libertarianism sounds good on a superficial level: leave us alone and let the economy grow. Unfortunately they don't put much scrutiny on their economic positions; they have such a simplistic understanding of the economy and especially the savings-investment, employment, and banking functions that it is almost child-like.
To start: they believe that higher savings leads to higher loanable funds and this will lower the price of credit. The cheapened credit will thus then flow automatically back into the economy via loans to industry so that the supply of goods is increased and everyone becomes wealthier.
If this were true, I would probably be a libertarian.
This analysis has some gaping holes in it. The first is the equities market. The vast majority of all equities bought and sold are on the secondary market, meaning that the proceeds of the sales of the equities don't go toward the business, but toward whoever sold them, i.e. stock brokers. Understand? The stock market is a gigantic sinkhole for capital; none of the money on the stock market is helping businesses to expand or buy materials, inputs, or labor. Most people prefer to put their money in the stock market naturally because, in comparison with investing in individual companies as a venture capitalist, the risk and uncertainty are much much lower. Since the stock market is pretty much guaranteed by the way the monetary system works to inflate consistently, it's a no-brainer: invest in stocks, not in companies.
The second hole here is about investment via banking. OK so if people put a lot of money in the stock market then that's a fair chunk of capital that industry is deprived of, but what about banking? The vast majority of banks' loans are not to private businesses, they go to households. Banks don't like to lend to industry, they like mortgages, auto-loans, credit cards or they like lending to hedge funds. Why? The answer is simple: collateral. If people default on their mortgages, the bank gets land and a house. If hedge funds default on a loan, the bank gets assets. If a business defaults on a loan, the bank gets ... ??? some illiquid business inputs in what was an apparently unprofitable venture? See my point? So, left to its own devices, the banking system will not lend to industry, allowing the economy to expand by producing more goods and paying workers in wages. Instead, the banking system will lend our own purchasing power to us as debt so we can access the existing stock of goods. The former is positive and pro-growth. It occurred in the past in the free market because alternatives like equities and mortgages and all that shit wasn't available, so all of the savings-capital was pumped directly into industry. The latter is negative: it means that, in comparison to the alternative, we get lower supply of goods, lower wages, and higher debt.
The third hole is about investment in land. Basically if you don't know who Henry George is, you have a fuckton of learning to do about land / real estate / housing and the economics of it. The long and short of it is: land, left to its own devices, will swallow up capital as an appreciating asset but provide zero contribution to the economy. It's fucking land. You can't make more of it. You need it for anything you do and spending $1 on it or $1,000,000 on has 0 effect on what the quality or quantity will be. Compare this with anything else in the capitalist system; spend $1 on a car and you get a shitheap, spend $1,000,000 on a car and you get a Ferrari. See how that works? Supply and demand. But supply and demand is broken in the market for land because you can't fucking produce it. Investment into land creates a positive feedback loop where credit (mortgages) inflates the price, leading people to think of it as an appreciating asset, leading to more credit being pumped it, higher prices, more speculative credit, and so on. Supply and demand in land markets is broken and requires guidance or caps on the size of mortgages or high property taxes or SOMETHING to devalue land.
So in sum, if libertarians get their way about the economy, and the savings-investment function is left to its own devices, all of the nation's capital will get sucked in to equities, into non-business loans, and worst of all, into land prices. This means that businesses are deprived of credit, we get our own purchasing power as debt rather than cash from wages, there's a smaller supply of goods, less economic growth and the nation's capital becomes psychotically devoted to making housing unattainable without more debt. Compare this to an authoritarian system of investment guidance and you have credit flowing in to industry, leading to growth, higher output, purchasing power as cash-wages rather than debt, and reasonable housing prices due to restrictions on capital flowing into land where it gets completely absorbed and has no positive impact on productivity or output.
Libertarianism is exactly what the elites want: freedom to control capital against normal people. It's literally the biggest psyop con that has ever been pulled in history. Don't be a fool.
pic related
[housing markets run amok fueled by mortgage positive feedback loops, housing is going back up again too]
pic related
[check the income to housing price ratio. shed a tear. now realize that the $5,000 gain in household median income was probably due to the shift from single-earner homes to two-earner homes in the seventies. $5k/year for the loss of the nuclear family. now cry more.]
pic related
[this is the future. rentee or rentier. libertarians are useful idiots for bankers selling fuckhuge mortgagers]
slide me
No responses, but yeah I agree. I used to be a really hardcore libertarian, but it pretty much is being a useful idiot for globalism, not unlike those who espouse communism.
That being said I still do enjoy private property, but a perfect free market, and free trade in the current global economy is completely unrealistic.
We all know they are tards, Rusbro.
They started around 16 shitting up our Government/History classes. Then around 17 they read the fountainhead and realize that they are upper middle class because they are the best (forgetting it is dad's money). Then they go to college and shit up your poli-sci classes. They go and shit up marijuana legalization rallies. They shit up protests against taxes.
Essentially they are shit and anyone who spends more than a few hours total around one knows how infantile their opinions are and how easily literally every argument can be parried.
In reality they are just small business jerks who don't want to pay any taxes (because they didn't incorporate their little business correctly and don't understand how to pay a tax accountant) or kids who want to smoke weed without getting arrested.
>>66412292
>; none of the money on the stock market is helping businesses to expand or buy materials, inputs, or labor.
that's just plain wrong.
>>66412292
At a very basic level, libertarianism prioritizes the role of the "actor," aka the individual person.
This is a ridiculous way of looking at human reality, in which people function within larger networks - families, clans, ethnic groups, etc.
Libertarians claim that this does not affect their analysis, but of course it fucking does, in countless ways. Basically, libertarianism ends up disadvantaging high-trust, low-cohesion modern white societies in favor of clannish and high-cohesion groups which use the libertarian system to take advantage of all the "suckers."
>>66414164
With the caveat of the primary market for equities, no it isn't wrong. Unless I'm just completely retarded?
>>66413998
Frustrating desu because Dickensian exploitation has been repackaged as some sort of anti-establishment radicalism and it's just so retarded
can you summarise all this into a funny meme?
thanks for your efforts
Oh look its that retarded Russian again who never read a book about Austrian economics.
Shill harder, Ivan!
>>66414412
Already did. Used to be Austrian. I read Human Action and it's genius but only for its ability to create internally consistent logical systems on a purely a priori basis. Unfortunately it either simplifies or obfuscates the very real and accessible details about the different patterns within the capital structure and so it ties its own hands to tell us anything useful.
I even read Henry Hazlitt's Failure of the New Economics because I wanted "Keynesianism" to be wrong so badly. It's a joke. There's no arguments in it other than epistemological nitpicking, counter-factual arguments, and complaints about govt inefficiency.
Took me a while to realize that Austrians are just a bunch of fuckin losers who are attack-dogs for the elite but they're so pathetic and embarrassing that they don't even get praise from them. So now I try to help people, by wasting my own time, not to waste their time reading that shit.
I really enjoy a good, well thought out post on /pol/ and I will try to offer my thoughts on it.
>>66412292
'Real Libertarians' don't buy stocks, they buy gold. I agree, they are retarded. However, you agree that people put their money into stock markets as it is 'lower risk'. If you can see a benefit to doing so, how can you say that only the stock brokers benefit?
>>66412311
Even if your logic is right, it won't be that businesses will be unable to get credit, just that it would be more expensive to get credit (i.e. have a higher interest rate due to being more risky as the bank does not have collateral) However, businesses may be able to get a higher rate of return than households so it may be worth it.
Furthermore, a reduction in a households costs should allow it to consume more. So some of this could be 'pumped into industry'. Where the savings go is more difficult but maybe into the less risky stocks you mentioned, allowing them to consume more at a later date.
>>66412335
I will begin by saying that I have never read Henry George so please correct me if I am wrong. However, it is absurd to assume that A) all land is equal and B) Land cannot be improved. If you own a patch of land with some crops on it, irrigating the land may allow for better crops than if you left the land unirrigated. Sure you could make some argument that I didn't actually improve the land but I think it would be semantics.
I'm not a libertarian but I do love responding to people who have obviously put some thought and effort into their views. Libertarians are retarded on public goods, information assymetries and business cycle theory so that's what I usually slam them on.
>>66414820
>internally consistent logical systems on a purely a priori basis
There's the rub. It all rests on a few axioms, and those simply do not conform to observable reality. Libertarian is to political philosophy as Ptolemaic cosmology is to modern physics.
>>66415162
>However, you agree that people put their money into stock markets as it is 'lower risk'. If you can see a benefit to doing so, how can you say that only the stock brokers benefit?
I have no problem with people being able to grow their savings, but surely this has to be the secondary function of an economy. Getting a nice ROI from your savings on the stock market, in harsher terms, is parasitism: income without output. Maybe that's sounds Stalinist to you, but you've got to think of all the purchasing power locked away in sterile assets in order to realize the degree to which potential GDP is being limited. When this sort of secondary function of an economy (protecting savings) grows to such a degree that it starts to dwarf the primary function (producing goods) you start to have a problem and it's one we're experiencing now, an unnecessary stagnation.
>Furthermore, a reduction in a households costs should allow it to consume more. So some of this could be 'pumped into industry'. Where the savings go is more difficult but maybe into the less risky stocks you mentioned, allowing them to consume more at a later date.
All this is true but it just seems like a gigantic elephant in the room that nobody is mentioning that so much capital is being kept from the real economy. Meanwhile there are massive projects to be undertaken, alternative energies to be developed, massive increases in standards of living to be enacted, infrastructure to be developed, and so on and yet there's so much talk about how it's unaffordable. Well yes it's unaffordable if only 10% of the capital you produce is going toward production.
Re: Henry George
He has a slightly jewy definition of land which is a purely spatial concept so it precludes things like infrastructural improvements. It's slightly jewy but it's also somewhat necessary for him to make his point about pure land rents swallowing up increases in total income without being interrupted by IRL shitposters.
So much echo in this thread
Libertarians are the supreme good goyim
>>66415713
>When this sort of secondary function of an economy (protecting savings) grows to such a degree that it starts to dwarf the primary function (producing goods) you start to have a problem and it's one we're experiencing now, an unnecessary stagnation.
But what IS 'saving'? It's foregoing consumption now, for more consumption in the future.
You see, the 'purchasing power' isn't 'locked away', it's helping create a higher productive capacity in the future.
>Getting a nice ROI from your savings on the stock market, in harsher terms, is parasitism: income without output.
But stock markets don't just create 'income without output', it creates a lower risk environment.
>All this is true but it just seems like a gigantic elephant in the room that nobody is mentioning that so much capital is being kept from the real economy.
The problem with this statement is that you only consider the 'real economy' to be a purely consumption based one. It's as if ,when you save, the money dissappears never to return. It does return, but in the medium to long run.
>Meanwhile there are massive projects to be undertaken, alternative energies to be developed, massive increases in standards of living to be enacted, infrastructure to be developed, and so on and yet there's so much talk about how it's unaffordable. Well yes it's unaffordable if only 10% of the capital you produce is going toward production.
Solar energy is vastly less expensive today than it was ten years ago. If nobody invested in the technology and instead spent that money on 2000-era solar panels, the ROI would be far less than if we did it today.
>>66416548
>But what IS 'saving'? It's foregoing consumption now, for more consumption in the future.
I'm not contesting that. But you have some options in how you save money. You can either save it and invest it in a company, which will help to expand the economy by buying inputs and producing more stuff. This is the path of increased income via increased output. This is good. The other option you have is investing your savings in assets on a secondary market. You might get a better ROI on this, but the proceeds of your initial investment will do little-to-nothing in terms of output. Energy, inputs and labor will not be paid for with this money; it will go to stockbrokers, who really don't expand the supply of goods in an economy.
So savings-investment can go toward income via output or it can go toward income without output. Only the former is actually productive. The latter is productive in a tautological way in that the savers have achieved their chosen ends, but in the broader economic sense of increasing the size of the pie? No.
>But stock markets don't just create 'income without output', it creates a lower risk environment.
How does a lower risk environment for investments help expand output? It isn't clear to me. If anything, creating a lower risk environment for investments is negative on output because it provides a safe-haven outside of the real economy for capital to flee to and thus deprive industry of purchasing power.
> If nobody invested in the technology and instead spent that money on 2000-era solar panels, the ROI would be far less than if we did it today.
I think that you have drastically misunderstood me, based on what you've written here. I'm not advocating that everyone stop saving and everyone pull their money out of investments to start buying shit. I'm saying that their investments need to be getting to businesses somehow, either as debt or as equity so that they can actually invest
Libertarianism cuts against our basic nature
We evolved to share sone things
Give and take
Libertarians want to shoot privately owned drones which infringe their property sky box by an inch
>>66412292
On the one hand I'd like a good discussion about libertarianism - on the other hand I just can't follow you. Your points are so weird that I don't even know who of us is the retarded one.
Stuff like
>invest in stocks, not in companies
What do you think stocks are or why companies go public?
>>66417365
or maybe you're just a jelly fag who wants to have his cake and eat it, too.
>>66417113
>I think that you have drastically misunderstood me
You are correct.
Here is the fundemental difference between your thinking and mine. In your thinking, a stock bought or sold on the secondary market has no effect on the productive capacity of the company.
I believe that there is a benefit to the companies by having their shares traded on the secondary market because it effects their abillity to raise credit on the primary market. Stocks do kinda reflect some sort of economic health for the company and this could help them get credit.
Furthermore, the managers of said company are also likely to be large holders of stock. That means an increase in the stock price would lead to management having more money, maybe to insert back into the business.
Am I making sense or missing the point?
>>66412292
>involving gubmint in the economy
>calling it libertarianism
lol
>>66417834
I think you're both kind of off.
1. I agree there is a small effect on credit availability but I'd say a minor one at best, especially because banks look at fundamental data, not at market cap.
2. A company going public is exactly that, people investing into the company.
3. You may argue that after the IPO, stock trade doesn't have a positive effect (it does though, in other ways) - but it also wouldn't have a negative one. If one person buys, another one sells. There isn't suddenly less money available.
4. Managers pretty much never re-invest into their company if it's public.
>>66417629
So yeah it seems like you think that buying stocks gives money to businesses. This is only true for IPOs or subsequent issues of new stocks on the primary market.
The vast majority of stock purchases are however on the secondary market, where they're just shifting hands between stockbrokers or other asset owners.
If all stock market investment actually went to the businesses who issued the stock then it would be awesome but that's not how it works.
>>66417834
Ok so you have some points here, but here is the difference imo: I'm saying, buying on the secondary market does nothing to put cash in their pockets allowing them to invest and grow. You're saying, buying on the secondary market might in some tertiary sense allow them to raise funds at some point. The point about management having more money; this is a "might" or a "maybe" but it's not something that we can expect systemic and consistent results from (many companies have shown that they would rather handsomely reward gigantic fuckups of CEOs rather than float company expenditures / R&D / what-have-you).
And when you talk about the benefits to the company of stocks being bought on the secondary market, you have to realize that capital is scarce. So when you say "Yes this will benefit the company because it will make them look more solid in the eyes of potential creditors and perhaps our managers will pour some money back in." you have to realize that all these roundabout explanations of why it might benefit them are coming at the expense of things that WILL benefit them (purchases on the primary market or simply bank credit), no explanation necessary.
It seems like you understood me perfectly well in this post btw but not in the previous ones based on the way you were talking about savings and investment. I fully acknowledge the legitimacy of these categories, but it's the way in which they're effected in the economy which deprives us all of a bigger economy.
I g2g can't spend all day chitchatting with you boys but keep it alive please.
>>66418545
It's been good talking with you man. You have inspired me to do some research.
>>66418545
>>66418741
Any suggestions?
>>66412292
Libertarianism is incoherent bullshit for many reasons. It's very simple, though. There are just two groups: government (bad), everything else (good). You can be a fucking moron and still wrap your head around that. Of course reality is brutally complicated; harmonizing the wants and needs of billions of independent humans in a sustainable way isn't simple, and there's no reason to expect it to be.
Understanding economics demands you understand human nature on all scales, from individual to global, to such a fine degree that you can simulate their behavior. It's only possible to a very, almost uselessly, limited degree. To the degree anyone can get a handle on it they only do it though serious scholarship. It takes a lot of history and theory to even get started. But your average person doesn't want to do that since that's work. Libertarianism offers an apparently self-consistent system that is so dead simple you can capture it's entirety in a brochure. It's works as long as you merely imagine it and never compare it to reality, and is valuable so long as you never consider how trivial it is to form a logically self-consistent theory of economics.
Libertarianism is wonderful for young people who don't know the first fucking thing about how the world works or has worked in the past. When you're 17 and middle or upper class your biggest problem is people telling you what to do, and libertarianism is the political manifestation of: don't tell me what to do.
>>66418303
Don't know if you read my prior posts but this post of yours just reaffirms for me that you don't quite have it right.
Again - IPOs have a positive effect, and secondary market stock trading has a neutral effect because whenever you put capital into it, someone else pulls capital out of it that he invests somewhere else.
The single biggest facor on the secondary market is just institutional investors that go back and forth between stocks and bonds depending on criteria they don't even have an influence on. It's not private people deciding whether they want to buy stocks or drink the money away.
Another point you're completely wrong about is that capital isn't scarce. It's abundant. We're just rushing from bubble to bubble. People are PAYING other people just to take their money. The problem is that banks still won't loan money to businesses because they're still too fucked from the crisis.
The third point you're dead wrong about is when you paint all these horror scenarios that will happen when libertarianism rules - completely ignoring that THESE EXACT THINGS are happening right now when we're as far away from libertarianism as we have ever been.
>So in sum, if libertarians get their way about the economy, and the savings-investment function is left to its own devices, all of the nation's capital will get sucked in to equities, into non-business loans, and worst of all, into land prices
This is exactly what is going on due to modern abuse of Keynes and governments forcing inflation, the complete opposite of the Austrian school.
>>66418545
>talk complete shit
>ignore counterarguments
>I g2g can't spend all day chitchatting with you boys
Fuck why do I spend time on this board
>>66418303
buying new stocks will generally be far more rewarding although more risky than going after the secondary market.
There's an incentive to invest directly in companies instead of dealing with brokers, bringing more companies to go public.
You go and buy stocks from brokers, what do they do with that money? They use part of it buy recently-issued stocks, investing in companies, in order to sell you those stocks again later.
ITT : NWO shills
>>66403072
>>66418765
Progress and Poverty for sure. just google progress and poverty pdf you'll find it easy.
Idk I'm just a talking head for post-keynesian e-celebs. What I'm saying about secondary markets and investment isn't based on any research, just me looking at this and wondering why it's not a different way.
>>66418868
Sorry man, not trying to ignore you. Yes I agree IPOs have a direct positive effect on the firm and secondary purchases are neutral.
And what I mean about capital being scarce is just that it's finite. I don't mean scarce as in there's not a lot of it. The relevance of me bringing up the finiteness of capital is just that, if you've got a chunk of it, and X of it is in equities, Y of it is in real estate and Z of it is in loans, and x_1 goes directly to stockbrokers only x_2 of equities actually finances firms' operations, and z_1 and z_2 go into households and financials (majority) and z_3 go into businesses (minority) then it would be better for the growth prospects of an economy to take capital out of x_1, z_1, z_2 and Y (ultimately, the "non-real" economy) and put more of it into x_2, z_3 (the "real" economy of production of goods.
>when we're as far away from libertarianism as we have ever been.
Can't be true in any sense whatsoever. Right now we have free trade, financial deregulation, open borders and a commitment from all establishment to veer as hard away from keynesianism (and toward monetarism) as hard as fucking possible. Compare now to Bretton Woods era: balanced trade, regulated finance, generally keynesian policy, stable growing economies.
>This is exactly what is going on due to modern abuse of Keynes and governments forcing inflation, the complete opposite of the Austrian school.
>calling chicago monetarism "keynesianism"
I see you have a lot of learning to do.
ok but now i'm really gone
peace ausbro and krautbro
>>66419201
complementing: the more money people put in the stock-market, the more demand and available capital there will be for other companies to join and issue stocks.
Those social issues, tho.
I don't agree with everything in the Libertarian Party (U.S.) platform-- still usually vote that way as they are the closest to my views.
Not a fan of some of the more extreme economic views, but I can definitely get behind the general ideas of the party-- especially on social issues.
Pic related
>>66419556
No hard feelings.
I still can't agree with you though
>Right now we have free trade
We don't. We have free trade between certain countries to a certain level.
>financial deregulation
We have the complete oppositie of what libertarianism wants: We overregulate normal businesses and deregulate banks that right now basically act like a second government/hand in hand with it.
>a commitment from all establishment to veer as hard away from keynesianism
What??? There are two kinds of countries right now: Those that openly stimulus-spend, suck Krugman's dick and throw money at the problem and then those that talk about austerity while also stimulus-spending.
I agree they are doing it "wrong" (i.e. they don't give a fuck about businesses and just use monetarism to feed banks, milk public savings and keep government debt from collapsing. But they do it under the pretense of "all that money will trickle down in the end", hence me calling it abusing Keynes.
You literally have governments secretly printing money in the basement right now, how much further away can you get from libertarianism?
>>66412292
I think you're assuming that securities, the banking sector, and land is a sort-of dead-end for money where it goes and stays without being used.
When you buy a security, fundamentally what is occurring is an exchange between two parties where money is traded for a legal contract. When you buy a security, the money that you spend is not locked into the legal contract, rather the money is transferred to another person, corporation, or institution. These economic agents would likely spend their money on either consumption, invest it into firms or capital, or reinvest it into the stock market. At some point in this cycle, money is going to hit firms and individuals, increasing either investment or spending and growing the economy.
As for banks, the same principle could be said here. Just because more money is being spent on consumption does not mean that firms cannot invest their extra profits. Firms are not limited to loans when expanding their business or investing in capital, rather increased profit-margins can prompt them to invest as much as borrowing would do.
I also think you have a misunderstanding of factor markets. Yes, the supply of land is fixed, but as you know the price of land is ultimately determined by the demand for it. If there is no demand for a piece of land, people would drop prices until someone is willing to purchase it, and the opposite is true for very valuable land. It is very important to remember that there is no money locked into land, rather the purchase of land is just like the purchase of securities - an exchange of a good for money, money which can then be used on consumption or investment.
Money cannot be locked into capital in the way you are describing it, and I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding economic theory by neglecting the mechanisms of exchange.
>>66412292
TL dr, go fuck yourself you statist cunt, my money is exclusive to my use, I dont give a fuck about what is "optimal", my property is only for my use, you are thinking that all the money in thé world is a ressource for you to use but guess what, its not faggot, its poelle's property, and no " higher cause", can justify it, if the product of my work wasn't mine, I wouldn't be incentivised to work and aka what's happening in France, you faggot, cunt, whore, asshole, subhuman socialist
So I've finished reading the thread.
Basically libertarianism is the ideology of middle-upper class boys in their 20s shouting as hard as their lung allow:
-fuck you got mine
-don't tell me what to do, my body my choice
-government get out REEEEE
As I don't see anything deeper in the exposition of libertarians belief in the post above.
They're the same guys that are memed as fedorafags?
bump?
>>66423372
>t. babby with 0 economic knowledge
