(01-16-2019, 08:58 AM)Last42min Wrote: As big a fan I am of the market, it does need some oversight. I think you grossly underestimate the amount of stupid and complacent people in this world. The market will take advantage of them. If you're cool with that, then it is what it is. I am for government rules that enforce competition. When there are regulations put in place, they should try to operate in the free market and have clear indicators when/how it doesn't.

Quite the contrary.  I have no illusions about how many stupid unproductive lazy incompetent people there are in this world.  However, I am not in favor of giving those lazy incompetent people absolute power over the productive members of society just because it makes people feel better. 

In the example that we were discussing previously when you look at the long term performance of mutual funds and social security (which were both developed at roughly the same time) it's like comparing a thermonuclear reactor to a camp fire.  Who among us is silly enough to thank our benefactors for saving us from the greatest economic engine in the world.  The Federal reserve system was developed to protect us from PANICS and economic down turns. It's policies CAUSED and PRESIDED OVER more panics, more downturns and the two most severe recessions in our countries history.  We've redistributed over 20 trillion dollars over the last half century.  At what point do we take stock to determine if that money forced from our hands at the point of a gun has done a darn thing to actually reduce the amount of unproductive people.  On the contrary, when you see large scale economic intervention in a sector of the economy it becomes LESS PRODUCTIVE and when you see economic intervention on the part of groups of people they become more dependent not less.  

The role of the state is to enforce contracts and property rights, nothing more.  The idea that the state somehow is going to substitute its own infallible ideas for the whims of the ignorant self interested masses has been proven a failure time and time again, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people and inordinate strain on the treasuries of the west putting us on a collision course with insolvency.

---