Presented by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. at "The Failure of the Keynesian State," the Mises Circle in Houston, sponsored by Jeremy S. Davis. Recorded Saturday, 23 January 2010. Includes introductory remarks by Mises Institute president Douglas E. French.
Keynesian Predictions vs. American History | Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Posted by admin on September 5th, 2010
Posted in Depression Videos 
Thomas Woods is awesome. Probably the easiest Austrian to listen to.
@cdwhitehead so if you work SMARTER you are working harder, so if you can build your own machines to save time & energy you are not stealing from anyone, and if you have to instead work harder to sell what you make to buy the machines you want at an honest price, this is what people call an investment. You put in extra energy/time (money) and you get higher returns (higher efficiency for future production). Profit mark-ups are theft, working harder and smarter is not.
@cdwhitehead if your costs go up then you're not saving time & energy getting those machines. The reason it's fair is because it's how everyone lives. If you make others suffer your costs in addition to their own, it's stealing and stealing isn't fair. If I knew a high markup was applied to a product to steal from me I'd do worse than haggle down, I'd boycott that seller for life. LIFE. I do no business with thieves. Work harder to get more: that's the only way fair production works.
2nd quarter GDP revised down to 1.3%....the stimulus is really working!! keep printing...what a joke
@ytgv3fc7 What if I figure out that working with less time and/or energy requires that I spend money to get better machines that will allow me to do that...if my costs go up...my prices go up....so why is it fair that I have to eat the cost so that everyone else can have chairs faster...
@maskedphrogg when people do this for food and water it's like kicking someone with a broken leg and then insisting they'll have to pay you every dime in their pocket for a crutch. It's vicious, it's evil, it's something people should be shot in the face for doing.
@maskedphrogg honest trade and honest money means that if you want something more, you do not ever mark it up with profit. NEVER. Instead, you WORK HARDER or smarter to make more of what you want to sell for EQUAL, FAIR VALUE. If I want to sell a chair and want 2x the cash I have to make another chair to sell. If I want to save on costs I have to figure out how to work with less time and/or energy in making those chairs. The vicious evil choice is to double the price. VICIOUSLY EVIL.
@maskedphrogg for profit always fails: for every % profit someone else has lost, this is a theft and a fraud by pretending the real needed cost to continue is this marked up price. Once enough people do that, poverty is manufactured because whoever had the least money to start with will now have zero. That's how profiteering works, just as usury works, just as inflation works. By REPUTATION for-profit is an epic failure because poverty IS A FAILURE CAUSED BY PROFITEERING. It is PURE evil
@maskedphrogg this is not emotional blackmail, it's a fact - collective ownership, production and allocation does not require a central hub, nor a government, nor does it require permanence. Socialism is not altruism, it's sensible. it's hedging against risk that without certain people, your society will crumble, and by ensuring they don't die from isolated bad events like an earthquake, joblessness, flooding, you can keep your communities and nation surviving. You are the Unreasonable, the Liar
@ParapaDrifter only one system can balance power to provide true freedom, survival and on top of that, minimal danger by hedging risks: socialism. An economic system that is long-term good for survival for a civilization absolutely must stop any single person or entity from a) attaining much more wealth than all the others AND b) must gradually add a very high cost to any entity (person, group) fighting to do this, to keep civilization stable. The more capitalism, the faster the collapse
@ParapaDrifter favoring the strong to kill the weak is always more evil. To even be unsure is a serious deficit in moral understanding.
In socialism government doesn't even need to exist, just as in capitalism it does not need to exist. Freedom = survival, so socialism wins every time. Capitalism forces murder, collapses and theft (profiteering) and none of that brings freedom.
Police enforcing regulations are equal, not worse, than mobsters. Money strong-arms competition: evil.
What do you think about a possible water crisis sir?
futuremoneytrends. com/Trend_Investments. html
@ytgv3fc7 -- nice mob analogy. Except, when you have a captured gov't. They provide the big corporation with mobsters (police enforcing regulations) to strongarm the competition.
If capitalism kills the weak and favors the strong, socialism favors the weak and kills the strong... which is more evil?
In socialism, instead of free market competition you'll have government competing with the (arbitrarily illegal) black market. Which model provides for more freedom?
@ytgv3fc7
Socialism - Collective ownership of the means of production and the allocation of resources.
By your redefining Socialism as Altruism you seem to think you can emotionally blackmail the reader into accepting Socialism as a social benefit. Poor try, we the Reasonable quickly see through your wordplay and attack your claims on merits.
btw you produce no support for showing FF 4 profit can never work. Considered in terms of reputation alone we see 4 profit works very well.
@ytgv3fc7
I don't make the claim on the basis of a single incident. It is a general claim. Taxation, in it's present form, is derived from serfdom. Taxes are taken, by force when necessary, in order to forward an agenda that those paying tax have little or no say in. aka serfs pay tribute
I would never say all food is bad in response to a particular case of food poisoning. It is reasonable to say THAT food and all food like it is bad when one recognizes what it is that makes them similarly bad
@maskedphrogg only you redefine words with lies. I speak the truth as reality forces it to be, nothing else. The root of the problem is that you're a liar and so are many capitalists. Those who write economic text books to define socialism as central control are liars and know they are liars. It's called propaganda. It's evil, just like you are. The truth is communities helping their own IS SOCIALISM. Always has been. Can you imagine FIRE-FIGHTING FOR PROFIT? Hellz no. It could never work.
@ParapaDrifter in fact, if such a welfare system did exist, I don't even think there'd be a need for regulation, for a government department, none of that. Who needs to regulate you GIVING away your money? Who needs to regulate RECEIVING a little cash to help with welfare? It's your cash, it's your call. It's not an earning, it's a loss, so there's no reason to tax it. Like a food-bank?
@ParapaDrifter just imagine if every person applying for welfare didn't face a bureaucrat but faced a real person with their own money willing to help someone unless the judged otherwise it was not sensible. Like judging if this person would ever be on the other side of the counter offering their work to another person to help them UP but not hand out free money and be stupid about it. Just imagine how quickly the losers would be given zip and a worker down on their luck might not.
@maskedphrogg claiming taxation is serfdom just because ONE event and ONE group chooses to steal SOME of the money is like saying food is bad for you because you might get food-poisoning if you eat any.
Think about it.
@ParapaDrifter critical to community survival and I know not to make the wrong choice on that. Winter roads: well this is a severe problem. We've got different changes in density/size with different temps, shifting soil and salt damage. I have continually looked at how roads can be improved while not sacrificing ability to USE them in the heavy winter (salt?). This is actually a very difficult problem.
@ParapaDrifter That qualifier changes everything, thank you. We need a lot less bureaucrats and a lot more useful people keeping everyone else useful who asks for a hand-out or hand-up, so we can make more accurate choices about why / how this is helpful. I understand why giving money to a homeless person with a mental problem will NEVER be returned to me and I have a choice to do that or not. I understand why ensuring my fire dept is not broke is definitely (more)
@ParapaDrifter of course, after all this dismantling and jailing must come a critical pivot-event to ensure freedom: all corporations must be made absolutely illegal and kept that way for all the future to come. Attempt to make a corporation: life in prison. Period.
@ParapaDrifter so in conclusion the only proper response to these vicious corporations is to dismantle everything they have, jail all of their leaders and track down who they stole from and return the stolen goods to each rightful owner. It can be done and it must be done.
@ParapaDrifter That is not a solution: the competition resorts to theft and strong-arming so the only way to compete economically is to do the same. Just as the only way to compete with the mafia is to be another mob. You do not engage in crime to play in their field: you eliminate them from the playing field so the game can change. Capitalism always kills the weak and favors the strong. This is evil and must stop immediately. Our last chance is here: kill them all or kick them out, or die.
@ytgv3fc7 @ParapaDrifter scratch that, let me put a qualifier in.... taxes to pay for frivolous gov't programs = idiot serfdom
We are slaves to "ourselves aka) the public "good" while middlemen bureaucrats get rich, and set their own salaries.
On the example of roads, road design has built into it planned obsolescence, for the simple fact that it provides people jobs. The gov't doesn't want to innovate a road that survives the winters, because it will hurt the road "industry"