libertarian. All libertarian principles must be followed.

>>16
As for libertarians who slurped on friedman's schlong, it was their right to do so with friedman's permission and I fail to see why you wish to make it illegal.

>>18
Au contraire mon fraire! I wish it were legal everywhere, even in Pinochets Chile. Im just saying that those slurpers seems to have been high since they are so forgetful on the slurpin'. Isnt a prime principle of libertarianism that a man always tells the truth else he'll be no better than some mere woman?

>>15
The stock market crash didn't cause the Great Depression, it was things done before and after it.

>>14
Well ok, the Great Depression had a lot of causes and there are different opinions on the main ones but most of them can be attributed to an unregulated economy. Overproduction, banks giving out too many loans, the unregulated stock market, high tariffs, the Federal Reserve, etc. I'm not saying there is no room to cut down on needless government intervention in the economy, there definitely is, but I find laissez faire to be a very overly simplistic economic ideology.

>>20

Stuff like this make me wonder why talking about politics on the internet is still tolerated.
Are you a historian?
I don't think so because you were you've listed a shitton of sources.
I'm not either and chances are low that there's one on 4chan.
So why talking about stuff which none of us studied in college?
But if you happen to be a historian then why would you insist on talking to people who didn't have the same education?
Oh, and saying that everybody had this in high school would be kinda dumb.
Having a hight school diploma doesn't qualify you to talk about theoretical physics, now does it?
Trying to prove anything through history in an internet discussion is ridiculous.

>>21
No, I'm not a historian. Yes, I did have this in high school, IB History of the Americas HL to be more specific. This isn't exactly rocket science. Do you have to be an economist to talk about Capitalism vs. Communism? Do you have to be a Senator to talk about bills going through Congress? Do you have to be a Physician to give your view on stem cell research? A theologian to talk about religion? No? Then why do I have to be a Historian to talk about history? You want sources? This is the internet, try Google.
"Trying to prove anything through history in an internet discussion is ridiculous."
What? That makes no goddamn sense. I guess I'll make a thread saying how we should go to war with Communist countries such as North Vietnam to stop its spread and we should persecute anyone we suspect of being a Communist in America and no one can argue with me that we've tried it before and it failed spectacularly, because you can't use history in an internet discussion!

>>22

Of course you can talk about stuff you don't know anything about.
You just don't make progress and everything is made of uncertainty and false deduction.. and AIDS.
I just thought that people discuss to achieve something and not because calling each other a retard is fun.

>>21
i'd liek to respond on behalf of >>20

"in fact, since this is the internet and we are all anonymous, i am a historian. now gtfo"

>>19
I think you've gone way over the point here. Libertarianism is a set of simple principles and laws that have been revealed to be the basis of all tyranny. The number of Libertarian principles are no where near the same scale as the laws and expectations set out by religions or marxism. They can lie, stick it in each other's assholes, swear, worship satan, disagree with the government and smoke cannabis all they want, just so long as they do not harm anyone or interfere with their liberties.

>>20
Herbert Hoover came to power a few months beforfe the stock market crash. Herbert was a believer in the cooperation between the government and economy seemingly ignoring this policies similarities with fascist Italy's economic policies, calling this cooperation "volunteerism" instead of it's actual definition "socialism". You will find many of the causes of the great depression were based on the assumption that the US would remain laissez faire forever, when this turned out not to be the case investors panicced. You have to really look at what Herbert did in order to fully grasp the magnitude of the disaster of his policy of eradicating a succesful laissez faire economy caused.

I believe the stock market would have crashed whether the laissez faire economy as there was a bubble, however it would have just been a correction in the market and not a panic if it weren't for Herbert's clearly socialist agenda. Imagine you are a 21 year old student in 1928 and you decide to take out a few loans and make an investment as part of a nest egg in a rapidly growing economy. 1 year later and socialists hijack the republican party and get elected and rightly you want to know how this will effect your investment and after a dip in the market you see that Herbert is making a number of ridiculous laws that only serve to harm business. Now imagine that Herbert did not interfere with the economy and let businesses do what was necessary to stay afloat. There would have been no panic!

wtf happenned to my grammar

>>19
I think you've gone way over the point here. Libertarianism is a set of simple principles and laws that have been revealed to oppose the basis of all tyranny. The number of Libertarian principles are no where near the same scale as the laws and expectations set out by religions or marxism. In order for libertarianism to work you can lie, stick it in each other's assholes, swear, worship satan, disagree with the government and smoke cannabis all they want, just so long as you do not harm anyone or interfere with their liberties.

>>20
Herbert Hoover came to power a few months beforfe the stock market crash, he was a believer in the theoretical merits of cooperation between the government and economy seemingly ignoring his policy's similarities with fascist Italy's economic policies, calling this cooperation "volunteerism" instead of it's actual definition "socialism". You will find many of the causes of the great depression were based on the assumption that the US would remain laissez faire forever, when this turned out not to be the case investors panicced. You have to really look at what Herbert did in order to fully grasp the magnitude of the disaster of his policy of eradicating a succesful laissez faire economy caused.

I believe the stock market would have crashed whether there was a continuation of the laissez faire economy or not as there was a bubble, however it would have just been a correction in the market and not a panic if it weren't for Herbert's clearly socialist agenda. Imagine you are a 21 year old student in 1928 and you decide to take out a few loans and make an investment as part of a nest egg in a rapidly growing economy. 1 year later and socialists hijack the republican party and get elected and rightly you want to know how this will effect your investment and after a dip in the market a few months later you see that Herbert is using it as an excuse to make a number of ridiculous laws that only serve to harm business. You are going to sell. Now imagine that Herbert did not interfere with the economy and let businesses do what was necessary to stay afloat. The majority of investors probably wouldn't have botherred and just waited for the the market to correct itself and continue growing.

The whole cause is global warming.

>>27
your mom is the problem bitch. she belched another hole into the ozone layer yesterday after obliterating her 2nd bucket of kfc whilst you were in the basement wonderring if you were gay or not fapping to shota. you're 25 and still living with her, time you stop being a god damn dorky nerd ass little pansy and drag yo momma's stank fat big, and oh lord i mean big, BIIIGG ass ovah to the park and make her walk at least to the ice cream stand and back.

don't you think this is a 1 time thang eevah, i dont care how much she screams and nags, you get her there once a day to work off those pounds

The world is counting on your efforts.

>>16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_friedman#Chile
Friedman's economic reforms led to a free society for the people of Chile.  Friedman did not support Pinochet, and Pinochet was initially not favorable toward Friedman and his ideas.  Pinochet had wanted a command economy rather than a market economy.  Friedman went to Chile to spread his ideas of market economics, and apparently even thought at the time doing so would lead to the political freedom of the people of Chile, which it did, albeit decades later. 

>>7
Wrong.  Bad monetary policy (the Federal Reserve) was the cause of the Great Depression.  It had nothing to do with any sort of market problem.

http://www.mackinac.org/archives/1998/sp1998-01.pdf

icelandic women are hot

Icelandic people are inbred...

iceland sukc..AMERICA FTW!!!!!

Shorten that to 2-4 sentences and then we'll talk. Until then, I don't feel like reading that load of shit.

lol - thats right. blame another country for your own country fucking up their economic structure... LMAO

Its because no niggers live in Iceland. It is all white.

>>37
But there was little alteration in demographics during the transition from shitty corrupt socialist economy to efficient technologically improving booming laissez faire economy

>>35
GTFO, rabbit shit

>>35
Yeah, we wouldn't want to hear what people who actually study economics have to say about the Great Depression! What we want is to continue to hold our comforting viewpoint of history that supports our preconcieved views of the world, and certainly not read anything that might challenge it.  Oh and by the way, conservatives are closed-minded retards, lolz!

>>40
Fail for last sentence troll that undermines your valid point.

>>38

dude, iceland isn't laissez-faire, far from, have you even read anything about iceland?

>>41
It didn't undermine the point.

So how does Iceland measure up in terms of rich-poor gap, poverty rates, etc? In the end, what matters is how the general population is benefiting from all of this.

>>21
>>35
gtfo morons

Look at African Race countries and look at White Race. Why can't you all see the connection?

>>45
Whites are evil, though I guess that would entail that asians, arabs and native americans should be in the stone age aswell.

>>25
Are you stupid? I mean, seriously, you specifically ought line the liberty limiting harms principle and then call that tyranny. What the fuck? I am a libertarian, and no I wouldn't like democracy that was not regulated by a constitution. Democracy is nothing but a mob rule, but set up a democratic government that is given an outline of the government's purpose so that the mobs of the majority can not become tyrannical, and then you have a good government. The will of the people is irrelevant if it is their will to infringe on rights that do not present harms to anyone involved, or to infringe on economic freedom. This is why a democratic republican government is the most efficient, because a good government is a simple one, one that simply maximizes freedom. How is that tyranny? If you're a proponent of socialism or of theocracy, then certainly you wouldn't like it, however both of these structures are based on a fundamental disbelief in the idea of liberty based on a disdain for the society that was created by the collective buying power of the general masses. So those are just stupid systems. We can disagree, but to call Libertarianism tyranny is the most outlandish thing you could possibly call it.

>>20
Are you an economist? Do you have the merit to make that kind of claim? Obviously not because your claims are rather reductionist, actually so are all of the claims about the cause of the great depression so far. For some reason people in America have a propensity to blame everything that's happening on the President when the president simply doesn't have that much direct authority or direct effect on the economy. The effects of a president's economic policy not only take a while to come in, but as well are not the supreme authority on the welfare of the market. The market is a constantly vacillating and extremely convoluted thing, and for the government to be able to have as much affect as you people are talking about, it would have to be as efficient, vacillating and convoluted as the market, which is impossible for a government because then it would have to become incredibly large and incredibly corrupt. The economy went through a drop which can be attributed to a number of things, and it started to bounce back naturally too, but then FDR's policies come in with his 'New Deal' bullshit, and a number of them are actually detrimental to certain businesses because of how expansive he made the government. He made it socialist and he usurped the powers of the states. The return of the economy happened by the forces of the market, and were slowed by the forces of government. Laissez faire certainly works, people just have to stop discrediting it with reductionist analysis of economic policy.

>>47
>>25 here, read >>26

>>44
Iceland has the 2nd highest UN human development index in the world next to Norway. It also still has a non-socialist welfare institutions that is vastly more efficient than socialist influenced welfare institutions.

All welfare institutions are socialist in nature.

>>50
No, socialists just claim credit for other people's work.

It also still has a non-socialist welfare institutions that is vastly more efficient than socialist influenced welfare institutions.
Could you elaborate on this? How does it work?

>>52
Voters vote in a government which decides to spends some tax paying contractors to do things, like build bridges.

>>53
I don't understand. What does that have to do with welfare?

And how is that any different from most industrial nations? I'm not aware of any that have their own bridge-building divisions.

>>49

http://ministryofhealth.is/Information/nr/677

let me quote for you:

"The Ministry of Health and Social Security is responsible for the overall administration of health affairs and matters relating to social security insurance other than unemployment insurance.The health sector is regulated according to the Health Service Act of 1990 by which all inhabitants have right of access to the best possible health service at any given time for the protection of their mental, social and physical health."


"The health service in Iceland is primarily financed by central government. Financing is mainly based on taxes or 85% and 15% is fee for service."

if a health care service which is regulated and funded by the government isn't socialist influenced, what is it?
The icelandic health care system is very well set up, very efficient, and very good, but it's not particularly... capitalist?

Like japan, traditional icelandic diet consists largely of fish and alternative dairy products like goats milk and cheese etc. all which are healthy and good for you and have been shown to make you live longer. There are far more factors to living long than "lol nice hospital" although iceland does have those.

>>44
"So how does Iceland measure up in terms of rich-poor gap, poverty rates, etc? In the end, what matters is how the general population is benefiting from all of this."

There isn't anything inherently wrong with some people earning more than others do.

>>55
See >>1.  Iceland is doing well not because of socialized medicine, but because of their otherwise relatively capitalistic economy.  While Iceland may have a few welfare institutions and such, they also have many other fiscally conservative ideas implimented there that we are a far cry from achieving here in the USA.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with some people earning more than others do.
You're right. You're also wrong.

Allowing one person to earn more than another hopefully serves as a motivator. However, beyond a certain point it also causes discontent and social agitation. For example: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=gini+coefficient+violence

In any case, I don't see how your statement relates to the one you quoted.

cant have an economy if everyone is broke

>>57
"However, beyond a certain point it also causes discontent and social agitation."

And that's what we have police and guns for.

how ironic is it reading this now...

>>60
Christ, it really is surreal

I hope >>47 died, was killed, or killed himself, what a fucking cocksucking idiot.

>>61
Don't worry. Muslims will chop his head off and hungry niggers will cook it.

>>62
http://2ch.so/po/src/1335115536055.jpg

2008 gfc noob

>>6
We libertarians don't like democracy because it's majority rule, dictatorship for the majority.

>>65
democracy is majority rule, dictatorship for the majority.
Since when? AFAIK, voting is falsified and real rulers are the Jewish bankers, who can buy anything.

>>66
AFAIK, voting is falsified
For example, there are no real nazis among candidates. I.e. You can't vote for a Hitler and a free gas chamber for the Jews behind Federal Reserve.

you've neglected to mention what a thoroughly de-regulated banking sector did to icelands economy in the 2008 crash....