Beastboy,
Did you realised that you had described incompetent leaders in the following
1) outdated or ill-design regulatons
2) enforcement lax (leadership in rank and file)

The kick-back idea is great. That leads back to the last point of scandal in the system

How about the simple logic that ponzi schemes don't work ?


Fiat money, is ponzi.


How can you print money out of thin air and lend, then expect to be paid back in real interests as well!?!!


Where's the interests going to come from ?!!!!



From real stuff, you dig from the ground, or foreign exchange, where others dig from their ground.




Do you see how wealth is transferred from the bottom barrel peasants to those at the top?!


Mainly the oligarch banksters.


It is a form of slavery! Most cannot see through it because they're bamboozled and blinded by materialism.


They don't realized someone's gotta pay for it for them to enjoy what they got. That's why the bottom barrel losers are the poor, the starving, whose land are being raped and they're left to fend for themselves, regardless of what country.


The ponzi/pyramid scheme is illegal only because the entire financial world and governments are using this pyramid scheme!

Of course, we all know what happens to pyramid/ponzi schemes eventually, especially in the financial world. They will collapse under their own unsustainable weight/lifestyle and debt.


This is the foundation of our world, the pyramid binary universe/tree scheme of all things!

Ya, I know. Not nice lah for me to say loud loud... haha.

The point is, regulatory problems is not exclusively a free market problem. Wealth gap yes, class distinctions ... in closed societies you can have elites too, like if you are related to a high ranking officer of the ruling party. Aristocracy can be based on affiliation than financial and it can be no less problematic.

Complexities... also not exclusively a free market problem. Try exporting some goods to closed market societies and you will know what I mean. I think that is because while free markets are predatory, closed societies tend to be protectionist. Soemtimes protectionist societies can be more complex than open societies.

So come back down the greed problem.

Yup.

So back to the original question, if free market not good for world economy, then what is good?

If anyone can name an economic system that is not based on the pursuit of profit (a.k.a. greed) then that's the answer.

hold it there.....
greed is not bad
it is the system that have flaws that make greed run over it....

If greed is not bad, then why even bother to regulate it?

Frankly speaking, there is no completely free market in the world. All governments intervene, the difference is just the degree to which they do so. Even in the United States there are many government regulations designed to limit the things companies can do. The anti-monopoly act is one. Statues protecting consumers are numerous as well, earlier last century many smokers who developed lung cancer sued the cigarette companies and won huge sums of money. If it was really a completely free market, this should not have happened, as nobody forced the smokers to buy cigarettes.

Neither will a completely controlled market work as well. Look at communism and how it has performed economically. China in the 60's and 70's was dirt poor, now they are far better. Look at the difference between North and South Korea, and in the past, between East and West Germany. Communism is just not viable because under it nobody has the incentive to do work. Why work hard when everyone gets the same pay?

The answer is a balance, free enough for people to exercise their creativity to create wealth and to reap the rewards of their hard work, and with enough government controls to protect consumers and small businesses, as well as ensuring fair play. Some social welfare is also vital for the country to develop well, as not everyone is fortunate enough to be born into a well-to-do family.

what are the regulators of greed?

You can start from faceless's post @4:05pm.

I can think of market manipulation tricks such as short selling and hoarding in order to create artificial shortage to jack up prices. The regulators.. a jail sentence if convicted?

that's the problem with monopoly of supply side of the economy..... free economy needs high competition

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Added on May 18, 2010, 7:54 pmdude.....do you even understand what does free market mean???


This post has been edited by slimey: May 18 2010, 07:54 PM

I also not sure wat free market mean ... anyone can summarize for me? coz I never study economic b4 (i'm a science student in IT field).

One of my previous post from different thread.

One main reason why Communism ideology fails is the way it handles the economic of a country. It assumes that the economic of a country is finite. Don't get me wrong, finite here doesn't mean that the regime leader comes out with a GDP of says 1Billion for year 2010 for that country.

"Finite" means the economic is determined by the regime leader and his team in a hierarchy structure. A team does infrastructure, B team food, C team medical, D team weapon....etc. The nation's wealth is determined by the top tier of the hierarchy. The job creation, the number of companies are all are predetermined by the leader. Food is distributed to each citizen in the form of coupon (like North Korea). The country will need to shield the entire nation from the outside world (capitalism) in order to maintain the ideology.

On the other hand, why capitalism is a better model? Because it started with the assumption that economic of a country is theoretically infinite.

Looking back at the history of western economy capitalism model, prior to 17th century, there were kings, dukes, rich man or central planner who control the entire piece of lands and everything (includes everyone) in it.

There was one Scotsman who proposed a new model called "Invisible Hand". He argued that when each person pursues his own line of work, the general population is far better off that it is when the king or the central planner runs the economic show and dictates who does and gets what (e.g. cloth, hat, vegetable). He argued that if millions of individuals making and selling whatever they pleased, and going off in all directions at once, could create an orderly society in which everyone had clothes, food and a roof over their heads. What if 99% of the people decided to make hats, and only 1% decided to grow vegetables? The country would be flooded with hats, and there would be nothing to eat. But this is where the Invisible Hand comes to the rescue.

There wasn't really an Invisible Hand, of course. It is a metaphor. For instance, if too many hat makers made too many hats, hats would pile up in the market, forcing the hat sellers to lower the price. Lower price for hats would drive some hat makers out of the hat business and into a more profitable line of work, such as vegetable farming. Eventually, there would be just enough vegetable farmers and hats makers to make the right amount of vegetables and hats.

The "invisible hand" method proposed is the basics of how a free market works, and they still hold true today. He was referring to supply and demand kept goods and services in balance. His idea seems obvious today, but in 17th century, it was a novel idea by one human being when such ideology was never heard and never implemented before.

His name was Adam Smith aka The Father of Modern Economics. And his idea was written down in the book called "The Wealth of Nations".

If a country wants to be prosper, it needs to adopt "free market" concept where the wealth generated is theoretically infinite. In summary, bottom up (capitalism) is a better model then top down (communism) from economical perspective.

One can still argues that there are pro and con with "free market" capitalism concept. I agree. Look at Tulip bubble, Automotive bubble, .Com bubble and lately property bubble in Dubai. Again, as Adam has mentioned, this is how the free market work in cyclic order, where price goes up will eventually comes down and this cycle will continues......just like the hats maker and the vegetables farmer.....

same reason why you want to light a fire. controlled fire/greed is beneficial, uncontrolled...

nice.rider, I do agree with you that Communism is less effective in developing the country's economy compared to Capitalism. However I do not quite agree with the reason you state.

It is not quite true that Communism treats the economy as finite while Capitalism treats it as infinite. Both types of economy need to put in labor, technology and natural resources to get outputs such as crops, manufactured goods and services. With advances in technology and more labor and resources put in, both types of economy will increase in output.

The real difference is that in a capitalist economy, people will have an incentive to work hard and work smart, because by doing so they earn more money. In a communist system, this incentive does not exist because peoples' wages are fixed by the state, without regard of the actual demand of what they produce. So they can laze around or produce lousy goods that no one actually wants to use, so the economy sucks.

In the final analysis, the difference is not one of a finite mindset vs an infinite mindset, but of a lazy mindset vs a motivated mindset.

Greed, for a lack of better word, is good. Greed works. Greed is right. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all its form, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. -Gekko

Free market as a concept does not suck. It only sucks because we are not in a perfect market nirvana. Yet, it is still the best thing that we have. Until we could find a better way to allocate resources, free market is here to stay.

Sprada,
Do you consider China'e economy communistic?

Monstar,
Greed by defination is
A selfish or excessive desire for more than is needed or deserved, especially of money, wealth, food, or other possessions.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/greed

Do consider obesity good for lack of a better defination of the word greed?

all hail king Gekko

faceless, I don't consider China's current economic system as Communistic. The only communist element they have right now is that government controlled companies make up a large percentage of their economy, over 50 percent if I am not mistaken. Besides that, their private companies operate in a fairly free-wheeling environment. In fact, because of their nearly non-existent welfare system, I would say that they are in fact less communist (or socialist) than many Western countries, especially the European ones.

contrary to the believe, usa doesn't practice a full-fledged capitalism as long as there's a government intervention.

still confused, just read the difference between the keynesian and austrian economics.
keynesian system believes that government intervention is inevitable (i.e: stimulus package, bailout). austrian system on the other hand, believes that the economy should be driven by the market itself and free from government intervention.

http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/austrian-...iat/2008/02/15/