Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Name me one... now, or in the past...

There's no such thing... and never has been...

I should qualify that... other than the banks that is...

DD is right. So I was wrong, we dont agree

I don't believe China got where it is without it's economic reforms as I described.

China's economy was pretty much stagnant before the economic reforms were implemented.
China's economy boomed after the economic reforms were implemented.
The economic reforms as described above were basically a shift towards capitalist priciples.


Towards does not mean it is capitalist, but it is MORE capitalist than totally communist.

So I am saying it is the shift towards a market economy that caused China to become an economic powerhouse.

Do you agree with this ?



Agreed. However there have been greatly varying degrees of the relative size of government.
There have also been many cases of extremely low regulations etc in particular aspects of the economy. For example there might be high regulation in banking but very little in bread production...

Your point about the banks is kind of wrong in the extreme sense of the word (I know it was just a joke of sorts). Banking is probably the MOST regulated industry. For good reason, the banking system is what enables the government to be as large as it is, and spend as much as it does while convincing the public that it doesn't cause massive long term economic problems and that printing money is not actually theft.

The stock market became less regulated and the banks got in on the action, that's why we're in a hole right now. That's why banking needs to be boring rather than exciting. Boring banks: regulated, Exciting banks: unregulated.

This is not correct.

The fundamental reason why we are all in this hole is because of inflation.

Inflation is inflation of the money supply ie The government creating money out of thin air.

1. Govt creates money (through central bank) and govt spends it on stuff that buys votes.
2. new money is also given to member banks as excess reserves.
3. more reserves means ability to lend more = lower interest rates
4. low interest rates encourage business to make investments in normally risky ventures, this investment requires capital equipment, and bids up wages to attract labour.
5. higher wages increase demand for consumer goods, bidding up the price. This higher reduces exports (why sell o/s when price is better here)

The higher wages are never evenly distributed in the economy. So we have an artificial increase in the prices of consumer goods, but only higher wages in small sectors.
Everyone else's wages do not rise in line with the increase in prices. This means their cost of living goes up and their quality of life goes down.

6. Govt blames someone else for higher prices, normally the farmers.

7. After some time (often decades) the on going investment in risky ventures (becoming more and more risky) creates instability and decreases confidence in the market. By this time a HUGE amount of money has been added to the economy.

8. As risk goes up, investers start to hold back, the economy starts to slow. As more investors pull their money out the risk becomes apparent.

Some threshold is reached and all hell breaks loose. A smart government would allow a sharp short depression to occur, to liquidate all the bad investments.

We don't have smart governments so they create more and more money, pushing rates even lower, this makes the inevitable crash much bigger and draws out the depression much longer. Many more people suffer as a result.

On top of all this is the massive fraud committed by the banking sector


Regulated banks means they are protected by the government. They commit fraud every day and are fully protected by the regulators.
The banks own the politicians and the politicians NEED the banks.
You cannot draw a line between government and the banks. Its much closer to Fascism than you realise.

If you study the history of depressions you will ALWAYS and without exception find it is preceeded with the devaluation of the currency (creating money out of thin air)

It is directly causal, no exceptions.

Depressions are caused by the deliberate action of our beloved governments and their REGULATION of money and banks.

china got the money when the us outsourced production of everything to them, from pet food to steel

Your favorite cat food, now in melamine flavor!

So we're all agreed then, a communist government led economic sector seems to be the best way to go....

Nah, Benevolent Dictatorship - I'll take the first watch

Yep....

Does that mean we just need everyone to vote greens?

Hahahahaha..... Thats not even funny....

My great great grandfather was friends with a benevolent dictator. Douglas MacArthur's rule seemed to work out pretty well for Japan.

The Japanese might disagree with you... especially those from Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

You may have a point... Then again, he also put Japan back on it's feet afterwards, and relinquished control when it was time.

MacArthur was certainly responsible for organising food distribution in post war Japan... and formulating some of the political infra-structure rebuild...

But his attention was diverted pretty quickly into Korea...

Most of the underlying economic reforms... were based upon a US economist... who's name escapes me at the moment... (he was recognised for many years by the Japanese.. with a economics award named after him)