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Originally Posted by ptgatsby
Bubbles form, bubbles collapse. It wasn't the use of fiat money that started it, and it won't be fiat money that ends it.
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Sure it was. The socialists who believe they can manage the capital markets via manipulation of interest rates and various forms of credit manipulation have utterly gutted our economy. By pushing the interest rate below the market determined rate, which was done in the mid-late 90's and after the tech bubble, the central planners have changed America from the world's wealthiest creditor nation, to the world's biggest debtor nation. The distortion of the price of money(interest rates) fooled people into thinking that borrowing was a good idea.
In a rational economy, the interest rate is expressed in the markets as the ratio of savings to the demand for capital investment. When these are unhinged, as they have been since 1913, you have the business cycle.
If you'd like to read about it, try this:
http://www.mises.org/books/tmc.pdf
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FWIW, I take technocrat to be a compliment. I rather like the concept of those specialising in knowledge ruling.
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Right, but the point is that you have no right to rule over anyone. The very idea that a central committee populated by the intelligentsia can plan the economy has been thoroughly debunked since 1919.
Aside from the moral argument against totalitarian economic rule, there are the numerous utilitarian criticisms. Even if the central planners are brilliant and have "the people's" best interests at heart, they cannot have complete knowledge of the market. The knowledge of local conditions is embodied in local transactions by local agents. This information cannot be known by central planners, no matter their technologies.