Europe Is Alike Argentina 2001

[Ries]

We don't need "investment from privte or public sources". We could still extract, control, manage, distribute and use all of those thing without depending on money. All of those things need PEOPLE to do them, not belief in an 'all-powerful' paper God. The building of railways, food, buildings, airplanes, anything, does not require money and investment to do it. It requires people. Take away most of the people and it doesn't matter how much money you have you won't get much done.

I can only assume you have never been involved in growing food, building buildings, or working on any type of manufacturing- because you couldnt be more wrong.
I own a farm, and live (When I am in the USA) in farm country. I have been building and manufacturing things all my life.

And merely having PEOPLE is not enough- people, without investment and working together (which is the definition of government) starve.
I lease my big field to a real farmer. He farms 2500 acres, and, this year, he had potatoes in my 20 acre field. They get about 15,000lbs of potato per acre.
He harvested them last week, and he used, conservatively about a million dollars worth of equipment to do it. Large scale agriculture requires money. Lots of it. To manually dig up those potatos would have taken a month, and cost more than the wholesale price, probably.
I grow a few potatoes for myself, in my garden- and there is no way I could deal with even ONE acre. In my area, they plant around 5000 acres a year.

And bridges, or buildings, or roads, similarly are way beyond the resources of individuals. Making steel is not something you do in your kitchen.

 

[Jaredberryman]

I can only assume you have never been involved in growing food, building buildings, or working on any type of manufacturing- because you couldnt be more wrong.
I own a farm, and live (When I am in the USA) in farm country. I have been building and manufacturing things all my life.

And merely having PEOPLE is not enough- people, without investment and working together (which is the definition of government) starve.
I lease my big field to a real farmer. He farms 2500 acres, and, this year, he had potatoes in my 20 acre field. They get about 15,000lbs of potato per acre.
He harvested them last week, and he used, conservatively about a million dollars worth of equipment to do it. Large scale agriculture requires money. Lots of it. To manually dig up those potatos would have taken a month, and cost more than the wholesale price, probably.
I grow a few potatoes for myself, in my garden- and there is no way I could deal with even ONE acre. In my area, they plant around 5000 acres a year.

And bridges, or buildings, or roads, similarly are way beyond the resources of individuals. Making steel is not something you do in your kitchen.

To be fair to Joelie, I think you are missing the point. I'm not sure Joelie was talking about individuals Someone still had to harvest the metal necessary to build the machines that harvested the food, and someone had to make the machines that make the machines, etc. Human ingenuity and the ability to build and use our resources is more important than just paper--at least that's what I think Joelie was saying. In reality, the human race can do things without money if we choose to do so. It's within the realm of possibility. It's just that at the present time money is a useful way to exchange things: goods, services, etc. The fact that we have equipment really doesn't change anything, since someone has to make the equipment.

 

[Ries]

I read Joelie's post as a Libertarian style anti-government post.
And my point is that there are a lot of things you cant do on your own, but you can do as a group, and governments, in general, have, historically, been that group.
For instance, the Internet, GPS, Lasers, Satellites, Jet Aircraft, Radar, Computers, and dozens more things we use everyday were funded, coordinated, and created only because the US and other governments threw enormous amounts of money at them, with no hope of profit or short term returns.

the list of things that simply would not exist without governments, and their financial systems, could go on for pages.

Certainly there are many things we can do without money.
But it would take a lot longer, be a lot more labor and material intensive, less efficient, and just plain be much more of a pain in the ass, and, as far as I can tell, the only reason to do so would be to prove some ideological point.

Money, Fiat Currency, Electronic funds transfers, and so on, are popular because they work- they are secure, fast, and low friction.

Gold bugs have an obsession with being right, and, usually, are willing to pay more in cost and time, to prove they are right- but going back to barter, or gold, would only cost us all a lot, in many ways.

 

[camberiu]

For instance, the Internet, GPS, Lasers, Satellites, Jet Aircraft, Radar, Computers, and dozens more things we use everyday were funded, coordinated, and created only because the US and other governments threw enormous amounts of money at them, with no hope of profit or short term returns.

So, we went from the club all the way up to the airplane, with things like mathematics, masonry, wind mills, water pumps, gun powder, irrigation, the telescope, steel, steam engines, internal combustion engines in between, without the need for major government funding, but yet something happened in the early 20th century that from that point on, for some mysterious reason, no new technology could be developed without government "throwing enormous amounts of money at it"? Is that it?

 

[camberiu]

Cardoso applied austerity messures following IFM orders. They never won an election again.
It was Lula who made Brazil what Brazil is nowadays.

You are seriously misinformed. Fernando Henrique implemented the Plano real in 1994, when he was still the Minister of Finances. He then won the election for presidency in 1995. He was president for the maximum allowed TWO TERMS, being re-elected 1998 and served until 2002, when he could not run anymore.

When Lula was campaigning for president in 2001, he published the famous OPEN LETTER TO THE BRAZILIAN PEOPLE where he EXPLICITLY promises that if elected, that he will maintain the trio balanced budgets, floating currency and low inflation, implemented by Fernando Henrique.

"Vamos preservar o superávit primário o quanto for necessário para impedir que a dívida interna aumente e destrua a confiança na capacidade do governo de honrar os seus compromissos."

Translation:
"We will preserve the budget surpruses as much as necessary, to prevent the growth of internal debt and the destruction of the government's credibility to honor its commitments"


Without saying that he would NEVER have been elected. Anyone trying to come to power with some crazy Peronist style political promises back then would have no hope on the ballots. people were tired of inflation and they saw what the Real and the reforms accomplished.

He fulfilled his promised and on the economic front, pretty much left the country running on autopilot. And politically, he benefited greatly from the posture of "continuation". That until the 2008 crisis hit. Unlike the previous administration, Lula's cabinet was made up mostly by union bosses and former communist guerrillas who new little or nothing about economics. There was no need to, as the country was doing fine on autopilot until that point. But now that the clear skies have been replaced with storm clouds, what to do? Well, they panicked and did the only thing they knew how to do: They printed money and they borrowed. Like Menem in Argentina, they lacked the political will or knowledge to do what needed to be done. Instead, they opted for the easy way out.

And now the chickens are coming home to roost.