Note: I do not mean we should legalize the selling of information that companies deem as private. This should be punished and treated as a form of theft. Committing that crime is not at all synonymous with buying stocks based on something you personally know.

People who invest based on non-public knowledge (whether it be Senators, corporate directors, or even simple employees of a company) are susceptible to conviction. Insider trading is seen as corrupt and damaging. Under our current circumstances, it most certainly is. But if it were made legal for people to trade securities based on inside information, would we really see such a harsh effect on the economy?

The answer is no. While some may consider insider trading fraud, it, in reality, is neutral to the economy when people have the freedom to do so. If I work in a department like Annuities at Prudential Insurance, I may know a bit more, from hearsay or from my work, than the average-Joe. If I act on that and purchase equity securities, why is it considered a crime? Why is it considered a crime for directors to purchase stock in a company based on deals they’re making for the business? Look, it may line the pockets of employees (which isn’t necessarily bad), but let’s look at the flip side.

Discouraging Speculation:

Right now, our markets are overflowing with credit. As always. This credit is often used to purchase stock. Most people invest with 401ks in companies they know very little about. We call that “speculation”, right? The more we discourage people to invest based on knowledge they have, the more we encourage speculation in the stock market. And time and time again, we have seen speculation lead to harsher downturns in the market.

Impedes Ability to Commit Fraud:

I’m sure very few people forget the fraud Enron committed. Now let’s think about this: Enron was ripping off its investors and clients left and right. Insiders would have sold much more and everyone would have noticed the shock that this selling would have had much sooner. It generally provides for a more transparent company, rather than closed off to the public.

A Concern Regarding Inside Trading:

Senators and Representatives. A number of people in Congress trade their securities based on closed-door meetings they have about regulations. I’m sure Cabinet members are much more guilty of this as well. This is no news, really. I fear that the legalization of insider trading would permit far more personal influence on decisions at committee meetings. In other words, Congressmen and women would legislate and push the markets around to allow for their portfolio to grow.

What would need to happen is the passage of an Executive Order banning Congressmen and women from owning stock of companies. Period. It would remove some corruption I think, and would put public service closer to the top priorities of politicians. It wouldn’t fix the issue of companies buying out our elected officials at all (it could still be done with donations or intermediary parties), but it would definitely help.

shanemorris:

So check this out… Earmilk likes to media sponsor live events. Basically, if we like your event, we’ll throw you a few thousand bucks worth of advertising for free. In exchange, you throw our logo on your flyers and give us tickets to give away. Alrighty then, that’s pretty simple, right… let’s move al…

BUZZ! WRONG MOTHERFUCKER! (Done in the voice of California.)

Because in California, you pay taxes on the full price of advertisement value. So even if I give someone $5,000 in advertisements, they’ll still owe the state of California $437.50. That’s just in taxes. And we’re an ONLINE fucking business.

Solution… get incorporated in business-friendly Georgia. Oh. How convenient. I’m here. Well, suck on that California. This is you LOSING yet another business.

I understand states need taxes to operate, but there are 49 other motherfucking states for me to choose from, especially when all 25 Earmilk employees work from f**kin’ home. We don’t need you California! Don’t you get it?! This isn’t a fucking child support check you just collect because you deserve it. You gotta give us a good REASON to pay you.

So let’s realize that this is also pretty much done on the federal level. What the state of California has added on drove out yet another business. So if we raise these taxes federally and keep these barriers to entry around, what will happen? We will see small businesses dying and larger ones leaving the country entirely. If we want business start-ups, we need to free up the markets.

Republicans can’t just focus on cutting taxes for “job creators.” It goes much further than that. We obviously need to halt the business cycle by removing central banking, and we also need to deregulate across the board. Disband monopolies by allowing businesses to enter the market and compete. If you want unemployment to go down and standards of living to go up, let these small businesses employ all over the country. Businesses like Earmilk need the ability to start and expand, not be pushed out by the corporations and government.

thoseboringpolitics:

In response to this post, I got a few questions claiming that my logic was faulty, because economies of scale wouldn’t exist in a free-market economy. Assuming the first was a troll, I ignored it, but I got 2 more anons with the same question. Maybe it was the same person, but I’m making a post explaining that economies of scale would still exist in a free-market. They would just exist to a smaller degree.

Businesses will obviously still finance and evaluate their assets, output, and expenses frequently in a free-market. In fact, they’ll have to scrutinize more into it since they’ll be completely on their own and without regulation. Economies of scale occur when Average Total Cost declines as more output is occurring. This effect is mandated by supply and demand. That’s simply business.

To make my point that the sizes of businesses would decrease, let me explain something:

We live in a Representative Republic, meaning it’s easier for businesses to get their say in bills and amendments. Lobbyists are paid big money to ensure handouts for their companies. A prime example are liability caps on oil companies. It removes the ability for many to pursue companies in court, allowing businesses to not be held accountable for their actions.

When businesses make decisions in a free market to increase their assets, with increasing revenue as their final goal, they take a risk. Businesses take many risks in markets and if they screw up, they can be held accountable. 

Everytime a firm expands, whether it be hiring a few new workers or building a whole new workplace, it’s taking a large risk. As firms grow and grow, a larger amount of liability is spread over a large amount of workers, consumers, and land. However, the liability is voided when the state is brought in. 

This is not to say firms can’t and won’t grow to international sizes in free markets; they will. But they won’t have nearly as much of a market-share nor will the have as little competition. Firms will be held liable for many disputes: from small claims to employee-benefits. The expenses of liability will force many businesses that would otherwise potentially hold a large market-share to drawback. 

Anti-trust laws, while they seem to be regulating firms, actually help keep monopolies around. Barriers to entry also prevent new competition. In other words, competition is kept out by government. 

Competition would be frequent as firms compete for size without becoming too large in liabilities. The only way a firm could become progressively large is if the way they treat employees is so positive and its output is so productive that claims against the firm won’t be filed. That type of innovation would be imitated and firms would prosper and compete to be better.

Monopolies are preserved by government.  AT&T was upheld by government and after deregulation, more competition entered the market and dominated. A more recent example involves statewide monopolies on electricity. Many states were recently deregulated, allowing companies to provide electricity for more people rather than go through an organization such as PECO (Philadelphia Electric and Gas Company). 

These monopolies directly correspond with large economies and diseconomies of scale; monopolies wouldn’t be around without a corporatist state. Economies of scale simply would be much smaller without the state. And that’s all because of the second most favorite word of libertarians (liberty is the first): liability.

Decided to reblog one of my older posts since I had to visit it anyway to provide the link for a friend. I think it’s a nice little post, and the post it links to at the beginning is nice as well. So for all new followers since this post, enjoy some reading material!

stfuconservatives:

shortformblog:

• 2007 In a bipartisan bill supported by president George W. Bush, a bill raising the standards for energy-efficient light bulbs passes with little trouble. The bill is popular with consumers, who see buying more energy-efficient bulbs as a way to save money.
• 2011 For some reason, Republicans (particularly Joe Barton) have turned down the law, which will take effect next year, and tried to force a repeal. The repeal failed. It’s worth noting that Barton gets a lot of campaign contributions from the energy industry. source

Read ShortFormBlog • Follow

Remember that video where Rand Paul was like “you call yourselves pro-choice, but you’re taking away MY choice to buy inefficient lightbulbs!” God, that man is a horse’s ass. No surprise that the energy industry is the one holding the carrots.

But… you are. You absolutely are taking away someone’s choice between products. The consumer no longer faces options to buy what they desire. Some inefficient-energy bulbs can produce more light; while I personally prefer energy-efficient bulbs, the regulation on businesses makes for nasty market conditions. 

The energy-efficient bulbs are more expensive to produce, that’s clear and it’s probably why businesses lobbied against it. So many people buy these cheaper bulbs and its partly where certain companies thrive off of. So imagine now that their entire demand for cheaper bulbs gets cut out. There will still be an overall demand for lightbulbs, so however much of a demand there was for inefficient lightbulbs, the firm must transfer that to energy-efficient lightbulbs. So the Average Total Cost sky-rockets. This means, to make up for the loss of profit, the consumer must pay more for their lightbulbs. That’s less money for the consumers to really do anything anywhere else. Since you’re a liberal, I’ll assume you’re a proponent of the fractional-reserve system. More money being put into lightbulbs means less credit creation for lower income families. The wealth is taken from other places.

The rise in prices of lightbulbs means a fall in demand. The firm suffers from demand loss. With higher expenses and lower demand, the firm is forced to lay off workers. It’s the way this is heading. Higher unemployment = lower aggregate demand. The economy takes a minor hit with every one of these needless regulations upon businesses, let alone the elimination of choice for consumers.

I don’t like Rand Paul much either, though I wouldn’t call him a horse’s ass.

TL;DNR: Economy will take a hit, not needed, eliminate’s consumer choice. I don’t like Rand Paul either, but name calling isn’t productive. 

kategrice:

progressivelyminded:

kategrice:

Friedman believes if we removed the minimum wage this would allow businesses to be able to hire more poor, thus decreasing the unemployment rate, and these employees could increase skills to rise to a higher paying job, and the businesses could sell more products because they would be cheaper from decreased labor costs. Wouldn’t this be the making of a massive corporatocracy? If they we’re able to hire laborers for cheap costs then they could employ large amounts of people and start creating more products via buying more machines and hiring more people and thus become a super power bigger than Wal Mart. Not to mention it’s ability to put smaller businesses out of competition by cheaper prices on all objects which would also increase desire to work for the company. Seems like it could become a world power relatively quickly. Or do I have this completely wrong and it’s actually going to create some Capitalist utopia?

I’m sorry but this does not sound like libertarianism is going to “increase the living standard of all”. 

I wish more an-caps and libertarians followed me so they could explain the theory a little bit better lol

In classical economics, technically speaking he’s not wrong in that abolishing the minimum wage would lower unemployment, but in real life, this means I think that most wages would drop (at least below what is set as our legal minimum wage), and so people would actually have to work longer hours than they’re already working to make what they did before. (And here, I’m talking about working class people and not whiny hedge fund managers.)

Perhaps it would create some kind of capitalist utopia, but it’s one that gives the employer the upper hand, for sure.

Thanks! 

That’s what I was thinking, that doing away with the minimum wage would be horrendous for the economy and humans quality of life that we have worked for. Hahaha yeah it would be Utopian for those making major profits xD   

My issue with this: where do businesses make profits from? Where does all the money come from? Investors and consumers. How do investors and consumers make money? From being employed. Now what employees are paid by businesses really is the beginning of the process of where demand comes from. If people only have so much money, then they will only buy so many goods. Meaning demand will drop. 

Workers being paid lower wages would mean yes, cheaper means of production and cheaper labor, but in turn, this means a change in the price of goods. The prices would fall relative to wages, and demand would spike. These low-paid workers would be able to afford the cheaper goods. Now this is great for businesses because the spike in demand is met! 

Note: Indirectly, this would affect the value of the currency positively, as the demand for the given amount of money would slowly drop to a lower point.

Workers would be paid less, but the end result benefits all consumers, including the low-paid workers. The businesses would need to thrive off of the consumers, as they sort of do now. 

As for the argument that it promotes corporatism and creates huge enterprises, I have an explanation for why this wouldn’t happen here. It also explains how firms would need to treat their employees with an alright wage. Set aside the fact that without paying workers a decent wage that consumerism would stop. The only way a company can even have output is with lots of employees. The best way to have employees is to be appealing to employees. Firms competing in a market would want more employees to create economies of scale (as explained in that post), meaning they would have to compete for workers.

And a company simply cannot get too large. As you can see by the graphs in the link, a firm will eventually reach diseconomies of scale, when employing people becomes inefficient and profits are lost. Meaning every time they want to employ more, they need to create new working spaces and make sure they have the demand for it. Though you could say now “But if all they have to do is create more working areas and employ more people, they can create a monopoly!” 

This post explains briefly how in the free-market, a business would be consumer-employee-regulated to a certain size. With this post on liabilities plus the post explaining how a firm can only employ so many people relative to its size, you can see no such monopolies or corporations would be created. It would be very competitive in all markets while also throwing down the overall unemployment rate.

While I’m very happy that things are equal, I’m not at all happy that this is the bill that was passed in the state. Things should be equal among gays and heteros. 

But not in the legality of marriage. Marriage in general shouldn’t be a legal issue. All marriages are required to be recognized by states. But why? Why is it necessary to have any regulations of people marrying who they love? People should be able to do what they want and call it whatever they want.

The fact that everyone who wants to marry someone is required to consult the state is ludicrous; no one should have to gain a license from the government to be with who they love. The solution shouldn’t be “legal” but instead left alone for people to decide. The fact that the most peaceful of all social matters is routinely controlled by government should be a sign that things have gone too far for far too long.

The Part of this Title will go over the Office of Financial Research and its Provisions. It will not be as long as Part 1. Subtitle B, which is the outline of the OFR, starts with 

(a) ESTABLISHMENT.—There is established within the Department of the Treasury the Office of Financial Research.

The Director of the Office, who will be paid at Level III of the Executive Level, may also appoint Committees that “may be useful in carrying out the functions of the Office.” The Committees can employ staff of the Office or entirely new employees. So in Subtitle A and B, it creates very powerful bureaus that may expand themselves at their very whim. 

Their funding comes from the Financial Research Fund which will be active 2 years after enactment. Until then, the Federal Reserve will be 100% involved in funding the Office.

It’s authority is best described by the wikipedia article of the Act:

The Office has broad latitude in performing support services for both the [Financial Stability Oversight] Council and other Member Agencies, including data collection, applied research and essential long-term research, and developing tools for monitoring risk. The Office can also issue guidelines to standardizing the way data is reported, constituent agencies have three years to implement data standardization guidelines.

Meaning pretty much the entire office serves under many bureaucracies and carries out their orders; it’s essentially a middle-man for any competent regulation, forcing more people to be paid for imposing conditions on businesses than need be. So those actually looking to help people with regulation (and not corporatism) didn’t quite think this one through. For those looking to gain benefits from corporatist “regulations”, this is a plus. It essentially allows the Financial Stability Oversight Council to carry out more actions at once than they otherwise would be able to by simply telling this Office to do it for them while they focus on other “regulations”.

Note I keep using the term regulations with quotations, since I highly doubt the blatant inefficiency of this all was accidentally created. For the congressmen and women honestly wanting to regulate for the better of consumers have been deceived so much in Title I of the bill. 

Despite being given the ability to liquidate entire firms on-demand, it’s not up to the discretion of Congress, but instead the OFR and FSOC. These types of impositions allow Fed-enabled inflationary expansion. If you remember, by discretion of the Council, a bank can be disbanded if it does not hold enough liquidity. The amount of liquidity needed can change at the discretion of the Board of Governors (a governing body of the Federal Reserve). So if liquidity limits go up, the quickest way to get the assets needed are to go to the Fed. For the banks who simply cannot afford to pay back the interest on the Fed loans, this is devastating.

The amount of credit available might exceed the demand and only the top tier banks and central bank will prevail. It’s funneling fiscal power into fewer entities. And the funds to do this are created by the OFR and FSOC, which become ultimately unlimited. Why else would there need to be multiple offices to carry out the deeds one office could handle? It’s Corporatism. It’s all aimed at keeping large businesses large and the richest class richer. 

These are no honest regulations and offices. It’s too clear by the inefficiencies. Even if most of these are honest regulations, why are they in the hands of non-elected men and women instead of Congress? The non-elected regulators can change their abilities by themselves, even if “bad men” are the ones doing it. Why would honest regulators such as Dennis Kucinich be permissive of this? Because, even though I am opposed to honest regulation, I am certain that corporatism is worse; this is corporatism at its finest.

Title I Down, more than ten to go. I hope Title I was about as bad as it gets.

Title I is titled “Financial Stability”. The purposes of these posts are to provide an overview of the Title’s provisions and potential effects on the economy.

The first part of this title reads as following:

(a) ESTABLISHMENT.—Effective on the date of enactment of this Act, there is established the Financial Stability Oversight Council. 

(b) MEMBERSHIP.—The Council shall consist of the following members: 

(1) VOTING MEMBERS.—The voting members, who shall each have 1 vote on the Council shall be— 

(A) the Secretary of the Treasury, who shall serve as Chairperson of the Council; 

(B) the Chairman of the Board of Governors; 

(C) the Comptroller of the Currency; 

(D) the Director of the Bureau; 

(E) the Chairman of the Commission; 

(F) the Chairperson of the Corporation; 

(G) the Chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; 

(H) the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency; 

(I) the Chairman of the National Credit Union Administration Board; and 

(J) an independent member appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, having insurance expertise. 

(2) NONVOTING MEMBERS.—The nonvoting members, who shall serve in an advisory capacity as a nonvoting member of the Council, shall be— 

(A) the Director of the Office of Financial Research; 

(B) the Director of the Federal Insurance Office; 

(C) a State insurance commissioner, to be designated by a selection process determined by the State insurance commissioners; 

(D) a State banking supervisor, to be designated by a selection process determined by the State banking supervisors; and 

(E) a State securities commissioner (or an officer performing like functions), to be designated by a selection process determined by such State securities commissioners. 

So the overview of that is that a new council is formed with all of the heads of public-sector-financial-institutions and regulators to collaborate and decide what to do with our economy. It’s funneling all the power into one decision making Council. The good news is that all Council members already an employee of the Federal Government won’t receive compensation for Council work; however, four new members of the government will be receiving high paid salaries, like their new co-workers, at the expense of our tax dollars. More to the deficit!

So what does this council do exactly? I bet the bill is super specific on its duties and abilities! Wrong. 

Read More

libertyidaho:

1. “The higher the minimum wage the better!” To say that the state should decide how much you pay somebody that is doing work for you is morally wrong, and economically wrong. The minimum wage makes it illegal for somebody to work below a given amount. That creates unemployment for very obvious reasons. An artificially high wage is also shifted to the consumer, making you have to pay higher prices for a product, making the cost of living skyrocket. A minimum wage creates unemployment, makes prices rise, hurts minorities, and creates poverty. (making people have to pay more taxes for welfare programs)
2. “It is immoral!” What is moral about theft, force, and authority over another person’s life? Capitalism is the only form of government that emphasizes property rights. This means you have the right to your life, money, and anything else that would fall under that category.  Capitalism is the only form of government that respects the rights of the people. It is the belief that you have the right to run your life, and nobody has any authority over you. Socialism on the contrary, is a government with large amounts of government power. The free market creates freedom, prosperity, happiness, and the goal of self governing. Socialism is slavery, poverty, and large amounts of power given into the hands of the state. 
3. “The free market creates monopolies!” History has shown us that the only way a company can create a monopoly at the expense of the people, is with special hand outs by the government. Government hand outs are the opposite of a free market.  A free market is where people are in charge of prices, who goes goes out of business, and who succeeds. Corporatism is when corporations get big at the expense of the people, with the help of government hand outs. The United States is a very good example of corporatism. Obama just like almost all the others, is a corporatist. 
4. “Doesn’t the top few percent own almost all the wealth!?” Yes, but this isn’t the fault of capitalism it is the fault of government intervention in the economy.  One of the biggest reason’s of this is inflation. When a government prints endless amounts of money to pay for a welfare/warfare state that is unsustainable, it hurts the middle class. When money is printed and given to special interests, it makes the rich more wealthy, only inflating the money of the poor. Government is the reason for the wage gap. Not capitalism.  

suburbanhermit:

evilteabagger:

City Government demands all keys to properties belonging to Cedar Falls residents.

WHAT

“The merit of an idea does not depend on the amount of people that hold that idea.”

True, but in a representative republic, it does. You’re elected to uphold the ideas of the people as well as the constitution. The mandated community lockbox would not only be an intrusion of privacy, but suppose the lockbox is broken into or stolen. Now one person or a group of people have access to all of these buildings. 

The reasoning behind this proposed mandate is for property purposes. The city government claims that destroying a doorway to get into a burning building isn’t necessary and is too destructive to private property. A man in the video says “I’d still like to have the old fashioned way because I have insurance on that stuff.” As any commercial building would. As any residential building would. 

The slippery slope this is leading to is bad. And this is simply an example of too much power in the government. Imagine what else they could do with this community lockbox. It seems recently that there has been huge amounts of police unconstitutionality. More than usual, that is. I see this as an escalating problem. Now imagine cops just being able to walk in your doorway that much easier now. It really honestly does point towards a police-state.