a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3415 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Democratic Tea Party  ·  

All of your points are very well refuted in my previous posts. I won't do the reading of my post for you. You're supposed to be an adult with adequate critical thinking skills and I expect you to understand how the points in your post which I have clearly referred to relate to the points in my post. If you can't do that then that's fine, but don't pretend that your points weren't discussed in a clear enough way for you to comprehend. It's all right there. I'll even give you an example.

    The borrower is paying on principal that is essentially worth much less, but the bank is able to make the loan because they get their money at the beginning when it's still worth a lot.

    What? The bank loses control of the money that's valuable in the beginning, and the reason they would go through with that is the expectation of a return on that investment in the future. But as a currency loses ts value, so does the ROI. You're saying that's good for the bank?

The bank does not lose money in the housing deal by lending out money due to what is called amortization and interest. If a bank lends you 100,000 and you buy a house, the bank has to charge interest to make a profit. This profit will lose value due to inflation, but not in the same amount that the interest will accrue. They also head the inflation off at the pass by taking most of your mortgage payment and applying it not to the principal of the loan, but instead to the interest that the loan has accrued thus far and interest the loan will ever accrue. EVEN MORE SO, most banks that originate the loan sell off your mortgage immediately to someone for a guaranteed amount and stop worrying about the interest ever. I lend you 100,000. I sell the loan for 102,000. I've just made 2,000 risk free. The guy who I sold it to paid 102,000, but now has the rights to the interest accrued on the loan and takes the risk associate with originating a loan.

I have never 'changed my tune'. I'll even reiterate it for you: Your understanding of the economics of the situation is capricious and lacks basic understanding of the underlying systems that you are attempting to discuss. I am not okay with your attempt to argue your point with no basis in reality as if it is actually a fact. My 'appeal to authority' is not akin to me just accepting the 'hive mind' or my 'indoctrination into the corporate drone squad' or whatever dumb shit you guys are saying in this current generation of ignorant internet economic experts. My authority in this situation is the academic research which has been performed before you and I were born, the studies that I have performed of that research, and the actual experience of the world based on that research.

Your authority is a gut feeling that you have that inflation is bad and deflation would make us richer. It's akin to religious fervor. Your economic understanding is equivalent to creationism. You are actively denying science because it doesn't agree with you. Like I said, this is not a debate. You have been wrong the whole time. It's like you asking me to debate you on why 2+2=5. And I did, because I believe that you can understand why you're wrong and learn. Looks like you're going to prove me wrong. But that's okay. Someone else will read these and see what you did and laugh at your mistakes and move on richer for the experience. That's okay with me.





shiranaihito  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    All of your points are very well refuted in my previous posts.

Really now?

You:

    As tripperday pointed out consumers will delay purchases in anticipation of falling prices.

Me:

    Falling prices being a problem is a common misconception. Electronics keep getting cheaper and better but people keep buying them anyway, which proves that it's not actually a problem.

You:

    Your fundamental misunderstanding of economic principles which have been explained to you in detail with examples is impressive.

That does not constitute a refutation of anything. But it served as a distraction to keep me preoccupied while you proceeded to pretend to school me. You want me to dance to your tune.

I get that a lot of what you're saying is actually accurate. But your latest responses are much wider in scope/context than the ones I responded to earlier. Now you've sprung your trap and revealed a much better understanding of what we were talking about than what you seemed to possess earlier.

As an example:

    EVEN MORE SO, most banks that originate the loan sell off your mortgage immediately to someone for a guaranteed amount and stop worrying about the interest ever

-Yes. Good point, and if you had brought that up when you made your original claim, my response would have been different. But you didn't.

It's a neat trick to make me look bad, at least to anyone who doesn't go through the whole thread for context.

    I have never 'changed my tune'.

Sure you have. It changed from the ad-hominem post to one where you actually discuss things (while of course spewing your psychopathic poison along the way).

But at the very least I've now established that your claim of refuting all of my points is simply false.

    Your authority is a gut feeling that you have that inflation is bad and deflation would make us richer.

I haven't appealed to any authority whatsoever, especially not a "gut feeling". But nice sophistry again. So you're saying losing your purchasing power (~inflation) is not bad then?

By the way, I haven't claimed that (price-)deflation would "make us richer", but just that it amounts to an increase in purchasing power.

b_b  ·  3415 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Dude, trolls are gonna troll. Not that you need me to tell you at this point, but it's just not worth putting time, effort, and logic into it.

user-inactivated  ·  3415 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I already have him on mute, hush, and filter. I just love economics and discussing it. The math is fun to do, and someone else will read this, or not since it was for me anyway, and learn something. I like that. It's more of a thought exercise to debate these guys than anything.

My favorite part is that he made up a dummy just to share his posts. That's excellent.

b_b  ·  3415 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hopefully you find it inviting here, then. We have a range of opinions from people who are pretty knowledgeable on econ, stretching from hippies like mk to fascists like wasoxygen, and everything in between.

Edit: I guess I should point out that I'm being tongue-in-cheek (kind of). I don't want you to get the wrong idea.

wasoxygen  ·  3415 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I am happy to pretend at expertise while presenting the latest fascist intel, as long as I can dodge the flying mud.

b_b, why did you have to link to that comment? I was liking shiranaihito up until I saw that.

At least I learned something constructive I can do. I pledge, every day, to frown so hard upon racism. Won't you join me?

shiranaihito  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I was liking shiranaihito up until I saw that.

Feel free to tell me how anything I said there is inaccurate.

Though I suspect you've got a certain condition in common with yellowoftops and b_b.. :p

wasoxygen  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

This was the sentence I found most egregious:

    In reality, in the US for example, racism against black people is frowned upon so hard, that it's really not a factor in why they're not successful.

Lots of awful things are frowned upon hard; that doesn't make them no longer a "factor" in causing harm.

Otherwise, I liked what you had to say about wealth, the virtuous cycle of saving, and questioning pat answers about "sitting on money."

b_b and I do share a habit of talking past each other and sometimes refusing to acknowledge when the other side makes good points. He's a commie, but he means well, and he rarely spouts absolute nonsense.

yellowoftops appears to have sympathy for my fascist (?) tendencies.

shiranaihito  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Lots of awful things are frowned upon hard; that doesn't make them no longer a "factor" in causing harm.

Do you think I was suggesting that the frowning itself somehow makes racism not a factor, instead of say, its effects on (racist) people's behaviour?

Besides, very few white people are actually racist, so their effect is marginal anyway.

I'm afraid to ask about your "fascist tendencies".. :p

user-inactivated  ·  3415 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Everybody's got their thing. There are parts of the Libertarian community that I fervently dislike, and one of them is that some (hopefully a very vocal very few) people think that the legal permission to do things is equivalent to moral permission. I had to leave r/Libertarian because I got down-voted when I called out someone for being racist. That's not a group I would associate with. I fear that the online Libertarian community is a bunch of do-nothing extremists who are going to ruin my party. We don't have the numbers to afford bad first impressions.

wasoxygen  ·  3415 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    legal permission to do things is equivalent to moral permission

That seems a bit self-defeating for someone who advocates against imposing legislation on people. If legislation makes people moral, we should wish for more legislation.

A more nuanced view is that trying to discourage immoral behavior with legislation can do more harm than good. Simply holding racist views is not illegal anyway.

The do-nothing extremist is my favorite kind of extremist.

b_b  ·  3410 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    If legislation makes people moral, we should wish for more legislation.

Have you ever come across Helvetius? From what I understand (and I'm by no means an authority here), his basic political philosophy was that law can make people moral fundamentally, and not just make them act moral. It's an interesting philosophy, and his writings were very influential on Marx. Of course, we saw empirically in the 20th c. how misguided Marx's interpretation of Helvetius turned out to be.

Can good laws fundamentally change our moral makeup? Certainly some religious people listen to their spiritual 'laws' and act (and feel) in ways that they see conforming to the rules. (For example, some religions mandate that their members tithe, and many of these members are happy to do it, because they see it as a moral imperative.) Could the government, if benevolent in its will, have a similar effect? My gut says likely not, because we don't view the government as an eternal force like a religious person might their authority, but rather we see the government as a useful institution that only is there to serve our interests (and rightly so). Perhaps that is why communist regimes always need a personality cult, to convince the people that they serve the government on not the other way around.

user-inactivated  ·  3415 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    My concern is that many commentators (and my fellow armchair commenters) advocate measures to correct the inequality problem using the same tool that Mr. Carson shows us is largely responsible for creating the problem. In order to pursue a political solution to the problem, concentrated political power is needed to effect the change. This power has been the source of the greatest harms ever caused by humans. Empowering an agency with resources and authority and a mission entails risk that the resources will be misused and the mission perverted.

What you said there is literally why I am a Libertarian. The machine will be perverted, and it is my best interest to give it the least power to do damage when it is perverted enough to do so. But like fire can burn and warm you, government can do good things as well. The second part is often forgotten by Libertarians in exclusive pursuit of the first. They too have the Politician's Syllogism in their process, but backwards.

Bad things have been done. The doer has grown in power. New things will be worse.

wasoxygen  ·  3415 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    What you said there is literally why I am a Libertarian.

I see. Perhaps I can get you to reconsider.

    government can do good things as well

It would be stupid to claim that government investment produces no benefits.

I have found that the dialog is more constructive when framed as "better or worse" than "good or bad." Is government the only way to get the thing we want? If not, is any alternative better, when we consider both costs and benefits?

Sorry for all the self-promotion, but it looks like you took a long nap and missed some of my best work.

shiranaihito  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Is government the only way to get the thing we want?

How is government a way to get what we, its subjects, want?

wasoxygen  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The usual answer is that you want to be able to get from point A to point B. For some reason you and your neighbors can't figure out how to lay asphalt, so you sign some invisible contract and people take money out of your paycheck and build roads and nuclear submarines with it, and now you can drive around.

shiranaihito  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah. So I guess you're a Libertarian of sorts then?

user-inactivated  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think we're actually already on the same page. What I said before is that Libertarians want to limit the government so it can do the least harm, but in pursuit of that goal you must temper your zeal with the truth that government can do good.

In the same extremist view that would produce that "Libertarian Paradise" we could extend the Rupublican Paradise nightmare to include Abortion Death Penalty and Gay Compassion Camps where the impure are forced into hard labor to think about sin. Then you'd have the Democrat Paradise where we don't spend as much as possible on making all people equal leaving us poor but full of love and hugs.

There's no such thing as a Libertarian paradise that doesn't include compromise with everyone else. And though your post is a very cynical view of Libertarianism, we can assume that it would be impossible to actually have that come to fruition in the current system.

shiranaihito  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    My favorite part is that he made up a dummy just to share his posts.

Now there's a wild accusation that's not true.

Oh, and weren't you supposed to have me muted?

Quatrarius  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

All that muting affects is the ability to comment on posts made by the muter and orange notifications being turned off when the mutee responds to the muter. It doesn't affect other posts.

EDIT: Is this shitpost o' clock or something?

shiranaihito  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Alright, thanks. I wonder why he bothered with another lengthy response even after muting me.

shiranaihito  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Ohh, right.

You're the guy who had just claimed "we live in a society that is set up to have black people at a disadvantage just by being born black".

Now you're calling me a troll behind my back because I pointed to an example of the opposite.

Way to go.

shiranaihito  ·  3414 days ago  ·  link  ·  

And what was incorrect about what I said there?