Man, our president is cool.
Susannah Breslin is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. She is a freelance journalist who blogs at Reverse Cowgirl and is at work on a novel set in the adult movie industry.
The Big Picture takes a big pixel look back at President Obama's first 167 days in office. He looks cool in pretty much every picture. Well played, Barry, well played. (Image credit: Samantha Appleton)
the latest
latest episodes
He could've played guitar better than Hendrix
He could've told the future
He could've baked the most delicious cake in the world
He could've scored more goals than Wayne Gretzky
He could've danced better than Barishnikov
Jesus could have been funnier than any comedian you can think of
Jesus was way cool
no, he's really not that cool. Just look at his policies.
"Man, our president is cool."... Your body text was more accurate: "He looks cool in pretty much every picture."
Turns out he's not such a radical change from Shrub...
Ted Rall agrees with me:
http://www.rall.com/2009/06/syndicated-column-sorry-mr-bush.html
Agreeing with the two above me:
Barack talks the talk, but
he won't walk the walk.
that's what counts.
"To Kennedy's teacher-
Please excuse Kennedy's absence today.
She's with me.
-Barack Obama"
THAT was cool!
Whaaaaaa!!! We lost! Now all we have are our bitter bitter tears. WHAAAAAA!!!!
mdh rules for posting those king missile lyrics.
Just breathe deeply and picture what things would be like with Sarah Palin in the White House. If that doesn't bring peace to your soul, nothing will.
The comments of #4 and #6 are perfect analogues of one another, which is hysterical.
Pic # 34 is my favorite - how great would that be?!?!
When Eurystheus ordered Hercules to clean up King Augeas' stables, at least Hercules didn't have you jackals biting at his backside.
Did you want to 'stay the course' when the repubs sent us crashing into this ditch? We don't need radical change. We need carefully thought out maneuvers to get back up on the road. It's a long way back up there, but if you jackals know a short cut, we'd like to hear it.
#4 posted by noen:
Because any criticism is, of course, petulant.
I'm on the left and what I've seen:
-Don't Ask Don't Tell is still around
-Warrantless Wiretapping too
-Defending the Defense of Marriage Act
-More bailouts for big companies
-No Public option on health care
-RIAA has it's people rolling deep
-Same old line on Israel
-More war, more troops, more military solutions
-Lots of speeches, pretty light on action
Not cool, not cool at all.
Yes, Nanuq, that would be worse. Instead of taking it up another notch, as McCain/Palin probably would have done, Obama is simply continuing to destroy the country at almost the same rate as Bush. But that doesn't bring peace to my soul.
Torture, wiretapping, secrecy -- nothing has changed in those areas. The only thing that has changed is that Obama is not redistributing money from the poor to the rich at quite the same rate as Bush did.
But yeah, the dude looks cool.
He does seem positively Coolidgian in these shots...
"Just breathe deeply and picture what things would be like with Sarah Palin in the White House. If that doesn't bring peace to your soul, nothing will."
Which is exactly the kind of logic Democratic candidates have been using for decades to get secular, anti-war, anti-corporate and gay rights voters to vote for pro-war, pro-corporate, 'marriage-protecting' religious zealot Democrats. Oh, and apparently looking cool helps too.
For those unhappy with him, or feel that he's Shrubbish, I would like to reiterate the point of the commenter above who said
"Whaaaaaa!!!"
I don't think Kucinich would've won. I would be happy to have voted for him and to call him president.
But outside of Kucinich, who of McCain,
Clinton, Edwards, Richardson, Biden, Gravel, Dodd or Vilsack would be doing better/would be more progressive? I'm not going to bother listing the scariness that was the other Republican candidates. And if you tell me Nader, I will sigh and shake my head.
Seriously.
Oh, and apparently looking cool helps too.
that is exactly the kind of logic republican candidates have been using for decades to change the topic away from their recent epic fails.
Che looked cool, so did Mao, so did Stalin, never mind the shredded liberties and endless trails of dead bodies. Even Hitler (oddly enough) was seen this way. There were letters to Hilter from women who had sexual fantasies about him during his meteoric rise. So long as style is prized over substance, the world will be plagued by cults of personality. Obama has a tyrants heart. He is prevented from expressing it by our constitution, at least for a time. I miss the days when America was uncool. Those were better days.
"We need carefully thought out maneuvers to get back up on the road."
How much planning is needed to stop torturing people and to stop spying on Americans?
How much planning is needed to stop torturing people and to stop spying on Americans?
The planning is for what to do with all the suddenly unemployed spooks.
You know what else is cool? Preventative Indefinite Detention. That's right, just like Philip K Dick. Kewl uh?
Hasn't it already been scientifically proven that black people are generally cooler than white people?
He's a good man doing a very tough job.
Yeah, Obama's cool. Cool like torture. Cool like "prolonged preventive detention." Cool like wiretapping.
Cool like a pot of boiling water.
@12 Snig: I think that Richardson would have, at least, stood a better chance than Obama of actually unfucking-up America.
Which is exactly the kind of logic Democratic candidates have been using for decades to get secular, anti-war, anti-corporate and gay rights voters to vote for pro-war, pro-corporate, 'marriage-protecting' religious zealot Democrats. Oh, and apparently looking cool helps too.
Amen,
Democrats = Republicans-lite
Seriously, would you people stop gushing about his coolness, and actually push him on the "Change" that everyone was promised, and voted for. Snap out of it already.
"The planning is for what to do with all the suddenly unemployed spooks."
Alaskan Roulette?
#*, Troofseeker: We need carefully thought out maneuvers to get back up on the road. It's a long way back up there, but if you jackals know a short cut, we'd like to hear it.
I wouldn't call this a "short cut" so much as a necessary purge. Ever since the Cold War, the American government has been infected with a proclivity toward secrecy and an "ends justify the means" perspective. At this point in time it threatens to consume us in much the same manner that Britain was consumed by its own paranoia. This infection cannot be gently maneuvered out. It must be thrust blinkingly into the sunlight, or else left to fester in the darkness.
First off, refuse to speak to any reporter or network who regularly uses ad hominems, as you have done here. Other changes make little difference in the long run if Washington's Culture of Spin isn't halted asap. An illegal action is an illegal action, even if everyone agrees not to talk about it.
Second, fire everyone involved or complicit in "extraordinary rendition" sites. Offer the prisoners US citizenship, or a flight back home (their choice). Release all material about what went on there. Arrest and fairly try anyone related to the torture, starting at the top.
Third, fire anyone involved or complicit in warrantless wiretapping. Release logs of everyone we wiretapped. Everyone, not just US citizens. Fire anyone who so much as thinks the phrase "state secrets."
Fourth, longer term: enact harsh punishments for people who abuse positions of legal authority. Start with cops.
Fifth, and finally: create a congress-appointed position whose sole responsibility is limiting the power of bureaucratic departments. At this point non-elected agencies effectively operate without any oversight, yet comprise the bulk of deciding what actually gets done. This needs to change.
Beelzebuddy, I agree with everything there except the firing for thoughtcrime, which I think is hyperbole on your part, and the Bureaucracy Limiter, which is an idea that needs work. There's a reason those bureaucrats make the decision, which is that Congress repeatedly fails to do so.
Godwin's law invoked by post #20.
As Troofseeker says, truly a Herculean Task the president has and there's a mountain of shit to be cleaned out of them stables.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5826/herculean.html
I remember seeing picture 2 right after the inauguration and thinking it was one of the best pictures of any famous person I've ever seen.
Also, I'm glad we could skip immediately past the poster's intended point about Obama's personal cool evident in these pictures, and get straight into the sniping, because where else on the internet besides BoingBoing do we really have to argue politics?
Could any of his detractors, in just 167 days as the head of one third of among the largest bureacratic organizations in the world have effected even one percent of the change they would like to see, without causing a civil war? Perhaps that's hyperbole. Without causing the other two thirds of the government to remove you from office?
@ #3 posted by PaulR (and everyone else)
"Turns out he's not such a radical change from Shrub..."
The system is designed to be a bit resistant to change, and I think BO might be (partly out of necessity because of the sluggishness of the system) taking to heart what Robert Duvall, playing officer Bob Hodges said in Colors:
Bob Hodges: [to his new partner] There's two bulls standing on top of a mountain. The younger one says to the older one: "Hey pop, let's say we run down there and fuck one of them cows". The older one says: "No son. Lets walk down and fuck 'em all".
No, not really.
This administration is a joke.
Just like the last one.
The problem is its getting less and less funny, because we've heard it over and over again.
Government is getting bigger and bigger, our freedoms are becoming less and less.
Politicians please do the following:
- Actually READ THE BILLS you vote on, and give congress/public time to read those bills.
- WTF happened to transparency? FOIA processes are bullshit. Fix it.
- Cut the budget, quit spending more money.
- Cut the lobbying bullshit.
- Fix domestic problems before spending money on problems in other countries.
- And finally, get off my lawn.
Yeah he is cool for someone that advocates torture as a method of keeping power.
He's notmy president.
our freedoms are becoming less and less.
As someone who could have gone to prison fifteen years ago for gay sex in the wrong state, I'd have to say that's a one-sided view. Some freedoms have been reduced and others have been expanded. There are a lot of people in the US who wouldn't willingly go back to their 'freedom' level of several decades ago because it would be a step back into institutionalized oppression.
He's charismatic and well marketed. That's it.
I think what depresses me most is that we've got The Left ceaselessly patting each other on the back while exclaiming "we did it, things are better" and we've got The Right clenching their fists and screaming "he stands for everything we're against, we need to take this country BACK". And you know what? They're both wrong. Obama is the new boss, same as the old boss. It broke my heart to vote for him because I was pretty sure he wasn't going to change a thing. I wish I would've wasted my vote on Kucinich.
Several decades ago one could go to jail for unmarried straight sex. Almost all states had punishable laws against adultery. During the 1950s you couldn't sit, stand, or squat without breaking one goddamned blue-nosed law or another.
I will re-iterate many of these comments.
Mr. GetAlong Compromise Obama, your "cool" is wearing out.
Poetry slams, earth wind and fire gigs, broadway shows, victory gardens, and cool photo ops are getting less and less satisfying.
Where is the HOPE? Where is the CHANGE?
Health care policy being dominated by insurance industry
WAR sill going on. Two WARS still going on. Why can't you just say 3 words - WAR IS OVER?
Treasury is still being looted - appointing Goldman Sachs frontmen to run things is not Change I can believe in.
Justice filing petitions to thwart wiretap cases, saying indefinite detention is a must, refusing to investigate Cheney for Plame violations, etc. etc.
Considering Monsanto executives for key FDA posts??
etc. etc.
By trying to appease and compromise, and maintaining incremental adjustments to failed policy, Obama is risking everything. When the shit continues to hit the fan, it will be spraying right on Obama and in 2012 a Repbulican will run on a "see - Obama big government made it a mess, put me in charge" and will WIN.
Then, we are totally f'd (again).
Call White House. Send emails. Demand the HOPE and CHANGE that was promised.
"Doesn't he look cool?
That's your post?
How embarrassing..."
Is it really so hard to feel proud of your president for once? That's what the post is about. "Here's my prez lookin' gooooood. I haven't felt this way in almost a decade."
I'd say your not really a very patriot American if you cannot muster even a little pride in the first African American president in our entire history.
iwood
"Because any criticism is, of course, petulant."
I've been in enough threads like this one to know a WATB when I see one. From the far Left we get "Obama is just like Bush!" and from the far Right we get those hot tears down their faces. The idea that in little more than six months it's even reasonable to ask that Obama turn America into a socialist workers paradise is ludicrous. America? The racist imperial power that under George Bush was a defacto police state, stolen elections, torture, wars of opportunity, secrecy, spying on it's people, spending out of control, belligerent and run by a stupid stupid man who pretended to be a cowboy.
That America?
Yeah right.
@#45 were you expecting Hugo Chavez?
The problem with you young whippersnappers today is you're so darned impatient! (Is my turn signal on?)
Seriously, the guy hasn't been in office for even six months yet (almost), and democracy moves slowly. Yes, much of what's being complained about here doesn't require the consent of Congress.
I'm not naive enough to believe he's going to be able to do everything he's promised, but still, six months really isn't much time.
You might as well be patient, you've still got three and a half years before the next election.
Thank you, Beezle Buddy, and those of you with ideas other than forming a lynch mob. It's easier to throw a rock thru a window than to replace one, and it takes longer. There's a lot of compromise in getting anything done on Capitol Hill- I'm sure BO is disappointed too. What would Palin do? Throw up her hands and run away.
"Could any of his detractors, in just 167 days as the head of one third of among the largest bureaucratic organizations in the world have effected even one percent of the change they would like to see, without causing a civil war? Perhaps that's hyperbole. Without causing the other two thirds of the government to remove you from office?"
If I were president:
1. I would actually bring all the troops home - from 90% of the posts around the world. This might cause civil unrest in other countries but I don't see us having a civil war over that. MONEY SAVED ANNUALLY: about a trillion bucks LIKELIHOOD OF OTHER 2/3rds OUSTING ME: Maybe...but not likely as the public would be for it.
2. I would cut the the DHS, DoAG, DoED, War on Drugs and phase out Social Security. They could not be replaced with other programs. I would phase out many other Fed Govt programs that have no constitutional basis. MONEY SAVED ANNUALLY: about a trillion bucks X 2 LIKELIHOOD OF OTHER 2/3rds OUSTING ME: Possible but again I think people would understand it.
3. Get rid of Personal Income tax forever and never to be resurrected in other forms. NO FLAT TAX. NOTHING. EVER. Make congress cut things all across the board so they can afford to do this. Civil war? Nope. SAVINGS: Well you'll see our economy boom like no other place on earth. LIKELIHOOD OF OTHER 2/3rds OUSTING ME: not a chance in hell.
4. Return to sound money. no more fiat silly money printed by the fed. So yeah get rid of the Fed. MONEY SAVED ANNUALLY: Untold Billions if not trillions today. Civil War? Nope. LIKELIHOOD OF OTHER 2/3rds OUSTING ME: Once I educate the nation on the ills of a private central bank and the fact they've had their savings eroded over the years the public will support me.
yeah if I were president I could get shit done better than BHO and if anyone questioned me I'd put my helmet on and declare "I'm the motherfukin' jugger-president beeiitch!"
Obama is pushing Bush's "State Secrets" case further than Bush ever pushed it. Not cool.
Obama is pushing "preventitive detention" even further than Bush pushed it. Not cool.
What I find he-lair-ee-us is the right wingers who are putting the hatin' on Obama but for all the wrong reasons. They want him to torture more, they want him to keep Guantanamo open, they want him to continue pouring dead american bodies into the Iraq quagmire, and that folks, is so un-cool that you could roast a pig in it.
man, this thread really brought out the libertarian extremists.
Putting it into small words for the libertarian extremists out there and those pondering their words:
a libertarian extremist is someone who argues economic policies based on one simple rule: they don't like the government. But there's a sub-rule that is what defines them as "extremists": they don't want the government doing certain things so badly that they don't care what carnage they create to get the government out of doing it.
From a game theory point of view, someone interested in figuring out the best economic policy might look at the plusses and minuses of fiat money versus money based on, just say, gold.
fiat money: economy good, +5
gold standard: economy bad, -5
And then they'd choose fiat money.
libertarian extremists aren't pushing economic policies based on game theory that compare the outcomes of economic policies, but rather comparing their own personal distaste for government involvement compared to their personal fantasy of laissez-faire.
Fiat money: government bad -5
gold standard: no government, good, +5
To the gold bugs out there, how many nations are on an actual full out gold standard?
NONE
If the gold standard is indeed better than fiat money, then the only way to explain the fact that every government on the planet is using fiat money is some massive grand conspiracy among a secretive international banking agency with hitmen and budgets that outweigh any country.
It requires pure, unadulterated conspiracy theory to explain it. ANd while you will avoid defending the conspiracy theory, you will continue to defend the premise that requires a conspiracy theory to be true.
Would we all be living in mansions if we had been on the gold standard the last couple of decades? No. Would we all be driving cadillacs, smoking cigars, and wearing bling-bling like it was nothing? No. And yet the gold bugs and gold nuts promise infinite riches if we would just convert to the gold standard.
from how to ask good skeptical questions:
1) How reliable is the source of the claim?
not very.
2) does the source make similar claims?
The gold bug almost universially embraces all libertarian policies. Not because libertarians are economic and political geniuses but because they hate government. So they support any claim that gets rid of government.
3) have the claims been verified by someone else?
No. Every country is currently on fiat money.
4) Does this (claim) fit with the way the world works?
No. economic studies have indicated that during the Great Depression the downturn was spread worldwide by the rigidities of the Gold Standard, and suspending gold convertibility that started the recovery.
5) Has anyone tried to disprove (falsify) this claim?
no. everyone is on a fiat system.
6) Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
the preponderance of evidence points to FIAT MONEY as being far superior to GOLD STANDARDS when economies go sour.
7) Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
hell no.
8) Is the claim providing positive evidence?
No, they mostly just don't like the gummint.
9) Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
No, they cherry pick data that fits their theory and ignore vast quantities of data that conflicts with their theory.
10) Are personal beliefs driving the claim?
Good grief, YES!!! Gold bugs hate the government. THey don't care about economics or know about economics. Given a choice between government involvement in some realm and no government involvement in that realm, they will chose "no government involvement", no matter what the effects of that decision is on the rest of hte world.
Gold bugs fail all ten skeptical questions.
Style
(Uhh .. #previewfail)
Style<Substance
@ #42.
ya because we are all americans here right? do you even know where this site is hosted?
and since when does thinking the president looks cool equate to being patriotic?
pls stp wth yr mrnfscsm.
Blue,
If you use the less than sign rather than coding it in, you invoke html. If you preview it, you have to go back to submit.
Gold bugs hate the government. THey don't care about economics or know about economics. Given a choice between government involvement in some realm and no government involvement in that realm, they will chose "no government involvement", no matter what the effects of that decision is on the rest of hte world.
Let's suppose I was someone who didn't know much about the economy, but I was able to read the words written above. I would conclude that from what you've said that the government is heavily involved in the economy. I would go home to ponder this further, and then suddenly remember that I can't because the bank foreclosed on my house. Right about then I might have a thought about how the economy ain't so shit hot, and that "government involvement" seems rather ineffective.
You don't think folks hate the government for no reason at all do you?
The presidency is a difficult job, period.
The office of the President is no place for idealists. Bush 43 ended up annoying a great many on the Right because he didn't stand up for principles and backing that got him in to office. We have this thing called the real world, however. And like Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama has to deal with it too. He has to compromise on his ideals because of the reality on the ground.
The job really does suck. You couldn't pay me enough money for me and my family to live with it for just four years.
Mr. Obama is just a man with a terrible job to do. I don't revere him. I don't envy him. I simply hope he does his best to meet the reality on the ground with the most pragmatic, logical, and careful attitude he can muster.
The gushing praise or sloganeering hatred aren't particularly helpful. Measured, thoughtful, and dispassionate criticism is what moves this country forward.
clockwork (orange?)
"do you even know where this site is hosted?"
Irrelevant. The post is about the president of the US by a citizen of the US.
"since when does thinking the president looks cool equate to being patriotic?"
It doesn't, it's the other way around. I feel a sense of pride and admiration that my country has been able to lift itself even a little after centuries of discrimination and slavery to elect a black man to it's highest office. So when I look at these pics I transfer those feelings onto them.
Don't you feel proud of what we've accomplished?
to #48:
so far you are the only one making a reference to gold in the entire comments section. i don't see how anyone criticizing the Obama administration immediately becomes a libertarian who craves a gold standard no matter the consequences.
i hate the idea of warantless surveilance, but have no great expertise in economics. does that make me a libertarian extremist?
there are nuances to individuals that you will encounter if you engage them individually, instead of grouping them together simply to cut them down.
AB3A, it's so rare that I agree so strongly with someone. Can I come over?
Heavy on the Starch, interesting. But how does your system generate working capital, without income tax?
@#20:
You mean like the election of 1828? When Andrew Jackson was elected to the presidency because he was cool? And then he killed a bunch of Indians?
Seriously, William Henry Harrison's main campaign point in 1840 is that he drunk hard cider, you know, you know, like regular people did, despite the fact that he was a member of the über-eletist Whig party. Grant and Harding were extremely political inept but nonetheless electable because of their coolness.
Please stop romanticizing a past that doesn't exist.
Change will come,
Or so it seems,
Eventually,
Defer your dreams
US elections are always popularity contests. How many people have actually read a platform or position paper from the parties or candidates? One percent of one percent of the electorate?
Get rid of the DoAG? You'd let the food producers self-regulate, then? That's kind of junk.
@38: Sure, over time we've made strides as far as civil rights for women, african-americans, and now hopefully gays. You can also look at how far we've come as a country in technology, workers rights, etc in 100 years, and its pretty remarkable.
However, being complacent and accepting of our government isn't a good thing. I think we should always be informed, and critical of things that need to change. Being put on secretive no-fly lists for protesting isn't a good thing, but neither was McCarythism... point is NO President/Administration will make everybody happy, but if we are critical and voice our concerns then hopefully some of it sticks and we can continue making this country better.
@60
I'm an independent voter, I vote both ways, I look at all the issues and the candidates websites etc. But you are right, the presidential election is a media-frenzied popularity contest. I think people should really be more concerned with their local government, as most people don't read the issues at all, and mostly vote based on party.
How many people have actually read a platform or position paper from the parties or candidates?
--Raises hand--
but what do I know, I worked for Nader with the exact hope that Gore would lose to an idiot
JUST so we'd get a (D) as good as Obama.
Of course he's COOL. . . he smokes cigarettes!
Just got back from France. He's still like a rock star there. I saw more Obama shirts there than here in the states.
However, being complacent and accepting of our government isn't a good thing.
I'm quite happy to rip the government as many new assholes as you'd like. But I do acknowledge that personal liberties have been increasing for the majority of people, in a sort of spastic ebb and flow way, for several millennia.
I don't think he even looks cool.
Yeah, it's great we've got an African-American in the White House. Aren't we just splendid to have elected him?
Trouble is, he's the wrong damn African-American.
Gonna be a long time before we can elect another one.
This time around, we should have gone with Hillary.
Wow, what a depressing discussion.
The way I see it, I had choices at the election, I made the best choice I could at that time and I'll see how it plays out over the next couple years. If I like the outcomes, I'll keep him. If I don't like the outcome, I'll choose someone else. Until then, I'll stop bitching about it because there's close to nothing I can actually accomplish with complaining except pissing everyone off and putting myself in a bad mood.
Yeah, it's great we've got an African-American in the White House.
I thought that his strength coming into office wasn't his race, but the fact that he was a constitutional law professor.That seemed like a better recommendation than an egregiously bad fighter pilot. So far, I'm underwhelmed.
As has been said: less than 7 months into the presidency, folks.
So far, he's made some great calls, rescinded some legislation that was ABHORRENT, and also some (what seemed to be) poor ones.
He's had to do a lot of compromising. And let's face it: for a country as divided as this one is, along moral and other lines, that's necesary.
Because he's said it all along: he's trying to represent EVERYONE, not just one side or another. Unfortunately, he ends up with a lot of backlash from one side or another when he does something they really dislike.
Very hard position to hold.
Comes down to this: give him the benefit of the doubt for a while, at least.
At the end of four years, cast your vote one way or another. That will be his judgement.
Considering the amount of hype and hope that surrounded his election to the Presidency, I have to say that I'm rather .... unimpressed so far.
Of course NOBODY could live up to ALL the hype and hope... But still
sigh
Ermott
@#48
man, this thread really brought out the person who's every comment seems to be an anti-libertarian rant.
Which comments before yours had anything to do with the mini-essay that you just wrote? A search for "gold" turns up nothing, so where exactly are these "libertarian extremists" that you write of?
The funny thing is that I was originally going to share my "extreme" libertarian view that Obama's nod of approval towards torture and increased spreading of war are not "cool", but now I somehow feel compelled to defend the gold standard instead.
I appreciate your regular attempts to deconstruct every single argument with trivia you learned in Logic 101, but it hurts my brain to see how your own arguments consistently neglect the simplest variables, like say, history... or facts.
fiat money: economy good, +5
gold standard: economy bad, -5
And then they'd choose fiat money.
Seriously? People choose the thing that says the word "good" and has the most points? Game theory is hella smart.
But here's the rub. Your arbitrary value of +5 is not based on history.. or fact. You just made it up, Greg. You go on to attempt to substantiate your ridiculous point system with your vacuous knowledge of history, economics, and the other side's argument. Let's break it down, point by point.
To the gold bugs out there, how many nations are on an actual full out gold standard?
NONE
And this proves that fiat money is better how? If you took history into account, you would find that most nations were on the gold standard not very long ago. In fact, America was once on the gold standard, Greg, and the dollar was worth several fold what it is worth now.
If the gold standard is indeed better than fiat money, then the only way to explain the fact that every government on the planet is using fiat money is some massive grand conspiracy among a secretive international banking agency with hitmen and budgets that outweigh any country.
No "theory" necessary, Greg.
The Federal Reserve IS secretive. Our own government does not even have the right to audit their spending and procedures. Their members are not even democratically elected.
The Federal Reserve DOES have hit men. Try creating and distributing your own competing currency and you will soon be confronted with this fact. No, they aren't shady snipers lurking around each corner: They are public law enforcement officers, who's job it is to protect the central banking system. Once again, no theory involved.
The Federal Reserve's budget DOES outweigh any country's because it in fact IS the budget for any country. The dollar is the reserve currency for the entire world, and it is completely controlled and distributed by the Fed, a private bank. Do you disagree that the Fed controls our currency, or that it is a private bank free of government oversight or representative decision making? If so, can you provide any historical or factual evidence to prove your point?
I can.
Would we all be living in mansions if we had been on the gold standard the last couple of decades? No.
Your answer is based on what evidence?
Would we all be driving cadillacs, smoking cigars, and wearing bling-bling like it was nothing? No.
Your answer is based on what evidence? Did you visit an alternate reality in which we tried the gold standard the last couple of decades and found out that we don't all live in mansions, drive cadillacs, and wear bling-bling? Say it aint so, Greg!
And yet the gold bugs and gold nuts promise infinite riches if we would just convert to the gold standard.
NO WE DO NOT. Here is a golden example of your complete and shameless ignorance of the argument you are trying to disprove. The argument for the gold standard is that gold does not experience the hyperinflation and deflation that fiat money does. The value of gold remains stable. No informed "gold nut" would tell you that it will miraculously increase in value and provide infinite riches, yet this is the very argument being made for fiat money (see: Paul Krugman ).
The argument against fiat money is that unlike gold, fiat money does experience radical shifts in value, a phenomenon known as the business cycle. Massive amounts of cash are pumped into the world and we temporarily experience a boom in spending, then the increased amount of cash results in a devaluation of the currency and we experience recession. Bubbles blow up, bubbles pop. Boom, Bust, Boom, Bust. Do you disagree with this idea that multiplying the amount of dollars in circulation decreases the value of those dollars? If so, can you provide any economic evidence to prove your point?
Let's take a look at your answers to those good skeptical questions, but this time, let's consider the real argument for a gold standard instead of your imagined one.
1) How reliable is the source of the claim?
not very.
Your answer is based on what evidence? Are readers here to assume your answer is true just because you say so?
2) does the source make similar claims?
The gold bug almost universially embraces all libertarian policies. Not because libertarians are economic and political geniuses but because they hate government. So they support any claim that gets rid of government.
Your answer is based on what evidence? Libertarians are not economic geniuses because you say they aren't? I'm not sure what objective measure you are using to reach this conclusion, but perhaps you mean to write that libertarians are not economic scholars. If that is the case, I can point you to hundreds of texts on economics written by libertarian professors and professionals. In fact, Libertarianism as a philosophy is entirely based in economics- the free exchange of private property.
Seriously, were you drunk when you wrote this stuff?
3) have the claims been verified by someone else?
No. Every country is currently on fiat money.
Once again you neglect to factor history into your answer. The key word you use is "currently". The claims of the gold standard argument have been verified in the past, and a quick glance at the value of the gold standard dollar compared to the value of our current fiat currency substantially proves the "gold bug" claim that fiat money rapidly decreases in value.
Here's a tool to help you verify this radical claim that fiat banking has decreased the value of money. Set the initial year to the last year we were on a 100% gold standard. Do you know when that was, Greg?
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
4) Does this (claim) fit with the way the world works?
No. economic studies have indicated that during the Great Depression the downturn was spread worldwide by the rigidities of the Gold Standard, and suspending gold convertibility that started the recovery.
Which economic studies? You are aware that the Great Depression occurred shortly after the establishment of the Federal Reserve, right? You do realize that we went off of the 100% gold standard and introduced fractional reserve banking shortly before the crisis, right? You do realize that it took more than a decade for American employment to recover, despite introducing massive amounts of fiat money into the system during the New Deal?
Right?
Has anyone tried to disprove (falsify) this claim?
no. everyone is on a fiat system.
Aren't you trying to disprove the claim right now? The fact that everyone is on the fiat system now should count as an attempt to disprove the gold proponent's claim that fiat banking is unstable.
6) Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
the preponderance of evidence points to FIAT MONEY as being far superior to GOLD STANDARDS when economies go sour.
Didn't you just write that no one has tried to disprove (falsify) the gold standard claim because "everyone is on a fiat system"? How can you possibly use that same reasoning to argue that the evidence points to fiat money being superior? We have no way of knowing, Greg. I mean, everyone is on a fiat system, so there is no way to compare the two, cause we totally can't verify or falsify the gold standard claims. Remember when you wrote that?
Of course I do actually believe that we can compare fiat currency and gold currency, but it requires that we look at historical examples. I've already provided my historical argument for gold (the value of the gold dollar compared to the present fiat dollar). What historical evidence can you provide for your counter-argument?
7) Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
hell no.
I think I will put as much effort into my rebuttal here as you put into your original answer.
8) Is the claim providing positive evidence?
No, they mostly just don't like the gummint.
Your answer is based on what evid... Oh, yeah, a lazy and overused stereotype.
9) Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
No, they cherry pick data that fits their theory and ignore vast quantities of data that conflicts with their theory.
Your answer is based on what evidence? No, seriously, please point me to a solid example of Austrian economists cherry picking data. Not because I don't think you can find it, but because I want you to actually read something by an actual Austrian economist for the first time in your life.
I actually do agree with your answer to this question. The proponents of the new theory (fiat banking, which has existed in America for less than a century) do cherry pick their data when accounting for the phenomena of the old theory (gold reserve banking, which was the standard of the entire world for ages).
10) Are personal beliefs driving the claim?
Good grief, YES!!! Gold bugs hate the government. THey don't care about economics or know about economics. Given a choice between government involvement in some realm and no government involvement in that realm, they will chose "no government involvement", no matter what the effects of that decision is on the rest of hte world.
"THey don't care about economics or know about economics." ?!?!?!
OMFG. You're kidding me, right?
http://mises.org/literature.aspx?action=austrian
http://jim.com/econ/
Gold bugs fail all ten skeptical questions.
No comment.
I look forward to your response to my argument, in which I expect, per usual, you will not respond to a single one of my points with a straight answer, and instead claim to not know what I mean by the word "is", use the terms "red herring" and "straw man" as if you have a tourette's tick, and insist that my form of questioning is similar to asking "When did you stop beating your wife?".
@48 GregLondon: You say that there are only two reasons all countries have a Fiat money system: 1) It's a good idea 2) Diabolical banking conspiracy.
And yet, pretty much all countries in the world adopt various policies that pretty much every sane person agrees are horrible. Such as "War on Drugs" style drug policies, the first instance that comes to mind. Clearly, they don't work, and they damage the welfare of society. And yet, more or less (especially with "hard drugs"), EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD adopts these awful, harmful policies.
So..is it because of a conspiracy? Perhaps. We do live in an age of economic empire, after all, with huge financial pressure put to bear on smaller governments - and leaders are humans too, who want to seem like they're fitting in with other leaders and doing the "accepted" thing.
==================================
I don't know exactly who you are replying to, but I assume it's the person above you. I think there is a great argument to be made against central concentration of power. Department of Education - a beauracracy in DC that makes rules that local schools must follow. That's it's main purposes - if it was abolished, schools would still teach the same as ever, except they would be more free to experiment. Dept. of Ag - an organization whose main purpose now is transferring money from taxpayers to agricultural corporations.
As for me, I abhor violence and coercion. I think that murdering someone who has not aggressed against you is always bad 100% of the time. I'm rather inflexible on the point.
Government, as it exists in the world today, is an entity that cannot exist without violence. If you do not pay taxes, and continue to go about your business, you will eventually be shot to death. If you try to put produce an alternate currency (which is really the best solution to Fiat currencies - competing currencies each based on the reputation of the backer, one fiat government and others private and asset based somehow), and continue in the face of orders to stop, well, you will eventually be shot to death.
With the existence of the Income Tax, if your country is engaged in illegal wars or destructive behaviour, it is impossible to survive or earn a livelihood without having blood on your hands, even if you actively avoid using government services.
Thus, while I feel it has some purposes (which are best localized, where the government and the governered can meet and discuss face to face), government is the most dangerous type of organization in the world today. No other type of organization, even the most despicable corporation has managed to straight out murder millions of people (although you could argue that Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, or big pharma is vying for this title).
==============================
What the Fiat currencies give the government, in effect, is a blank check to spend as much as is desired without having to raise the tax rate. The citizens pay for it down the line through higher consumer prices.
If the government is somehow completely fair, just, prudent, and uncorrupted, this can theoretically be a good thing in times of crisis. However, if the government is corrupt, it can be a very bad thing. Historically, the reason the gold standard was set aside was to allow states to fund massive wars. We first went off it during WWI, and finally abandoned it during the Vietnam War.
Surveying a landscape that sees the treasury department full of wall street executives and lobbyists, the military industrial complex just as greedy and bloodthirtsy as ever, and a sea of hungry parasitical corporations from pharma, agri, homeland security, intelligence, prisons, etc. etc. swelling at the gates of the capitol building with their hats in their hands, it seems like a reasonable impulse to want to cut off the flow of cash.
===================================
An argument can be made that reckless deregulation caused the financial crisis - allowing CDOs and CDSs to go willy nilly with no rules whatsoever. An argument can equally be made that it was government interference - fiat currency and artificial lowering of the interest rate in the early 2000s that inflated the bubble and caused the pop, Freddie and Fannie using their government backing to legitimatize CMOs to investors, as well as the moral hazard created by the Wall Street heavies assuming they could make reckless bets and they would eventually be bailed out if they failed. I believe that both sides have some validity.
On a side note, you might want to go read a book on game theory. A game theory grid is meaningless without two players and four outcomes. I might note that we have a fiat currency now and the economy doesn't seem to be so "good"...
"Which comments before yours had anything to do with the mini-essay that you just wrote?"
Susannah Breslin made a fairly innocent post about how proud she is of her president. Then we had a few people who just HAD to shit on that. Libertarians are over represented on the internet. Probably because of the nature of the medium and how it came to be. Nevertheless it's a fringe belief system that has little respect in the larger world. For good reason.
To bring this somewhat back on topic, for many years now we've tried the libertarian way and we had a succession federal reserve chairman who were staunch free market advocates. What happened? We crashed the global economy to the tune of several trillion dollars.
Obama has been in office 6 months and has enacted mild Keynesian reform. What happened? We avoided total collapse and the data points of the last 3-4 months indicate the economy is bottoming. In addition, the leading economic indicators tell us the possibility of recovery is very high.
Libertarian thought is economic creationism.
Wow you guys are angry about a whole lot of tangentially related things.
Great photos.
@74 Noen: First, it's absurd to say that the head of a supremely powerful corporate/state instutition like the Fed can possibly be Libertarian. Mr. Greenspan was a gold standard proponent earlier in his career. When he got into the Fed, he forgot all about that. He lowered interest rates low enough in the early 2000s as to encourage a bubble. This wasn't solely responsibly, but it played a key role.
Your assertation assumes that it was solely the result of the free market. In fact, as I outlined in the last paragraph of my post above, a convincing point can be made that government meddling played an important part.
On another point, I think you are miscontruing the post itself. She merely said he "looks pretty cool in pretty much every picture". You are projecting your own feelings here, that this equates to "pride" - Personally, being of the opinion that Obama is a shill for Wall Street who is complicit with Bush in one of the largest financial crimes in world history (the various bailouts-along with the cap and trade system, which will be a unprecedented boon for Goldman Sachs et al), I would call that "damning with faint praise."
Libertarians aren't right about everything, but I challenge you to find anyone else who was saying anything this prescient back in 2002, especially on the house floor:
http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-26/ron-paul-on-the-housing-bubble-july-2002/
(Incidentally, compare this to what the canonized Krugman stated just a month before, "Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." - http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html?ref=patrick.net Unfortunately, Greenspan followed this advice...)
Yeah, I know I overstated Krugman's statement. But instead of warning of the dangers of a bubble, he was saying that that was the best hope the Fed had to boost the economy - he refers to a new bubble as the "grounds for optimism".
It does sum up the Keynesian ideology well - borrow money, postpone the problem for a few years, and it will all be easier to deal with then.
Incidentally, sorry for getting so off topic here.
I'm just sad that he's the best we could do.
Greenspan was a close personal friend and disciple of Ayn Rand herself, the Libertarian Messiah. She stood beside him as he took the oath of office to join the Ford administration. *The Age of Turbulence* is sprinkled with his name-dropping of Rand and his assertions of dedication to the ideals of Libertarianism and laissez-faire economic theory. Saying "he was the head of the Fed, so he couldn't have been a Libertarian" is just denial.
I think what we have here is a failure of imagination, which is probably the inevitable consequence of looking at issues along a one-dimensional axis (left/right, libertarian/socialist, what have you). In t he US just about every political discussion takes place on a single axis, and it shows in the things people say and the options they adopt.
The simple fact of the matter is that this isn't a a binary choice between fiat and gold-backed currencies.
There are many other options out there, and some of these have been employed very successfully during certain historic periods (for example, several "emergency currencies" were issued during the Great Depression, and they worked so well they ended up being outlawed, for they were in essence Local Exchange Trading Systems and conflicted with the centralization agenda of the New Deal).
Fiat-based currencies suck because they are mathematically defined to grow exponentially, necessitating growth that is unsustainable in the long-term and forcing an increasing monetization of everything, from "natural resources" to people's time. But gold-backed currencies aren't some magical panacea, aren't somehow "more real."
But there are many options out there, such as the Local Exchange Trading Systems which are being experimentally implemented in several areas. Demurrage-based currencies also have many interesting attributes. Unfortunately, people have bought into the binary dialectic too deeply to really think about these issues.
And he speaks English correctly too! Bonus!
I am very, very disappointed with what he's done vs. what he said he'd do.
"At least he's not Bush/Palin/etc." is not going to cut it for me. I pushed people into voting for him because I BELIEVED that he said he was going to end some of the most egregious Bushco policies and he hasn't even TRIED. The wiretapping, endless war, corporate welfare...it's all a really painful kick to the nuts for someone who let their cynical guard down for a man who seemed to truly want to make things different.
dstntmbrk@72: A search for "gold" turns up nothing, so where exactly are these "libertarian extremists" that you write of?
heavystarch@46
1. get US military off of foreign soil
2. phase out Social Security.
3. Get rid of Personal Income tax
4. no more fiat silly money printed by the fed.
Wow. I'm impressed. You searched and searched and looked all through this thread and couldn't find a single libertarian extremist. I can only assume that's because there's no libertarian position that you think is too extreme.
To those reading along and have not yet drunk the koolaid, go back and read all the policy changes proposed by heavystarch @46, and while you're reading it, ask yourself what do these proposals all have in common?
Are they all separate, different, unrelated policies that just happen to make the list? Or is there a single ideological theme under all of them?
Well, let's see what dstntmbrk said about the fed in his own post:
The Federal Reserve IS secretive. ... Their members are not even democratically elected. ... The Federal Reserve DOES have hit men. ... The Federal Reserve's budget DOES outweigh any country's because it in fact IS the budget for any country.
Anyone notice a theme? A distrust of government? Conspiracy? Anyone notice that dstntmbrk's comments are almost entirely negative evidence? The comments are almost entirely attacks on his conspiracy evils of fiat money rather than being evidence showing how the gold standard would be better?
dstntmbrk isn't explaining why the gold standard would be better than fiat money from an economic sense. He's explaining why the gold standard would be better than his conspiracy theory riddled view of the federal reserve. In his view, the federal reserve is evil, so anything that gets rid of the fed must be an improvement.
Compare this to heavystarch who wants to get rid of social security, get rid of income tax, and get rid of fiat money. See a pattern? The government is evil, so anything that gets rid of the government is good.
And what does zyodei@73 say? there is a great argument to be made against central concentration of power.
exactly
This is the game theory decision making of libertarian extremists: anything that has power over me is bad. Anything that removes that power is good. zyodei makes this very argument in his next sentence.
Department of Education - a beauracracy in DC that makes rules that local schools must follow. That's it's main purposes - if it was abolished, schools would still teach the same as ever, except they would be more free to experiment.
Notice it isn't about what educational policies are good and which are bad. it isn't about class sizes, teacher training, school curiculum, student testing, or anything like that.
No. zyodei's choice is made from a completely different axis: Federal standards for education are bad because they're Federal. i.e. the less centralization we have in policy making, the better, no matter the circumstances.
Let's continue that to its logical end. State level educational standards are bad because they're centralized at the state level. Town level standards might be bad because they're centralized at the town level. What we should do is have every individual parent decide how to teach their kids. Get rid of any government educational standards, because they're centralized, and every parent will homeschool their kids.
The libertarian extremist is driven by ideological motives (any authority over me is evil) to the point that they make their decisions solely on whether it gets rid of authority over them or maintains it.
And zyodei's argument about the department of education is a stellar example of this kind of thinking. Get rid of the Department of Education, get rid of federal standards, because individuals will always make the right educational decisions for their children if the bureaucrats and gummint would just leave them alone. It isn't about the merits and demerits of any particualr policy, its about a rabid hatred of anyone telling them what to do.
dstntmbrk invokes as proof of the evils of the Federal Reserve: Their members are not even democratically elected. Built into this argument is the premise that any authority over me is evil. Except it's built into the US Constitution that the Judicary be held apart from elections. We don't want judges to be deciding cases based on what is the most popular position. We want them deciding cases based on law. But do we hear dstntmbrk arguing that teh Supreme Court judges are not, horrors, democratically elected?
The original use of the phrase was "Laissez-nous faire" which means "Leave us be", let us do it without any intervention at all.
That's all this is. It has nothing to do with which policy is better, but which policy lets the libertarian extremist to get the gummint to let them be, let them do it on their own. And then, the libertarian extremist will promise, order will spontaneously emerge out of chaos. Centralized authority only impedes the invisible hand from finding the best solution on it's own.
Sorry, but this one just made me chuckle:
zyodei@73: Government, as it exists in the world today, is an entity that cannot exist without violence. If you do not pay taxes, and continue to go about your business, you will eventually be shot to death.
really? Shot to death? A lot of executions by firing squad in the US that I haven't heard about?
Hey, dstntmbrk, can you see a "libertarian extermist" now???
Great photos. I agree with others who say there hasn't been enough time yet in office for President Obama to be judged so critically. Time will tell...but for now, as a parent of a student who is studying outside the U.S., I feel like to the rest of the world, for us to elect Obama it shows we aren't ALL a bunch of gas guzzling, gun totin, righteous, smirky A-holes here in America. And that is a very good thing for the future. (and for Americans abroad)
I never liked Bush, but I am patriotic enough that I never openly slammed him and I gave him the benefit of the doubt as a person and a leader. He WAS my president, even if I didn't vote for him. I wish the republicans I know would have the graciousness to do the same. We are all still Americans.
The man plays well with the camera. Such a nice change. The fact he always looks so collected and clean brings to mind the first Kennedy-Nixon debate.
And I hate how people saddle the president with all the moaning about change. He's our nation's figurehead, and he's powerful. I'm not denying that. But sweeping political change in a system of checks and balances over multiple branches of government? Usually that involves a revolution of some sort to bypass the system. Not what I'm in line for.
Political discussion is great, even some hardheaded lambasting can be a little productive. Just start aiming it. Find local political groups or form your own. Contact your elected officials, get them on board, or at least let them know you exist. Get in touch companies and other large organizations. Let them know what you think of their policies. And whoever gives me the obligitory "That doesn't work!", try and find some paitence and some support for yourself and your cause. I'd start here, we've got some wonderfully opinionated Boingers who seem friendly enough.
Wow, if folks can slog through all the essays on economics, maybe they'll will see a few little posts down here on the bottom...
Mark Twain, “Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it.”
I'm pleased to feel hopeful again, to feel a bit of pride in our country. I know that's not quite enough, but it's something, and that's better than what the last eight years brought us, by far.
I admire the man and MOST of what he's trying to do. And he does look pretty cool, instead of creepy and sneaky. It's not a flaw.
Boy this conversation has turned to shit.
I'm not reading all the garbage about the gold standard, because it's OFF TOPIC in this thread, which is about Obama. Specifically about how Obama LOOKS, but never mind.
The gold standard is off-topic in a discussion about Obama because Obama does not have the power to return us to the gold standard. In fact, even if all the countries in the world agreed, we COULD NOT return to the gold standard, because THERE ISN'T THAT MUCH GOLD IN THE WORLD.
I'm not reading all the garbage about the gold standard, because it's OFF TOPIC in this thread, which is about Obama.
Almnost like people were trying to disrupt any sort of appreciation of the man and derail the conversation.
@ GREGLONDON
Hey, dstntmbrk, can you see a "libertarian extermist" now???
Greg, you just opened my eyes! It only took a few hundred words for you to prove that libertarians do not like centralized power. Really? This is what we libertarians have been arguing the whole time? That we don't like government intervention? I can't believe you figured it out! Good job, dude!
The Federal Reserve IS secretive. ... Their members are not even democratically elected. ... The Federal Reserve DOES have hit men. ... The Federal Reserve's budget DOES outweigh any country's because it in fact IS the budget for any country.
Anyone notice a theme?
I do notice a theme, Greg. You took out all the sentences where I verified my statements with positive evidence and replaced them with "...". Do you seriously think that people who see this butchered quote will not scroll up to read what I actually wrote? The common theme that I see in this and every argument you make on this site is 'Intellectually Lazy Coward'.
Are you completely incapable of having an actual dialog with another human being? When normal, healthy, non-cowards communicate, Greg, they acknowledge each others arguments, respond to questions, and ask questions of their own. None of this will do for you. In every dialog we have had on this site, you have yet to answer a single one of my questions or provide a single counter-argument to any of my points. Why? Because you have no answers, you intellectually lazy coward.
It's not too late to actually learn information, Greg, but you'll have to make time for it. Just put down that copy of the only book you have ever read, Fool Yourself Into Feeling Superior: Dehumanizing People With Stereotypes, Caricatures, and Other Avoidance Strategies for the Intellectually Lazy Coward, and read a history text.
I will give you an assignment to get you started, because it can be hard to know where to begin when trying something new (like actually defending what you believe in instead of cutting every one else down like an intellectually lazy coward). Here's the assignment:
Reply to posts 72, 73, 76, 78
Using these tools of communication:
* Answers to all questions. (Don't worry Greg. The questions aren't bad vodoo. They will not trick you into saying something you don't mean to say. You can use as many words as you like to answer, and you can even do research first! I believe in you, man. You can answer questions if you really put your mind to it!)
* Counter-arguments that utilize contrary information and facts from history and the sciences. Provide counter arguments to every point that your opponents make.
* Questions for the opposite side.
and without using these avoidance strategies from the Intellectually Lazy Coward's Toolkit:
* Nit-picking the structure of your opponent's argument while avoiding it's content.
* Psychological profiling of your opponent.
* Stereotyping the lifestyle, social class, or reasoning ability of you opponent.
* Assuming that if a person argues one thing, they are inherently arguing for another thing.
* The catchall terms "gummint", "tin foil hat", or "conspiracy theory".
Of course I know that an intellectually lazy coward like yourself will never complete a single part of this assignment, Greg. You are the Dwight Schrute of BoingBoing: an adolescent boy's blind respect for hierarchy, and an absurd arrogance built upon nothing.
dstntmbrk, are you made of pure irony?
If you believe you are right (and don't we all?), state your case, but keep the insults to yourself. Personal attacks are uncalled for, and just make the rest of us think that you're the jerk here. Play nice, or go away.
zyodei
"@74 Noen: First, it's absurd to say that the head of a supremely powerful corporate/state instutition like the Fed can possibly be Libertarian."
HAHAHAHA!!! The man says he is a Libertarian, how is it absurd then to take him at his word? He formally apologized to Congress and to the world for his errors, grounded in Libertarian thought, that created the recent financial collapse.
"Your assertation assumes that it was solely the result of the free market. In fact, as I outlined in the last paragraph of my post above, a convincing point can be made that government meddling played an important part."
You have made no arguments at all, you just say stuff and expect people to believe you. My assertion is that repeal of Glass-Stegal was the primary reason. And no, Ron Paul was hardly the only one to say anything.
boingboing quoting from this article from the 1999 NY Times:
" ...Consumer groups and civil rights advocates criticized the legislation for being a sop to the nation's biggest financial institutions. They say that it fails to protect the privacy interests of consumers and community lending standards for the disadvantaged and that it will create more problems than it solves.
The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.
"I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.""
The consensus from that google search above is that repeal of Glass-Steagall, deregulation, was responsible for the recent crash. Further evidence should be obvious: the years leading up to the great depression were riddled with boom-bust cycles that significantly disrupted the economy. After it was passed we enjoyed a long period free from the nightmare market crashes every few years. Then we stupidly repealed it and lo! within a very few years we collapse the global economy.
The lesson is obvious to most people today but not for some. Some people cling to an ideology for non-rational reasons. Often those reasons have more to do with accepting authority than with "economics" as Greg points out. To be fair here, I have seen this on the far Left as well as the Right. These unresolved Oedipal issues lie at the root but how it all plays out is different for many people. My honest opinion is that lots of people sure could use some soul searching, and I include myself in that too.
@greg london. Well, first, the firing squad. No, there aren't any firing squads. But yes, there are a slew of police shootings. To be correct, I should have replaced "shot" with "shot or thrown in a cage". Or, be physically removed from your house at gunpoint, etc. In short - have violenced inflicted on you.
If you persist in going about your business as if the government didn't exist, you will not be shunned from the community, you will not have services denied to you that you are not paying for- no, you will simply have your life and/or freedom of movement and/or dwelling removed. That's the logical conclusion. Call me what you like, but do you deny that the current system is based at every level on implicit threats of violence?
Let me modify your line: With a few exceptions, authority over me, that I have not in some way acquiesced to or called on myself by harming another, is a fundamental evil.
The primary exception to this are the natural laws that are laid out in all religions and understood by all small children: you should not hurt others, and there must be some social mechanisms in place to prevent people from harming each other.
But it's all turned around in our society. In order to live in America today, you must pay your token into the military murder machine. Call it conspiratorial if you like, but a spade's a spade: the U.S. government has spent the better part of the last two hundred years consistently killing a vast number of people, certainly many millions, at home and abroad. In order to be a legally accepted member of society, you must financially support this. To me this is morally abhorrent, and it is really a black and white issue. If a man lives as a saint for 99 years and on his last day shoots another man, he will forever be remembered as a murderer.
I was a liberal Democrat for most of my life. It is only rather recently that I have concluded that a solid majority of the federal government's actions fall on the continuum of unintentional harm, through a combination of unintended consequences and the incomplete information that plagues top down system, to black evil. If Jeffrey Dahmer set up an organization to feed homeless children, would you forget he was a murderer?
But I don't mean to be too negative. Here's a positive argument: whenever possible, government should be on a local level, where people have the opportunity to discuss things in a human way. Looking each other in the face and coming to consensus. Refusal to participate should lead to ostracism and not receiving the fruits of the group endeavour.
You can't state that I am only making negative arguments by denying the substance of any positive ones. I note you did not bother to rebut my suggestion that instead of a pure gold standard, or pure fiat currency, we legalize a system of competing currencies, each of which is backed by it's own unique guarantee of value. A belief in local solutions and human potential is indeed a positive argument. I suppose a resistance to violence is a negative argument - but isn't it the most fundamental one?
In general, I trust individuals. They aren't perfect, but from my own life experience, I believe that people are inherently good. When people exist in more and more highly organized structures of control, they forget this inherent goodness and it is replaced with what they feel are their obligations. Corporations, government, armies, it doesn't matter. The obligations of
soldiers to kill, the obligations of politicians to satisfy their contributors, the obligations of executives to slash and burn to maximize shareholder profit. Top down, hierarchical organisations seem to kill the humanity in their members.
So, yes, I absolutely believe that our education would be better with more and more local decision making, experimentation, and control. People are generally rational beings, and most people will want their children to have the best opportunities possible. Left to their own devices, the vast majority of people will come together and form or support innovative schools that they think will best train their children for the world. To believe otherwise would require a tremendous lack of faith in humanity as a whole.
Whatever your philosophy, to argue that public education as a whole has gotten better in the 30 or so years since the Dept. of Education was founded is a fools errand.
Indeed, order DOES emerge out of chaos. Look at the Internet - it might have it's share of crackpots, you probably count me among their number, but aside from some basic technical standards, there has been a tremendous level of order and productivity that has emerged from a highly chaotic system. I believe that you underestimate the collective intelligence of human beings.
What I want in life is, indeed, to be free to raise my family, fulfil my purpose in the world, earn honest pay for honest labor, help as many other people as I possibly can in whatever way I can - and do all of this without being forced to harm any other humans or creatures. I want to voluntarily join associations to best fulfil all four of these primary objectives. I want to live in peace in the highest sense of the world. This is what freedom means to me, and this is what I believe to be the highest state of human beings. Why you seek to vilify this, I do not understand.
@Noen 93: Thank you for that interesting clip. I don't deny that Glass-Steagal and the deregulation of the CDS and CDO market was an important contributing factor. The argument I made was that it is not as cut and dry as that, there are other factors too, which I outlined briefly above. For instance, it doesn't seem like too big of a stretch that the biggest wall street players, who had been spraying money all around, figured that if they screwed up they would end up getting bailed out.
More to the point, is that many people, most of them in the Republican Party, claim to be "libertarian" or "free market" when it suits their interests, and forget about it other times. So Greenspan - a former director of JP Morgan - supports a "free market" initiative that vasty materially benefits JP Morgan. Hmm. And yet, after having held the reigns of power for a little while, he acts in a highly interventionist manner...
there has been a tremendous level of order and productivity that has emerged from a highly chaotic system.
As far as the internet goes, and IMHO, you have that exactly backwards, among other points.
"and do all of this without being forced to harm any other humans or creatures."
like that one. That's magical thinking.
You can't predcict or control what 'harms' other people, unless you can make sure they're all just like you and have your standards - in which case you ARE harming them.
What you can do is tell them to get over themselves and to expect back from the world slightly less than what they offer to it.
Outside of actual politics and intrigue, here's what I posted to my Facebook status after I read this and looked at these pictures.
"Frankly, I don't care how "effective" Barack Obama is in his presidency. I think he's a standup guy, and somebody who I would be honored to be friends with (not because he's the president). I trust him because he brings something to the office of Presidency that I feel has been lacking. Respect. Honor. Genuine good will. He's somebody I can aspire to be like. And that's all I want. Obama 2012."
In short. Man, our president is cool.
@93 Noen: I might also add that, instead of kicking around the one-foot-in-the-grave bag of bones Greenspan, it's worth looking at the central roles both Rubin and Summers played in the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the decision for the CFTC to ignore derivatives, and then ask..what the hell are they doing as top economic advisors to Obama?
@96. OK. Take any reasonable steps to minimize harm of other people. How's that?
People have different needs and desires. Is it wrong to buy from sweatshops? Do they need the money? I don't know, but I try to stay away. I'm glad I have the choice to shop at thrift shops, even if in the end it is the wrong choice.
But I think that pretty much everyone doesn't like bombs being dropped on their heads.
I want to add, he really does look like a million bucks in each one of those photos. There has certainly never been such a photogenic president since the era of photography dawned.
zyodei - fair enough. The world is indeed an ethical minefield, but there is a line between feeling guilty for the sins of your brother and for those of your father.
I was getting at the idea of a universal definition of 'harm' being rather tricky. People do have differing needs and desires, but some are truly 'harmed' by the most surprising things.
And not to be too trite, because I did catch your ad absurdium, but "bombs being dropped on their heads" *is* approximately the same standard of harm used to justify waterboarding. Those same people were ultimately responsible for overseeing Wall Street.
Ron Paul tards are tards.
"I'm not reading all the garbage about the gold standard, because it's OFF TOPIC in this thread, which is about Obama."
Well sure but we've had threads of 300 or so before. If the mods say knock it off I will but this post has already disappeared from the front page so... seems like fair game.
zyodei
"many people, most of them in the Republican Party, claim to be "libertarian" or "free market" when it suits their interests"
No true Scottsman fallacy. Libertarianism can never fail, it can only be failed. Or in other words it fails the falsifiability test.
"With a few exceptions, authority over me, that I have not in some way acquiesced to or called on myself by harming another, is a fundamental evil."
Then leave. If you dislike it so much here please just leave and form your Libertarian Utopia elsewhere. I suggest Somalia.
More generally this is the crux of your whole problem. You're a petty dictator wannabe. "No one's the boss of me!!!!" Well sorry to break it to ya dude but yeah, you gots all kinds of bosses tellin' ya what to do. That's the price that you pay for living here so again, if you don't like the social contract then by all means take a hike. You have several choices: You can accept the reality that authority exists, you can work to change what you don't agree with, you can leave, or you can revolt. Good luck with the last one.
Noen, what mods are you speaking of? There's the moderator (Antinous) and the adjuncts (arkizzle and...me). Do you insist on hearing it from Antinous?
dstntmbrk@90: Greg, you just opened my eyes! It only took a few hundred words for you to prove that libertarians do not like centralized power. Really?
Uhm, no, it wasn't "Libertarians don't like centralized power". It was "If you don't pay taxes, the gummint will SHOOT YOU".
But since you've drunk the koolaid, I suppose they're completely logically equivalent to you, eh?
Is it International Cranky Day? Please return to civility.
zyodei@99: But I think that pretty much everyone doesn't like bombs being dropped on their heads.
That isn't the same as
authority over me, that I have not in some way acquiesced to or called on myself by harming another
that's the fundamental false premise of a libertarian extremist. That Violence like war is morally equivalent to a government doing something you don't agree with.
Representative democracy doesn't require unanimous consent. Just because you didn't agree to Social Security or Income Tax or Fiat Money, doesn't automatically make them inherently evil.
You want people living without government intervention? As pointed out earlier, go to Somalia.
Antinous having arrived, I cede any moderatorial comments to him. He's kinder than I would be; I'd delete all the comments that aren't about Obama from this thread. But perhaps that's why I don't have the keys to the WMD (weapons of mass deletion), and he does.
Ah, those many minutes ago, when I saw this headline in NetNewsWire and thought, "oh man, this is gonna be a long thread..."
Thank you all for an interesting read.
"the natural laws that are laid out in all religions and understood by all small children: you should not hurt others"
...
"I believe that people are inherently good"
...
"People are generally rational beings"
funny how strongly I, with my life experiences, disagree with each of those assumptions (as well as with their opposites, by the way).
@ #72
"Greenspan was a close personal friend and disciple of Ayn Rand herself, the Libertarian Messiah. She stood beside him as he took the oath of office to join the Ford administration. *The Age of Turbulence* is sprinkled with his name-dropping of Rand and his assertions of dedication to the ideals of Libertarianism and laissez-faire economic theory. Saying "he was the head of the Fed, so he couldn't have been a Libertarian" is just denial."
Ayn Rand = Objectivist =/= Libertarian
Here is what the objectivist Ayn Rand had to say about libertarianism.
The Ferderal Reserve is the complete antithesis of the free market. Believing that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the most blatant violation of free and voluntary exchange on earth, was a free market libertarian simply because he claimed to be one is absurd. I think this misunderstanding keeps popping up because people do not know what the free market is. A quick look at the Wikipedia entry gives us this definition:
"A free market is a term that economists use to describe a market which is free from government intervention (i.e. no regulation, no subsidization, no single monetary system and no governmental monopolies). Within the ideal free market, property rights are voluntarily exchanged at a price arranged solely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. By definition, buyers and sellers do not coerce each other"
Knowing this definition, how could anyone come to the conclusion that the Federal Reserve Chairman (or any member of our government) could be a free market libertarian?
**********************************************
Because so many people have complained that these comments are off topic (I agree), I should share that my point of view on the original post is very much the same as many of the other commenters. Yes, our President does look cool but beyond looks he is not a cool guy at all.
I've seen the usual bombardment of "Only six months in office!", "A big mess to clean up", and "His hands are tied". Certainly these claims are true. It would be a big job for anyone to reverse the direction of this ship. But quit fooling yourself, people. The guy is expanding our war machine. Every time he has been given a say on a torture policy he has chosen to continue Bush's policy or make it even worse. It's not that he isn't putting his foot on the brake; It's that he's stepping on the gas.
Nothing cool to see here.
Here is what the objectivist Ayn Rand had to say about libertarianism.
Oh good grief. Rand held that the only moral social system is laissez-faire capitalism.
So, as far as economics go, the difference between Objectivists and Libertarians are purely a matter of internal motivations. Externally, they are indistinguishable, since they both support laissez-faire. They may have had different reasons as to why laissez faire was the best, but that's irrelevant to anyone else. Their external policies are identical.
Deal with it.
@greglondon 106:
Well, it's all on a sliding scale. From petty invonvenience (unjust fines, etc.) to war. Where would you say the "War on Drugs" falls on this? Certainly, throwing those guilty of victimless crimes in prison is somewhere on the continuum closer to the violence of war.
Then leave. If you dislike it so much here please just leave and form your Libertarian Utopia elsewhere. I suggest Somalia.
Seeing how I have expressed a desire to simply live without being either the victim or perpetrator of violence, the suggestion to move to Somalia seems rather disengenous.
The mentality of war and violence is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. It's repercussions are felt on so many levels - how the police treat citizens, how schools treat students, how people treat each other. America is an inherently violent society. You may disagree, but I feel a principle cause of this is our constant war mongering throughout our history.
Try spending a few months or years living in a country that has never invaded any other country, such as India, South Korea, or Switzerland. They have their problems, but there is a fundamentally different feel living in countries like that.
For the record, I would rather pay 50% of my money in taxes to a more benign government that doesn't do much on the "evil" end of the spectrum, than pay 10% to a government that is engaged in systematic warfare, WMD production, etc.
One characteristic of a traditional "boss" in our society is that you always have the freedom to quit the job and find another.
Well, let's review those choices one by one:
1) Continue to pay my money into the war machine, blissfully ignorant of where that money goes and who is damaged by it.
2) Work to change it - certainly a worthwhile goal, but not easy with our current system. In our current system, millions of anti-war people, such as yourself, will choose to support a pro-war president, like Obama, because he seems like an upstanding kind of guy, and he maybe speaks some anti-war rhetoric on the campaign trail. Once in office, the "Change Candidate" expands and continues the existing wars, and doesn't ever even consider trimming our empire that spans 110 countries.
3) Leave - This is one of the strongest arguments for a preference for government services to be decided on a localized level when possible. If you don't like what your local government is doing, it is generally a fairly simple affair to leave and move to another town. Even moving from state to state is a feasible affair. Moving to another country is much more difficult.
Even if you do, you still are carrying a U.S. passport, and are subject to U.S. taxes above a certain threshold - unless you renounce your citizenship, which is an irreversible decision (unlike moving out of town). To truly "leave" America, you have to forever forgo any future chance of positively affecting life in America.
And it's worth noting that if you have ever been convicted of a crime, it is virtually impossible to immigrate to another country, and "the land of the free" can become something of a prison.
4) Revolt - well, thanks for the good wishes on this one.
Then leave.
I did.
Just vote him out next term. He was the best choice in a sea of bad choices. We get what we pay for.
Hm, Al Gore 2012?