Author Topic: World economies in shambles?  (Read 6142 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Drake Blackpaw

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Male
  • Posts: 3109
    • http://www.drakebp.furtopia.org/
Re: World economies in shambles?
« Reply #25 on: May 28, 2010, 10:49:40 am »
*cough, cough* Getting back on track.............

So how would you guys FIX the world economies? What must not only the US do, but also Spain, Greece, the European Union, etc. do to overcome their problems? Is having Germany, France, and any other countries bail out Greece or other problem countries a good idea or not?


I disagree with March O'Hare when it comes to Greece.  The problem with Greece (and Spain and Portugal) for the rest of the European union is that they all share a common currency and so if one country defaults, it has a huge impact on the currency and thus every country that uses that currency.  It's in Germany's and France's best interest to keep Greece afloat right know because of the damage it would do to their own economies, which are quite strong, if Greece goes under. 

All of a sudden the Euro doesn't seem like such a great thing, and the UK was very smart to stick with their own currency.

Offline Yip

  • Species: vulpes vulpes
  • *
  • Female
  • Posts: 4007
    • Furaffinity
Re: World economies in shambles?
« Reply #26 on: May 28, 2010, 11:32:00 am »
Of course I have, and the notion that conspiracy theories are silly is a meme in itself--an incredibly stupid one.
No, it's not stupid at all. Here you've taken my usage of the term "conspiracy theory" and distorted the meaning to try to make it sound like it is. Saying that "conspiracy theories are silly" is a meme, but one which is supported by evidence and logical reasoning. It's NOT saying conspiracies don't exist. It's basically saying, when talking about conspiracies, Occam's Razor still applies.

To be fair, you didn't seem to be speaking of it as a conspiracy in the way I was speaking against.  I was mostly cautioning those that'd run away with these "the corporations control everything" ideas. No, the big corporations don't control everything. The big corporations have lots of money, and money in our society easily translates to influence. But having lots of influence is not the same as being in control. The fact that the big corporations tend to fight the Obama administration (as the article you linked to points out) is evidence of that.

My point really was simply that there doesn't need to be any "illuminati" pulling the strings for things to be as they are. It's simply individuals each acting in their our self interest. Business as usual, as you say. Honestly, I think we are mostly in agreement. I'm just cautious about wording since I know a lot of people take these sort of things too far. (as an extreme example, some believe that the government is controlled by reptilian beings.  And the fact that they don't have good evidence for this is evidence that these being are covering it up.  *shakes head*  )

Offline KitsuNinja

  • Space Pirate
  • *****
  • Male
  • Posts: 574
Re: World economies in shambles?
« Reply #27 on: May 28, 2010, 03:35:34 pm »
It's been in shambles for a while now, have you all been living in a cave?
Kemono Party > Furry and kemono fan realists who would rather embrace random and cuteness over being drama-queen furries, furry vs furry bashing or a furry who tries too hard. :3

Offline J. March OHare

  • I think, therefore I'm mad.
  • ***
  • Male
  • Posts: 180
    • The Robert A. Cook Gallery
Re: World economies in shambles?
« Reply #28 on: May 28, 2010, 06:22:38 pm »
Drake Blackpaw: "I disagree with March O'Hare when it comes to Greece. The problem with Greece (and Spain and Portugal) for the rest of the European union is that they all share a common currency and so if one country defaults, it has a huge impact on the currency and thus every country that uses that currency."

No question about that. Turns out that those who were against a common currency were right. I feel more strongly about bailouts when it comes to corporations (which are supposed to function according to the laws of capitalism) as opposed to governments, and I suppose that in some ways, it could be argued that Greece isn't even an independent, sovereign state anymore but a state in the EU, like Louisiana is a state in the U.S.

I don't really know how the situation sorts out in the EU, but I do know that too much centralization is bad. There comes a point in the development of any organism--living, corporate or government--at which too big is undesirable. The EU has possibly crossed that line. I know the U.S. has.

Vararam: "Occam's Razor still applies."

Having long been a troubleshooter for complicated exhibits that I designed, I can say with absolute certainty that Occam's Razor is a dull and overused tool. Unrelated simultaneous malfunctions have a way of making the Razor useless (random is not random?) and one has no recourse but to fall back on what you might call "coincidence theory."

Coincidence theory gets pretty thick. I have no doubt that some things that appear to be conspiracies are really just multiple unrelated things going wrong all at once in a trillion-to-one shot. In other words, the Razor is as apt to support conspiracy theory as it is to refute it.

Vararam: "To be fair, you didn't seem to be speaking of it as a conspiracy in the way I was speaking against."

I wasn't.

Vararam: "The fact that the big corporations tend to fight the Obama administration (as the article you linked to points out) is evidence of that."

It only goes to show how spoiled and selfish the heads of those corporations are. Obama would not be where he is if he hadn't been a good doggie for his financial contributors. Consider this: Remember the bailouts? Obama and McCain both left the campaign trail at a critical juncture to return to D.C. and vote for them, whereupon George W. Bush signed them into law before the ink was even dry on the bill. (Republicans seem to have forgotten that.) The vast majority of those people are all on the same team. They work for global multinational corporations, not for the people of the United States.

Deregulation did this. Sold-out weasels (my apologies to real weasels--the word I want to use is forbidden on this board) in thrall to their corporate masters did this. We'd be in trouble anyway because of weird coincidences like those of which I spoke, but absent the Ponzi scheme that the big banks were playing, those (largely natural) disasters would not have been positively catastrophic.

Vararam: "...as an extreme example, some believe that the government is controlled by reptilian beings."

That one amuses me. I do not disparage myths, because they always contain a grain of truth. Do I think the Global Elite consists of reptilian extraterrestrials? No. Do I think they act like that's what they are? Yes.

The movers-and-shakers don't agree on everything, but here are a few things they do agree about: they want cheap labor. They don't care if their employees live below the poverty line. They don't care about their employees at all. Ideally, they'd like to have a workforce of automatons with no pleasures, no recreational activities, no desires other than to serve them... endlessly. And ideally, they'd like for them to work for free. They want slaves.

You don't have to believe in reptilian beings to know that. You only have to watch what they do.

KitsuNinja: "It's been in shambles for a while now, have you all been living in a cave?"

Not me. I've known this was coming since 1980. It really started to snowball in 2005, right around the time of the words, "Heckuva job, Brownie." I'm just surprised that it's taking so long. The system had more momentum than I thought, and I already knew it had a lot.

It's been running on fumes for years, and I think we're about out of fumes.

Offline CiceroKit

  • I'll get back to you on that
  • ****
  • Female
  • Posts: 391
    • My FA page
Re: World economies in shambles?
« Reply #29 on: May 31, 2010, 10:27:23 am »
When we live in a global economy where international corporations are seen as too big to fail, the only way to change things for the better is with more regulation. However, we need to find a way to do that on an international level. The problem affecting us lies beyond our borders, and when large employers here house the headquarters overseas just to evade paying taxes, then it is time we form an international regulatory body or revamp existing ones.

For example, the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is so huge, and any real solution (reserve well) is so distant because, number 1, we have a law on the books that renders the U.S. government largely helpless in this matter, and number 2, the main entity responsible, BP, is a British corporation. While our president meets with British leaders, we can only hope that the British government will step up to the plate and pressure BP to use a safer dispersant and drill the reserve well already.

I can't begin to express my anger about what is going on with this oil spill, but I can say that big oil like big financial, is an industry too big to fail. That is simply unacceptable. That is simply the reverse of what Capitalism is supposed to be. We are definitely living in an age of Corporatism, or one might even venture, Imperialism. And that is the problem with Capitalism, because left unchecked, this is the inevitable outcome. It is what happens when we let things slide, like allowing mergers that create monopolies. Allowing price fixing by a corporation to drown out its competition (Wal-Mart is the most blatant example). We have let things slide way too much all while touting the lie, "the free market will regulate itself." It doesn't.

Sure, maybe Communism hasn't worked, but Socialism has. It has worked just as well as Capitalism if not better. But no one ideology is going to save the global economy. The solution is not going to be an easy one, and things are going to hurt for a while. But I ask you this, a few years back, was the economy really that good or was it all just a bubble, an illusion created by corrupt lending practices? I believe it was the latter. I, for one, can say that I began to feel the fallout of the crumbling economy in 2003. I know others who would name an earlier date. Economists and financial advisors alike need to stop calculating in virtual assets. What is that idiom about counting your chickens before they hatch?
Artist. Educator. Activist. Writer.

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/cicerokit/
Cicero Kit on Second Life

Being a furry artist is a sideline; I am a public relations professional by trade as well as adjunct faculty at two technical colleges in Wisconsin. I also freelance as a graphic designer and journalist and have had an editorial comic series published. Anything you want to know? Ask.

Offline J. March OHare

  • I think, therefore I'm mad.
  • ***
  • Male
  • Posts: 180
    • The Robert A. Cook Gallery
Re: World economies in shambles?
« Reply #30 on: June 01, 2010, 01:35:07 am »
CiceroKit: "...I ask you this, a few years back, was the economy really that good or was it all just a bubble, an illusion created by corrupt lending practices? I believe it was the latter."

I agree. It was a bubble. In fact, I have little to add. I pretty much agree with everything you said.

The only thing I'd quibble about were the words "too big to fail," but I'm really just making conversation here. Of course I know you know this: there is no such thing. There's "so big that failure will be catastrophic," but in the end we can't control what fails. We can just wipe out the global economy trying to plug up the cracks, but when the structure collapses... BOOM!

Without a major paradigm shift, such a collapse is inevitable. We have Peak Oil staring us right in the face. Petroleum is a finite resource. We can wish it weren't so until we're blue in the face, but you know what they say: "Wish in one hand and..."

We also appear to have the unmitigated arrogance to believe we've beaten the laws of Nature and Thomas Malthus. We haven't. We've built a technological house of cards that has allowed this planet to support more people than its natural holding capacity would allow. Remove one card, and again... BOOM!

When I was a kid I thought even the ancient Greeks had hubris figured out. That was naive. The majority never has.
« Last Edit: June 01, 2010, 01:36:39 am by J. March OHare »

Offline Yip

  • Species: vulpes vulpes
  • *
  • Female
  • Posts: 4007
    • Furaffinity
Re: World economies in shambles?
« Reply #31 on: June 01, 2010, 04:30:31 am »
Vararam: "Occam's Razor still applies."

Having long been a troubleshooter for complicated exhibits that I designed, I can say with absolute certainty that Occam's Razor is a dull and overused tool. Unrelated simultaneous malfunctions have a way of making the Razor useless (random is not random?) and one has no recourse but to fall back on what you might call "coincidence theory."

Coincidence theory gets pretty thick. I have no doubt that some things that appear to be conspiracies are really just multiple unrelated things going wrong all at once in a trillion-to-one shot. In other words, the Razor is as apt to support conspiracy theory as it is to refute it.
You seem to be using the common, though inaccurate interpretation of Occam's Razor. Most people seem think Occam's Razor is about favoring simplicity. That's wrong. What it really says is that entities should not be multiplied beyond that which is necessary. In other words, an explanation of the unknown should be done as much as possible in terms of the known; don't include more unknown entities than required.  When properly applied, there is nothing about coincidence or things that require complex explanations that violate Occam's Razor.  Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, do by their very nature. Otherwise it wouldn't be a conspiracy theory, it would simply be an explanation.   At any rate, I was using it as shorthand so as not to have to explain in detail my objection to conspiracy theories since that's not what this thread is really about. (thanks for helping that to work by the way. *shakes head*)

As I've already said, for the most part I agree; there is definitely a problem with the current system. And thats why we are seeing the problems we are seeing now.



Offline J. March OHare

  • I think, therefore I'm mad.
  • ***
  • Male
  • Posts: 180
    • The Robert A. Cook Gallery
Re: World economies in shambles?
« Reply #32 on: June 01, 2010, 05:07:28 am »
Vararam: "You seem to be using the common, though inaccurate interpretation of Occam's Razor. Most people seem think Occam's Razor is about favoring simplicity. That's wrong. What it really says is that entities should not be multiplied beyond that which is necessary."

I was aware of that, but as you said, most people aren't. Forgive me for thinking you might not be; however, I don't believe the subject of conspiracy theory came up until you mentioned it in Reply #23 on the previous page.

I don't follow your logic when you say conspiracy theories multiply entities by their very nature. Seems to me they often do the opposite: attributing a single cause to a collection of phenomena that would otherwise be a staggering set of unlikely coincidences. Of course, that can reach the point of absurdity, like trying to explain Life, the Universe and Everything by simply saying, "God did it."

I will also admit, I'm not without emotional reactions to the disparaging use of the term. Too many times I've seen self-proclaimed "skeptics" step over into kneejerk-debunker territory as they're slinging it around. Sloppy comparisons, as in lumping the JFK assassination along with UFOs and reptilian Illuminati as "tinfoil-hat stuff" are committed by debunkers all the time.

We seem to be circling warily around each other, with you trying to decide whether I'm a woo-woo while I try to decide if you're a kneejerk debunker. I don't believe either of us is, however.

Getting back to the subject of economics, we know that bankers conspired to bundle up worthless loans and sell them to unsuspecting victims. That's not "tinfoil-hat stuff." We know it beyond a shadow of a doubt.