The key would have been to design the code-making process with built-in checks and balances. I would have allowed business and industry owners to form chamber of commerce type organizations on the basis of common interests apart from just business and industry- geographic location, religion, politics etcetera. I would let the owners for each type of business and industry design codes for their business and industry but then the codes would have to have the approval of the entire group so the entire organization can be held in check; mutual accountability among people that do not share the exact same commercial interests would help insure the honesty of all of the members in the organization.
Or, more likely, it would result in a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" structure where all businesses, gathered together by mandate, cooperate for the benefit of business to the detriment of everyone else. Ever heard of price fixing? It is the result of competing businesses cooperating to increase their mutual profits. Do you not think if you force business to form a coalition, they would not end up cooperating in the same manner? Get real.
The NRA gave labor the right to unionize, but if your unemployment rate is in double digits and a strike is your only legal means of redress you really have no means of redress at all. So I would have given labor a say in making the codes as well, although I don’t know if labor should be represented based on job type or employer.
Yea, a perpetual labor contract agreement debate at the national level. That would work.....
I would then let the entire organization set up a charity that would provide health insurance and unemployment, disability and retirement pensions for the people that work for the members of the organization. These benefits would be transferable between employers as long as a worker remains employed by members of the organization.
Thus diminishing the ability of business to compete for qualified workers through differentiated wages and/or benefits.
And you would have ended up with a collapsed economy in place of the depression.
A long-term bad economy is bad for the nation. Social unrest is almost always bad for society and by not taking government action to stimulate the economy during a depression that depression could easily lead to revolution.
Except history shows every time the federal government tries to "stimulate" things, they end up, at best, creating an imbalance that ends up creating more problems, which then require more government intervention, creating more imbalance, until we end up with things like the Great Depression, and the crisis of today. At worst it completely fucks things up almost immediately, ala Carter in 1977.
The Great Depression was the result of the government trying to artificially avoid the post war depression from WWI. Had they left things be, a depression would have occurred, but of far lower impact and far faster recovery. The crisis of today is the result of government continually "stimulating" economic processes through artificially depressed interest rates, encouragement of high personal debt, etc. The bottom line: when government interferes, the economy eventually goes flooey, and in the meantime is highly unstable.
Then explain how Nazi Germany had a booming economy up until WWII even though the government ran the economy. I understand that the Nazis had a purpose in letting the government run the economy- rearmament and war- and this purpose created a false demand for industrial output that allowed an economic recovery that may not have otherwise happened. But it does show how a government-run economy can be a successful economy at least in the short term.
You explained it yourself. The boom economy of pre WWII Germany was the direct result of Hitler putting Germany into a full blown war economy. Our economy, too, boomed during WWII. It boomed during WWI. Economies always boom during wartime as production is vastly increased to meet the artificially inflated needs of war, no matter who is in charge. And take note, that in order to take full control of the economy, practically every other personal liberty was also taken away. You want to trade your liberty for some idealized economic stability? I do not.
Loss of artificially created demand is why post war depressions occur: because the demand created to support the war effort goes away, the industries built up and expanded to meet the demands of a war economy are then forced to shrink, resulting in negative economic growth until a new equilibrium is established.
Except we never allowed the equilibrium to get established after WWII. We almost immediately got embroiled in the Cold War, with Korea and Vietnam being hot spots in that military posturing conflict with the Soviets and Communist China.
When the Cold War diminished, the economy started to sag, we again failed to allow the economy to establish a new, natural equilibrium. The government stepped in with "stimulus" ideas like opening credit to lower economic strata. This created an imbalance which resulted in reformation of banking laws. When the natural consequence of lending money to people who could not afford to pay it back hit in the form of drastically increased bankruptcies, the government stepped in yet again with more adjustments, to include regulations requiring banks to make mortgage loans in low income areas. To counter thhat imbalance, they allowed banks to diminish the lending risk by selling high risk mortgages in large packages.
In short, it has all been a house of cards supported by government "stimulus" ideas and laws, with the occasional influx of government money that does not exists until they say it exists via the federal reserve. We face consistent and repeating economic crises BECAUSE government interference keeps setting up imbalances.
All Reagan did was deregulate and fail to enforce antitrust laws and the likes of Walmart and Home Depot and a destabilized banking and airline industry are the results. Reagan encouraged laissez-faire competition and the entire economy ultimately suffered.
Banking was not destabilized because of Reagan reducing regulation - it was destabilized because the idea of forcing banks to open credit in lower income strata, which caused the need for re-regulation and artificially depressed interest rates - coupled with allowing banks "high risk" rates to compensate for defaulted loans - is what destabilized the banks.
The airlines were artificially propped up by the government infrastructure. Of course when that infrastructure is removed, a readjustment is going to take place. The alternative would have been to accept the need for ever increasing government subsidy to keep that government mandated infrastructure running, with the end result of complete collapse of the industry later.
And I did say Reagan took his concept too far.
