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Your wiki info is always suspect, unless I can obtain primary sources. It hardly even addresses the human nature involved which is what we were talking about, as well as the exploration and discovery going on in that period of history.

You're not going to try to convince me that all capitalist enterprises are above board, are you? You say you are a cynic. I disagree.

But what excites me the most, what has caused the advance of humanity, are the risks people are willing to take.

Completely different from the liberal inundated Wall Street and banking cartel.

The point I'm trying to make, though, freedom, is that rich, poor, or whatever, whether government initiated or adventurer initiated, the people loved the risk, the OUTSIDE CHANCE they would WIN, not necessarily become rich, just win. Isn't that what the gamble is all about? The addiction, that is?

What made Columbus sail to the West? It wasn't greed. It was the OFFCHANCE he would find Kublai Khan and his magical realm.

Well, don't think it was government produced. I believe it was created and SOLD to the government. In those days, "companies of merchant adventurers" had to have a royal charter of some sort; just as the North American English colonies (before Britain was formed, I think) needed a type of charter granted to them by the King, in America's case, James I or Charles.

Those charters I find very interesting in how they were worded and used to develop English influence on the sea coast. In fact, the exploration of the continent starting in the East, Canada, and south of Canada, the French and Spanish in Florida and along the Mississippi, etc.

A distant relative, Chief Alexander McGillivray, of the Creeks, (Muskogee) even tried to gain protection from the Spanish in Florida to prevent the Americans following the Revolution (McGillivray fought for the Brits) to intrude on what he considered Creek lands---Kentucky and further west.

My other distant relative, however, Chief LeFlore of the Choctaws, fought with the Americans, and aided in the Treaties of Dancing Rabbit Creek, to move Choctaws to Indian Territory later in 1836. And the Leftists' rendition of THAT is basically untruthful. I found a PhD dissertation from the '60's containing letters from Greenwood LeFlore to the U.S. Senate concerning the move. It wasn't at all what it has been portrayed to be.

Sorry I bent your ear---

+1

I read a book a few years back: American Speak and Brit Speak. But 'sort your housing' wasn't in it!

From wiki:
"British joint-stock company founded in January 1711, created as a
public-private partnership to consolidate and reduce the cost of the national debt. "
Just another government approved con.
Sort of like Wall St. and the banking cartel. Special laws for "special people."

Poor people turned in their government pensions to get money to buy shares!!

Indeed. Takes some travel in the British commonwealth to understand Britglish. ;^)

No discussion on human nature as it relates to economic activity can be complete without a 'review' of the South Sea Bubble. Everybody and their dog invested in this 'company of adventurers', even sometimes not knowing exactly what this 'company' was setting out to do!

Isaac Newton himself, as Master of the Mint, lost about 700 pounds. It was the early 1700's that this company set out to discover and do whatever.

Exactly. DEI does not make experts. Only foolish games.,

"Sort your housing"? Doesn't compute in American.

I agree. The experts being appointed today might not have made the cut at all 30-40 years ago when there was at least some weighting on experience and merit.

And unfortunately, 90% of what would be her disastrous reign would be concealed from us.

Just re-read your post, and wanted to comment that 'experts' change with the times. What an expert is today we would have simply called an initiate thirty or forty years ago!!

Darn that old human nature! Always interfering with rationality!

In insurance, term, there are three necessary self-governing limits on rates and premiums, and the first is rates must be adequate. That is, an insurance company must be able to pay losses, and if by trying to compete, the premium base is desecrated, then the funds needed to pay losses may not be there when they are needed.

The other two are equitable and fair; equitable so the company is not charging more than necessary, and fair so that a risk with a brick house is not paying more premium than one with a frame house.

I'm not sure I follow you. I agree, competition is the best way to insure a quality product is made at a good price. But competition can also become extreme, and destructive. In fact, the best example I can give you is what happened to the transportation industry during Reagan's cuts in regulation in the early '80's. I was at Stapleton International Airport in Denver, when an airline, can't remember the name right now, I'll think of it in a bit, just closed down, no more flights, people were sleeping on the floors in terminal. Wish I could remember the name.

I wasn't and still am not, against deregulation, but it is not something that can be done instantaneously.

Just looked it up; I think it was Frontier.

Unfortunately, yes, there are often irrational discussions.
Sometimes that is the case with discussions of monetary policy by "experts"
in monetary policy, likely due to the 'human nature' of the "experts." ;^)

Simply put, as a regulator, before I accepted, or underwrote a risk, I might require certain improvements be taken in safety measures. For instance, bars on windows of shops in low-rent neighborhoods; limbs of trees that would be a menace in case of a storm or what not, I might have them removed; making sure sidewalks are cleared of snow so that slip and falls are negligible. Or I might reduce a rate if certain procedures are taken.

I loved insurance, I loved the control, and I knew I could protect the business, by protecting the customers and clients, better than the owner of the business himself, as sometimes measures like this are either overlooked, or put on the back burner.

It's a very long story, both how insurance works to insure safety in industries and business, and my particular part in it.

But I always knew, though not every risk I wrote would be profitable, overall, I could write a profitable book of business. They say an underwriter takes risks just as much as any Las Vegas gambler, but it never felt that way to me.

I'll just say this, because it is a pretty important part of insurance and the economy itself; the insurance company, like a balloon chase crew, must arrange to have the money in hand at the same time the losses occur. Pathological competition could prevent that.

Not only COULD prevent that, but has done so in the past. And many times.

Your questions must wait for an answer, as too many unqualified people read these comments. The 'lookers on', not the legitimate Gulchers.

Your rationale for government 'exhibiting control on larger business', that is, for unearned power and wealth, should, properly, be refined and investigated so as to have a sharper and more clear understanding of what causes, and how they work, business and industry to become extremist in their conduct, so that government doesn't need to seek power and control over them, and thus government can be kept in check as well.

Now, the answers to those questions, how and why businesses grow and conduct themselves, are not easy to discover. Human nature has a lot to do with it; in fact, it has the most to do with it. What we don't want to do, is crush those 'animal spirits' Keynes referred to in his writings long ago.

I'm not a Keynesian economist, I'm a monetarist, a mild monetarist. Fiscal policy is not good policy for regulation of either the economy or business. But the extremes of the business cycles can be flattened out, but as I've said, we must wait for clues.

You said: Glad to have a rational conversation with you---is there any other?

Like to hear your understanding of property and casualty insurance as regulator. Sounds fascinating.

competition makes me work harder if I want to succeed. It doesnt benefit ME as a producer; it makes my life harder. But, overall it benefits everyone in that it keeps people who are just in it for power from exerting that power over people unmercifully.

the reason for going into politics is to secure power over people

Some 160 years of it, government has been exhibiting control on larger business
in order to gain more and more unearned power and wealth.
Companies responded in the most efficient peaceful way:
by corrupting government and using it to eliminate competition and end the free market.

Glad to have a rational conversation with you! ;^)
You want some 'body' to limit business?
Who is qualified and won't be corrupted by the power?
Let's discuss.