Geoff makes valid points about the absurdity of neo-classical assumptions about “equilibrium”, perfect knowledge, perfect competition and so on.

But his critique of free markets, and his brutal mantra of government control, fails for the following reasons.

Firstly, using the words “mantra” and “brutal” doesn’t conclude or help your argument, does it, Geoff? Mantra implies irrationality, so unless you yourself can defend your argument against my proof of its irrationality, then it’s you who’s using a mantra. Brutal implies the use of aggressive force, but unless you’re going to explain where, short of actually shooting people, you renounce the violence of enforcing any policy you advocate, it’s you advocating brutality Geoff.

Secondly, all your argument means is that neo-classical assumptions are wrong. But that neither establishes your critique of individual liberty and unhampered markets, nor your assumptions in favour of government intervention.

All that needs to be established morally is that people prefer market transactions and that they're voluntary. And all that needs to be established pragmatically is that markets do more to allocate scarce resources to the most urgent and important social ends, as decided by society, than governments. That’s what you need to disprove, Geoff, not straw men from neo-classical theory.

Thirdly, it’s not good enough to say, if market transactions are to be overridden by government, it doesn’t mean turning to socialism. That’s exactly what it means, to the extent of the intervention.

Fourthly, you’re still going to need a theory to say how you know what interventions are justified and why? Why not full socialism? What *principle* limits government intervention Geoff?

Think of it this way. If everyone in the world wanted your computer, and nothing else, then the price of everything else would be zero, and the price of your computer would be astronomical. The fact that real world prices aren’t like this, is because in reality people don’t just want your computer. The array of prices we see is the result …

… of the evaluations of all seven billion people in the world, through their *voluntary* actions in buying or not buying, selling or not selling, everything. Thus the market is FAR FAR more representative of society and the social good than any government ever was or ever can be. Unless you are going to give reasons for your absurd assumption that a coercive territorial monopolist of aggressive force and threats – the State - is more representative of society, than society is of itself by its *consensual* co-operative transactions – it is you with the absurd irrational and brutal mantra Geoff.

Let’s look at some of Geoff’s criticism of markets
“dumping pollutants into the world”
Fails to distinguish private from public property, durr. By far the overwhelming problem with pollution is dumping to government property e.g rivers, or resources in which government prevents private property e.g oceans. In other words, the problem is just socialism’s usual tragedy of the commons.

“ under-paying suppliers and employees”

Under-paying *relative to what*?
Define the fair price for any given transaction.

“depleting natural resources too quickly”

How do you know what the correct rate is? The most aggressive party will decide. Brutal mantra.

The market rationally weighs future against present interests; the government can’t, simple as that.

“selling shoddy goods”

People have a right to buy whatever quality they want.

So far as the shoddiness is a result of fraud or deceptive conduct, that is illegal in market transactions, and nobody is arguing otherwise, so it’s not a straw-man criticism of markets.

But fraud is not illegal in government is it Geoff? The law against misleading and deceptive conduct only applies “in trade and commerce”, not “in politics and government”, so it’s an irrational mantra to assume government can or would do better.

“In other markets, inefficient or no-longer-desirable practices, like constructing energy-wasting buildings, continue even though it would be cheaper overall to update practices.”

Then why don’t you do it and reap the profits?

Geoff’s God-assumption is nonsense. Ignoring costs doesn’t make for a better theory of economics, it makes for a worse.

the game

http://www.infowars.com/stunning-hypocrisy-obama-slams-leaders-who-do-not-tolerate-dissent-from-their-own-people/

http://www.infowars.com/italian-riot-police-remove-helmets-join-anti-eu-protesters/

http://www.infowars.com/useful-idiots-2013/

http://www.infowars.com/google-wants-microphones-in-your-ceiling-microchips-in-your-head/

http://www.infowars.com/christians-are-being-burned-alive-beheaded-crucified-tortured-to-death-and-imprisoned-in-metal-shipping-containers/

were in..hell
we just havnt realized it yet

they want hell on earth..[cause who wants heaven..on earth]
you..just/havnt even/noticed..[bit/by/bit]..how they gradually..changed..even...your beliefs.

im..more interested..in this..
http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/nytimes-unprecedented-concentration-of-sea-creatures-near-shore-in-california-experts-baffled-longtime-residents-astounded-video#sthash.tpnBVDof.dpbs

or this
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-11-30/science/44595591_1_humans-chimpanzees-traits

even/this
http://mentalmodels.princeton.edu/papers/2012negation.pdf

im over this
http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/mandela-eulogies-reinventing-his-disturbing-legacy/

or this
US government sells rest of its General Motors stock;
loses $10.5 billion on bailout[plus dividends]
http://www.blacklistednews.com/US_government_sells_rest_of_its_General_Motors_stock%3B_loses_%2410.5_billion_on_bailout/31026/0/38/38/Y/M.html

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Monday the government today had sold its final shares in the Detroit automaker, leaving taxpayers with a $10 billion loss on the $49.5 billion bailout. The move means GM is free of government pay restrictions and can again pay dividends on its common stock.

arnt you glad tony..isnt buying into the..gm scams?

or how about this?

Making a Killing with Cancer: A 124.6 Billion Dollar Industry
http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/making-a-killing-with-cancer-a-124-6-billion-dollar-industry-12092013

If you had a business selling something that made you well over a hundred billion dollars per year, would you take steps to eradicate the need for your business? Or would you make every effort for that money continue rolling in?

Take cancer, for example. Don't let all the media hype about "The Cure" fool you. No one who is in a position to do so wants to end cancer because they are all making a killing on the big business of treatment, while ordinary people go broke, suffer horribly, and die.

or this
http://www.redressonline.com/2013/12/the-meaning-of-peace-israeli-style/

but..maybe govts are waking up
http://www.redressonline.com/2013/12/britain-edges-towards-boycotting-israel/

or just the pope?
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/10/30/pope-francis-denotes-christianity-as-an-illness/

Whenever I see articles like this - and they are unfortunately plentiful - I know from the opening paragraph that they are written either by academics in their sheltered university workshops, or by public servants. Either way, by someone who has never actually come close to the activities associated with running a business.

We know that markets aren't perfect, Mr Davies. But taking those imperfections as the reason that markets should be rejected is as logical as saying that because Australia will not win the World Cup, we should abandon playing soccer. The game is not the problem.

I would also be willing to bet that if Mr Davies had written a piece like this in an area within his expertise, it would be laughed out of court by his peers. Here's a beauty:

"The evidence is also clear that free markets have not worked as well as managed markets."

Sez who? Especially when the follow-up is:

"Though there is no basis for letting markets fun [sic] unfettered, we don't have to turn to socialism."

What regime, does he suggest, would be able to control the markets as he wishes? The most recent examples of command-and-control have all been socialist. Does he perhaps recommend dictatorship as a benevolent alternative?

No, of course he doesn't. Instead,

"All we have to do is turn a critical eye on our markets. If a market is producing undesirable results, we can adjust the incentives"

And who exactly makes the judgment on "undesirable results". Undesirable to whom? The government in power, perhaps, making politically-driven decision on what to support and what to reject on the basis of their "electoral mandate"?

Oh.

That sounds very familiar.

The free market is “brutal ideology”?

“The evidence is also clear that free markets have not worked as well as managed markets.”?

And the free market is a “theory”. No it’s not! It is a system to increase wealth for every one lucky to live with such an economy; it is the only type of economy that works.

The GFC mentioned was not a result of free markets: it was a result of a socialist US president trying to ‘manage’ the economy by insisting that people who clearly could not repay mortgages were given mortgages. That’s your ‘managed’ economy for you.

As for “reasonably efficiency”, the market efficiently controls itself, when left alone. The author’s ‘efficiency’ comes from a mind totally remote from the real world.

Like all academics, Geoff Davies should stick to what he knows best – and what he knows best is certainly not the real world.

The free market is not perfect, but that is mostly due to the fiddling and interference – or management as Geoff calls it – by the elites who control our good for nothing politicians. None of these people understand the business cycle.

Pericles, Jardine - I am not "rejecting" markets, as should be evident from the article. Too people many jump to the false dichotomy - either "free" markets or no markets (socialism). There is a whole world of options between those extremes. Options, I would argue, that actually maximise personal liberty (short of living alone in the wilderness).

If anyone is interested in getting a clearer idea of what I'm on about, you can read my new ebook - see http://sacktheeconomists.com. You can even download it FREE until 7 pm Thurs (AEDT).

Geoff Davies
sorry, but the article is ridiculous. You've absurdly muddled periods of free and directed markets - alleging that the decades after the war involved a lot of government involvement which supposedly switched off in the 1980s with neoliberalism.

The height of absurdity is reached when you claim that Australian growth was inhibited because Hawke-Keating chucked away much of the financial regulation and started cutting tariffs.. Bbbbbbwwwwhahahah! You are virtually alone in claiming this.. so I don't know how you managed to rig the figures and don't have time to work it out, but I'd suggest you look again.

About the only economist with any reputation I know who might even begin to agree with you on markets is a Prof John Quiggin at Uni of Q. He had some book out recently..

Much of what is written by those opposed to the views of the author of this article ignore the advice of more competent writers.

In 1998 the then Governor of the Australian Reserve Bank, Ian MacFarlane wrote, "More and more people are asking whether the international financial system, as it has operated for most of the 1990s, is basically unstable. By now I think the majority of observers have come to the conclusion that it is..."

"The intellectual underpinning of the free market position ...The Efficient Markets Hypothesis - is very weak. In all the exchange rate tests of which I am aware, the hypothesis has been contradicted by facts."

"We need to devise a system for maximizing the benefits to be gained from international capital while limiting the risks." "It is simplistic to insist on the totally free movement of capital in all countries and in all circumstances."

Howard and Costello for ten years operated the Australian in the sector of the fiscal space that in known to be unstable in the long term. See Slide 49 of Prof Stephanie Kelton's paper at the Field Institute.

The GFC was caused by criminal activity in the USA speculative market that drove any honest operators in the banking system out of the market through the Gresham dynamic. Please read former regulator W K Black at neweconomicperspectives on this subject.
Reading Professor Mariana Mazzucato's book "The Entrepreneurial State" might improve the understanding of some of the free-marketeers.

Three very loud cheers for Geoff Davies who is of course a geophysicist and not an armchair bound pointy-headed academic or public servant who does not "get out in the 'real' world". Geophysics is of course a hugely important branch of science.

Geoff's book Economia is one of the best books published any where in the world on economics/politics/sociology/history, and yes science too.It makes all of the books and essays etc written by all of the usual suspects that associate with the IPA, Catallaxy Files, and benighted scribblers such as Ludwig von Mises appear very simplistic and tacky.
Speaking of von Mises and similar "free" market libertarians I quite like this assessment of the devastating cultural consequences of their applied politics. I do not share the authors naive Christian religiosity.
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2010/02/22/abuse-your-illusion

...The housing market, in it’s current form, debunks both schools of thought. It has Government intervention on every conceivable level, which distorts “Real Value” of the housing stock, to the point where market forces are increasingly available, exclusively to a narrow cohort of the global wealthy; and the banks with a willingness to allow investors to take a risk in the housing market with borrowed capital.

...The social cost of this mix and match of failed systems is plain: Ballooning household debt, little to no control over property rents, homelessness and increasing despair and anxiety directed towards survival of the family unit!

Notice how Foyle, Geoff and Daffy do not advocate any particular governmental action? All they’re standing for is the right of some people to attack innocent people and kill, enslave or steal from them.

Obviously government will not be able to manage the economy better, even in your own terms, unless its advocates can answer the following questions:
• At what stage, short of actually shooting people, do you renounce the initiation of force to enforce the policies you advocate?
• By what criterion do you know the difference between the market price and the just price in any given transaction?
• How do you know what the correct rate of depletion of depletable resources is?
• How do you know what is the correct discount for futurity for everyone in the world?
• How do you know whether government is providing too much, too little, or the right amount of any given service?
• If your assumptions of governmental omniscience are right, then why don’t you agree with full socialism?
• Why don’t the same problems inhere in the partial socialism you advocate?

Let’s face it. None of the apologists for government will answer any of these questions, because they can’t. But instead of having the intellectual honesty to come out and say that they can’t answer them because they’re beliefs are wrong, they’ll just try any diversionary tactic in the book, like
a) Geoff: trying to send us on an errand to construct his own argument which he can’t defend: alleging that there are more options when EVERY option Geoff offers, that is not libertarian, is simply the government forcing people to sacrifice their liberty and property:
b) referring to absent authority AGAIN after going silent and running away from a thread in which his own argument was totally demolished: Foyle
c) referring to works that he hasn’t read: Daffy’s drivel about Mises.

Thanks for proving that there is no answer to the arguments for liberty but layers of fallacies trying, but failing, to cover up your tedious dysfunctional failed slave philosophy of socialism.

Onya One Under God...A timely reminder from one of your links!

...South African conditions today remain deplorable. Neoliberal harshness works this way. Business as usual is policy. Disadvantaged millions are ruthlessly exploited...(Or ignored (my words))!

And a not so muted point; why only sixty thousand turn out in a stadium with a ninety thousand capacity...!! speaks volumes!

...The truth rules in SA...Neoliberalism breeds traitors to a Nation and its people and presents them as winners!

Foyle
MacFarlane was quite right to make those comments you cited.. but they have nothing to do with main theme of the article.. he was, I think talking about the tendency of major investors to shift funds from one country to another.. That was around the time of the Asian financial crisis so he was speaking after the event. Since then we've had a much bigger crisis due to much the same problem..

However, that it what happens with markets and no-one has been able to think of anything better.. Not even Davies with his eccentric theories would advocate getting rid of international currency markets..

Geoff, I think your “free market purist” is a bit of a mythical beast. More typically, the free-market mantra is like the old Country Party capitalisation of gains and socialisation of losses.
This is well illustrated by the road transport lobby in Australia, costs such as fuel are subsidised, facilities like roads cost them virtually nothing, the real costs being foisted onto the general public. They then have free-market open slather to compete with the railways who have to cover all their costs.

Once again the right whingers come out with their usual catchcry:
“If you criticise Capitalism, YOU'RE A COMMIE!”
There are more political and economic theories than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Peter Wing Ah Jardine.
Glass Steagall was a “regulation”. It's repeal was a major cause of the Great Recession.
Guess what! Without regulations (rules, Laws) people (businesses, banks) cheat. Go figgur.
In the absence of regulation (rules, Laws) Banks have even been known to recommend stock purchases to their own customers, then bet against them and then affect the outcome to favour themselves.
I suggest all the free marketeers get together and try playing Monopoly, -without rules. First, have a brawl to decide who gets to be banker, then let HIM decide what the rules will be.
Or, try this: imagine playing football against a team whose captain was capable of eating his team members, and doubling in size with every feed.
And when he was through with his own team, he was free to eat your team as well.
Would you really want to be fullback?
Just laws make people free. Absence of Law favours the powerful, at the expense of everyone else.
The greatest threat to the liberty of individuals won't be democratic governments. It will be the natural result of a “Survival of the Fittest”, Lawless Capitalistic system which inevitably results in all power -over billions of people- residing in the hands of a tiny handful of sociopathic individuals (far less than 1%).
BTW, thanks for the download link, Geoff Davies. I hope to be able to have a gecko over the weekend.

Geoff
Imagine a physics professor told you he’d demonstrated the theoretical possibility of a perpetual motion machine, disproving the “mantras” of rational science. But on examining his workings, it turned out all he’d done was add a quantity on one side of the equation, failing to account for the same quantity on the other side.

What would you think of that intellectual offering? You’d think it was stupid or dishonest wouldn’t you? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

The civil and rational thing to do, would be to assume he’s not being dishonest, show reason why you think he’s wrong, and ask him to disprove you, wouldn’t it? That’s what I’m doing.

Economics, by definition, concerns all situations where the resources available are not enough to satisfy all the human wants they could be used to satisfy. This is the original economic problem, which gives rise to all economic activity, and all economic theory. It’s not caused by “free markets”, it’s caused by reality. And it cannot be changed by the fact that dolts, and fools, and garble-brains, and socialists, keep endlessly misapprehending it. Please acknowledge that you understand this fact.

You need to show, for any benefit of government intervention that you allege, how you have accounted for the cost in resources withdrawn from alternative possible employments, in terms of the possible satisfaction of human wants foregone, in units of a lowest common denominator.

Go ahead. I say you can’t do it. Prove your theory is not as stupid or dishonest as our professor’s.


Grim
Do try to understand the basic issues.

The initiation of force or fraud are:
a) illegal in market transactions, and
b) legal in governmental transactions,
so this doubly refutes everything you said in your last post.

That rest of your intellectual sloppiness – hysterical misrepresentation - may be thought cute, or even laudable, in the Marxist intellectual kindergartens that you inhabit. But here you’re only making a fool of yourself.

All
Notice how all of the anti-libertarians slimily evade the opportunity of specifically answering the questions that prove me or them wrong?

Jardine K Jardine wrote,
1.At what stage, short of actually shooting people, do you renounce the initiation of force to enforce the policies you advocate?
Answer;
When was force last used in a mixed economy? You ignore the fact that corporations are organisations that could not exist but for laws that allow them to limit liability. The regulations that require protection for others in society allow education, health protection, road use and all the other benefits citizens enjoy

2. By what criterion do you know the difference between the market price and the just price in any given transaction?
Answer;
In a mixed economy preventing collusion (regulation) and having and applying serious penalties works.

3. How do you know what the correct rate of depletion of depletable resources is?
Answer;
One example would be that fossil carbon is essential for metal production from oxidised ore is required for ever.

4.How do you know what is the correct discount for futurity for everyone in the world?
Answer;
This generation should never neglect the interests of the next. See 6.

5.
How do you know whether government is providing too much, too little, or the right amount of any given service?
Answer;
The government is at least as good as corporations - look at the errors of BHP, Rio, and the Australian banks (The latter were all in effect bankrupt once Lehman collapsed).

6.
If your assumptions of governmental omniscience are right, then why don’t you agree with full socialism?
Answer;
Who claimed omniscience rather then just more competent in a mixed non-totalitarian society.

7. Why don’t the same problems inhere in the partial socialism you advocate?
Answer;
See 6 above

I took advantage of your offer, Mr Davies, and downloaded your "book" for free. I feel sorry for anyone who actually pays for it, though. It is breathtakingly shallow, and full of arrant nonsense.

Here's just one example, from the section "Pyramids and Ponzi Schemes"

"If the price of oranges goes up, this counts as contributing to inflation. If the price of housing goes up, it isn’t counted towards inflation."

Fact check:

"...the Housing group includes all expenditure on rents, utilities, purchase and maintenance of dwellings and other expenditure on shelter-related goods and services. The Housing group accounted for just over 22% of the CPI expenditure in the 16th series CPI weighting pattern, introduced in the June quarter 2011."

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6461.0

If this was merely an opinion you were expressing, you might get away with it. After all, we all have our opinions. But you out yourself as a complete fabricator in the next sentence...

"I’ve had occasion to ask an economist if this is really true, and why. The response has gone something like “Oh yes well … technical reasons … international comparisons … mumble mumble … OECD … blah blah”. But , I say, isn’t it a major omission? After all, the rent or the mortgage payment is one of the biggest, often the biggest, expense for your average family. Buying the family home is the biggest investment most people make. More mumbling."

Sadly, this sort of baloney is a recurring theme throughout the pamphlet. As is the chutzpah with which lines such as this are delivered:

"Anyway, it seems I just explained the GFC in a couple of pages of fairly plain English. Certainly there were other factors involved, some more of which I’ll mention shortly, but I think we’ve covered the essence. Yet it seems this explanation has never occurred to the economists in charge of major economies."

You may think you "explained the GFC", Mr Davies but you did so with pretty much the same level of comprehension as an economist would bring to bear to "explain" mantle dynamics.

G'day Pericles,
thanks for the link. May I direct your attention to paragraph 1.10: "The cost of housing is measured as the price of a new home (excluding land). Mortgage interest payments are excluded.”
Also 2.1:
 “All expenditures by businesses, and expenditures by households for investment purposes, are out of scope of a consumer price index. In this regard, expenditure on housing presents particular difficulties as it can be considered as part investment and part purchase of shelter-related services.”

I imagine Mr Davies is suggesting, whether as an investment or not, the cost of land is integral to the purchase price of a home and has inflated somewhat over the last few decades.
Personally, I found comparisons such as this annoying:
“ From 1953 to 1974 unemployment in Australia averaged only 1.3%”
blithely ignoring the fact that back then a significant number of middle class wives and mothers stayed home and didn't register as unemployed. I think back then many of us were under the impression that -with technology- life would continue to get easier and we were all headed for a life of leisure.
Oh well.

Foyle
Can you see that it’s just garble-brained to reason like this:
“Government does certain things because they’re good and the reason we know they’re good is because government does them”?

That’s all you’re doing.

For example, we could preserve depletable resources for future generations by no-one using them. But then those future generations would be under the same prohibition for the sake of still further generations. Taking this extreme version of the “robbery-of-the-future” argument to its logical consequence, no-one could ever use them. As soon as we accept that any amount of use is to be permitted in this generation, we immediately raise the issue what the correct balance should be between present and future utility, and how to decide it. When I ask, how is the government to know what is the correct balance you merely assert without any explanation whatsoever that the government knows better. Can you see that’s just mental gibberish?

Can you see it’s just the same thing, to say we need government to ensure non-fraudulent market transactions are fair, and when asked by what rational criterion do you know the difference between the market price and the fair price, to answer, Because the government says so?

Same with saying the reason we know government is providing the optimum amount of any given good, is because government is doing it. Gibberish.

Your equivocation about the use of force is trivially disproved. Are you suggesting that government’s interventions should be voluntary? No? Then stop trying to pretend they are, and honestly answer the question instead of evading it with a question in reply, and a repeat of your religious liturgy.

Geoff:
can you see that all the same assumptions underlie all your theory, that it entails an open-ended irrational credulity in governmental economic superiority, and that’s why you can’t answer critical analysis of it?

All
Notice how both Foyle and Geoff think that economic knowledge consists of asking “economists” what their opinion is, and just blindly following it without at any stage inquiring what their reasons are or whether they make sense in their own terms?

Curmudgeon - I've been off line for a day. If you're still here, yes it's a bit shocking how the numbers don't match the received wisdom. The full references were removed from the article. Here they are:
1 Bell, S., Ungoverning the Economy. 1997, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 324 pp.
2 Weisbrot, M., D. Baker, and D. Rosnick, The Scorecard on Development: 25 Years of Diminished Progress. 2005, Center for Economic and Policy Research, www.cepr.net/index.html: Washington D. C.

Funny though, that you know the right answer even though you don't have evidence to hand.

Grim, thanks for clarifying the role of housing in inflation measures. Yes, it's the land price that inflates in a bubble, but that isn't counted.

Not quite, Geoff Davies.

>>Grim, thanks for clarifying the role of housing in inflation measures. Yes, it's the land price that inflates in a bubble, but that isn't counted.<<

The reason land has been excluded is that it is not a commodity, and cannot in itself be consumed or exhausted, and is therefore equivalent to an investment, rather than consumption. Its inclusion can also be a distortion, as its contribution to the price of a unit in a twenty-storey apartment block will be substantially different to the price of a McMansion built on the same land footprint.

In any event, rental values are included, which are a close analogue to the impact of the price of housing.

So your glib assertion that it is "the land price that inflates in a bubble" simply serves to underline your tendency to invent your rationale as you go along.

Okay, let’s just recap what we’ve established so far about the original article and the anti-libertarian defences of it given in this thread:
• You DO want your policies enforced otherwise they’d be voluntary and the only thing you all agree on is that you want to “rein in” voluntary transactions
• You cannot identify any point up to and including shooting people dead when you renounce the use of aggressive violence to enforce the policies you advocate.
• If you do, at that point your policies would become voluntary which is exactly the one thing you are all agreed you don’t want so my above line of reasoning is correct, and you are too embarrassed to admit your nasty fascism.
• The fact that we don’t see government shooting people to enforce interventionist policies is not because policy do not entail and rely on aggressive force and threats, it’s because the subjects of it know that resistance is futile and their obedience does not entail consent.
• By contrast market transactions are consensual.
• There is no issue that aggressive force and fraud are and should be illegal in market transactions, so it’s drivel to allege that free markets entail oppression or exploitation
• On the contrary, it’s you guys who are arguing for the “law of the jungle”, “survival of the fittest” creed: the most aggressive and violent party in society – the State – taking whatever it wants from the weaker. You are trying, and failing, to establish any justification for it.
• Your denial that you stand for the use of aggression is either straight-out dishonesty or confusion/delusion.
• You cannot identify any rational principle whatsoever that identifies the voluntary transactions that you want to override: you stand for mere open-ended total government power.
• You cannot identify any principle by which government power would be limited: you are totalitarians.
• You cannot identify any rational criterion by which you distinguish the market price from the alleged fair price that you want to enforce: you stand for mere arbitrary power.

• The one thing you are agreed on is that government should have control of the means of production: you are totalitarian national socialists.
• You have not explained how government using its coercive powers to take over or direct what would otherwise be private property transactions is *not* “turning to socialism”
• You have not explained why you resile from full socialism if government has some presumptive superiority at economising.
• You obviously resile from full socialism because you know that what you are advocating, carried to its logical conclusion, would entail the destruction of the economy, the environment, society and the State – mass starvation and enormous abuse of power.
• You have not identified or understood why full socialism does that; you apparently think it was just some strange coincidence.
• You have not shown why the defects of socialism you admit, would not inhere in the socialism you advocate.
• You have not taken account of prior government interventions in causing the problems that you blame on free markets: a classic example is the constant left-wing complaint against “corporations” whose predominance is largely the result of their own policies
• You have not begun to understand, or to identify, the original economic problem that you are trying to solve by socialist policies, because it is caused by natural scarcity not capitalism and cannot be solved by forcibly re-arranging property titles.
• You have not explained why liberty and socialism are a false dichotomy; and how any alternative to “rein in” markets (by threatening to shoot people) is not socialism.
• Although you claim to stand for a mixed economy, in fact the only thing that’s keeping the economy mixed is the private property and individual liberty that you stand against, in favour of an open-ended creed of government control of anything and everything.
• This means that the mixed economy is only mixed because of the libertarian ideas and institutions protecting people’s property from arbitrary confiscation and override by government, which you are arguing are bad in principle; thus you're contradicting yourselves.

• You use double standards, for example justifying interventions for “collusion” and “monopoly” although these apply no less, and usually moreso, to government.
• At no stage has Geoff made any defence whatsoever of his absurd claim that government has a presumptive superiority at economising, except by appeal to the absent authority of … wait for it … himself!
• You have no theory of government to justify your absurd assumption that it’s more representative of society than society is of itself.
• You have not given any reason why it’s *not* mere special pleading for government to prop up a failing business with OPM.
• You have not demonstrated the economic benefit of any policy you advocate, because you simply ignore the costs to alternative possible use of the same resources: mere economic incoherence.
• You have based your criticism of free markets on neo-classical theories that you yourself adopt in your criticisms of free market, for example the dogma about monopolies and collusion.
• You have not given any rationale for the depletion of depletable resources to justify your assumption – given without any reason whatsoever - that you know what the correct rate of depletion should be.
• You have not attempted to come to terms with the problem of how to deal with balancing future against present utility.
• When shown that your belief are self-contradictory you persist in them, merely going around in circles as Foyle has done.
• You have *not* read or understood the arguments that make mincemeat of your socialist drivel in short order, consistently satisfying yourself with glib misrepresentations and evasions.

Geoff
please show, for any benefit of government intervention that you allege, how you have accounted for the cost in resources withdrawn from alternative possible employments, in terms of the possible satisfaction of human wants foregone, in units of a lowest common denominator; or admit you can't.

For explaining power about economics that doesn't instantly crumble on cursory examination, try:
http://mises.org/Books/mespm.PDF

It's a shame some of you people react before you comprehend what I'm really saying. It's not so far from some of these "libetarian" views. It's an argument so resist big business as well as big government, both of which curtail individual liberty. It's an argument for legitimate productive business rather than parasitic exploitation. It's an argument that producers should pay full costs, so markets can function properly.

As for the implicit accusations of Stalinism or whatever, I advocate nothing more than the democratic process, imperfect as it is.

That's hardly a convincing defence, Geoff Davies.

>>It's a shame some of you people react before you comprehend what I'm really saying.<<

I have read your treatise "Sack the Economists" from cover to cover. If I still lack comprehension, it says a great deal about your writing skills, and your inability to get a message across.

Or it is equally possible that you what are writing is actually the result of looking in the wrong place. After all, despite making a big thing about the failure of economists, you still see fit to allow a selection of them to provide supportive blurb for your booklet. How does that work?

I have already picked out two excerpts of nonsense from it. If you can defend your position on those, let me know. But there are many more to choose from, if you would like me to post them here.

As a commentator on economics, you make a great geophysicist.

Pericles - "If I still lack comprehension, it says a great deal about your writing skills, and your inability to get a message across." Well there are two possibilities there Pericles. Clearly you just don't get the main messages, though plenty of others do.

"despite making a big thing about the failure of economists, you still see fit to allow a selection of them to provide supportive blurb "
As a measure of your comprehension, you don't even get the clearly and repeatedly stated distinction I make between "mainstream economists" (mainly neoclassical) and some others who have a much better grasp of how economies function. So of course it's some of the latter who have offered endorsements.

There is no point debating your nitpicking.

Business Insider Australia

Bitcoin Proves The Libertarian Idea Of Paradise Would Be Hell On Earth
Houston Chronicle &#8206;-

14 Years Ago JP Morgan Patented Bitcoin-Like Payment System
http://12160.info/photo/927-people-own-half-of-all-bitcoins?context=user

Just 47 individuals own nearly one-third of all Bitcoins. About 927 people control half the entire currency. There are just over 1 million Bitcoin

http://12160.info/main/mobilepage/desktopMode?target=%2Fxn%2Fdetail%2F2649739%3ABlogPost%3A1375607

http://www.chron.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Bitcoin-Proves-The-Libertarian-Idea-Of-Paradise-5053528.php

not..only financial..ARMOGEDDON

Israeli To Officially Take Over as Vice Chairman of U.S. Federal Reserve Bank
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/12/11/israel-federal-reserve/

We all know the Zionist banksters control the world money supply. This is NOT news. What is news is that they used to try to hide their occupation of the U.S. American money system by pretending to be Americans.

Now? Screw it! This time they are just blurting it out!

The Vice-Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve is going to be an Israeli bankster who ran the Bank of Israel Bank; Stanley Fischer. Plain and Simple! Screw You America!

Now what will Americans do when they ALL realize that their banking system is run by Zionists as stated so on the main street marquee? Well, if they remember Andrew Jackson, they will throw this occupiers out on their bankster assess, arrest them, and thrown them all in prison. Or maybe Americans will just again just take up the wazoo and bow to their masters? Hard to say…
http://rinf.com/alt-news/business-news/blackrock-biggest-investor-world-dominance-problem/

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/how-wall-street-bankrupted-detroit-interview-with-richard-wolff/

http://investmentwatchblog.com/why-john-boehner-and-paul-ryan-should-immediately-resign/

http://investmentwatchblog.com/ken-okeefe-time-to-arrest-traitors-in-white-housecongress-end-the-fed/

http://12160.info/page/ag-holder-more-mortgage-fraud-cases-against-banks

I hardly call the identification of two egregious and glaring holes in your pamphlet "nitpicking", Geoff Davies.

>>There is no point debating your nitpicking.<<

And you do rather flatter yourself on the communication stakes. Waffle is waffle, wherever it is found.

"The cost of housing is measured as the price of a new home (excluding land). Mortgage interest payments are excluded.”
This is bitterly ironic. It may be understandable from the perspective of statistical analysis, as investments fluctuate more than “ baskets of goods and services”, but I contend the investment in Land -even more than the whole real estate package- is the main driver of inflation.
Inflation in essence is an increase in the amount of money in the system, -without a commensurate increase in materials, goods, products or services. Land is an investment, but more to the point it's the most common -and the biggest- investment most 'ordinary' people make. Although not precisely accurate, remember the old adage about land: “they ain't making any more of it”.
In our credit based, fractional reserve system new money is borrowed into existence -and interest is charged on this new money.
This is bizarre.
The only logical justifications for income in any form is as a means of exchange, for Labour, Sacrifice or Risk. This premise makes the charging of interest on new money morally unacceptable; ie in a 10% fractional reserve system, 90% of the money borrowed involved no effort (apart from the stroke of a pen), no sacrifice was made (when one person lends to another, they sacrifice the purchasing power of the money lent) and the risk is illusory.
IOW, every time anyone signs up for a mortgage egregious amounts of money are introduced into the system, without any commensurate increase in materials, goods, products or services -and for the next quarter century interest is charged on this uniquely and completely FREE money.
This is the root cause of inflation. All other prices are dragged up by this mechanism.
I would suggest economists and statisticians ignore this simple fact for the same reason we have all ignored the air we breathe. It's just “there” (the essence of conservatism).
It makes for an interesting comparison; CO2 and New Money...
That should start the dogs barking.

http://republicbroadcasting.org/if-john-kennedy-had-lived/

The day that John Kennedy died, November 22, 1963, was the beginning of the end for America. These same forces, the interlocking directorates of the military industrial complex, the Federal Reserve, the major oil companies and the media that they control, continued to suck the life out of America to the point of where we stand today, a shell of our former country.
Conclusion

If in the last year of JFK’s presidency, he hadn’t offered such hope to the American people and to the future of the country, I would have lost interest in the life of JFK and his subsequent assassination a long time ago.

I falsely held out the hope that the 50th Anniversary of his death would rekindle a curiosity about who killed JFK and why and then subsequently link that knowledge into today’s America. This could have been the impetus for change in America. Alas, the elite controlled the narrative this fall with plethora of documentaries which lead away from the truth that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK. As a result, the country’s interest will continue to wane and with it, the belief that JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy.

In 1993, 80% of the country believed that JFK was killed as the result of a conspiracy. With the rash of media propaganda, that number has reduced to 61%. The elite have weathered the storm and continue unabated on their journey towards sucking the life out of this country. They will continue to do so until there is nothing left and we are thrown onto the junk pile of history.

Wow. Can’t believe I just agreed with every word that Grim just said. Go Grim! We’ll make a libertarian of you yet. All you need now, to set the keystone in the arch of your critique of crony capitalism, is to understand that it’s not “our” money system. It’s the State’s. The whole fractional reserve scamola is a political creation, a creature of statute, by which the State exempts itself and the banks from the law against fraud, in return for a cut of the loot.

A very readable account in plain English is here:
“What Has Government Done to Our Money?” by Murray Rothbard
http://mises.org/books/whathasgovernmentdone.pdf

“The Mystery of Banking” by Murray Rothbard
http://mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf

Geoff
Look we are all agreed that there is much BS going by the name of economic theory, and that the so-called right wing neo-classical school is as full of it as the communists.

But just because the bullsh!t-artists’ intellectual methodology is nothing but arbitrary moralising slathered in jargon and fallacies, doesn’t mean that:
a) it's okay for you to do the same, or that
b) everyone else is doing the same thing.

We have just established that the problem isn’t that *I* have failed to comprehend what you’re saying, it’s that *you* have.

My questions go to the core of your economic theory and answering them will either prove me or you wrong, which is why you haven’t answered them – because you can’t, without proving your own theory wrong, and you know it.

“It's an argument for legitimate productive business rather than parasitic exploitation. “

I asked you how you distinguish parasitic exploitation from legitimate productive or legitimate government business, and you refuse to answer, remember?

Why bother discussing it if you don’t even care that what you’re saying is demonstrably untrue?

Why don’t you guys just try to read the first chapter of Rothbard: http://mises.org/Books/mespm.PDF , see if there’s anything you can disprove as illogical, and try out for fit, economic theory that is not demonstrably illogical and self-contradictory as we have just established yours is.

WHAT..they are trying to..get us angry
its called divide and con*queer..under the GUISE..of reigning 'markets',,in..but the real..target=you*

http://rss.infowars.com/20131124_Sun_Alex.mp3
the beginning..explains the war..between the baddies/the baddies
the middle explains how federal..police are corrupting local police...and how they..assaulted alex..by hurting a child
or your savings..or your job..or your pride.

landless serfs+wage slaves..=their our/your..end
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=6152&page=0

[they will do much the same..to govt
[recall..goerge/blair/john..REALLY believed satans spin

and note..please..the big ending..is important too
perhaps more..try to focus..on what is said

thats what i like about files..you can rewind..to make sure
thats all tony needs do..check/confirm..dont act fast..not furious

anyhow the lions lay..with thee sheep?
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15820&page=0