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Kro-Bar posted:"if you need an ID to drive a car then you should need an ID to vote!" Since it's talk radio I doubt any "facts" or "logical arguments" will sway anyone one way or the other. Make your point with facts and stats first, definitely, but you might also try playing on his (and his audience's) conservative nature. For instance, assuming he's very pro-gun (he's conservative so I'm just going to assume he is) you can shoot back "If you agree with that, you should also agree that people should have to get a license and register to buy a gun, and only certain 'street legal' guns should be allowed. Both gun ownership and voting are equivalently fundamental rights according to the Constitution. Driving is not." I mean he could weasel out of that by bringing up background checks and waiting periods, but if he's very hard-right something like it might work. Above all you need to drive home the point that the goddamn constitution says this is a total and absolute right. Conservatives love the constitution so I say it's your best bet. Shame Boy fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Feb 22, 2013 |
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Feb 22, 2013 00:01
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Quantum Mechanic posted:I remember some time ago in D&D somebody posted a study or an article that went through how much of the economy is involved in protecting wealth from theft (whether it's direct loss-prevention or management) and it being something like a quarter of the economy. Does anyone remember that paper or happen to have it? No, but it wouldn't surprise me as that probably includes the entire Insurance Industry.
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Feb 22, 2013 00:38
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Aeolius posted:I like this post. One concern, though: It says on the site that voter ID laws would only prevent impersonation fraud, but I don't see why it wouldn't curb some other categories, too. For example, the "proof of residence" requirement effectively ties you to a given district; that's not foolproof, but it could conceivably cut down on Double Voting or Registration Fraud. The "proof of citizenship" requirement would no doubt impact the figure for Non-Citizen Casting Ineligible Vote — in fact, going by the tenor of the debates, I would expect that to be one of the main planks on which pro-ID arguments rest. In all likelihood I based it on their descriptions of the categories at the time: Double voting - Individuals who vote more than once in the same election, often by absentee ballot and then in person. Registration fraud - Violations of the voter-registration process, typically occurring when people are paid to get registrations; they invent names to get paid more. I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure non-citizens can get a driver's license or photo ID and I'm not sure if there's anything special about them for non-citizens (presumably here legally), so just showing you are who you say you are isn't a guarantee of stopping non-citizens. I think the biggest thing is addressing the whole subject more broadly. Voter ID is a waste of money and disenfranchises voters because it resolves a non-existent problem. There are other concerns about vote integrity and enfranchisement (like ballot machines) that ought be addressed with that money and effort instead.
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Feb 22, 2013 02:12
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:Since it's talk radio I doubt any "facts" or "logical arguments" will sway anyone one way or the other. Make your point with facts and stats first, definitely, but you might also try playing on his (and his audience's) conservative nature. For instance, assuming he's very pro-gun (he's conservative so I'm just going to assume he is) you can shoot back "If you agree with that, you should also agree that people should have to get a license and register to buy a gun, and only certain 'street legal' guns should be allowed. Both gun ownership and voting are equivalently fundamental rights according to the Constitution. Driving is not." I mean he could weasel out of that by bringing up background checks and waiting periods, but if he's very hard-right something like it might work. This is great advice. Thanks to all of you for your stats and reasonable talking points!
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Feb 22, 2013 03:17
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My request is less about debating and more about sharing some good info. Where can one learn about the goings on in Iceland, ie how they replaced their Government, made a constitution and got themselves on the road to recovery without all that austerity stuff. Thanks in advance.
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Feb 22, 2013 22:38
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I agree about voter ID, but there's one thing that keeps bugging me - Florida 2000. There is a definite circumstance where less than 500 votes one way or another, in murky circumstances, dictated the victor of the Presidency. What do I say when people bring this up?
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Feb 23, 2013 17:23
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Freudian posted:I agree about voter ID, but there's one thing that keeps bugging me - Florida 2000. There is a definite circumstance where less than 500 votes one way or another, in murky circumstances, dictated the victor of the Presidency. What do I say when people bring this up? If less people had voted for Buchanan then Bush would have been a clear victor and the hassle would have been avoided.
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Feb 23, 2013 17:25
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Install Gentoo posted:If less people had voted for Buchanan then Bush would have been a clear victor and the hassle would have been avoided. I'm not sure we're talking on the same lines. I'm saying that the margin of votes that people keep talking about here shifted things into territory where the election was in doubt. Am I misunderstanding the argument?
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Feb 23, 2013 17:35
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Freudian posted:I'm not sure we're talking on the same lines. I'm saying that the margin of votes that people keep talking about here shifted things into territory where the election was in doubt. Am I misunderstanding the argument? Usually when people bring it up they are saying that Al Gore should have won if it weren't for those meddling Naderites. Bringing up that conservatives voting for Bush instead of Buchanan would also have shifted the election to a more decisive total gets them to think about it a little harder.
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Feb 23, 2013 17:45
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Install Gentoo posted:Usually when people bring it up they are saying that Al Gore should have won if it weren't for those meddling Naderites. Bringing up that conservatives voting for Bush instead of Buchanan would also have shifted the election to a more decisive total gets them to think about it a little harder. It sounds like they're talking about people that bring it up in regard to voter fraud, not in regard to people saying that Gore should have won. People that claim that the margin was so slim that voter fraud could have been an issue in the results even with its low incidence rate.
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Feb 23, 2013 21:39
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Idran posted:It sounds like they're talking about people that bring it up in regard to voter fraud, not in regard to people saying that Gore should have won. People that claim that the margin was so slim that voter fraud could have been an issue in the results even with its low incidence rate. I think that's only convincing if you can show either that the alleged fraud was all for one candidate or so widespread that following the distribution of all other votes as a baseline it would account for the difference. According to the site I linked Florida had one case of alleged fraud in 2000, and it was registration fraud by a campaign official. I'm not seeing any substantial numbers in my other searches, more complaints about just poor election processes in general (types of ballots used made for poor recounting, etc.)
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Feb 23, 2013 21:47
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Mo_Steel posted:I think that's only convincing if you can show either that the alleged fraud was all for one candidate or so widespread that following the distribution of all other votes as a baseline it would account for the difference. According to the site I linked Florida had one case of alleged fraud in 2000, and it was registration fraud by a campaign official. I'm not seeing any substantial numbers in my other searches, more complaints about just poor election processes in general (types of ballots used made for poor recounting, etc.) It's less "It decided the 2000 election" and more "Even considering the stupidly low amounts it actually happens, it could have an actual deciding effect in a very close election. An example of an election where the margins were small enough where this theoretically could apply was the 2000 election, which means the idea of an election with margins that small has a precedent and could happen again." I think a good argument against this is that the levels it occurs in are so low it's probably completely drowned out by larger noise factors, such as people making mistakes on ballots.
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Feb 23, 2013 22:12
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:It's less "It decided the 2000 election" and more "Even considering the stupidly low amounts it actually happens, it could have an actual deciding effect in a very close election. An example of an election where the margins were small enough where this theoretically could apply was the 2000 election, which means the idea of an election with margins that small has a precedent and could happen again." I think a good argument against this is that the levels it occurs in are so low it's probably completely drowned out by larger noise factors, such as people making mistakes on ballots. Yes, that's what I was trying to say. Thank you for understanding my thought processes better than me, and if I understand you right you're basically saying that this method of voter fraud would be completely unreliable and unpredictable even in the tightest of races due to any number of things (rainy day, bad traffic, spoiled ballots as you mentioned)?
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Feb 25, 2013 01:31
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Freudian posted:Yes, that's what I was trying to say. Thank you for understanding my thought processes better than me, and if I understand you right you're basically saying that this method of voter fraud would be completely unreliable and unpredictable even in the tightest of races due to any number of things (rainy day, bad traffic, spoiled ballots as you mentioned)? Yeah basically. Unless you could get way more people to do it than the number of confirmed or even suspect cases that actually happen every year, and unless you could concentrate all those people into one state, the sheer number of mistakes, margin of error, "rainy day" affects etc would render it not much more effective than if it hadn't happened at all. Candidate A got 500 fraud votes, but Candidate B also got 500 votes by accident and they both would have gotten 1000 more votes if it hadn't rained or if the lines weren't long or or or. Sure, if you isolate voter fraud by itself and say "everything else the same, would this affect the election?" you could probably come up with a case where it might, but it doesn't happen in a vacuum like that. I guess when we get our voting system absolutely foolproof where 100% of people always turn out to vote and every vote is counted exactly perfectly the way it was intended to be cast then it might actually be an issue worth discussing, but the number of people who simply don't have a ride to a polling place is probably more significant than it at this point. Plus, if you're specifically arguing voter ID and registration laws, there's far, far more people who actually don't have a valid, recent form of ID than who actively want to defraud the election process. Fix 500 fraud votes, lose a few hundred thousand valid ones.
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Feb 25, 2013 04:09
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Think about how many unbanked people we could help in this country too if we didn't require bank accounts to be tied to a verifiable ID. We should probably make sure all sorts of vital services are available to people without ID. In fact, the only requirement to identify yourself for a job should be finding a citizen who vouches that you are legally allowed to work. We could eliminate tons of immigration paperwork that way and truly empower the population.
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Feb 25, 2013 10:31
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shots shots shots posted:Think about how many unbanked people we could help in this country too if we didn't require bank accounts to be tied to a verifiable ID. We should probably make sure all sorts of vital services are available to people without ID. Banking is not a fundamental right guaranteed by the US constitution, this isn't hard, son. I mean I'm okay with a bunch of things requiring ID if ID is funded by the state.
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Feb 25, 2013 11:14
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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shots shots shots posted:Think about how many unbanked people we could help in this country too if we didn't require bank accounts to be tied to a verifiable ID. We should probably make sure all sorts of vital services are available to people without ID. You have to provide identifying information on a form when you first register to vote which can easily be crosschecked ahead of time to verify you are a citizen. If you either have the voter registration card or know some good identifying information about yourself (such as SSN, etc) I don't see why you should need an ID for this, even disregarding all the constitutional arguments. Even if you don't go to the correct polling place it should be trivial to look up your registration somehow. Not saying that it IS trivial yet, but there's nothing technologically preventing having some form of lookup service. What's someone going to do, steal the voter registration database and sneak around to different polling places hundreds of thousands of times to vote before everyone gets there?
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Feb 25, 2013 13:48
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Quantum Mechanic posted:Banking is not a fundamental right guaranteed by the US constitution, this isn't hard, son. Banking is not a right, but obviously people without ID have to do SOMETHING that they are deprived of without having ID (job/welfare/government assistance/banking) and all of these things are much more vital to a person's wellbeing than voting, which basically doesn't change anything. To use the same argument above, sure there are money launderers, but they are a drop in the bucket compared to people without ID. We shouldn't ruin their lives just to catch a small number of drug dealers/tax cheats. Parallel Paraplegic posted:You have to provide identifying information on a form when you first register to vote which can easily be crosschecked ahead of time to verify you are a citizen. If you either have the voter registration card or know some good identifying information about yourself (such as SSN, etc) I don't see why you should need an ID for this, even disregarding all the constitutional arguments. Even if you don't go to the correct polling place it should be trivial to look up your registration somehow. Not saying that it IS trivial yet, but there's nothing technologically preventing having some form of lookup service. Something like this is ludicrously insecure since all of that data is more or less publicly available and for sale. Fake social security cards cover the black market, and commecial databases are also available. To be honest, I think voting would be fine if we did the thing where you use indelible dye to prevent people from voting more than once, and then just let anybody who claims to be 18 or older and a citizen vote. shots shots shots fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 16:26
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shots shots shots posted:To be honest, I think voting would be fine if we did the thing where you use indelible dye to prevent people from voting more than once, and then just let anybody who claims to be 18 or older and a citizen vote. This seems to create a problem with early voting, something I wholeheartedly support, as it allows time for people to "double vote". Early voting, something that every other civilized country does, enables individuals to vote who may not have the time to do so normally (the poor).
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Feb 25, 2013 17:42
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shots shots shots posted:To be honest, I think voting would be fine if we did the thing where you use indelible dye to prevent people from voting more than once, and then just let anybody who claims to be 18 or older and a citizen vote. To be honest, I think voting is fine exactly the way it is*, given our incredibly low amount of actual voter fraud. Why fix what isn't broken? *Obviously it could be improved by more early voting, all states letting you vote by mail, etc. But in terms of voter fraud, our current system is working.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:03
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Mitchicon posted:This seems to create a problem with early voting, something I wholeheartedly support, as it allows time for people to "double vote". Early voting, something that every other civilized country does, enables individuals to vote who may not have the time to do so normally (the poor). I'm more concerned with how lovely of an electoral system we have in general (lacking IRV or Condorcet voting, unrepresentative leadership due to gerrymandering, for example) than I am of the idea that a massive group of individuals is going to coordinate to all double vote for one candidate without being caught by someone snitching, unusual patterns of voting within precincts, or a name query in a database showing they voted twice. When I voted last year I went to my local polling place, they asked me for my name, they found my name in the rolls and marked it off, then gave me a ballot. It seems pretty straightforward to check that day to see if I also voted early via absentee ballot (or it would be if we had a transparent core setup for collecting votes and not 50 shades of ancient 1900s voting methods).
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Feb 25, 2013 18:19
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shots shots shots posted:Something like this is ludicrously insecure since all of that data is more or less publicly available and for sale. Fake social security cards cover the black market, and commecial databases are also available. Really my whole point wasn't this would make it 100% foolproof to spoof, but it would make it prohibitively difficult to actually do in practice while not restricting voting by people who do it validly. We're not talking about an on-line voting system where you could just script all this fake data to enter votes automatically, you would literally have to get massive busloads of people, teach each of them their fake information and bus them around the state to have any kind of actual measurable affect, and that's even before any sort of reasonable auditing system picks them up and flags them for using dead people's SSN's or voting as people who never registered or who voted twice, etc. I guess if you're a loving James Bond villain you could do it but I don't see anyone realistically pulling this off to any sort of useful degree and not getting caught.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:05
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Mo_Steel posted:I'm more concerned with how lovely of an electoral system we have in general (lacking IRV or Condorcet voting, unrepresentative leadership due to gerrymandering, for example) than I am of the idea that a massive group of individuals is going to coordinate to all double vote for one candidate without being caught by someone snitching, unusual patterns of voting within precincts, or a name query in a database showing they voted twice. When I voted last year I went to my local polling place, they asked me for my name, they found my name in the rolls and marked it off, then gave me a ballot. It seems pretty straightforward to check that day to see if I also voted early via absentee ballot (or it would be if we had a transparent core setup for collecting votes and not 50 shades of ancient 1900s voting methods). I'm not afraid of double voting, just stating that that could be a conservative counterargument to using dye if there is already early voting in place.
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Feb 25, 2013 20:42
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I'm going to have a debate soon about the issue of pornography and how far it can and should go. As I'm Norwegian and this is going to be a debate about the Norwegian laws about pornography, my debate will be built around that. Excuse my language, and if I need to clarify something, please say so  The Norwegian laws about pornography mostly boils down to "No depictions or rape, beastiality, necrophilia, pedophilia or other sick stuff" and I agree with this. Those who have produced or contributed to the production of such pornographic materials will be severly punished according to Norwegian laws. This is emphasized even stronger in accordance to our own laws and the laws of children and women according to the UN which we also have ratified. The main issue here is something that my professor and some of my classmates have mentioned about this is that such laws against pornography will only further contribute to such acts being done in reality. With this, I also remember reading an article about how some states have allowed pornographic animations with children, rape etc to decrease the percentages of such acts being done in real life. If I remember right, it also mentioned that this actually contributed to a significantly lower rate on such acts. However, I do not have any sources on this. My professior mentioned another "dilemma", and that is how we have our own laws which allows full freedom of speech and laws from the UN which also allows full freedom of speech, but the laws against pornography goes against both of these laws. She mentioned that by prohibiting productions of such pornographic materials, you go directly against the laws of free speech. I, personally, believe that it goes against free speech in theory, but that free speech is not an automatic allowance to produce such things because there's a limit on how far you can go. Intentionally producing material which depicts situations of non-agreement, non-consent, harmful situations and so on for pornography is, in my opinion, way too over the line(with this I mean depictions of children, rape etc) . Producing pornographies where there is no mutual consent, acted or not, goes against this. As I mentioned, I fully agree with the Norwegian laws but, hopefully without opening a can of worms, I would really like your opinion, statistics, articles or whatever to challenge my views or even to support my views.
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Feb 28, 2013 10:39
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Stalins Moustache posted:"No depictions or rape, beastiality, necrophilia, pedophilia or other sick stuff" The key thing to remember with pornography is, assuming you're coming from a free speech perspective, is why the production of things like paedophilia porn is illegal. It's not just because "it's icky and we don't like it," it's that one must break the law in order to produce the footage. Same with bestiality - animals cannot legally consent. I think the legal rationale for necrophilia is desecration of a corpse, but I'm not too familiar with that. It's why there's such a legal shitstorm around "loli porn" - animated porn that clearly depicts children; strictly, it shouldn't be illegal, since it doesn't require any illegal activity to occur to actually produce. That hasn't stopped several governments prosecuting it like child porn, though. Ultimately, what is your goal with pornography laws? Is it to avoid an incentive to create undesirable material, or is it a method of social control? In terms of "other sick stuff" where is the line drawn? What separates out a really hard bondage video (which can get pretty nasty, albeit entirely consensual) from a rape scene? Like I said before, is the ban on things which simply LOOK LIKE the described situations, or does it actually have to be the act in question? On who should the responsibility of judgement fall in these cases? Pornography's such a varied thing that it's very difficult to make a set of rules for what is and isn't okay; it's hard enough to even define "what is pornography?" Ultimately you have to work out what your goal is, and work from there.
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Feb 28, 2013 14:16
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Any goons have any good info, articles, and studies on the stagnating middle class? I had heard a number of conservative points that state this is a myth. Here is an article that my econ professor presented in class for reference: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323468604578249723138161566.html
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Mar 1, 2013 16:23
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Mitchicon posted:Any goons have any good info, articles, and studies on the stagnating middle class? I had heard a number of conservative points that state this is a myth. State of Working America has a metric poo poo-ton of data and information on wages, income, wealth, mobility, poverty, and more in their 12th Edition Report. It's probably the single largest collection of such information I've seen gathered together in one place. I did a quick look through of the article as well, using the above source on Wages for my responses: quote:It is true enough that, when adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, the average hourly wage of nonsupervisory workers in America has remained about the same. But not just for three decades. The average hourly wage in real dollars has remained largely unchanged from at least 1964—when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) started reporting it.  It's actually been mostly flat since 1970, but I'm not sure this argument helps the author's point either way. Wages stagnating for even longer isn't somehow a good thing for their argument that the middle-class hasn't grown with the economy is false. quote:Moreover, there are several problems with this measurement of wages. First, the CPI overestimates inflation by underestimating the value of improvements in product quality and variety. Would you prefer 1980 medical care at 1980 prices, or 2013 care at 2013 prices? Most of us wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter. This is a red herring because it has nothing to do with the relative economic strength of the middle-class, but with the progression of technology which affects everyone in society on some level. Arguing that technological advances make up for a flat income curve isn't convincing because that technological advance is available to the wealthiest as well and their income certainly hasn't been flat. quote:Second, this wage figure ignores the rise over the past few decades in the portion of worker pay taken as (nontaxable) fringe benefits. This is no small matter—health benefits, pensions, paid leave and the rest now amount to an average of almost 31% of total compensation for all civilian workers according to the BLS. I haven't fully run numbers on this, but my inclination is that they're using the increasing cost of health insurance as a way to argue that compensation has risen. In cost terms this might even be accurate (and a strong argument for a single-payer health insurance system with strong price controls to unburden businesses and individuals) but in terms of what employees get, we see a different picture:  Less workers are covered under employer insurance than in the past few decades...  ...the type of pensions that are offered are worse than before...  ...and access to sick leave and paid time off is pretty unequal in our workplace today. quote:Third and most important, the average hourly wage is held down by the great increase of women and immigrants into the workforce over the past three decades. Precisely because the U.S. economy was flexible and strong, it created millions of jobs for the influx of many often lesser-skilled workers who sought employment during these years. No problem, we can divide up the wages by wage group to see what sort of changes each group of wage earners has seen over the past few decades. We don't want to get our data messy by including these low skilled women dragging our wages down, so let's just look at men:  Huh, the top 20% seem to be doing alright, the bottom 50% not so much. But we're also concerned about lesser skilled workers, presumably those lacking in education. If the authors are right, we should see a rise in workers without college or even high school degrees among our workforce...  Well that's odd. The percentage of the male workforce that isn't even at a high school education level has decreased, but the wages those workers earn has also decreased in real terms. It's almost like their argument that more unskilled workers caused wages to fall for the whole of society isn't truthful, and in reality our workforce has become better educated overall but the top earners have squeezed the bottom and middle earners for everything they can take. Most of the rest of the article is the same red herring about technological advancements meaning relative economic power isn't an issue when it really is.
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Mar 1, 2013 17:58
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Can people contribute articles / studies either for or against charter schools in the US? Stuck in my phone till tomorrow night and I'd like to get some reading material to a friend in politics on the subject.
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Mar 4, 2013 06:34
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Totally TWISTED posted:Can people contribute articles / studies either for or against charter schools in the US? Stuck in my phone till tomorrow night and I'd like to get some reading material to a friend in politics on the subject. http://jacobinmag.com/2013/02/disaster-capitalism-in-the-chicago-public-schools/ has plenty of good links within the article
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Mar 4, 2013 06:41
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Anyone have good data on Medicaid reimbursement rates and if they're problematic? I've seen some good data about Medicare but not Medicaid.
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Mar 4, 2013 17:56
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Accretionist posted:Anyone have good data on Medicaid reimbursement rates and if they're problematic? I've seen some good data about Medicare but not Medicaid. Check out the current conversation in the sequester thread, Medicaid is the topic at hand. e: Medicaid themselves also has information on reimbursement http://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid-chip-program-information/by-topics/financing-and-reimbursement/financing-and-reimbursement.html http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/fmap12.shtml Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 19:38
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Totally TWISTED posted:Can people contribute articles / studies either for or against charter schools in the US? Stuck in my phone till tomorrow night and I'd like to get some reading material to a friend in politics on the subject. This is the most comprehensive study of charter schools in the U.S. that I'm aware of. From the Findings section: quote:Despite promising results in a number of states and within certain subgroups, the overall findings of this report indicate a disturbing — and far‐reaching — subset of poorly performing charter schools. If the charter school movement is to flourish, or indeed to deliver on promises made by proponents, a deliberate and sustained effort to increase the proportion of high quality schools is essential. The replication of successful school models is one important element of this effort. On the other side of the equation, however, authorizers must be willing and able to fulfill their end of the original charter school bargain: accountability in exchange for flexibility. When schools consistently fail, they should be closed. They found that the majority of charter schools either underperformed public schools or did no better or worse.  There's a lot more detail and factors are discussed in the paper (elementary vs. high school, authorizer standards, etc.) Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 20:46
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Two links that may be helpful to people First is the New York Times pointing out the discrepancy between corporate profits and hiring/wages. It also alludes to the alarming return of the crazy risk-taking that tanked the economy in the first place. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/b...Uq6q5w#comments Second is a viral video going around about income inequality, though I had not seen it somehow. The video is on youtube, but this link includes a few links. http://mashable.com/2013/03/02/wealth-inequality/
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Mar 4, 2013 21:38
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WampaLord posted:To be honest, I think voting is fine exactly the way it is*, given our incredibly low amount of actual voter fraud. Why fix what isn't broken? The issue they're talking about isn't reforming the voting system to reduce fraud, since like you say it's negligible. They're talking about ways to change the voting system to allow more people to vote more easily. Put fewer restrictions on the system.
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Mar 4, 2013 21:57
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Thanks nachos and mo_steel, good stuff there.
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Mar 5, 2013 02:49
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Idran posted:The issue they're talking about isn't reforming the voting system to reduce fraud, since like you say it's negligible. They're talking about ways to change the voting system to allow more people to vote more easily. Put fewer restrictions on the system. On the topic of improving our voting system, I've found these videos to be particularly informative and easy to understand. His other videos are all pretty good too, like this one about our Electoral College: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k&hd=1
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Mar 5, 2013 03:02
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I'm trying to trace the exact reasons for the vast inflation in the Yugoslav economy following the Agrokomerc affair of 1987. It's a great subject and cautionary tale to any sympathizers of market socialism. quote:The Agrokomerc Affair of 1987 was a banking scandal centered around Agrokomerc that led to political destabilization of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It seems as if the creditors (mostly banks here) were left with gaping holes where their capital should be after it was revealed that the promissory notes were fraudulent and unbacked, leading to an inability to pay wages to their workers/themselves by the creditors and overproduction at Agrokomerc. Cue crisis. Now this may all seem pretty easy and straightforward to you trained economists, but I'm having some trouble figuring out the next step here. Maybe it's due to a lack of sources -- I can't find much information about the Affair online. Here's some stuff I used: Dyker's Yugoslavia, Socialism and Debt, seems to have quite a right-wing slant to it, preferring the more libertarian analyses of the economy, but still useful. http://books.google.nl/books?id=qaY...okomerc&f=false  Branka Magaš's The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracing the Breakup, 1980-1992 http://books.google.nl/books?id=d5n...0affair&f=false  Ignoring the larger political issues at hand, what should Agrokomerc's reasonable response have been? Despite the drop in supply price, the people in that entire area were basically dependent on Agrokomerc's business to be paid a wage with which they could take advantage of that price drop, meaning that mass starvation was a definite worry for a while. Now I'm trying to understand this with babby's first economics, no Marxism (yet) or anything, so bear with me. Dyker's book seems to indicate, in the passage about 'primary emissions', that Agrokomerc was effectively bailed out by the Yugoslav state through the nationalized banks, and the implication seems to be that the inflation was the result of the money supply expanding because of that. Is this how it should be seen? Could anyone with a better brain take a look at this text and shed some light on this for me? Thanks in advance. Otherwise I might just have to head to the university library or something.
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Mar 5, 2013 16:38
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Yugoslavia SFR had a serious issue with financial exploitation and fraud in part from their practice of using foreign countries/universities/etc to educate their work force. I'll see if I can pull up that study I read on it a while back.
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Mar 5, 2013 23:13
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I am looking for information pertaining specifically to the Agrokomerc affair.
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Mar 6, 2013 00:17
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I brought it up because the two are probably linked one way or the other. I'll post it if I can find it/it's actually relevant. edit Has this thread had much to say about Chavez? As the Token Lefty for a bunch of folks I need to be prepared for this weekend. Looking for positive and negative. Increased literacy, doubled personal income but at the cost of what? The murder rate is high and journalists for the opposition-owned-by-big-boil were detained?
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Mar 6, 2013 15:11
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