Penney will succeed where Stitch, Talbot and near liquidation failed

[oafc0000]

Am chilled just wanted closure on what I mean't to articulate in case I hadn't done it too well previously, and was a little wound up by the people talking rubbish comment................................only a little tho

 

Lets just put the hot potato down and step away then

[Corporal_Jones]

A market fundamentalist whose job it was to interfere in the money markets on :laught16:

 

Trust me, a genuine market fundamentalist would no sooner do that than he would work on a traffic enforcement service for a local authority

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He's the nearest thing to a market fundamentalist you'll get though. He was a disciple of Ayn Rand, wasn't he?

 

All market economies have had standing behind them, massive and ruthless state power. That applies whether they've been run by Keynesians or laizzez-faire fetishists like Greenspan. Always have and always will. Your 'pure' free market is, like communism, a chimera.

[Corporal_Jones]

You are ALL welcome to re-write history as much as you want but the statement that no one saw this nightmare coming is totally 100% false...

 

 

 

Some people saw it coming a couple of years in advance, and tried to warn of it.

[leeslover]

He's the nearest thing to a market fundamentalist you'll get though. He was a disciple of Ayn Rand, wasn't he?

Although I am not an adherent of Rand, I am more than enough familiar with her work o know that you are entirely mistaken about her views to describe her as a free marketeer. Everything (in her mind at least) followed from her neo-Aristotelian philosophical views of the ends of man qua man - much as a Marxist, who would base everything on the idea of class identity as the defining nature of man and the Hegelian view of a natural sequence in human development, from a certain starting point you can reach a whole series of conclusions which can end up much like a religion. If you accept the starting logic and follow it through correctly you will get to the end conclusion in how it applies to anything, be it economics or morality. It's a million miles from deciding that a certain economic policy is the right one and going from there.

 

All market economies have had standing behind them, massive and ruthless state power. That applies whether they've been run by Keynesians or laizzez-faire fetishists like Greenspan. Always have and always will. Your 'pure' free market is, like communism, a chimera.

That's like saying that there has never been a society free of criminals, ginger people or left-handers. The benefits all come from normal people but there will always be deviants. But to be clear - where a government of whatever flavour controls things, that is the part of that country which is not laissez-faire, free market or whatever tag you want to give it. It is socialised.

[Corporal_Jones]

That's like saying that there has never been a society free of criminals, ginger people or left-handers. The benefits all come from normal people but there will always be deviants. But to be clear - where a government of whatever flavour controls things, that is the part of that country which is not laissez-faire, free market or whatever tag you want to give it. It is socialised.

 

 

 

Your first two sentences make no sense at all.

 

A major function of the state in a society like this one is to guarantee the market economy. When state controls are dismantled and the market given a much larger role, as has happened over much of the world during the last thirty years or so, it has been due to government action, backed by the state with all its powers of coercion. This is more than obvious.

[Corporal_Jones]

Although I am not an adherent of Rand, I am more than enough familiar with her work o know that you are entirely mistaken about her views to describe her as a free marketeer. Everything (in her mind at least) followed from her neo-Aristotelian philosophical views of the ends of man qua man - much as a Marxist, who would base everything on the idea of class identity as the defining nature of man and the Hegelian view of a natural sequence in human development, from a certain starting point you can reach a whole series of conclusions which can end up much like a religion. If you accept the starting logic and follow it through correctly you will get to the end conclusion in how it applies to anything, be it economics or morality. It's a million miles from deciding that a certain economic policy is the right one and going from there.

 

 

 

However you want it, I've never heard of a follower of Rand who isn't a rabid adherent of the idea that free markets are the answer to every human (and non-human) problem*. Greenspan, for instance, thought so, and, like his kind in governments of all formal denominations over the past few decades, sought to extend the market into as many areas of society as possible. Of course, they used the full powers of the state in doing so.

 

* Many of them need a good deodourant and a sex life, but that's another story.

 

[leeslover]

Your first two sentences make no sense at all.

 

A major function of the state in a society like this one is to guarantee the market economy. When state controls are dismantled and the market given a much larger role, as has happened over much of the world during the last thirty years or so, it has been due to government action, backed by the state with all its powers of coercion. This is more than obvious.

I think we have a dichotomy. Removing obstacles to free and voluntary exchange of goods, labour and services cannot result in coercion, it results in freedom. You imagine the market process to be just like any other system which arrives from the top down, whereas it is in fact the unintended (but on the whole positive) outcome of unintended actions. A closer reading of Adam Smith or Hume, rather than just the quotes or the Open University digests will bring you to within 200ish years of this field of human study, before it was taken forward by 20th century writers who I do subscribe to but who you aren't well enough read to know about. Sorry, but you started the insults on the intellectual basis and you just haven't read enough or understood enough. You could still very fairly disagree with me but you don't understand why you do.

[leeslover]

However you want it, I've never heard of a follower of Rand who isn't a rabid adherent of the idea that free markets are the answer to every human (and non-human) problem*. Greenspan, for instance, thought so, and, like his kind in governments of all formal denominations over the past few decades, sought to extend the market into as many areas of society as possible. Of course, they used the full powers of the state in doing so.

 

* Many of them need a good deodourant and a sex life, but that's another story.

Well, you wouldn't, precisely because being an Objectivist is quite a lot like being a Marxist, you weren't allowed in if you didn't hold to the core beliefs and they tended to end up arguing about the smallest point of anything, which is in fact not a bad thing for a philosophical movement as opposed to a political one. I've met people who were in the Rand circle in the early Rand days, they tend to look at it like the days when you might have smoked too much gear or drank too much or had that thing with the three lesbian girls (imagining two out of the three there), it wasn't bad but it wasn't the answer to it all.

[tangerinedreams]

Well, you wouldn't, precisely because being an Objectivist is quite a lot like being a Marxist, you weren't allowed in if you didn't hold to the core beliefs and they tended to end up arguing about the smallest point of anything, which is in fact not a bad thing for a philosophical movement as opposed to a political one. I've met people who were in the Rand circle in the early Rand days, they tend to look at it like the days when you might have smoked too much gear or drank too much or had that thing with the three lesbian girls (imagining two out of the three there), it wasn't bad but it wasn't the answer to it all.

 

 

I think you should take more gear because frankly I think your views are nothing more than a ****

[OldhamSheridan]

Can I be the first to say WTF?

 

You pair of utter dweebs.

 

 

 

 

 

NB. Sadly not. Mr Dreams beat me to it.

Edited December 5, 2009 by OldhamSheridan