GFC - Finger-lickin' debt
Comment made in relation to Tim's post and article about someone who lost their savings, in response to another commenter...see link and below!
Labels: Blair-bothering, Blog-talk, Economics for Babies, Political Commentary
posted by girl with trackies @ 1:27 PM
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> “We, the financially useless, are dependent upon the sensible. For example, they buy the houses that we rent.”
Uh, not quite. Maybe circa 1991, when most people who wanted to buy a house could afford one and the only long-term renters were the Hogarthian unwashed. Not since 2001, when plenty of single-income couples who could otherwise have bought a house suddenly saw prices double or triple overnight.
Try “They get in and buy the houses that we would otherwise buy - offering $50,000 extra for their fourth or fifth house than you can offer for your first - and then jack up the rent or the re-sale price so they can get their ‘investment’ back.”
If capitalists were capable of restraining their own greed - never mind ethics, simple long-term self-interest would do - no one would be interested in socialism.
Tue 05 May 09 (08:19am)
Tue 05 May 09 (10:29am)
And if people knew anything about the realities of socialism, they would run with open arms and hug the nearest “capitalist pig” they could find and never let them go.
Socialism only works in theory, because it fails to take into account the reality of human self-interest. Socialism fails miserably in reality because it allows one group of people (the state) to make self-interested decisions about another group of people’s (the plebs) consumption and production.
Capitalism works in reality because it harnesses human self-interest. The gears of capitalism are oiled on the self-interested decisions made by individuals to trade things they produce for things they consume, judging fairly accurately what things are “worth” without the regulation of a state bureaucracy. When self-interest becomes greed, capitalism as a system tends to self-correct. (Others have more ably explained the real reason behind the GFC, so this is necessarily simplistic.)
Are people worse off sometimes? Sure, but it beats the heck out of a socialist system that denies human self-interest except to a ruling elite, who are then encouraged to wallow in wealth they did not create, leaving the plebs to wallow in the brotherhood of equally distributed poverty. Yay.
Judge capitalism as a whole working system fueled by free people, not by the few who attempt to exploit it. Are those people now not suffering as prices deflate to what things are actually worth, as per the article above?
Tue 05 May 09 (12:32pm)
Here’s a tip, Rod. Buy somewhere else. That buying-and-jacking caper is just people trying- usually successfully- to predict the future value of something. This actually results in much fairer prices most of the time.