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Comment Re:Intellectual Monopolies violate property rights (Score 1) 224

You may be able to make a profit but you just won't get monopoly profits. Just like before recordings actors and singers earned money from live performances. if you want to make movies you have to keep them under your control in a theater, insert ads or product placements, fund through crowd sourcing, or try to come up with digital distribution easy enough that people will pay instead of copying. There are plenty of ways to make money creating content without monopoly.

Comment Intellectual Monopolies violate property rights. (Score 1) 224

The real underlying flaw with Intellectual Monopoly laws like Copyright and Patents is they violate property rights. Someone that creates a movie now has a legal claim on my hard drive. They can show up at my house and use violence against me if I arrange the magnetic patterns on a disc I own in a particular way. The same with patents. They can use force against me when all I have done is arrange materials I own in a certain pattern. These laws violate my property rights.

Your only argument is that monopolies can get rich is correct. When you can use force on peaceful people to make them pay you then you tend to get wealthy. Not a big shock there.

Comment Re:Wrong answer to the wrong question (Score 0) 1094

Because some people's labor is not worth the minimum wage. Let the businesses pay them what they are worth. A basic income can maintain a minimum standard of living without penalizing work. This way once you get the first job and increase your skills you can earn more. Cutting off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder isn't the answer.

Comment Re:Yes deflation IS bad in general (Score 1) 335

You are only looking at who is hurt by deflation not the benefits. This is why Central Banking is so dangerous. It picks winners and losers for every action it takes.

Deflation hurts those:
in debt just like inflation hurts savers.
with houses but helps those looking to buy a house.

An economy needs savings to grow. Going into debt when there isn't actual savings (producing more than is consumed) cannot lead to sustainable growth but only malinvestment bubbles and crashes.

There is no such thing as a deflationary spiral. The economy always adjusts to whatever the money supply is. It just depends which industries were overvalued. Japan is suffering from stagflation where the Central Bank refuses to let deflation happen.

I agree that few economists think deflation is desirable which is why we are in such a mess right now.

Comment Re:What's the best value for inflation? (Score 1) 335

Inflation is an increase in money supply. In a free market money would be provided by the market. Precious metals, IOU's, American Express travelers cheques, bitcoins, etc. Human choices would determine what the supply of money would be. For instance if the price for precious metals rose in relation to other goods you would have price deflation. You could buy more goods with less gold. If it became profitable to mine for gold than people would do so which would increase the supply reducing the price and reducing inflation.

So there is no optimal value of inflation. Central banks inflate because it benefits them, the politicians, and those that get to spend the money first.

Comment Re:Economics is a science! (Score 1) 335

Economics is a science with predictive capabilities. The problem is knowing when this science leaves the world of economics and into the unpredictable world of human choice.

Economics similar to physics can tell you what will happen if some action is chosen.

If you let go of this bowling ball it will fall due to gravity. It doesn't say whether you will let go.

Similarly Economics will tell you that creating money out of nothing and giving it to people will cause distortions in the economy . What is can't tell you is if that money will be created, who it will be given to, and what they will spend it on.

It can tell you if you raise the minimum wage above the market clearing wage that marginal jobs will be lost. But it can't tell you what the market clearing wage is, if the minimum is above it, or which jobs will be lost.

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