Well, the market capitalist solution would be to remove all subsidies from air-travel businesses, and lower the relevant taxes with the same amount, letting the market come up with solutions. I mean, there's no-one with the amount of resources required to run an airline and all the airports involved who'd balk at investing in that for an eventual profit, is it? Because the market may well decide that without subsidies and tax.funded infrastructure, the retunn on investment simply isn't good enough to warrant the risk.
This is of course based on SAS which is jointly owned by state and private interests (if I remember correctly) meaning any profit goes to the private owners, and all costs to the public.
Although there is a gap between the free market economy and market capitalism, your point is on the money. All of these government induced businesses are malinvestments. Quite amazing it all has gone on as long as it has.
Fully logical. Politicians promise stuff, and use tax money to buy it from the market. The market on its hand gets a captive customer.
And we are left witout real options as politicians and market dominators alike legislate and regulate to stifle competition.
As some kind of inverted Jingoism, I'd say Sweden is the prime example: taxes, regulations and fees and bureacracy are so bloated it gives the supermarkets' (95% of our food retail is concentrated into three privately owned cartels, simplified) more profit to import lamb and sheep meat from New freakin' Zeeland, than to buy domestic production.
That's not comparative advantages or any normal market mechanism in play, just the unholy 'fleece the common man'-alliance between state and capital.
And don't get me started on the comparative quality of tjing-tjong chinamen-made tools compared to my old swedish and West German and english tools, or classic american cars - what the actual swear happened to the glorious US automobile indurstry? The old cars, up until the Gremlin or so, were awesome both in technical specs as well as works of art. (The Gremlin gets a free pass from me, because it's simply such a weird-looking car it approaches beauty from the other end.)
So, raise prices. Demand will go down, and then you won't need any more employees. After all, we're not talking about bread and heating fuel here. We're talking about vacationing and eating out. Luxuries that can be done without, as far as I'm concerned.
I was talking to a supplier yesterday and we discussed the high fuel prices. A 50 cent jump up in one day. I told him everything will stop for a time so get ready. He agree and added something is going the crack. But I was nice, I said it'll last for three months and then slowly start backup again.
Although I do believe we have a more solid floor here in Wisconsin, just a bit more free market economy, we are used to work and have resources, we do rely on Canadian dirty oil though (I like that little Swedish girl telling people they should behave more conservatively) and I think we are still nice to the Canadians, even though they also have been fasicstfied. $10 a gallon gasoline is better than none!
Those idiots in European governments on the other hand were never interested in the free market economy, they don't have a clue is right on, then these idiots want to war with their fuel supplier? They make deals with the USA to supply non-existent gas? Do they really think the consumers of gas in the USA will go along with shipping our gas somewhere else?
Before someone blames the heavy handed USA might I remind you we imported German Fascism into Washington DC with Operation Paperclip. And Its still German illusion of using the government power to guarantee returns on investments no matter where the heavy handedness comes from.
I think the higher the degree of control a country desires over their population, dictating movements and squeezing every penny out of the people, the more resources it requires, the faster it will fail in this environment of depleting resources and lack of free market cooperation.
"I think the higher the degree of control a country desires over their population, dictating movements and squeezing every penny out of the people, the more resources it requires, the faster it will fail in this environment of depleting resources and lack of free market cooperation."
Spot on, and nothing but bull's eye. The trick with control is to achive the maximum amount /needed/, not the maximum possible, to the minimum amount of resource allotment. It's no use saving a penny if the savings process costs more than the penny, unless poverty itself is the goal (c.f. Soviet starvation-as-a-weapon tactics).
It's like training a dog or riding a horse - the maximum amount of control a human can exert is enormous, but it is basically never necessary. You train the animal to love to obey and you make it feel good about being good at what you trained it for. Even though the metaphore becomes distasteful applied to humans, it still applies.
I'm suspecting that for many in power, no matter what the actual structure may be classified as, it is the feeling of exerting control itself that gives them some kind of reward.
So, this is also what I see in my historical enquiries: it's possible to extract more taxes from the population, but the 'price tag' in terms of bureaucratic overhead, 'friction losses' due to excessively burdened logistics etc. are all part of the game.
Oh, did I tell you about my favourite mecanism of action yet? If you want to do something that current laws don't permit, you simply engage in backroom dealings or use really any other extra- or paralegal way, only to rubberstamp = 'legalise' whatever it is you've done in the aftermath.
I just wrote a book (manuscript) about the imposition of what historians call 'the fiscal-military state', which is in reality nothing but a facny name for an extractive régime that dominated 18th-century Europe.
No change at-all, except higher taxes taken from, and more coercion directed towards, the peasantry.
Same here. It's almost de rigeur when one points out these cretin policies, on gets replies akin to Monty Python's 'what have the Romans ever done for us'
I'm still torn between the stupidity vs. evil issue, even though it is apparent that these issues are unrelated to the outcome: in the end, it doesn't matter if it's a meltdown by accident or malevolent intent, eh?
Well, the market capitalist solution would be to remove all subsidies from air-travel businesses, and lower the relevant taxes with the same amount, letting the market come up with solutions. I mean, there's no-one with the amount of resources required to run an airline and all the airports involved who'd balk at investing in that for an eventual profit, is it? Because the market may well decide that without subsidies and tax.funded infrastructure, the retunn on investment simply isn't good enough to warrant the risk.
This is of course based on SAS which is jointly owned by state and private interests (if I remember correctly) meaning any profit goes to the private owners, and all costs to the public.
Although there is a gap between the free market economy and market capitalism, your point is on the money. All of these government induced businesses are malinvestments. Quite amazing it all has gone on as long as it has.
Fully logical. Politicians promise stuff, and use tax money to buy it from the market. The market on its hand gets a captive customer.
And we are left witout real options as politicians and market dominators alike legislate and regulate to stifle competition.
As some kind of inverted Jingoism, I'd say Sweden is the prime example: taxes, regulations and fees and bureacracy are so bloated it gives the supermarkets' (95% of our food retail is concentrated into three privately owned cartels, simplified) more profit to import lamb and sheep meat from New freakin' Zeeland, than to buy domestic production.
That's not comparative advantages or any normal market mechanism in play, just the unholy 'fleece the common man'-alliance between state and capital.
And don't get me started on the comparative quality of tjing-tjong chinamen-made tools compared to my old swedish and West German and english tools, or classic american cars - what the actual swear happened to the glorious US automobile indurstry? The old cars, up until the Gremlin or so, were awesome both in technical specs as well as works of art. (The Gremlin gets a free pass from me, because it's simply such a weird-looking car it approaches beauty from the other end.)
Excellent comment! My Dad owned a Gremlin. I cut my teeth on a 53 Ford F100...
I think the entire fascist economy is about to implode, financial wealth of the fascists will simply disappear.
But…SAS won't get any more Swedish subsidies, Norwegian media reported yesterday, asking if 'we' should do the same?
So, raise prices. Demand will go down, and then you won't need any more employees. After all, we're not talking about bread and heating fuel here. We're talking about vacationing and eating out. Luxuries that can be done without, as far as I'm concerned.
Exactly.
'The West' is like an asylum, or rehab facility, for spoiled kids.
'Our' ancestors--from Voltaire to Rousseau to Marx, Nietzsche, and Weber, as well as many others must be rolling over in the graves over our follies.
I was talking to a supplier yesterday and we discussed the high fuel prices. A 50 cent jump up in one day. I told him everything will stop for a time so get ready. He agree and added something is going the crack. But I was nice, I said it'll last for three months and then slowly start backup again.
Although I do believe we have a more solid floor here in Wisconsin, just a bit more free market economy, we are used to work and have resources, we do rely on Canadian dirty oil though (I like that little Swedish girl telling people they should behave more conservatively) and I think we are still nice to the Canadians, even though they also have been fasicstfied. $10 a gallon gasoline is better than none!
Those idiots in European governments on the other hand were never interested in the free market economy, they don't have a clue is right on, then these idiots want to war with their fuel supplier? They make deals with the USA to supply non-existent gas? Do they really think the consumers of gas in the USA will go along with shipping our gas somewhere else?
Before someone blames the heavy handed USA might I remind you we imported German Fascism into Washington DC with Operation Paperclip. And Its still German illusion of using the government power to guarantee returns on investments no matter where the heavy handedness comes from.
I think the higher the degree of control a country desires over their population, dictating movements and squeezing every penny out of the people, the more resources it requires, the faster it will fail in this environment of depleting resources and lack of free market cooperation.
All downhill from here.
"I think the higher the degree of control a country desires over their population, dictating movements and squeezing every penny out of the people, the more resources it requires, the faster it will fail in this environment of depleting resources and lack of free market cooperation."
Spot on, and nothing but bull's eye. The trick with control is to achive the maximum amount /needed/, not the maximum possible, to the minimum amount of resource allotment. It's no use saving a penny if the savings process costs more than the penny, unless poverty itself is the goal (c.f. Soviet starvation-as-a-weapon tactics).
It's like training a dog or riding a horse - the maximum amount of control a human can exert is enormous, but it is basically never necessary. You train the animal to love to obey and you make it feel good about being good at what you trained it for. Even though the metaphore becomes distasteful applied to humans, it still applies.
I'm suspecting that for many in power, no matter what the actual structure may be classified as, it is the feeling of exerting control itself that gives them some kind of reward.
So, this is also what I see in my historical enquiries: it's possible to extract more taxes from the population, but the 'price tag' in terms of bureaucratic overhead, 'friction losses' due to excessively burdened logistics etc. are all part of the game.
Oh, did I tell you about my favourite mecanism of action yet? If you want to do something that current laws don't permit, you simply engage in backroom dealings or use really any other extra- or paralegal way, only to rubberstamp = 'legalise' whatever it is you've done in the aftermath.
I just wrote a book (manuscript) about the imposition of what historians call 'the fiscal-military state', which is in reality nothing but a facny name for an extractive régime that dominated 18th-century Europe.
No change at-all, except higher taxes taken from, and more coercion directed towards, the peasantry.
Oh, I don't doubt that this story will fail--I'm rather worried about the price tag…
Same here. It's almost de rigeur when one points out these cretin policies, on gets replies akin to Monty Python's 'what have the Romans ever done for us'
I'm still torn between the stupidity vs. evil issue, even though it is apparent that these issues are unrelated to the outcome: in the end, it doesn't matter if it's a meltdown by accident or malevolent intent, eh?