Re: Lyle's Laws

Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Wed, 01 Jan 1997 21:01:10 -0600

> The first sign of what's coming is the stock market. It continues to
> forge ahead. This is the great Victory-of-Capitalism Bull Market.
> As the market penetrates into all corners of the earth, the economy
> becomes more stable. There will be no more recessions. That part of
> history is over. There will be no more bear markets, at least not
> for the market as a whole. Individual stocks, and individual countries,
> will go up and down. But the aggregate will grow steadily, and in fact
> the stock market will grow at increasing rates. In recent years it has
> been in the 20 - 30% range. It will move into the 50 - 60% range in the
> next couple of years, and then into the 100 - 200% range. And on up
> from there.

The stock market will never be stable until the government gets the heck
out of it. "Stock market drops 200 points on news of strong economy."
What? Shouldn't stock prices *rise* if companies are doing better? No,
because the government, in the name of "stabilizing" (= slowing down)
the economy, raises interest rates that should be set by private
bankers, thus causing bonds to be more attractive than stocks. Or maybe
they just shoot anyone who buys above a certain price. I don't care.
This is ridiculous.

"The Incredible Bread Machine" is a fine reference on how the entire
boom-and-bust cycle is intrinsic to government, not capitalism.

-- 
         sentience@pobox.com      Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
          http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
           http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.