Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[theinevitable]

I have never really gotten the Stocks thing. I mean... they are selling a lot of stocks because they are worried that the world market is going down or whatever... but... the value of the stocks only goes down if everyone sells them. So, everyone sells the stocks because they are afraid everyone else will sell them...

there has to be a less ridiculous way to do this. I know that a thing's value is only what people will pay for it but... it basically seems like Stocks are an entirely fake concept. Do they have any value other than as little pieces of paper that people will buy from you, in hopes of later selling them for more money?

[smick]

LFM, when will you realize that economics is what I know, and writing fiction or couriering things is what you know. I spend every day studying and watching the economy, its my thing, its what I do. My full-time job is learning about the economy. I make a simple statement about a current event in America and you go on writing fantastical statements about bubbles, con jobs, and market manipulation. Stick to what you know.

Oh what the dogg?!  We are about education.

[Nabubrush]

Well, sort of. 

Most stocks are issued "No Par value" these days.  About the only place par value is relevant anymore, that I'm aware of, is in insurance companies.  The par value of the stock is the company's "capital" and the amount paid for the stock above par value is "surplus".

Careful, A-Cap might shout at you, too.

"You are a salt-miner. Get back to the salt mines. Leave the talking about stocks to the smart people."

[V-Adore]

If you do, I insist that it be called "A-CAP Yells At Everyone Who Isn't Him For Trying To Discuss Economics In His Presence."

[Nabubrush]

I thought I remembered when we were all basically cool to each other. Is that my imagination? I thought it was real.

[AugustWest]

I thought I remembered when we were all basically cool to each other. Is that my imagination? I thought it was real.

Let's not start sucking each others' dicks here.

[theinevitable]

...who is this new poster with an avatar of a cat nose?

[littlefallsmets]

I have no doubt, AC, that you understand a certain school of economic theory... its rules and applications and so on... far far better than I do. Definitely.

I also don't believe that it is a school of thought that really works for all that many people at all and basically only applies in the real world because a bunch of people all decided that if they put that theory forth as the only real theory of how trade can work then... maybe momentum would build and they could basically have all kinds of stuff themselves.

I believe that they certainly work on small scales for small periods of time but over vast amounts of people and vast amounts of property... over generations... they degrade under their own weight into class strata that have nothing to do with the economics of competition.

They certainly seem air-tight in books and I'm sure you know exactly how air-tight these things are in books but... they don't really work for most people who don't have a lot to begin with, certainly not over large periods of time.

They're not a healthy underpinning for a large society for very long. Great checks and balances and regulations and counterbalances need to be leveled against its machinations to make it actually work and... once Reagan's handlers started dismantling those counterbalances, an end game was set into motion that would eventually destroy the middle classes that made our nation stable.

Ten years? Twenty? Two generations? Who knows.

I know you know your stuff but I think that the things you know your stuff about, that topic can only go so far in an actual nation of people as opposed to numbers in a book.

I could quote you scripture and verse about the fictional universe that the X-Men live in and that would be all great and awesome but... people don't actually shoot force-rays out of their eyes and so my deep knowledge on the subject only goes so far.

I know more about the underpinnings of Christianity than most hardcore Christians do but since I don't believe that most of it happened literally and some of it not even figuratively, it's just a nice thing to talk about at parties that doesn't really work in most cases.

I feel the same way about the current schools of unfettered macro-capitalism.

It works for a few people, it works in books but it is of little use to the reality I've seen in my life.

[Nabubrush]

...who is this new poster with an avatar of a cat nose?

Hey fuck you pal.

Nah, I'm just busting your balls. I noticed that we had more than one person with cat or cat-like avatars, so I figured what the hell - gotta change it up on you guys. Remember when I was Al Green?

[wombat]

If you do, I insist that it be called "A-CAP Yells At Everyone Who Isn't Him For Trying To Discuss Economics In His Presence."

OK, that was irresistible.

[theinevitable]

I spent a brief second being terrified that apparently I had started a thread with this name somehow, by accident.

I don't know if I agree with you, LFM... I think that economics does a good job of what it is for, which is figuring out how people will behave with their money. The problem lies in assuming that "the way things are" or "the way things would be most economically successful" is the same as "the way things should be."

[littlefallsmets]

Well, Nev, that's basically what I'm saying.

It works as a beast of its own and it works for the purposes of a few people some of the time.

But we have this problem of confusing ourselves as a nation with ourselves as an economy. We are an economy, certainly, but we are definitely a nation of people so many times before we are an economy and... it is convenient to a small group of people to make us forget that.

In my own small and probably useless personal way, however, homie don't play that.

[Nabubrush]

Well, Nev, that's basically what I'm saying.

It works as a beast of its own and it works for the purposes of a few people some of the time.

But we have this problem of confusing ourselves as a nation with ourselves as an economy. We are an economy, certainly, but we are definitely a nation of people so many times before we are an economy and... it is convenient to a small group of people to make us forget that.

In my own small and probably useless personal way, however, homie don't play that.

Exactly! If only there was a way to buy stock in Amer . . . yulp.

Sorry, threw up in my mouth there a little bit.

[melack]

I don't like this thread.

[littlefallsmets]

We create our world and our studies of it from the base of our assumptions about it.

Transnationally monopolistic variants of capitalism, which is what you seem to be refering to as "economics", exists but that is hardly to say that it works, especially the evidence of how it is hollowing out our country.

Mixes of tightly-controlled free-market and government-centralization of basic necessities have worked all over the place and certainly are also "economics". Hell, Soviet communism "worked" for a lot longer than the current yee-haw cowboy unbridled Wal-Mart scorched-Earth form of free-market theory as "worked"... and they're all three "economics".

The market does not regulate itself, if that's what we're talking about. The market creates competition for a little while until someone falls into a natural advantage which is quickly pressed into monopoly through the pressure wealth can put upon government and law and then...

There are no more market forces, there is just the survivor of long-past market forces that mutated into a force large enough to game the system toward itself. Game the system into allowing daytrading and predatory lending and all sorts of shadiness because more money can be made in the short term.

And it all eventually cascades into Big Troubles.

Yes, that is as it has happened, sure. But largely because the economic forces that got so large bought out those who would regulate it and went into a short-sighted greed-spiral.

If we start from the idea that whatever happens is what works and that whatever happens is right, sure, that is exactly economics, I suppose.

But I am inclined to choose a different path.