Interesting... "Fight" on oil rig just prior to explsion

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Skybird

So does sexual perversions. Or pressing the red button. Or becoming choleric. It makes things happening.

Last time I checked those things werten't a mechanism for self-sustaining productivity.

It depends on what gets done. Egoism today does mostly bad things. Altruism focusses not on oneself's benefit, but on the other's benefit.

(A) I'd like to see you or anyone else demonstrate altruism on a regular basis that can hold a candle to what private industry does every day as a matter of course. Even Mother Theresa's contributions are nothing compared to the vast amount of wealth and social growth that the market generates.

(B) You cannot prove that egoism does mostly bad things within the context of private industry. An economy worth $17 trillion that provides comfortable liveleyhoods for over one-hundered million people says you're wrong.

The info on the different chemicals was given by insiders.

And? That's what people do, even when they are employed by the entity in question. Corporations are not any more evil than anyone else, Sky.

Because oil lobby is amongst the strongest there is, lobbying for oil spends more money than other lobbies, and the briberies being given in connection with the oil business surpasses that in most other business fields.

Quite correct. The oil lobby is very strong, but so are the farm and steel and automotive and textile lobbies, along with a dozen others. The problem is not with the lobbies themselves. They're just doing what we gave them incentive to do. The problem is with the mechanism we gave them to lobby, i.e. the state.

I've been trying to tell you this for what, two years now?

Information is one thing, lobbying is a very different thing. And corruption is corruption. Lobbying means manipulating legislation, bypassing the intention of laws, and betraying the voters, claiming more power for lobbyists than the voting people. It is the ultimate hijacking of democracy.

Really? Lobbyists manipulate legislation? How did you ever figure that one out?

C'mon Sky, I may not be as smart as you, but I'm not retarded. I'm just as aware of how dangerous centralized authority is as you are. And yet, you seem to hold on to some misguided belief that the state can "set things right".

I blame corrupted commerce and industry lobbies, becasue they are criminal and cause more damage to our socieities than Saddam and Kim Yong Il ever did.

Do they? That's an irresponsible claim and you know it. No private industry has ever massacred half a million Kurds or started a war or forced 25 million people to live in poverty and darkness. Only governments wield such power.

In Brussel, the relation between industry lobbyists and EU members of parliament is said by insiders to be around 50 lobbyists per 1 member of parliament. The relation between industry lobbyists and consumer protection lobbyists is said to be 200:1.

That's what happens when you give peple a powerful state to co-opt.

Not yours. We have had it for some decades now, and it costed us dozens of trillions, and a whole historic era of freedom and democracy going down the drain. Or better: getting sold away.

Okay, where is yours? If my way of doing things is so bad, why do you not have an alternative? You don't have a system by which we place altruistic angels in state offices, and neither does anyone else.

What you have is a list of grievances for which you are willing to blame other people and a vague notion that everyone else should do everything "better' because you wish it. You might as well build a car with a wind-powered engine.

Wait and see. You are too self-convinced.

So are you, but the difference between us is that I can generate economic productivity through investment. What have you created?
I have complete confidence in the ability of private industry and consumers to create and sustain a sustainable fuel economy. That's all they've ever done, so why would anyone expect anything different?

No: when.

When, indeed. Oil production continues to climb, despite the worries of concerned persons like yourself. It may run out someday, but I seriously doubt it. Even if it does run out, there will be an alternative fuel source. Didn't we learn this already?

I know you live by that old economic theory. Some economists in the Anglosaxon world do that, too. Most economists world-wide do not.

No, most economists you have heard of who have an agenda to pursue refute classical economic theory because they want free money from the state.

Usually the classica economy theory gets presented by people of the establishment who have to loose proifts if the sttaus quo, no matter how desastrous it is, would get massively changed. In other words: corrections get prevented to spend another years with collecting the cream before everything breakes apart.

Negative. Classical economic theory is often presented by economists who know what works because they grew up in a successful economic model. Read Friedman.

I stop here, because I think discussions between us are pretty much useless. The world continues to run by either your model

What? The world doesn't use anything even remotely close to my model. The concepts of free trade and limited government are alien to any major state in the world.

and will mess up even more, for the same reasons that you propagate, or it will try new ways, and maybe finds a small chance, however unlikely that is, or messes up anyway. I prefer a small chance over no chance. but never forget on thing - it is the thinling of that economy model you propagate, that has broiught us to where we are: a dysfunctional, corrupted gopobal economy with corrutoped elites and impotent politics that are not independant from the economy lobbies that have taken them hostage.

No, my friend, it is not the free market that has brought us here. It is the state that has brought us here. The corrupted elites are here because we gave them a place to live.

If you really want that, go ahead. But the Gunny this time will not help you.

Outstanding! I'll start a thread as soon as I get off from work. White or black?