31–38 of 38 posts
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How do you think is planned economy unable to direct this effect? Maybe random faults even out arbitrary bias that would be introduced by regulation. How is a government spending tons on military not partially a planned economy?
Would you offer up the military industrial complex as an example of a planned economy NOT wasting money on dead projects?
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This is NOT a sarcastic comment nor a defense of centrally planned economies: which country(s) has a free market economy post the 2008 financial crisis?
You could even argue (and I don't believe this is a bad thing) that the way the US government handled GM's default was very much a "planned economy" sort of move, which resulted not only in the successful exit from crisis for the new organization, but also the prevention of a cascading economic failure (EDIT: hundreds of thousands of jobs were at stake). A completely free economy nor a planned economy are ideal; a mi…
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You could even argue (and I don't believe this is a bad thing) that the way the US government handled GM's default was very much a "planned economy" sort of move, which resulted not only in the successful exit from crisis for the new organization, but also the prevention of a cascading economic failure (EDIT: hundreds of thousands of jobs were at stake). A completely free economy nor a planned economy are ideal; a mi…
Yes, but who are the stakeholders? In the eyes of those at the top that is.
How do you ensure "decent people" are always at the top? I don't know. I'm not a terribly big fan of Obama (drone strikes, supporting the NSA), but he's done an OK job. Now Elizabeth Warren and Rich Cordway (director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)? They're kicking all sorts of ass for the general public.
Find good people. Put them in charge. Get out of their way.
One significant way where a free market economy has an advantage in efficient resource allocation over a planned economy is not the priority allocation of resources to successful enterprises/groups/economic niches (both styles can do that), but a rapid, ruthless deallocation of resources from unsuccessful enterprises, so they can then be used elsewhere. Planned economies could do that in theory, but this has always b…
This is NOT a sarcastic comment nor a defense of centrally planned economies: which country(s) has a free market economy post the 2008 financial crisis?
Then we have the 1979 government bailout of Chrysler...the 2009 government bailout of Chrysler...this company seems to need a bailout every thirty years...with some of the same talking heads shouting how the banks need to be bailed out denouncing the "socialism" of bailing out Chrysler.
Of course there was the 1971 government bailout of Lockheed as well.
Every year the US government sends $500 million to Iowa in direct farm subsidies...Senators Jodi Ernst and Chuck Grassley are against "socialist" measures that tend to go more to big cities in other states, but of course hypocritically demand the government give corporate welfare to the farmers in their state. Texas gets $400 million a year in direct farm subsidies, with the same hypocrisy surrounding it. At least Democrats are honest about what they're doing.
Then of course we have the net neutrality debates, with the backers of the AT&T/Verizon monopolists saying "get the government hands off the Internet". This is a laugh to people like me (and some others here I'm sure), who remember the days of ARPAnet and NSFnet and sri-nic.arpa and nic.ddn.mil and so forth.
Some people act like Red Guard students are still marching through Peking, throwing portraits of the Buddha in bonfires during a Smash the Four Olds campaign. In the modern day, the economy of the PRC does not operate all that differently than that of the US or Germany or some other country in terms of a "free market". The only different for the PRC is its economy has been booming since the 1980s much more than these other economies. Since 1990, every year the PRC's economy has grown 7% or more. That this might slow down for this quarter is what is eliciting surprise. Looking at the US economic downturns after 2000, and after 2008, it seems incredible that so many American pundits point to a slow quarter in the PRC's growth as signs of how they've been heading in the wrong direction all along etc. 7-14% economic growth every year since 1990 looks pretty good to me.
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It is obvious that contigenics is in China, they admitted that in their post; you were only calling out nationality, but that isn't even relevant. If they don't have a VPN, like I don't, where else are they getting news from? NYT is blocked, WSJ is blocked, BBC is blocked. You don't have to tell me to "stop reading NYT" because I can't! So your whole argument makes an assumption that is not even technically correct.…
You aren't addressing what contigenics said. You are just filling in whatever you wish they had said and attacking that. This is called a straw-man argument. Let's look again at the source material: "Wow, yet another anti-China article from NYT. I can't get over the volume and frequency. Things look pretty good on the ground here!" No one said anything about the availability of news sources. Contigenics simply pointe…
Irrelevant: we have no way of knowing, it's blocked. So whatever we want to say about CPC vs, NYT journalism is irrelevant, we are only getting the former. Unless you have a VPN, you are vastly uninformed - it is quite simple!
You just don't seem to get that, at all. Contigenics made an observation from China, where news sources are very limited because of the CPC. It is not from a position of open access to knowledge. You refuse to acknowledge that aggressive censorship exists in the PRC, but it is a verifiable fact. Come visit China and try to access NYT. Or buy a newspaper in the airport with blacked out articles.
Censorship taints all discussions about Chinese vs. Western press, it is there, everyone know it is there, and it can't be ignored or brushed off as some silliness. I've been here for 8 years and that just becomes more and more true; only the apologists think otherwise.
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You aren't addressing what contigenics said. You are just filling in whatever you wish they had said and attacking that. This is called a straw-man argument. Let's look again at the source material: "Wow, yet another anti-China article from NYT. I can't get over the volume and frequency. Things look pretty good on the ground here!" No one said anything about the availability of news sources. Contigenics simply pointe…
> Therefore it is worth entertaining the possibility that the NYT might be full of shit. Irrelevant: we have no way of knowing, it's blocked. So whatever we want to say about CPC vs, NYT journalism is irrelevant, we are only getting the former. Unless you have a VPN, you are vastly uninformed - it is quite simple! You just don't seem to get that, at all. Contigenics made an observation from China, where news sources…
>If they don't have a VPN, like I don't
Modus Ponens you are uninformed.
> I've been here for 8 years and that just becomes more and more true
See, you are doing exactly what contigenics did. You are trying to inform me about China by appealing to your personal experience within China. But by your logic I should be able to simply dismiss you because you don't have access to all news sources and are thus uninformed.
I'm not comparing Chinese press and Western press. I am pointing out that people within China (like you, me and Contigenics) add value to the conversation in spite of censorship by telling us what things are actually like on the ground. If you did read NYT and WSJ et al, you might believe that the sky was falling in China. I know when I look on the streets of Shanghai, I see a people absorbed in their new found consumerist appetite rushing to buy the most fashionable knock-off status symbol and post their moments on wechat. The sky is not falling anytime soon. Perhaps things are different for you?
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> Therefore it is worth entertaining the possibility that the NYT might be full of shit. Irrelevant: we have no way of knowing, it's blocked. So whatever we want to say about CPC vs, NYT journalism is irrelevant, we are only getting the former. Unless you have a VPN, you are vastly uninformed - it is quite simple! You just don't seem to get that, at all. Contigenics made an observation from China, where news sources…
>Unless you have a VPN, you are vastly uninformed >If they don't have a VPN, like I don't Modus Ponens you are uninformed. > I've been here for 8 years and that just becomes more and more true See, you are doing exactly what contigenics did. You are trying to inform me about China by appealing to your personal experience within China. But by your logic I should be able to simply dismiss you because you don't have acc…
My reply: if all you read is xinhua, you wouldn't see it. Western press provides us with information, even negative information, in uncertain times. That is all good.
Your reply: westerner performing an ad hominem by calling parent a Xinhua wumao shill; you should be ashamed of yourself!
So please excuse me if I took offense.
I do read western press...at work where I can. But I feel like I'm in a bubble starved for information since the Chinese press is so biased and unreliable, which isn't great in these very uncertain times. NYT provides valuable information, mostly solid reporting (this article isn't even controversial at all, even by Chinese standards), information that tells me if I should make a dash for the bank and convert my RMB savings into dollars and get it out of the country!
We won't know that the sky has fallen until it hits the ground. For now, we are stuck reading tea leafs to figure out what will happen next. We live in interesting times.
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How do you think is planned economy unable to direct this effect? Maybe random faults even out arbitrary bias that would be introduced by regulation. How is a government spending tons on military not partially a planned economy?
Planned economy might direct this effect, but they don't - if the system gives leaders an option to prolong the agony, then they invariably use it, and the system suffers from it. For examples in planned economies, USSR had a lot of examples, and this article is another. For examples in otherwise-freemarket-but-not-in-this-case economies, see "too big to fail" situation with bank bailouts, and your own example on USA…
With hindsight it would have been better for the industry to decline gradually than laying off everyone at once.