Um… but I thought markets always make the most efficient allocation of resources? Damn commie agitators.
(By the way, I hope you are all taking advantage of the Real News Network feed I’ve provided in the front page sidebar. It’s a great service worthy of your attention and support.)
For those of you who don’t want to watch the whole video, let me summarize if for you:
America is at fault. America is greedy. America is evil.
Yawn.
Well, to play devil’s advocate, there’s nothing free about the world food markets. So many nations subsidize crops that anyone arguing for free markets has a ready-made alibi.
Furthermore, these kinds of “short-term fluctuations” and “widespread dislocations” (i.e. massive social upheavals) are accepted as “creative destruction” in the inhuman, pseudo-Darwinian outlook of the Objectivist / Libertarian free market worshipper. Once the market responds to the increase in demand and inefficient producers are weeded out, we’ll all live happily ever after.
If we don’t nuke each other first.
“m… but I thought markets always make the most efficient allocation of resources?”
If they did, I’d be out of business, and so would Warren Buffet.
@1 Well, I wouldn’t say that, but I would say that the wingnut religion that unregulated markets are the best and only solution to everything is sheer poppycock.
Markets, being amoral (and properly so), must sometimes be superseded by intervention if we are to achieve moral results.
Roger Rabbit unmasked:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....owd13.html
The Bush administration has intervened in free markets by giving no bid contracts to selected companies.
Everyone already knows that, but the WingNut argument in favor of no-bid is that waiting for the free market to respond to Iraq would have been inefficient.
Hmmmm…
re 1: I dub thee, ‘BlatherBoy’.
@2; Exactly the situations that make the Thomas Friedmans of the world cream their pants in anticipation.
Nothing at all is “free” in the neocons’ Bizarro world. It’s all either bought or stolen.
Sure they’re efficient … at putting money into their shareholders’ and (even more so) their executives’ pockets.
And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
I thought “The Real News” was an ad… Oops.
It’s really very simple–combine this thread with the recent one about schools and say, “Well then, let them eat children!”
@ 8 Maybe Milton Friedman?
So, I’ve put out a challenge to the leftwingers here to prove that Obama has worked well with republicans and democrats, as he claims that’s what he is about.
Proud Leftist tried to say why he thought Obama should not have supported Alito as a sign of working with both sides. BUT P.L. NEVER PUT FORTH PROOF THAT OBAMA WORKS WITH ALL SIDES.
I’ve seen McCain do it. But where is the proof that Obama has worked with both sides, and that shows he will do so as he claims in the future?? LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN, LEFTWINGERS HERE IN THE ROOM. Show me the money, so to speak.
An airplane is flying circles around downtown Bellevue right now with a giant red sign behind it that reads:
Mccain=100 more years in iraq
Wow. Awesome.
The biggest horse’s ass on Horsesass.org, bar none, is Mark the Welshing Redneck. Not only did he marry a dead crack whore, he’s a deadbeat who doesn’t pay child support or gambling debts! If he welshed on a Mafia bookie, instead of a liberal wimp like Goldy,* he’d be decorating the bottom of Puget Sound in a pair of cement overshoes. But I digress.
Mark the Welshing Redneck is a complete fucking idiot. Here’s an example of what I mean. MTWR claims cutting taxes always increases revenue! Now let’s see how that’s working out in the real world.
In 2004, Bush gave corporations a $136 billion tax cut. For the first 7 months of the current federal fiscal year (beginning Oct. 1, 2007), corporate income tax revenue is down 14.7%, federal spending is up 7.3%, and the federal budget deficit has increased 88%!!
This is only one example of what happens when you let wingnuts run anything. They do everything wrong! And the whole universe goes to hell in a handbasket! We need to lock these morons inside their trailer parks and surround those places with barbed wire, guard towers, and armed guards with orders to shoot any redneck moron trying to escape.** It’s a matter of national security.
* Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting Goldy take MTWR “for a ride,” although that’s certainly a pleasant idea.**
** Hey, just kidding!!! Ann Coulter humor. She gets big laughs from jokes like that, so I thought I’d try it too.
@9 Redneck the Fucking Mark keeps asking me who should pay for my health care. The reality is that I’m not only paying for my health, but for his, too. (I can’t imagine a deadbeat like him paying his own bills — I’m sure he’s first in line at the ER looking for a handout 2 or 3 times a month.)
So, what’s the solution to this food crisis? Total government control over agriculture, agricultural research, market distribution, farm finance, etc.? What, exactly, are you people asking for? It seems you want total government control, and that reminds me of Russia and Stalin: Stalin and his thugs killed all the middle class kulaks in order to collectivize the Soviet Union’s food production.
It brought big trouble for Russia: the kulaks were the only ones who knew how to efficiently farm and grow stuff. Total government control is not the answer.
BTW, watch the drinking and driving when you all go to DL tonight.
19 Who the hell can afford enough booze? All the corn squeezin’s are going into peoples’ gas tanks, while more dollars-conjured-out-of-nothing get funneled to that big subsidy-worthy “family farm” belonging to Pa Archer, Ma Daniels and Baby Midland.
18, Oh hell, Fellatially Incorrect is layin’ his Soviet History on us. Na, commrade.
How about doing away with the morally corrupt system of betting on the price of commodities. It’s a scheister’s game that drives up the price of everything vital we use everyday. It’s also a perfect example of naked capitalism run amok.
14, Maybe you’re ADHD, based on your ability to follow the subject of a thread. But the incredible lack of understanding on your part, based on your assertion that McAsscrawl worked accross the isle deserves a response. As soon as he decided to run for president he repudiated all his prior stances, and put on the fucking biggest dunce cap in world history so people like you would vote for him.
If the Rooskies screwed up so horribly, how come now it’s them selling us natural gas, instead of the other way around?
@19 “What, exactly, are you people asking for?”
Subsidizing the conversion of food crops to ethanol doesn’t help.
Neither does paying farmers subsidies to not plant crops.
Neither do the export controls being slapped on by some foreign governments.
However, nothing has contributed so much to high food prices as increased demand in China and India brought about by increased affluence in those countries brought about by the outsourcing of American jobs and American public debt to those countries. They now have so much of our money that instead of eating grain they now feed (much more of) it to livestock so they can live on meat like us.
One industry that needs a lot more regulation is metal scrap dealers. Know what thieves are stealing in our area now? Railroad tracks. Why? Because scrap businesses are willing to pay them for it. Now, c’mon, when 3 young guys show up at your scrap yard with a flatbed trailer full of rails, shouldn’t you wonder where they got them?
From KIRO 7 News (quoted under fair use):
“OLYMPIA, Wash. — Thieves … took railroad crossing arms from a location south of Olympia, and railroad tracks were stolen in Grays Harbor County, reported KIRO 7 Eyewitness News. …
“Police said the men told detectives they were selling the sections of railroad track to a local scrap yard ….”
Down here in la la land it is manhole covers (don’t get excited daddylove) and the copper from rooftop air conditioners that are being stolen for recycling.