Adrian

"Don't worry, Hayek has your back.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S..." - Adrian

"Colloquially the assessments—particularly in the test form—are referred to as SATs. This terminology is rooted in the original intention to introduce Standard Assessment Tasks when the assessments were first introduced.[10] The term is variously believed to stand for Statutory Assessment Tests,[11] Standard Attainment Tests,[12] Standardised Achievement Tests and Standard Assessment Tests.[2] "SATs" is pronounced as one word, rather than the American SATs (where the letters "S-A-T" are pronounced individually). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N..." - Adrian

"Scotland is far too addicted to state socialism and central planning for this to ever happen :(" - Adrian

"Geoists and students of Smith and Ricardo would question the size of tax rebates for the rich via capital gains on their freehold property. These are not lottery wins, they are land monopolies absorbing societal and state created economic growth and monetary inflation. Capital that should be redistributed, increasing the standard of living of everyone if done correctly via social housing and citizen's dividends." - Adrian

"It depends on how you define 'government' and 'market'. 'Market' does not equal 'for profit' or 'government corruption' and equating the government of Iceland with the US federal government is comparing apples and oranges. Almost all the problems of government in the US trace back to errors of scale i.e. lack of knowledge and objective tests of errors that give real feedbacks. The idea that the US can create the largest government in all history and then vest more and more powers at its centre and then complain that it is being corrupted is strange. It is not strange that the federal government is corrupt but why it is not much more corrupt based of the value of favours it can bestow. It is strange that 100% of companies do not have as their business model to employ lobbyists and gain revenue from the government. Privatisation has nothing to do with the free market. You don't have to fear for profit schools or hospitals on the free market because there is no historical evidence that..." - Adrian

"Places like Germany and Singapore might be "socialised" by American standards but by Canadian or UK standards they are the free market. The problem is that once you have fully socialised it becomes politically very difficult to get back market systems you have lost." - Adrian

"What debate about network neutrality ? There isn't one outside the US because it is an invented political issue for a US audience. The internet has never been packet neutral, if it was the only way to get better network performance would be to throw expensive hardware around and thus ISP charges would be ten times what they are. Also the internet has never been free of transport costs for startups, only for big companies that can negotiate peering arrangements. The idea that allowing telcos to charge extra for priority transport of packets will mean the end of competition or freedom or create barriers to entry on the internet is totally false. I can only conclude that the issue has been invented to try and distract people from the fact that the US is a mass of local telecom and cable monopolies. Rather than governments compelling companies to share infrastructure like most countries they just grant monopolies. This is where the political corruption is ! Unfortunately most Americans..." - Adrian

"It's ironic that Bill Black will not tell you any of the ways Hayekians have been proven right by history. e.g. In the 1980s the UK Conservative party (driven mad by Mrs Thatcher and Hayek's Denationalization of Money book) opposed the creation of the Euro. Instead they supported the legalisation of all European currencies in all countries believing that this would lead to the Deutschmark being adopted as the international trade currency while all nations retained their own currencies. Thus avoiding all the problems the Euro has created." - Adrian

"Hayek was not a monetarist or believer in efficient markets so very far away from the Friedmanites. I don't think you can just turn the market on and off at will e.g. when you turn off market prices you always get either a glut or shortage because you have turned off information. This is why socialised health systems (fixed prices) always have waiting lists (low quality service) for the poor - the rich can always buy high quality healthcare. The rich can always buy a place at a good school while there always seems to be a shortage of places at good schools for the poor. If you learn anything from Hayek it is that there are massive dangers to market tampering that hurt the poor far more than the rich. If you want to help the poor give them some money or vouchers or build some infrastructure, don't rob them of the benefits of spontaneous market order driven by the vast information compressed into prices. Hayek for beginners: http://www.amazon.com/The-Pric..." - Adrian

"What the hell are you talking about ? I was simply pointing out the Bill Black is lying to you when he says that Heyak received his Nobel prize for the Road to Serfdom ! If you are interested in Hayek then you are much better off going to Hayek experts rather than someone who doesn't know what he is talking about or wikipedia: http://www.econlib.org/cgi-bin..." - Adrian

"classical liberalism is not socialism ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?..." - Adrian

"This is only true if not phased in over a long period of time. It would destroy 100% of the value of freeholds, i.e. it would de facto nationalise land and thus prevent property owning tax payers getting massive tax rebates via unearned capital gains on property. It can't be socialism because Marx described it as capitalism's last gasp and it was supported by the liberal party including Churchill." - Adrian

"This is total rubbish ! He got the Noble Prize in economics for his economics ! i.e. the Mises-Hayek theory of the business cycle and his writings on the problems of central planning e.g. this essay: http://www.econlib.org/library... The Road To Serfdom is no different to the predictions made in the book 1984 by Orwell and made at exactly the same time. The difference being the Hayek's predictions are far less over the top and rooted in reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... http://www.nobelprize.org/nobe... The best thing he ever wrote is the essay 'The Use of Knowledge in Society', I very much doubt Bill Black understands its significance." - Adrian

"Only if you haven't studied it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... https://www.youtube.com/watch?..." - Adrian

"Another less than stellar analysis from 2002: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/... No, confidence doesn't just evaporate. Banks wake up to the fact that they are bankrupting themselves by making big loans to dodgy repayers and stop lending and start begging for money from the central bank to cover their losses. All it takes is an oil shock (1973) or tax change (1990) or bank run (2008) to wake up mortgage lenders and borrowers that the music has stopped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?..." - Adrian

"True, he thought he was seeing a bubble peak but the bubble was only just starting to inflate because the gas (mortgage credit expansion) was just starting its runaway phase (just like 1934, 1969 and 1986). He and others totally underestimated what banks can do to expand credit in the terminal phase of the cycle. Ad from 30s mortgage boom: http://thediaryofalocalestatea..." - Adrian

"True, but they don't end for no reason. They end because the things driving the cycle end or change. The monetary and fiscal and banking and political drivers of the land cycle are all still in play. Nothing has changed other than some magnitudes e.g. the size of bank bailouts or open market operations. Thus the cycle continues." - Adrian

"Hong Kong is not a theory ! A 2 to 3% LVT would be similar to council tax now and thus could replace it. As you increase the LVT you progressively eliminate all other taxes and land then is not a speculative financial asset. There is no tax avoidance or capital flight, rather capital wants to flood in. Also you don't have to put LVT on all land at the same time. You could start by just targeting land with planning permission." - Adrian

"It's a land value tax, not a house value tax ! It is the annual rental value the land the house stands on would have if there was no house there." - Adrian

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L..." - Adrian

"If you went to a 100% ad valorem land tax overnight you would have chaos. You start by replacing council tax with a 3% LVT then slowly increase this over 20 years until you have eliminated other taxes." - Adrian

"This is because a significant expansion of mortgage credit has not yet begun. Like in the mid 90's. But by 2003 it was too late to do anything !" - Adrian

"It does indirectly, i.e. by preventing supply gluts like we have seen in other countries when a property bubble bursts. e.g. Spain had lots of unaffordable housing in the bubble and now it has lots of affordable housing. This can never happen in the UK because the auto correcting features of a market are turned off by restrictive planning. The biggest ever global property bubble could only produce a few empty city centre flats in the UK in 2009 and 2010, not what you would expect in a real market." - Adrian