Damned Democracy

[dr_mabeuse]

I was looking at Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree about globalization and the rise of the world economies (and the sinking of the US's) and it reminded me of something I always wondered about American foreign policy.

Why were we so damned set on bringing democracy to all these communist countries? Didn't we know they'd start competing with us economically and eventually be eating our lunch for us? Didn't we have it a hell of a lot better when the Russians and Chinese were living under the iron heel of controlled markets and Great Leaps Forward? Now look at us!

I was just reading where the dollar has fallen so low that New York is now only the world's 22nd most expensive city, and it's going to get worse. We're headed for Second Nation status. This is all from bringing democracy and free markets abroad. We should have kept them commie.

 

[rgraham666]

Best laid plans and all that.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

In the long run, the world will benefit from the fall of the Iron Curtain, including the USA.

However, we're in a rough patch for the moment.

Whether the Iron Curtain fell or not, however, the EU forming is a major competitor in any case.

Like it or not, we would have had to deal with China, too.

We kicked Germany's ass and Japan's, and they have come back. It's a damned if you don't, damned if you do situation, so it's better just to do the right thing.

That being said, we can't be surprised when we're overextended by invading countries when we don't need to do so (Iraq, anyone). Liberation is something to help with, not to do for others.

Or, as John Quincy Adams said, "We must be the friend of liberty everywhere, but the guarantor and provisioner of ours alone."

 

[shereads]

Worst of all, the Russian mob is taking over some key US territories of the old-school Italian mob. It's just not right.

 

[trysail]

I was looking at Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree about globalization and the rise of the world economies (and the sinking of the US's) and it reminded me of something I always wondered about American foreign policy.

Why were we so damned set on bringing democracy to all these communist countries? Didn't we know they'd start competing with us economically and eventually be eating our lunch for us? Didn't we have it a hell of a lot better when the Russians and Chinese were living under the iron heel of controlled markets and Great Leaps Forward? Now look at us!

I was just reading where the dollar has fallen so low that New York is now only the world's 22nd most expensive city, and it's going to get worse. We're headed for Second Nation status. This is all from bringing democracy and free markets abroad. We should have kept them commie.

Well, Doc— what's a liberterian free market advocate to say?

Free and competitive markets are a good thing (unless you happen to have been spoiled by a life lived under protectionism and artificial constraints to competition).

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Beyond that, don'cha sorta think it would have been a tad arrogant (not to mention fruitless) of us to have attempted to prevent the Russkies and the PRC from adopting free market economics?

By the way, there are folk who would argue that the Russkies and the PRC have yet to adopt democratic political systems.

It is possible that there is an inherent and ultimately unstable contradiction between free market economies and totalitarian political systems. We shall see. Stay tuned— things are bound to be interesting.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Worst of all, the Russian mob is taking over some key US territories of the old-school Italian mob. It's just not right.

I'm sure that La Cosa Nostra can take care of itself.

 

[Oblimo]

We need people to buy our shit.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

The dollar is low because the Federal Reserve has allowed too many of them to be created in the past four years. It has nothing to do with economic fundamentals.

America benefits no less that anywhere else when parts of the world that were previously poor and closed to trade become affluent trading partners. It makes everyone better off. Economists of all stripes understand this, and they also understand that there's a streak of irrationality in that anti-market bias which causes people to see the benefits of free trade within a country but think that if trade helps other countries it must be hurting us.

 

[only_more_so]

I was looking at Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree about globalization and the rise of the world economies (and the sinking of the US's) and it reminded me of something I always wondered about American foreign policy.

Why were we so damned set on bringing democracy to all these communist countries? Didn't we know they'd start competing with us economically and eventually be eating our lunch for us? Didn't we have it a hell of a lot better when the Russians and Chinese were living under the iron heel of controlled markets and Great Leaps Forward? Now look at us!

I was just reading where the dollar has fallen so low that New York is now only the world's 22nd most expensive city, and it's going to get worse. We're headed for Second Nation status. This is all from bringing democracy and free markets abroad. We should have kept them commie.

Well, when the aliens attack everyone is going to start kissing the US'es ass. Did I say aliens? I meant the Chinese. Yeah, the Chinese.

What is the proper possessive for the US?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

We need people to buy our shit.

We don't make anything anymore! Except shit. That we make plenty of.

Everything we sell is made in China, Japan, Taiwan or Indonesia and Mexico.

 

[rgraham666]

But that's very profitable for the companies involved.

Which is the only thing that matters to them.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

But that's very profitable for the companies involved.

Which is the only thing that matters to them.

But is it in the long run? If all the jobs are shipped out of the country just how long will they be profitable? A decade or two?

When no one in the US can no longer afford their product they will have to start marketing and selling in those ex-third world countries which they exported the jobs too. Now the wages they pay for the product in those countries becomes too expensive for them to make and they are either out of business or the manufacturing and jobs come back to the US. Only now there are no longer any factories or manufacturing plants, nor is there any skilled labor that is needed to fill the positions in those missing plants.

But no one has ever accused big business of being smart in their long range thinking.

 

[Oblimo]

We don't make anything anymore!

Brands and franchises, my dear boy, we make brands and franchises.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

We need people to buy our shit.

I think we should replace "In God We Trust" with this new motto.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The dollar is low because the Federal Reserve has allowed too many of them to be created in the past four years. It has nothing to do with economic fundamentals.

America benefits no less that anywhere else when parts of the world that were previously poor and closed to trade become affluent trading partners. It makes everyone better off. Economists of all stripes understand this, and they also understand that there's a streak of irrationality in that anti-market bias which causes people to see the benefits of free trade within a country but think that if trade helps other countries it must be hurting us.

Bull hockey. Why don;t we have inflation at home then? The dollar is low because it's not worth Jack Squat. It doesn't buy anything. People want Euros. The American economy is a pile of debts with no income so no one wants to be holding greenbacks. We're in hock up to our eyeballs to the Chinese and if they ever call in their chits we're screwed. Like T Boone says, we're shoveling out $300 Billion a year for oil, the greatest wealth transfer the world has ever seen and we have absolutely no idea what to do about it. All we get for that money is CO2. We're spending money in Iraq like a drunken sailor, all our R&D money goes into acquisitions and money shuffles and we've got an overmature economy.

We should have done everything possible to keep the commies commie. We should be supporting Cuba and North Korea as our last best hopes.

 

[R. Richard]

I'm sure that La Cosa Nostra can take care of itself.

La Cosa Nostra is Sicilian. If you think that there's no difference, ask an Italian.

 

[rgraham666]

But is it in the long run? If all the jobs are shipped out of the country just how long will they be profitable? A decade or two?

When no one in the US can no longer afford their product they will have to start marketing and selling in those ex-third world countries which they exported the jobs too. Now the wages they pay for the product in those countries becomes too expensive for them to make and they are either out of business or the manufacturing and jobs come back to the US. Only now there are no longer any factories or manufacturing plants, nor is there any skilled labor that is needed to fill the positions in those missing plants.

But no one has ever accused big business of being smart in their long range thinking.

But the people who made the decisions became rich and are now for the most part gone with their money.

They have their villas in France or their beach front property, with servants, in the Caribbean so why should they care if the country that birthed them goes to Hell?

 

[cantdog]

Firstly, I personally seem to be able to print money. All I have to do is run up a big debt on my cards. They never even ask where that amount of dollars is going to come from. I just create those dollars out of thin air.

Hell, they offer credit cards to babies! They want people to run up huge unsecured debts.

Then, the 'assets' which those debts represent go off to war, acquiring companies and doing all the lovely shenanigans that, once upon a time, you needed real money to be able to do.

And a certain proportion of those debts, or assets if you prefer, never actually come into being, because some of those debts get written off when they can't be collected. So those assets have all along been worth some imponderable percentage less than they seemed to be, at face value. Thus all dollars are to that extent weaker, and yet more money has been brought into circulation in the process.

Plus the fiscal policies of the ideologues who have captured Washington, starving the beast, have gone to make the country as bankrupt as they can make it. On purpose.

The world overvalues the dollar, if you want my opinion.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The new motto is "cui bono," who benefits?

ROXANNE cant be more wrong.

If America was trading surplus wheat or timber or aircraft for surplus oil or bananas or fish her argument would be valid. But what we're doing is using cheap labor to circumvent American labor law, environmental law, etc. and health-welfare funds. ROXANNE cant argue that the jobs are dead-end unskilled work because more and more of it is white collar.

American corporations are creating a situation that fomented our Revolution. That is, the East India Company bought Parliament and GEORGE III inorder to exploit American commerce and even compete with it, but without the taxes the Americans paid. The East India Company brought tea to America, sold it to merchants, then opened its own shops to compete, but without taxes. ROXANNE will suggest that EIC tea was cheaper and everyone prospered, but they didnt.

So where we're headed is to another reckoning with the politicians about their loyalties.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Brands and franchises, my dear boy, we make brands and franchises.

Vapor, not real, not tangible. It used to be "Made in America" meant something. Now all we do is put together other people shits in some foreign country and slap a label on it a call it ours.

As I said before we don't "make" shit!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

CANTDOG

Dont fucking count on it. The banks own Washington and will get their money from you.

 

[rgraham666]

Vapor, not real, not tangible. It used to be "Made in America" meant something. Now all we do is put together other people shits in some foreign country and slap a label on it a call it ours.

As I said before we don't "make" shit!

Same thing happened to Britain in the 19th and early 20th Century.

Len Deighton wrote a good book on it.

 

[Liar]

You spread democracy to China? I don't think they got the memo.

 

[JagFarlane]

My two cents...

As I sit here and read, I see one striking thing. Everyone is complaining about problems...no one offers answers. I see the whining and the bitching that few choose to answer...

First, why did we try to bring democracy to other countries? Freedom. Plain and simple as that. We were a country born on the ideals of freedom. Freedom of everything here, the right to do as we wish. You don't live in a country where you can only buy bread on a certain day, or you can only choose to drive a certain brand of car. You don't live in a country, where if you're an 18yr old male, you have to serve 2 years in the armed forces. If you don't like your job, you can go to college, whatever college you want. And our country has taken to task, that its our job to bring freedom throughout the world.

Our country is evolving, as it always has. Its gone from a farming country to a manufacturing country just a century ago, and now, its changing from a manufacturing country to a service country. Its a natural evolution, and it has its growing pains. You talk of jobs going overseas, yes, that happens. Just this year, Merril Lynch sent their desktop support work to India. Why? Because here, in the US, those workers demanded $120K a year salaries, whilst Indian workers asked for only $30K a year. People here, in the US, seem to think that high paying salaries are not a privilege, but a right. One of the biggest complaints businesses have is that college kids, with no experience, come out thinking that they should be earning high paying salaries, and don't understand that they have to start at the bottom.

Just 40 years ago, college was seen as a right for only rich kids. Unless you were a big sports talent or something of that nature, you shouldn't go. Today, its seen that everyone has the right to go to college, to get a degree. In fact, today, its often told to todays youth that a high school degree with not get you very far. Is this always true? Not always, but generally is. College itself, once viewed as a privilege is now seen as a right.

You talk of how the EU is a major competitor, but forget that the EU is made up of many large, established countries. That all their economies combined are what is needed to compete with the US. And they are hurting from high oil prices too. Spanish truck drivers are going on strike. Italian fishermen go on strike as well.

Oil is...where we bleed our money, yes. But are we smart enough to get ourselves out of it? Yes. Slowly but surely this country is turning around, from Pickens and his wind farm, to the engineer whom designed a way to turn any vehicle into a hybrid, and estimates that when he gets shops up and running, can do it for $1-2K a transfer in about an hour. Biodiesel has been a hot topic as of late, as have nuclear power plants, solar power, and drilling our own resources. It will take time...yes, but can it be done? YES.

The biggest problem we have right now, is that the last serious recession to hit this country was over ten years ago. The recession of '01 really shouldn't count because the consumer kept spending, and made that recession less noticeable. Now its hit the consumer, and people are afraid. They're not used to this. But its not just our country, its other countries. Even China, India, and Indonesia have raised the price of fuel, by eliminitating some of their subsidies. Venezuela has talked of raising the price of their fuel, even though they know it will lead to riots because they think they have a right to cheap fuel.

Look around the world, look at Haiti where they eat dirt cookies, or to Thailand, where children wander dumpsters in search of food or something to sell to buy food. If you're here, chatting on the AH, then at least you have a roof over your head, a computer that functions, and the internet. How many people out there would kill to have the internet? Look at some of the reports out of Afghanistan. For some of the women, look at how the young women over there cry with joy at not only being allowed to go to school, but to use a computer, and to dream of a good life for once. Look at how privileged you are, look at what you take as a right, when it really is a privilege.

My two cents, though most of you will hate me for it

 

[dr_mabeuse]

You spread democracy to China? I don't think they got the memo.

No, but we tried, and now they've got this damned free market bug. We should have given them Taiwan and encouraged them to stick with that back-yard blast-furnace thing they had going during the People's Great Leap Forward. It kept the kids out of trouble and meant free pig iron for the whole family. And what was wrong with those quilted pajamas they used to wear? Now everything has to be high fashion?

They say that in 5-10 years they'll have more cars than the USA. Guess how much gas is going to cost then? If they'd stayed communist they'd still be riding the shoe leather and waving Mao's little red book, not driving all over in Mercedes Benzes.

Now all they do is rip off our video games and designer handbags and poison our Alpo.