People Power

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Originally Posted by airshifter

But in the eyes of the government, just about anything is discrimination.

Age, sex, marital status, national origin, and religion are all included.

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Are you saying those aren't potential causes for discrimination? At least they don't include employment and financial status, as far as I know. And those are what matter. I'd hate a situation where I'm denied a loan just because someone else of the same age, sex,marital status, national origin and religion has not repaid his when I know that I myself can and will pay back mine.

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Originally Posted by Bob Riebe

What part of this do you not understand?

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Specifically what if anything it's got to do with the abandonment of prudent lending practices some 14 years later. If it had had some meaningful effect, it would have taken place almost three business cycles earlier.

Surely the invention of "no doc" and "low doc" loans as a result of deregulation and exacerbated by the Bush/Greenspan tax cuts following the DotCom bubble created the easy credit market which led to the mess.
Joseph Stiglitz had that opinion when he wrote about it in 2007.
RealClearPolitics - Articles - How the Bubble Started

I call shenanigans on anthonyvop's hypothesis.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

What does that have to do with anything? You asked for an example of a private company being in a monopoly position. I provided one.

To answer your question, someone might not be able to drive, or they may have chosen for some reason not to drive. The concept is not difficult to grasp.

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I asked for an example of a private company beingin a monopoly position. Your example is not a true monopoly. It is a state run monopoly for "public" transportation. But even at that, it isn't a monopoly as there is an alternative ... truly private trasportation. Your own car, your friend's car, taxi, etc.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

Again, there may be all sorts of reasons why not.

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True there may be many reasons why you want to buy your coffee on the high street. Fact of the matter is, no one is forcing you, you do have choices.

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Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1

This will be a key question for all of us as time goes on IMHO.

Rather than ask why support someone who is expensive, perhaps we should be asking why are they expensive and what could be done to make them less so?

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As long as you are talking about reducing expensise through the free market system, I'm all for it. And in the long run, the free market will chose the highest value product (not always lowest cost). But if you are talking about some sort of government intervention to somehow try and force down prices (which seems to be the point of the OWS people), then count me out.

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Originally Posted by airshifter

But if a landlord has a history of statistical evidence showing that one race group is more reliable in paying their rent on time, they can't act on that, as it would be labeled discrimination.

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And quite right too. Surely these things must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis?

On the Janet Reno/mortgages bit. Hopefully the link works

http://www.ots.treas.gov/_files/25022.pdf

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Evidence of "disparate impact." when a lender applies a practice uniformly to all applicants but the practice has a discriminatory effect on a prohibited basis and is not justified by business necessity.

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Example of "disparate impact". A lender's policy is not to extend loans for single family residences for less than $60,000.00. This has been in effect for ten years. This minimum loan amount policy is shown to disproportionately exclude potential minority applicants from consideration because of their income levels or the value of the houses in the areas in which they live.

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So right there in the document itself it clearly lays out the process by which banks will be forced to lend to minority households even if they can not afford the loan.

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Originally Posted by chuck34

I asked for an example of a private company beingin a monopoly position. Your example is not a true monopoly. It is a state run monopoly for "public" transportation.

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No, you misunderstand completely. What I was talking about was not state-run at all. I was clearly referring to the involvement of private companies.

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Originally Posted by chuck34

But even at that, it isn't a monopoly as there is an alternative ... truly private trasportation. Your own car, your friend's car, taxi, etc.

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Much as I suspected, your belief in 'choice' only goes so far. In this instance, you seem to be saying that the choice is private transportation or nothing; that if one chooses not to have one's own private transportation, one abandons the right to be presented with a choice. Why should the choice only be between a private sector monopoly in the provision of public transport, or private transportation? Surely, if you believe in choice, you should also believe in the right to have a choice between different forms of service provision? The problem with the view held by you and others on the right when it comes to choice is that you only like it to be exercised within a certain pre-defined mainstream.

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Originally Posted by chuck34

So right there in the document itself it clearly lays out the process by which banks will be forced to lend to minority households even if they can not afford the loan.

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The process by which that can happen, maybe. But nowhere does it say that they will be forced to do so. Surely the interpretation ought to be down to the individual lender?

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

No, you misunderstand completely. What I was talking about was not state-run at all. I was clearly referring to the involvement of private companies.

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Perhaps it's because I am honestly not that familiar with the train system in the UK. My (basic) understanding is that it is government managed, but they contracted out the actual running to private companies. Those companies then, as you say, ran the trains poorly. Private involvment in a public project, at least in the cases that I'm more familiar with, don't really represent the free market. I will admit that I could be wrong in your particular example, I am truly ignorant of the specifics.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

Much as I suspected, your belief in 'choice' only goes so far. In this instance, you seem to be saying that the choice is private transportation or nothing; that if one chooses not to have one's own private transportation, one abandons the right to be presented with a choice. Why should the choice only be between a private sector monopoly in the provision of public transport, or private transportation? Surely, if you believe in choice, you should also believe in the right to have a choice between different forms of service provision? The problem with the view held by you and others on the right when it comes to choice is that you only like it to be exercised within a certain pre-defined mainstream.

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This is not an all or nothing proposal, and I have never said as such. I think there may be valid cases for public transportation. But to somehow claim, as you seem to be, that public transportation does not or should not have to compete against private transportation is foolish at best. Supporting the desires of the few at the expense of the many for ever more, isn't what I would call a recipe for finacial solvency.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

The process by which that can happen, maybe. But nowhere does it say that they will be forced to do so. Surely the interpretation ought to be down to the individual lender?

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Yes it should be down to the individual lender. But the document I just quoted from, an offical US Federal Government document, clearly states that it is no longer a decision the individual lender can make.