Re: OT: Geek/Tech/Entrepreneur Stuff to do in PHX

I would have to second!
------------------------
Keith Smith


--- On Sun, 8/2/09, Eric Cope <eric.cope@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Eric Cope <eric.cope@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: OT: Geek/Tech/Entrepreneur Stuff to do in PHX
> To: "Main PLUG discussion list" <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
> Date: Sunday, August 2, 2009, 9:43 PM
> nice citation!
>
> On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 8:51 PM,
> Austin William Wright <diamondmagic@users.sourceforge.net>
> wrote:
>
>
> Craig White wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 2009-08-01 at 21:20 -0700, keith smith wrote:
>
> >
>
> >> If you are referring to the courts that is one
> thing the government
>
> >> needs to do.
>
> >>
>
> >> Water
>
> >> Sewer
>
> >> Trash pickup
>
> >> Streets
>
> >> Police
>
> >> Fire
>
> >> Standing Army
>
> >> and one or two other things.
>
> >>
>
> >> Everything else needs to be removed from the
> government.
>
> >>
>
> >> Using the courts to resolve a dispute is
> differently from the
>
> >> government providing for our business needs.
>
> >>
>
> >> Free enterprise.  Do you think as a small
> business owner I am afforded
>
> >> any protection under the law.  Not happening.
>  Only the big guys get
>
> >> help from the government.
>
> >>
>
> >> I really have to get a few things done so i will
> sing off for now.
>
> >>
>
> >>
>
> >>
>
> In NH, we got our own water, sewage, and trash. Why is
> government
>
> necessary for those things? Even roads maybe (though there
> are bigger
>
> things to think about), many of the highways are tollways.
>
> > Keep in mind I'm for small government and a free
> market.the problem is that free market has now proven to be
> a disaster. The
>
> > current economic mess is a direct result of
> deregulating things like the
>
> > banks, Wall Street, etc. While the John Galt logic
> sounded pretty good,
>
> > it simply didn't work and the great Ayn Rand
> disciple, Greenspan got it
>
> > all wrong. We are paying the consequences for this now
> and will be
>
> > paying even more consequences as the next wave of home
> and commercial
>
> > property foreclosures ramp up, unemployment starts to
> climb again and
>
> > more and more people's unemployment benefits
> expire. Free market is a
>
> > great concept that simply doesn't work because
> corporate interests are
>
> > predatory and irresponsible.
>
> >
>
> > The acknowledgment that essential government services
> listed above
>
> > justifies the role of government and you want to argue
> that it should do
>
> > no more. There is much more government should be
> doing...but they have
>
> > abrogated their responsibilities in things like
> consumer protection.
>
> >
>
> > Government will always be a problem but no government
> is a worse problem
>
> > considering the amount of people and the current trend
> of business
>
> > practices.
>
> I would examine the "free market" again. We are
> /not/ in a free market,
>
> and haven't even been close to one for a while. We
> never deregulated
>
> anything, indeed, the pages of regulation haven't
> decreased since Regan.
>
> Greenspan turned out to be one of the biggest
> interventionists, only
>
> outdone by Bernanke. You can't blame the mess on
> bankers, if they didn't
>
> make those decisions someone else would have, and the
> outcome wouldn't
>
> have been any different (in other words, it is a symptom,
> not a cause).
>
> The problem stems from many central banks including our own
> Federal
>
> reserve cutting interest rates from 2001-2004 by
> (essentially)
>
> "printing" money. Since the housing market was
> one of the most regulated
>
> (that is to say, there were government-enforced lending
> standards and
>
> intervention my Fannie and Freddie), so people spent that
> new money on
>
> houses before anything else (Oil too, because energy is
> closely tied to
>
> the market), drove prices up, created a misallocation of
> capital
>
> disproportionate with consumer demand, and we crashed when
> not enough
>
> people could humanly gather the money to buy a new house at
> the price
>
> they were at.
>
>
>
> Too many people get mislead by the number on the money,
> ignore the
>
> money, that isn't what an economy is about. It is about
> exchange and
>
> production. It is impossible measure how much an economy
> satisfies
>
> people's wants, some of their wants may not involve
> exchange with other
>
> people (so-called autistic exchange, which cannot be
> measured). Every
>
> dollar spent bailing out companies is a dollar that cannot
> be used to
>
> make televisions cheaper, or is a dollar that cannot be
> used to buy
>
> food. Every dollar borrowed by government is one that
> cannot be loaned
>
> out to a private investor, and raises interest rates at
> that. Every
>
> dollar printed by government is one that was not in turn
> made with any
>
> productive effort valued by someone else, and raises prices
> for the
>
> people who are honest, without getting any raise in their
> income to
>
> compensate. If GM collapsed, who knows how many companies
> would have
>
> wanted to buy their machinery to build electric cars
> cheaper, or invent
>
> the next great mode of transportation. Just because GM
> collapses,
>
> doesn't mean that the workers no longer are allowed to
> work, nor does it
>
> mean that the capital has vanished into thin air. It all
> still exists,
>
> to be re-allocated to a use /better/ and cheaper than cars
> (or
>
> specifically better than GM cars, if purchased by another
> car company),
>
> as judged by who who would value it the most (able to pay
> the most).
>
> Recessions are created by debt and caused by a bad
> structure of capital.
>
> We need to embrace failure, it lowers prices that allows us
> to pay off
>
> debt and re-form the right kinds of capital that will
> satisfy our wants
>
> more effectively then if we did not.
>
>
>
> This is why I oppose any and all science, art, think tank,
> and
>
> infrastructure funding. People allocate what they have to
> what they have
>
> (goods, which here includes renting their labor), to the
> most urgent
>
> needs first. If the only way an oil pipeline can be built
> is to force
>
> people to pay for it, then they are losing out on something
> they desire
>
> more. So how does infrastructure come about then?
> Conversion of capital.
>
> Money saved in a bank is effectively, for the purposes of
> economics, the
>
> same as the infrastructure (capital) itself, but
> time-delayed. (Interest
>
> rates play in, being the rate at which people value
> something now over
>
> something in the future.) People pool their savings in a
> bank, and the
>
> more people who save, the more they intend to defer their
> consumption
>
> until later. Since we have differed consumption, interest
> rates go down,
>
> and this money can be loaned out - to buy capital that will
> be able to
>
> produce the things people will want in the future. This is
> why Europe
>
> was able to advance so much more than the rest of the world
> until the
>
> industrial age, and especially the Native Americans who had
> /no/ pool of
>
> capital, because it had a far more modern banking system.
> It is the
>
> detail of why the Soviet Union failed (no savings, no
> capital). Only
>
> when the savings pool is more than the cost of the capital
> can it be
>
> undertaken, otherwise it will be a malinvestment and better
> spent on
>
> other projects. This is a very difficult thing to grasp, it
> has taken me
>
> much studying to even be able to explain this, hopefully it
> suffices. I
>
> also want to note, this is why manipulating interest rates
> is a /very
>
> bad idea/, because it encourages capital growth, like more
> houses or
>
> factories for instance, when people don't have the
> savings to draw from
>
> once they are manufactured - that is to say, people
> won't be able to
>
> exchange for the new capital at the time of their maturity
> at the rate
>
> that was expected when development began. This is why a
> bust follows an
>
> artificial boom, almost like clockwork throughout history
> (though, the
>
> same type of bust can also be caused without a boom by
> other things,
>
> there is no difference between a bust caused by too much
> spending in
>
> energy and a bust caused by a broken oil pipeline that
> forces people
>
> dependent on oil out of business).
>
>
>
> On topic, try a solar water heater. Solar anything. We
> haven't used
>
> electric heating for the past two months and are saving
> about $50/mo
>
> because of it. Take a look at what resources an economy
> has, in the case
>
> of Arizona, there is have labor, some types of crops,
> copper and other
>
> metals, and sun, and I know other things too. Phoenix
> especially is
>
> funny because it is (I think) the first big city not built
> next to
>
> water, usually you need transportation to be able to grow.
> Anyways, look
>
> for things that use the resources around you. Things
> powered by solar
>
> and simple electronic components (fasteners, wires and
> cables perhaps)
>
> come to mind.
>
>
>
> Austin Wright.
>
>
>
> PS. If this is at all interesting consider reading /Man,
> Economy, and
>
> State/.
>
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>
>
> --
> Eric Cope
> http://cope-et-al.com
>
>
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