For some who have watched Michael Moore and some US based documentaries, these people are very critical of free market. They always give they point of view but they never really suggest anything substantial to replace the free markets. Actually I am not a very big fan of the free markets myself therefore I was wondering what is a more sustainable and fair business model which we should use. Any idea?

The reason why they cant propose a new system is because it is either free or controlled market. Controlled market as we know is much worse than free market. Look at China before the were demand driven.

many economy system in the world are mixed market, like those european countries, try search for the nordic model.

true... I ahve some fren whose business died casue of free market.... why? cos his customer can buy goods from his supplier and his supplier are willing to give the price lower than your cost

this is not a problem with free market, this is your friend being screw by the supplier.

free market benefits the consumer to have the freedom of choice , in the same time free markets creates tough competition for the seller.. somewhat 'dog eat dog' world in the free market economy.

just my 2 cents

Its still a hybrid between free and total controlled, Robert.

you are saying previously there is only either free or controlled.

Okay, Robert.

Still new looking at both exteremes, it would be possible to picture the in between. Comming up with models out of these concept would be revolutionary and requires a lot of creativity.

Hi, in fact it isn't really a free market in the US now. With so much regulation going on (especially post sub-prime), we are coming to an in between now sooner than you think.

The question now is - 'How much is too much regulation?'

Tan

technology + socialism/communism is the way to go.

Star Trek is the future.

Get rid of debt money and the pyramid financial system.


Kick out the babylonian slave drivers from Egypt, aka the western white men (who're descendants of egyptian kings)

yeah, the last time we played with communism ended up pretty well.

humans are by nature greedy and selfish. hence why utopia via communism dont really work. and why capitalism is showing the most effect

It will work now because of technology. Last time doesn't work because not enough of tech.


But the other factor is we must get rid of useless eaters, practice eugenics.


Sterilize people who have more than 2 children and remove unproductive humans from the gene pool.


Population must be cut down to manageable levels.


And finally, complete destruction of all major religions.


Religion is the cancer to the progress of humanity. Destroy it and all those who spread it.

knock knock? hello?
calling to planet mars? you there?

Wow Gary, you really like to control people. What if you had two child and then your son dies. You and then not able to get another son because you and your wife no longer have reproduction capacities. Similarly divorcees who remarries cannot have children because they had two in the previous marriage. This will deny the other spouse who was never married of children. Is this a form of justice or just control because the population dont know what is good for them.

How about listing down the reasons why you feel the free market system is unsuitable and we'll go on from there.

lets start with ineffective regulations, ever spiraling complexities, tendencies to create financial aristocrat class, widening of wealth gap, and the numerous scandals that is the result of this system.

and debt money.


People who do nothing, lend money they don't have, but expect real money to be returned.


This is simply a pyramid/ponzi scheme and eventually all those at the bottom of the chain have to kill/rob/rape/plunder to pay off the debt to those sitting at the top.


Money out of thin air, someone's gotta pay for it... and who? Those at the bottom of the chain.

This post has been edited by garytong: May 13 2010, 10:07 PM

Good start lim00b,

Ineffective Regulations.
What produces this? Incompetent leaders. The world is mostly democracy. Should we do away with democracy?

Ever Spiraling Complexities.
It would seem like increasing knowledge is the key to this. The question is could we attain full knowledge? What is knowledge today is a joke tomorrow (example the belief that the earth was flat).

Covert after the Elite Class.
Social strata had always existed. It is human nature to grow a need to strive to be high society? The communist wanted to abolish social strata. In order to do that there is a need for the dictatorship of the "uneducated" masses. What will eventually follow is the withering of the state. This China and many communist countries had shown that it was not possible. The dictators will cling on to their power to continue to lead the masses. Meanwhile new social strata will be created.

Widening Wealth Gap.
This is generated by social strata. Solve that issue and this one here would be easier to handle.

Scandals in the System.
This would be hard to solve. Greed is a human nature. Try asking a kid you do not know to share his candy and the answer is no but he is more than willing to share your candy. Perhaps we can have some way of breeding a nation of zombies by brainwashing.


TS, I pointed out earlier that there is no solution. Anything is just ahybrid of the two existing system. I hope some forumer can think out of the box and shed some light to this.

If I'm not wrong this was a key reason that led to the US economic meltdown and one of the reasons that triggered the great depression of the 1930's.

Many things can cause ineffective regulations. The regulations themselves may be outdated or ill-designed. Or they may be updated but enforcement might be lax. Or enforcement might be airtight but can be settled with under table money. That last one is a problem even in communist countries so I see it more as a human problem (greed) rather than a free market problem.

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

---

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/

I agree.. I've been traveling in & out of mainland China these couple of years & they're more like Singapore now.

china does not consider itself a free market, it consider the last financial crisis as the sign that the free market have failed. state control economy is still very much going the be continued in China for decades to come unless there is a revolution.

the most free market in asia and maybe the world i think is hong kong.

This post has been edited by robertngo: May 19 2010, 12:10 PM

Sprada,
Then there is no real communist economies. To say that communist economises is less effective is only in theory and textbook exercise. Such exercise I believe is clouded by "capitalistic" ideals.

Back to the question of greed. Are people in "conmmuist" countries not motivate to work because the are not properly rewarded in accordance to their efforts? Would rewardsnecessary be confine to monetary gains? Is there no other forms of motivaton? Yet being demand driven China had resolved this issue. Looking at it from China's prespective I call this "controlled capitalism". As quintessential pointed out their are no austrain economies. Therefore the are also a form of controlled capitilism like China.

Keynesian Economics Is Wrong: Bigger Gov't Is Not Stimulus

faceless, there is a real communist economy. Look at North Korea. In the past China was really communist before Deng Xiao Peng made changes in the 1980's, and look how much better its economy is compared to before then.

Yes, other rewards can be given besides monetary ones. But are they enough? Sure, you can say that we cannot just judge how well an economy performs from a capitalist viewpoint of money. But when people do not have enough to eat and have to queue up for miles to buy the humblest necessities of life, I think that should be unacceptable no matter what viewpoint we use to observe it.

Sprada, if there other factors to motivate other than greed, we are still stuck with the greed issue. The excessive desire to possess causing leading to bribery that case a weakness to the system.

As defined by Oxford
greed / grēd/
• n. intense and selfish desire for something, esp. wealth, power, or food.

Obesity is greed + stupidity.

Humans are by nature greedy. 200000 years ago, we were greedy for food and caves. Now we are greedy for different things. You be your own judge on what is right and what is wrong. All I know is, if you aggregate greed you get what is driving the economy. And the single biggest driver? Money. Or deferred goods and services depending on how you view money. Is that bad? You tell me.

Money is nutreal. Good or bad depend on how it is used or aquired. Good or bad is also determine by culture, religion ...

Maybe it was me that did not clarify the word finite enough. Assume there is one hundred people in a country that adopts communism ideology.

The leader group 25 pal to plant vegi, 25 pal to make clothes, 25 pal to make houses and 25 pals to make weapons. And he came out with their own currency for circulation. As you might imagine, the price you sell for the vegi and clothes are more or less fix. The money becomes a medium to trade different necessity. If 1 million dollars was printed, it would be more or less staying the same for a very long time.

The following questions raise:
1) How to calculate GDP for each people in the country?
2) How to calculate inflation which is a barometer for demand and supply?
3) The value of clothes and vegi are hardly demand and supply driven, how to determine the value of it?
4) How the leader know that 25 person planting vegetables is enough for national consumption, if it is not demand and supply driven?

Few months back, North Korea raised help to UN community asking for food supply as many of the citizens in the country live in starvation, however this request was turned down by UN. The reason provided was if North Korea afforts to make nuclear weapons, didn't see why they couldn't affort to feed their citizen. One can argues that it was UN that closed off the two way trading between North Korea and the rest of the worlds, the point here is North Korea which adopt purely communism ideology is not self sustainable.

In contrast, capitalism does not impose any restriction to the price of a product and services. A bag could be range from 10 dollars to 1M dollars as long as demand and supply calls for it. The GDP for a country is theoritically infinite, depends on how well the products that they produced are needed by the rest of the worlds.

When the price of the product reaching sky high, at one point it will burst just like all the bubbles burst happened in the history. One need to be smart enough to different between the intrinsic values of a products and services against the price pay. Like what Warrant Buffet has quoted: "Price is what you pay, value is what you get".

This is what make capitalism so seductive and dangerous at the same time.

Excluded the discussion of greed here. Be it capitalism or not, it is always an issue and need to be regulated.

i do support capitalism, but it dont seen to be sustainable in the long run, the world have finite resource , but capitalism have not limit, i devour resources like they infinite. it is good the economy depend on supply and demand, but sometime human demand too much and create too much waste on resource that are not renewable.

Just like what illustrated in Al Gore's an inconvenient truth video, which won him a nobel prize in peace. Although whether he walks the talk is questionable.

There will always be endless discussion on how do we weight on what we have achieved, to the expend of consuming our very own mother nature.

Do we measure the value of a human by what he own or what he do?

Who do we value more? An environmentalist named John or Bill Gates? If we only have one choice to be friend with only one of them and he will be friend with us, who would that be?

Off topic a bit I would say

we do need to value the sustainability of the earth environment, there are changes to nature that are cannot be undone, business should consider if what they are doing really add value to humanity that it is worth comsumming finite resources to do it.

Population control and eugenics is the answer.


Sterilize people who insist on having more than 2 children and those who don't have the brains should not reproduce.


We start with the religious nutjobs.


'Go Forth and Multiply' type of people.


This way we reduce uncontrolled demand/consumption.


Instead of waiting for them to overpopulate before we resort to either soft or hard kill to take them out.


Better to not have these humans born than to have to kill them later to sustain the future of the entire human race.

YES SIR.....
I HEARD YOU CLEARLY.......
I GOT YOUR MESSAGE
NOW CAN YOU JUST LEAVE THIS THREAD BECAUSE YOU ARE CLEARLY GOING OFF TOPIC

We often talk about greed as being bad in itself. Actually greed is the main driver of human progress.

You want to earn enough money to feed and clothe yourself right? When you achieve this goal, you want to earn enough to buy a house and car right? I don't blame you. So do I.

Now, you may say that this is not greed, but merely desire for the basic necessities of life. The fact remains though, these are still material desires. What we see as basic necessities might be great luxuries to people in Ethopia, and so to them, we are very greedy. The fact is that there is no clear line in the sand as to what is legitimate material desires, and what is overarching greed.

The only thing we can do is to regulate by law so that one person's greed cannot harm another, and that people have to take responsibility for their greed.

In the United States, many huge companies did not do well not because of the greed of the top executives. It was more of a case of disconnection of risk and return. They had the rights to control the company and would collect great rewards if the company did better than projected, but would lose nothing if the company failed. This of course led them to adopt risky financial practices to maximize returns to themselves. IF it was their own capital they were dealing with, I'm sure they would have been more cautious and conservative financially.

How does this help the world economy?

He has his point Wodenus. Less mouths to feed. I rather hope Gary would come out with something new than always repeating the same thing. Perhaps offer himself to be the first to be sterilise to set an example.

On the issue of greed, I like the way Sprada saparated the types of greed. Those deemed as basic necessities, those beyond necessities that will not hurt others. I think this can to some degree pin point the greed issue.

Speaking as one who benefits from lower prices of open competition, greed is good. Speaking as one who sees natural resources dwindling by the hour but still has 5 more decades to live, greed is not good.

I understand how needs are not the same as wants. Well it always starts off that way. Once upon a time our needs were just food, water, clothes and a spear. These days, a diploma... is that a need or a want. How about a car, or a cell phone. We can say they are wants, until we realize that we can't compete and survive without them. Who's to say today's wants won't become tomorrow's needs.

Because greed is a relative creature that changes rapidly with the times, I'm not entirely sure if we can be compelled to take responsibility for it, legally or otherwise. What's certain is we will pass the cost of our greed to the next generation in the form of debts, diseases like obesity, environmental wastelands, social conditions and so on. Nothing is free. You can't see these things in the span of one lifetime. You have to look beyond that to see it.

Just my 0.02.

it doesn't matter what kind of economy system the world has, as long as people act like assholes toward each other, any kind of economy is flawed.

if i were a supreme leader of the world, i'd put less focus on economy and tech advancement and more focus on teaching everyone how not to be dicks first.

That is not very nice Black Kitty. Even if the economy is in recession you still want to do propaganda on gearing everyone not to be dicks. They kill you and present your life 4 nerzhul.

you cannot stop people for being an d***, you just need regulation to made sure they dont pull some d*** move to screw everyone for their own gain.

this is way off topic.

how do you regulate 6 billion people?

in our capitalistic world, the top 10% of the world population holds 85% of the world's wealth. the top 2% holds 50%.

this means that if the world population is 100 people, and the total wealth of the world is 100 units, the top 10 people have 8.5 units per head, while the rest of the 90 people of the world only have 0.16 units per head. The top 10% people has 53 times more wealth than the rest of the world.

and obviously none of them deserve most of their wealth.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are perhaps the two richest men alive. Can you tell me what exactly it is that they do everyday that deserves them +USD40 billion in their banks, which is probably a million times more money than you and i will ever see in our lives? Does this mean that they are working a million times harder than you and me?

This post has been edited by mylife4nerzhul: May 22 2010, 01:03 AM

Hi kitteh, the world's billionaires aren't working a million times more than you & I. They're just many times smarter, and braver. They use financial leverages to do heavy lifting in the same way as you'd use a pulley to lift something 100 times heavier than you. Their spend their time searching for these leverages while we work for hourly wages.

We can only say they don't deserve their wealth if they cheated others in the process. In a free market, its willing buyer willing seller. People allow themselves to be used as leverage like M'sia Boleh's infamous Ali Baba system, for a fee of course. Both sides take a risk. Maybe it isn't fair but come to think of it, is anything really fair in the world?

In my opinion, the one who DESERVES a billion dollars is not one who works a million times harder than anyone else, but one who makes work easier for a million people.

So you're saying it's morally okay for the super wealthy people to deserve all their money not by contributing towards society by physically working like how it's supposed to be in the first place, but by outsmarting everyone into giving them more money? And getting returns a hundred fold compared to other people who actually physically work day by day in blood and sweat?

And difference between me using a pulley to lift heavy objects and an tradesman who overcharges his product 500% more than it's worth and underpays his workers is that one involves manipulation of machinery, while the other involves manipulation of HUMAN BEINGS.

This post has been edited by mylife4nerzhul: May 22 2010, 04:41 PM

i have to disagree, does contribution to society only comes through blood and sweat? how about thinkers, philosopher and researchers?

and society in general seemed to be allowing such practise to happen, cause no one actually forced the workers to work for the bosses. you seemed to be under the impression that top CEOs are nothing more than fat kings living off the toils of their corporate slaves.

I think you're missing the point. What kitteh was saying is that it's immoral for a certain few privileged people to prosper over the backs of other people's work, regardless of whether it's the farmer, the factory manager or the teacher. The "blood and sweat" wasn't meant to be taken literally.


Really? In this world, you either work for someone, or you're the boss. If you're really lucky, you will work for someone who won't exploit you. If you're a person of good-heart, you will treat your employees well without exploiting them. Unfortunately, there's too much of the former, too little of the latter.

I will let my friend, Tom Morello, explain further:



Replace America with any other country, and you'll still get the same result.

Granted, there's people out there who treat their workers as more than just sweatshop factory mules, but they are few and far between.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: May 22 2010, 05:16 PM

well, i feel that proper leadership is worth much more than grunt work. in any system you ll need proper overseeing and strategy to direct and focus the grunts below them to a cohesive force.

now the issue is, is this exploitation? a general generally stays out of harms way and direct soldiers to risk their lives. in a war, which is more valuable? i dont think you can assign the same value for a soldier vs a general.

correct, if you feel like you are "exploited" and dont like it, you are free to start your own business and "exploit" others. quotation is that i dont feel it is exploitation per se. slaves and serfs are exploited, employer/employee is a symbiotic relationship

Dude, don't get me wrong. I know where you're coming from and when you put it that way, yes it sound immoral.

BUT, firstly do re-examine again if someone like Bill Gates really contributed nothing to society. Try and google up "Bill Gates charity" and see what you get. Gates and many other billionaires like him provide one important function: they provide employment and with it, salaries, benefits, taxes, and other things that ripple down to your pocket and mine. If you removed Gates & others like him, not only you won't have Windows. Tens of thousands of people who work for Microsoft will be out of work. There will be hardship for their dependents, and the merchants that provide to them, and their dependents, merchants who sell computers on Windows and so on and so forth.

So how do you propose people like Gates be compensated? Pay him $5 an hour?

If the people who provide us employment are outsmarting us, then could you give an example of how we could get jobs and not be outsmarted?

And I agree, the pulley system analogy and your example of overcharging is different. Its apples and oranges lah, cannot be compared. Here's how I can do a financial pulley. I use my salary, say $10k, to take out a bank loan of $50,000 for a business. I use that $50k to pay a downpayment for goods worth $100,000. So from $10k on paper, I get goods worth ten times the value. That is how I leverage. Its willing buyer willing lender/seller all the way, everything's transparent, no one's forced.

Now I would agree not everyone's an angel. There are those who manipulate others big time and they should be called for who they are - unethical opportunists and some, criminals. But trust me, it would be a mistake to think that everyone is business is like that.

---

Added on May 22, 2010, 7:47 pmIf I work for a boss, can I say that I am exploiting him for money, especially if I'm a lazybones sort of guy who goofs off much of the workday?

i think in economics, exploit is a neutral technical term, meant to mean getting something in exchange for something. For example working 8 hours a day in return for X amount of pay. It is not meant to carry the negative connotation. Correct me if I'm wrong.

This post has been edited by Beastboy: May 22 2010, 09:31 PM

So Bill Gates set up a charity foundation and suddenly it's all okay? So you're saying if i rob $1 million from a bank and give half of it to charity then it'd be okay? He can act philanthropic all he wants, but stealing is stealing.

Compensating Gates? It's HIM who should compensate everyone else, since in the early days, Microsoft bullied and drove other competitors out of business which resulted in the Windows monopoly that you see today.

I'm not saying that all employers are taking advantage of their employees. What I'm saying is that the employer is morally responsible in paying their employees their due, and not just giving only the top executives RM50,000 bonuses a year while their employee wages remain stagnant or even dropping.

If by leveraging you mean setting up a business with a loan, then there is nothing wrong with that. As long as you pay the bank, your tax collectors, your workers, and everyone else their rightful dues, there is nothing wrong. It's when you start overpaying yourself and start underpaying others and overcharging your services when things start to go wrong. Unfortunately that's is the norm among employers and corporations these days.

No one's forced? You speak as if the willing buyer/willing seller system is flawless and incorruptible. Tell me, what OS are you using right now? Windows? Are you using windows because it's a superior operating system? Or because it's the only OS that supports all your favorite programs, which is the direct result of Windows monopoly? I bet it's the latter. It doesn't seem like a choice now is it?

Back in my college days, there was a mamak restaurant nearby who overcharges their food. The thing is they are the only mamak restaurant within that area, so it's either travel 8 km away to eat or pay RM6.00 for just fried chicken and rice. Now it doesn't seem like a choice now is it?

Do you see the problem complaining about rich people?

Ok, in your ideal world, some one like Warren Buffett should not have USD40b in his account. Ok, so lets say we cap his earnings per year to 100k. What would happen then? He would simply do enough to earn 100k and just chill for the rest of the year. Whose is going to make up for the lost income generated by him? There would be a significant lost of productivity from one of the best asset allocators in the world. This is what is known as a deadweight lost.

The fact is, he is worth USD40b because he has done USD40b worth of net work. And he has done it legally while indirectly it also increased social welfare. If you think he is overpaid, go do what he does. Increase in supply would drive down the price. Simple economics.

The socialist nirvana in a lot of younger people's mind simply does not exist. A bricklayer laying bricks for 10 hours does not equal to the amount of work that Warren Buffett does in 10 hours. Firstly, 10 hours of bricklaying work would probably only add USD1000 to the value of the house/economy. 10 hours of Buffett's work would add maybe 1000x of USD1000 to a company/economy. It is easy to see why Buffett's work is valued higher by everyone(market participants). It is because he adds tremendous value. Secondly, almost every able bodied person could do bricklaying after a short amount of training. And the fact is, no one is able to do what Buffett is able to do. Even people with a parallel amount of technical skill (ie Charlie Munger) cannot do what he does. He has a certain je ne sais quoi and a certain talent combined with a favourable environment that makes him really really good at what he does. A socialist nirvana would not reward either of those. Talented people that could positively change the world are suppressed. The world would be worse off if you do not allow talent to flourish.

I have 2 PCs. One is SUSE, the other Ubuntu. If you have admin access to the forum you can even check to see what OS I'm using if you feel I'm not telling the truth.

Dude, you're making all kinds of generalizations without checking/asking first. Its hard to have a sensible conversation when you don't give the other party the benefit of doubt.

Mac OS X FTW! ofc, we are OT

in case of that overpriced mamak, you'd wonder why no one else opened a more "reasonable" priced store. My uni was totally different, thre was 1 popular mamak where seniors traditionally bring juniors go, then he started overcharging and under delivering on quality. by the time i grad, no one goes there anymore.

its easy to say "pay their dues" but how do you know they are not already being paid their dues?

last time i heard his salary is around 50k per month.....that's more than enough for him for the rest of his life

i think bill gate and warren buffet don't have 40+ billion in their bank account

if im not wrong it's their net worth mostly base on stock market price....and who drive the price? invester

if microsoft stock suddenly plummet at around $1...do you think bill gate will still rate as world number 1 richest person?

This post has been edited by dr2k3: May 22 2010, 11:24 PM

Doesn't matter. I was just trying to make a point. It is easier to illustrate it when you consider his asset as cash. Bringing in networth and stock's market value would just open a can of liquidity worms that is probably more suited for another topic.

so if i have a house (100k) + cash 10k

so you count me have 110k cash?

I would count you as having 110k cash if:
1) The market has sufficient liquidity to allow you to liquidate your house as soon as you want to
2) The market has enough liquidity to ensure that you receive fair value for your house ie. close or marginal to the value of a previous sale of a similar asset that offers the same risk and return.
3) The is no cyclical bust in the market that is currently artificially depressing your house and the liquidation of your house has little to no impact on the market.
4) There is minimal to no transaction cost

Like I say, I am only using USD40b in the bank to illustrate a point. That was not the crux of my previous post. How does having USD40b in the bank or networth make any difference to the spirit of original post you quoted?

actually i m responding to mylife4nerzhul $40billion in bank

then how much do you think he is worth

wow really need to agree with my mates, thats it is totally true for lowyat forum having so many brainless idiot talking crap, and +1111111 for those who patiently explained to them -.-"......salute !!!!

actually everything is just as simple as demand and supply theory...if you dont like it, you just simply stop demanding for it laaaa.
IMO, free market is needed and good for the society, it encourage for further innovation and creativeness of people to survive in this society, competition creates great opportunity in many forms, and it will benefits the consumers and user at the end.

We, the human being are dependable units, we depend on each other to survive, the point is where you willing to depend on. since you loves to talk about bill gates, lets talk about it, if US did not release and intro the technology of internet to the world after the world war 2, bill gates' idea of everyone having a pc in their home would not be success. If mircrosoft dint success and making huge profit from us, the number of multi-millionaires in US would drop dramatically. If microsoft did not dominate the industry and standardize the technology being use, we might not having the chance to type all these crap in here. If a boss did not smart enough to maximize the profit gained for the company, the investors might not choose that particular company to invest on, in other words, the company couldnt expand, and remain in small forms, and the amount of workers would remain, lesser lazy/stupid/brainless/whateveryouliketocall people having the chance to sacrifice their sweat and blood for wages as low as $1 per hour. For some people, $1 is simply enough to feed them for 1 day or even 1 week.
If no free market, meaning lack of competition and encourage for monopoly, can we still able to get a laptop with the price as low as rm1500?? If no competition, can we still enjoy low value of money for vegetables/meats/seafoods/NEEDS from tesco/giant/carefour????
if let a telecommunication company dominating the industry, can we still enjoy the low prices for sms/calls ??? only one of them, either maxis/celcom/digi/xxxx to exists, and how many people would have lost their jobs? If a business is overprice/overcharge, why would you still go for it?? and you should happy for it, because it creates opportunity for you to become boss and be rich, you can start a similar business to compete with it, and that time only you will understand why would they charge you that price....lolzzzz.
Btw, thats enough, times up and gtg~ byebyeeeeeeeeeee

This post has been edited by kennie: May 30 2010, 05:37 PM

a discussion on the question that does free market corrode moral character

http://www.templeton.org/market/PDF/BQ%20Market%20Essays.pdf

greed is not human's nature ...................

Confucius said before, a baby is like a piece of white paper, its the environment, the ink, that make black dots on it.


i dun believe human are born greedy, cause i have seen how little kids share the candy that they have.

it is capitalism that thought humans how to be greedy.

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Added on June 4, 2010, 11:40 pmAnother few reasons are like constant harassment of capitalist countries towards communist countries and dictators of communist countries like joseph stalin that are less interested in fully committed to Marx ideas.

in addition, marx didnt intend human to work for money, it was intended to make human work to express their humanity. I could explain more if the book "The communist manifesto" is allowed in Msia. In Capitalism state, only the most talented are rewarded, but not the most hardworking.

A doctor and a garbage collector, who is more important? The answer is neither, if there is no doctor, then all of us will be sick, but without ppl collecting the garbage, all of us would get sick too. But the doctor gets paid more than a garbage collector because of his talent, while that garbage collector might be far more hardworking than the doctor.

Yeah i know capitalist countries can have the hell lot of GDPs they want but its pretty useless if 99% of the money is only in the hand of a group of ppl and the rest are left to die in hunger.

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Added on June 4, 2010, 11:51 pmU mean like i hide my stock so there will be less supply and i can sell for higher price?

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Added on June 4, 2010, 11:55 pmin short, lembu yang punya susu, sapi dapat nama.

This post has been edited by FLampard: Jun 4 2010, 11:55 PM

Hi guys,

I want to recommend one documentary film which I recent watched, "Zeigeist : Addendum"
It will explain to the very root of the problem we have now with monetary based economy.
The film also proposed an alternative to the capitalism, a resource-based economy.
Watch it yourself, here is the link to the movie website:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
yes, you can watch it online FREE, just click the the picture and it will redirect you to google video. It's kind of weird in the beginning of the film but bear with it, I guarantee you that you can learn a lot from this film, and it will give a blast to your mind.

download and watch the yes man fix the world, interesting point on uncontrolled greed.

http://vodo.net/yesmen

Nice share.

Waste of time, it's hard to argue with a movie. If he had a website with the transcript maybe.

thanks for sharing

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Added on August 14, 2010, 11:40 pmhere is the transcript u demanded. got it straight from quick google search.
http://www.wanderingsandmusings.com/wp-con...st_addendum.pdf

if u have watched the movie and u think it's a waste of time, i'm sorry.

ya movie is meant to be watched and discussed, not to argue.

This post has been edited by JowY: Aug 14 2010, 11:40 PM

to all of you who post links to movies , other threads and more videos...

why not summarize the point and put it right here for everyone to discuss rather than just lazyly posting a link there and hope that people would watch it

so please maybe summarize what was said because if you can't then there is no point for you posting it because it meant you did not fully understood what was discussed in the movie either..

back on topic, I have replied to another thread Capitalism there so maybe a moderator would like to merge this thread with the other to combine the discussion or something

This post has been edited by daccorn: Sep 3 2010, 10:07 PM

Free market is not good to an advance country

I thought its supposed to be the other way around. By advanced you mean a proper developed country? with a stronger civil society and citizen movement group that is not curtailed by the government? Of course information has to be liberated and not kept secret or else people would find it hard to know exactly whats going on whether with their governments or corporations. But with a liberated civil society, I don't see how the free market could threaten them. But of course we are nowhere near the ideal situation even in developed nations.

Dude I think ur confusing freedom of information with free market. Ur comment actually made me lol.


edit: Just for the record, Micheal Moore is an idiot.



Dude u are just like Micheal Moore, except of a different breed.
Confucius is an old man preaching his own personal beliefs, he became famous in a period where much of the knowledge we have right now did not exist.

Humans are just another type of animal, but infinitely smarter than the rest of the animals. A human is not born a blank sheet, a human is born with his parents characteristics, he will be predisposed towards certain behaviours, just like his parents. He will also be born with his animal instinct, fear, desire, motivation, the desire to become better. These are all human characteristics. When we grow up we learn how to adjust and we learn how to grow up emotionally and mentally.

Just like how children are capable of sharing candy, they are also capable of being obnoxiously selfish. These behaviours are influenced by their environment, it does not mean that just because children share their candy that they are born generous. It's just a human trait, like many other traits.

This post has been edited by flight: Feb 5 2011, 12:00 AM