Re: [Sci.nanotech] MNT macroeconomics



Phillip Huggan <cdnprodigy@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The military will never be subject to regulation. They get to build
whatever toys they like, in the name of "national security". In the
end, only peaceful purposes will be subject to meaningful
regulation. What such regulation will result in is lots of people
who could be cured of diseases dying, lots of toxic waste pits that
could have been cleaned remaining in the ground, lots of poverty
that could have been cured continuing, etc., in the name of an
omniscient set of regulators "studying the matter".

But the non-military actors you speak of can potentially build
military weaponry with this technology.

You can build military weaponry in any machine shop, too. It isn't
even hard. If you're even a pretty lame machinist you can build pretty
much any gun that is in current use. Manufacturing ammunition for your
guns is pretty straightforward as well.

It takes fairly little training as a chemist to make pretty nasty
toxins and chemical weapons from commonly available materials, and
there is effectively no way to stop any of that, either, and the
information on how to do it has been common knowledge for most of a
century.

So, how is any of this new?

How will this be avoided without regulation?

How would it be avoided *with* regulation? You can't even stop people
from doing what they want *today*.

Look at the price of oil as traded on a couple of of the futures
exchanges. There are more than a few hundred people who participate
directly in setting the prices of those contracts -- it is hundreds of
thousands of people who are directly trading, and they're responding
to the demand decisions expressed by literally billions of people.

No it is a few dozen hedge-fund traders who dominate the market.

I've worked for hedge funds. I assure you that they do not always make
money, much to their chagrin, and in no sense "control" anything. They
try very very hard just to predict where things are going. They're
also a tiny fraction of the energy trading -- they're not even
"controlling" in the sense of being dominant players.

The signals from actual commodities producers and derivative
financial vehicle issuers are dwarved. I'll post the derivative
trade flows data if you insist.

There is no such data. A large fraction of the energy trading these
days is in the spot markets, and a large fraction of it is outside the
United States, and in both cases is beyond the realm of securities
reporting requirements. There isn't any single reliable source of
information available. I don't think anyone even has exceptionally
accurate data on worldwide production -- it is all at best educated
guesses. Hell, I bet that even the House of Saud doesn't know the real
amount of oil leaving Saudi Arabia. Any data you have, I doubt I'd
believe.

Going wider afield, if your belief that markets can be manipulated so
easily by the powerful was true, why did the Hunts go bankrupt trying
to corner the silver market in the late 1970s?

I said the free and efficient market invariably steers large
capital accumulations into economy-wrecking compounding interest
vehicles (like stocks and bonds).

Stocks don't accumulate interest, compound or otherwise. Without the
stock and bond markets, you wouldn't eat anyway -- the efficiency
gains they provide in financing are part of what allows your modern
lifestyle to exist.

And with that, I'm done arguing with you. Anyone willing to call
stocks and bond "economy wrecking compounding interest vehicles" isn't
operating on the same set of economic theories I'm familiar with, and
I see no point in continuing.

--
Perry E. Metzger perry@xxxxxxxxxxxx

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