U.S. Considers Curbs on Speculative Trading of Oil

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Some subscribe to only half of Adam Smith's philosophies. His main thrust appeared to be how there will be "naturally evolving" interactions out of need that don't need help or regulation or restriction. The carpenter will find a saw mill for lumber ..the bar tender a distiller ..etc..etc. It wasn't a license to steal, nor an endorsement (in any way) to leverage. It stood firmly on ethics in action.

Most consider those aspects a punchline to a joke.

Another corruption of Adam Smith's philosophies is the implication that it's good for a nation ..while using them only as being good for the individual and at the cost and degradation of the nation.
 
Originally Posted By: ZZman
Didn't I repeat over and over again that producers and buyers agree to a price?


They already do. You would replace a system that works with one that CANNOT work... no matter how much force is applied. Stalin killed up to 30 million, Mao over 50 million, and they could not improve on the mechanisms of the market. How many millions of black marketeers are you prepared to execute?
 
I don't know..but there are a few in the legit market that have earned my desire to see them die an extremely slow and painful death.

In our corruption of Capitalism, it is, again, a choice between "Hey, kid. It's either me (doing it to you HARD) ..or them three (doing it to you HARDER).

This is madness and I don't think that we're prepared for the other side of a system that's dark complexion is beginning to show. We've been living the shiny side of it for a few generations.
 
The main objection to any "curbing" or restriction is that it distributes the benefit over too many beneficiaries. The first indicator is that the starving sweat and toil achievers at the top of the food chain start whining.
 
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Some subscribe to only half of Adam Smith's philosophies. His main thrust appeared to be how there will be "naturally evolving" interactions out of need that don't need help or regulation or restriction. The carpenter will find a saw mill for lumber ..the bar tender a distiller ..etc..etc. It wasn't a license to steal, nor an endorsement (in any way) to leverage. It stood firmly on ethics in action.

Most consider those aspects a punchline to a joke.


Really? That is little more than a rephrasing of what Plato said: "Necessity, who is the mother of invention." What a comedian, that Plato.

Quote:
Another corruption of Adam Smith's philosophies is the implication that it's good for a nation ..while using them only as being good for the individual and at the cost and degradation of the nation.


A policy that is good for the people, individually or collectively, is good for the country. Remember, it is the people who buy and sell goods, not their governments. It is each individual who engages in international trade; government only involves itself so it might collect taxes.
 
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
The main objection to any "curbing" or restriction is that it distributes the benefit over too many beneficiaries. The first indicator is that the starving sweat and toil achievers at the top of the food chain start whining.


You can restate this as often as you like... but you cannot make it work. Not with humans, anyway. Maybe another species, which is differently motivated. Ants and bees are naturally communistic, but not humans -- no matter how many you kill off. (See what is happening in the capitalist paradise, the Peoples Republic of China.)
 
Quote:
Really? That is little more than a rephrasing of what Plato said: "Necessity, who is the mother of invention." What a comedian, that Plato.


I don't get your point. I've read many revues of Adams writings (which, unto themselves, are real hard reads without CliffNotes®) ..just like I've done with all of our founding fathers. Not once was there any overtone or undertone of "dominion" over others via economics as a goal or even something to be aspired to.

Now either these clowns were para-feudalists ..and just fancy con artists with eloquent writing skills of masking their ultimate desire for collecting gold ..and all of their utterances were shear silly humanistic platitudes for the sucker to rally around ...

..or they truly believed EVERYTHING that they said.

Now those who subscribe to ONLY those aspects that they find advantageous ..and totally ignore and disregard the gentility and true nobility of their writings ...are mere cherry pickers of convenience ..and living in denial of their true motivations for citing the writings of these great men. They cheapen their worth and mock their greatness in their corruption.
 
I didn't see you quoting Plato here:

Quote:
The argument since the publication of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" in 1776 is that free trade obviates the need for war -- that countries can obtain the resources they need peacefully and do not have to fight each other.

But not only do you think Adam Smith was wrong, but you actually think war is better than trade. It's not an original idea, but I think it's wrong -- I would rather buy a tank of fuel from you than fight you to the death for one.
 
I agree, but the alternative "preferred" method doesn't have too many fewer splinters from my perception.

We live in the time of the constructed "willful trap". You suffer under one trapping ..and gravitate to the other. Each evolution is worse ..and that leads to the gravitation back to the new "preferred trapping".

Repeat as needed.
 
TornadoRed: So you have not seen human nature change in the past 20-30 years or so. Morals and Ideals have not been corrupted?

What generation are you from? I am almost to 50 and I have seen it.

My comment on the bullet was actually meant as a joke. I don't advocate taking anything away. I advocate people working together for the common good and treating people fairly. Once again that is why I said both sides could agree on a mutually fair price. If they agree and contracts are made why should they screw over the other side side selling under the table. Both are getting what they want.
 
Originally Posted By: Tornado Red
If there is not enough water to go around if the price is free, how high must the price increase before supply and demand are in balance? It sounds like you think the morally preferred method is to let those with the most guns decide who gets water and who doesn't.


No..what I am saying is if the water you had cost you 1.00 a bottle it would be in my opinion fair to sell it for $ 2.00, not 10.00 just because you could.

Now if I was a speculator I would sell it for 10.00 because that is an awesome return on my investment......... :no-no:
 
I surely support supply and demand. It's the only that assures maximum availability. It's the only truly fair distribution system. Capitalism, in its purity, is the fairest distribution system. Each member has a share ..each member earns his reward for his/her contribution to the collective enterprise.


..but we know that's not how it works.
 
Originally Posted By: ZZman
TornadoRed: So you have not seen human nature change in the past 20-30 years or so. Morals and Ideals have not been corrupted?

What generation are you from? I am almost to 50 and I have seen it.


I am over 50, and I know that every vice or perversion you can imagine was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Perhaps with a bit of research we can find out who they learned from. Human nature has not changed -- check out Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, which date to around 1600 BC. And I doubt the people in Homer's stories were much different that those who lived 1000 or 2000 or 5000 years earlier.
...

The futures markets already enable buyers and sellers to negotiate mutually agreeable prices. Every trade involves a buyer and a seller. The buyers think prices will go up, the sellers think they will go down, so each has the same motive: profit.

Any regulation or restriction on trading will reduce the efficiency of a market, or else it may encourage the traders to use a different exchange, maybe in a different country. Since oil is a globally traded commodity, it would not take much to drive the bulk of the trading elsewhere.
 
So? What has Wall St & Co. done for the nation? Has anyone's pension really grown? Haven't Wall St. & Co. profited off a vapor housing market that pushed vapor profits and produced vapor gains? Haven't the financiers and the money changers profited ..while the entire collective pool of resources were dissolved and diluted.

What do they do for me. What do they do for my nation that isn't paid well in excess of what is brought to the table? Just what compels me to "want" Wall St. & Co. to do more of what they've done? ..because it will be worse without them? So I should reward the "reduced depletion" ..while they aren't sharing in my decline? Pay me to stay aloft ..for there's no hope for you. If you leave me unencumbered to enjoy my life, I might make your misery a bit less miserable. Your sinking into quicksand ..a bit slower. Oh, I'll add water, but I'll add less than the other guy. I care.
 
Gary, I can't see where your last message has anything to do with what has been discussed earlier.

But I can tell you would have been a supporter of Andrew Jackson in 1835, or the anti-immigrant anti-trade Know Nothing Party in 1852, or of William Jennings Bryan in 1896. Their policies were wrong then, just as your views are wrong today. There was no reasoning with Jackson, he wanted to rid the country of the Bank of the United States, which was serving as the closest thing to a national bank. The Know Nothings wanted to keep out the Irish immigrants, and they blamed the nation's economic troubles on the Papacy and the Free Masons. Bryan wanted the country to get off the gold standard, he wanted unlimited coinage of silver which would have weakened the power of the Eastern banks. That was also the era of the tycoons who bought and looted the railroads, manipulating stocks.

So you see, your ideas are hardly original, they were old in the 1800s. There were reasons for establishing reasonable regulation of markets, to level the playing field. But the idea of getting rid of the banks because you don't like the interest rates, or getting rid of the stock and commodity markets because you don't like the price of oil or the value of your 401(K), or blaming an international conspiracy for the nation's woes -- those are ideas that sensible people have been rejecting for about 190 years.
 
Well, I think you misinterpret my visceral response(s). I'm all for free trade. Absolutely. You pay for it. You don't borrow to sell it and put your fellow American out of a job with his own credit card use.

You're generating philosophy ..but if whatever I'm not (as you assert) ..just how has that served us and how will it serve us in the future. It has appeared, at least in the past hmmmm..40 years ..to make us poorer and more dysfunctional.

How can such a sound and assured philosophy, benefit so few ..deprive so many ..impoverish a wealthy nation and turn it into the biggest debtor on the planet?

What about it has worked?
 
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
How can such a sound and assured philosophy, benefit so few ..deprive so many ..impoverish a wealthy nation and turn it into the biggest debtor on the planet?


How about blaming the real culprits, the Congress? Hardly a bastion of free-market principle, quite the opposite in fact.
 
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