The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Does government regulation kill jobs?

Not exactly, unless you define popularity and good looks, family connections, inheritance, a lot of luck, and a great deal of ruthlessness and unprincipled backstabbing as a merit.

Noble prize winner club is meritocracy, our society as a whole is not and never will be. Plus 'Capitalism sans govt Intervention' is as much pipe dream as Communism. Wealth concentration leads to Power concentration, this in turn leads to Wealth influencing rules of wealth acquisition. Cronyism and Interventionism aren't deviations, they are inevitable conclusion of Capitalism.

Your choices are potentially incompetent, likely ineffective due to bureaucracy, or effective but malicious due to incentive system set up to encourage screwing people over.

I will pick incompetent and ineffective over someone who is given strong incentive to screw me over and deny coverage.

Except in no place have you made a successful argument that your brand of socialism is required or instrumental in the maintenance of such order. In fact, as society has greatly flourished, all things considered in the past two centuries and the topics we are debating revolve around relatively new or upcoming introductions into our economic and political life - it is therefore demonstratively false that your "Somalia example" serves as anything but a Red Herring in the discussion.

Three refutations to this post are self-evident.

1) You do not know the definition of Interventionism in regards to its scientific and academic terminology. ( Bank bailouts, govt mandates, etc are interventionism. Standard law prohibiting certain types of bad behavior is not.)

2) A small govt focused on protecting liberty, can better protect the smaller business from unfair and illegal assault by larger rivals who employ underhanded means. Large, Interventionist govt is most easily corrupted by nature of the difficulty of holding its small constituent pieces accountable.

3) The effects of "good looks, family connections, inheritance, a lot of luck, and a great deal of ruthlessness and unprincipled backstabbing " are human conditions, not ones strictly regulated to Capitalism. The USSR and other Socialism attempts have proven this, as has just about any iteration of any govt anywhere. That you would ignore this evident reality and attempt to impugn these traits on Capitalism alone has tipped your arguments off the precipice of short-sightedness into the realm of patent absurdity.

Talk about a false dichotomy. But a good reminder of one reason the Founders saw fit to enshrine our right to keep and bear arms nonetheless.

However, I must say I find the idea of allowing a sub-class to perpetuate by reason of not implementing free-market reforms that would help them lift themselves out of said sub-class due to fear of the sub-class itself to be utterly abhorrent.

Better give the scary man a fish, but dont even think about teaching him to fish - hes scary and might decide he just wants me to hand him fish after all?

You are misdirecting. Do you or do you not acknowledge that one of the roles of society is to enable wealth creation, and that no wealth could be created without society?

No misdirecting, calling you out on it.

Also, strictly speaking from the point of logic - yes you can in fact create wealth in a vacuum. Greater participants have greater capacity for wealth to be certain. However it is also certain that a solo person can start naked and alone and from there find seeds.

Plant the seeds in rows hoed out with a fallen branch and start farming. Tame animals, divert water for irrigation, build shelters.. and yes, create all sorts of wealth entirely in a vacuum. In fact at one point wealth had to be created in a vacuum, from nothing, or else we would never have achieved any sort of wealth.

A well ordered society can in fact provide a beneficial ENVIRONMENT that is more suited to creating additional wealth. You would be correct to say that it is more conducive to create certain types of wealth in the USA than in say, Somalia.

But your usage of that fact, and your comparisons were utterly irrelevant for the topics at hand, and you were also incorrect to state that wealth can only be created within society.

You probably also think of Society as an entity unto itself as opposed to the inter-workings of a great number of individuals as well - if I had to guess from your past writings.

But anyhow, now that we have hashed out the vernacular a bit - lets get down to the logic please.

I knew you would come up with 'Robinson Crusoe' example as a way to defend your shaky argument. Reason I keep bringing Somalia up is because this is not isolated environment but actual place on Earth. If you want to deal in pure logic, Society could exist with just one person, because you can perfectly cooperate with yourself. Now throw couple more people into this equation and you will need most of the belonging to Society (cooperating) in order for any Wealth creation to be possible.



This will simply not happen if society is not present. Other people will have different ideas, namely raping your wife, killing you and your children and stealing your food. This is what Somalia looks like, and no, you cannot create any appreciable wealth there.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society

I was simply clearing up the vernacular being used.

The issue here is that you are being inaccurate on so many levels, from your usage of terminology to the links you are trying to make.

The "Robinson Crusue" point, as you put it - simply states in black and white, and in an irrefutable manner that strictly speaking, wealth is not necessarily created in a group setting. One individual can in fact create wealth. Ergo, other members of a society may - but do not necessarily - play a part.

However, you should have also noted before sticking on this point that I also clarified that greater wealth can be created by group co-operation. This was defining a fine point of terminology and usage so we were on the same page.

Now, are you going to keep swinging at straw men, incorrectly using terminology and making wild claims that the alternative to your Socialist plan for society is Somalia - or are you going to step up and present an actual logical argument?

I am beginning to doubt you can, since you seem to be trying to base your first principles on easily debunked premises.

I will give you a hint: to go anywhere with this line of reasoning you appear to be pursuing, you need to re-arrange your budding argument away from the "society is needed to create wealth" to "most of the wealth we currently enjoy is created in the context of a modern society".

Now, start over, examine the clear cut difference in the lines of reasoning and try again.

Derid, my point still stands, and you failed to dispute it. You are confusing "created by" and "must be present" arguments.

A society, as defined by webster - "an enduring and cooperating social group whose members have developed organized patterns of relationships through interaction with one another" is necessary for any wealth creation. In very simplified terms, if multiple individuals are present, they need to show basic level of cooperation in order for any of them to create any wealth. I never claimed that individual cannot create wealth, they can and do, what I am saying is that individual has to belong to society to have opportunity to create wealth.



Your confusion seems to be based on the fact that you seem to completely dismiss negative effects of human interaction. You argue that since individual can create wealth in perfect isolation (I do not dispute this), you can scale it up to any size and proportionally scale wealth creation (I dispute this part) without any regards to interaction of these individuals.