Peter Schiff debate - closed public debate

[Smiling_Dave]

I have accepted. My initial assertion is that you have never quoted anything specific that Peter said. You merely dismiss his whole body of work with name calling.

So your first step is to come up with a specific economic assertion that Peter made that you disagreed with, and we can then debate. If you don’t I say you lost right there.

I expect you to reply with "I won’t do your research for you. Go through all my 10,047 posts and find something I said about Peter.’ I will accept that reply as an end to the debate.

—Readers, this is a closed debate between Dave and I. Please do not post to this thread. You can comment about this debate in this thread. —

[liberty_student]

@Smiling Dave

I have accepted.

Start a new thread. I will remove all posts to that thread by outsiders, as Lilburne does with his debates.

Actually, I will start the thread with this. Context is handy.

@Smiling Dave

My initial assertion is that you have never quoted anything specific that Peter said.

I don’t believe I have claimed otherwise.

@Smiling Dave

You merely dismiss his whole body of work with name calling.

Can you source this please?

@Smiling Dave

So your first step is to come up with a specific economic assertion that Peter made that you disagreed with, and we can then debate. If you don’t I say you lost right there.

Now this is not only a non-starter for a debate, but it’s also a non-sequitur.

How about you start with something I did say, since you must have seen something I wrote which bothered you so much, to go on this multi-day adventure defending Peter Schiff.

If you can’t make a specific claim that I have done wrong, then why all the personal attacks? On what basis have you made them?

[liberty_student]

Also, it may be handy, as well as choosing a debate topic, if we define our terms.

[liberty_student]

@Smiling Dave

I expect you to reply with "I won’t do your research for you. Go through all my 10,047 posts and find something I said about Peter.’ I will accept that reply as an end to the debate.

I didn’t see this when I replied.

You’ve already claimed I have said things about Peter. I’m not asking you to do any research. I am only asking you to substantiate your claims.

Or you can pick an economic topic and we can debate it.

But you can’t make claims, and then say that I have to prove I didn’t say them (proving a negative) and call that a debate win. No one is buying that.

I’m asking you to participate in a good faith, honest debate where you and I argue what we can support, nothing more, nothing less.

[Smiling_Dave]

1. So we have reached some agreement. We both agree that you have never proven that anything specific Peter said is wrong

2. You did say:

Smiling Dave:
There are two kinds of nations, debtor nations and creditor nations.

There is no such thing as a nation.

Schiffism is entertaining, but it’s not economics.

Thus you are attacking not a specific thing he said but EVERYTHING he said, as being not economics, but something else, which you gave the derogatory term of Schffism. Do we agree on this too?

[liberty_student]

@Smiling Dave

1. So we have reached some agreement. We both agree that you have never proven that anything specific Peter said is wrong

This is incorrect. I do not agree to this, nor have I given any indication I did. I said I have not sourced Peter directly. Very different.

Please be specific in what you claim I have and have not said.

@Smiling Dave

2. You did say:

Smiling Dave:
There are two kinds of nations, debtor nations and creditor nations.

There is no such thing as a nation.

Schiffism is entertaining, but it’s not economics.

Thus you are attacking not a specific thing he said but EVERYTHING he said, as being not economics, but something else, which you gave the derogatory term of Schffism. Do we agree on this too?

I think you’re committing a fallacy of composition. I never indicated Peter Schiff has never been right about anything. I simply stated that Schiffism, specifically the debtor nation, creditor nation stuff is complete BS, and has nothing to do with economics, specifically Austrian economics.

As for Schiffism being derogatory, that wasn’t my intent. I needed to call his ideology something, I would happily accept any term you have for it, provided you don’t want to call it Austrian Economics, because it is not Austrian Economics.

[Smiling_Dave]

1. Ok . so you say that you have never quoted anything specific that Peter said. You then say that my statement that you have never proven him wrong about anything is incorrect.

So, summing up: You have never quoted anything specific that Peter said, but you HAVE proven him wrong about something specific. Please tell me:

A. What that something is

B. What your arguments were.

C. Why you did not bother to quote him before proving him wrong.

2. You assert that the debtor nation creditor nation stuff is complete BS. And your proof is?

[liberty_student]

@Smiling Dave

1. Ok . so you say that you have never quoted anything specific that Peter said. You then say that my statement that you have never proven him wrong about anything is incorrect.

This is also wrong. I don’t understand what the confusion here is. Either you’re not understanding what I have written, or you’re not expressing it back in the same manner.

The former is correct. The latter is not. I suggest you block quote me, so there is no confusion about what I have and have not said.

@Smiling Dave

Please tell me:

A. What that something is

B. What your arguments were.

C. Why you did not bother to quote him before proving him wrong.

See above. Also, if you don’t know what you disagree with, then there is no point in debating it. You’re the one who came after me multiple times, if you didn’t have a reason to do so, and I am trying to participate in a forum for you to address those concerns, then it is starting to seem to me that your attacks and claims might be meritless.

If we’re going to continue, I would happily provide your comments, and you can explain why you made them about me, or things I have said. We can start the debate that way. You indicated people are doing Peter Schiff wrong. Who? If me, where? I’ll happily discuss that with you. Just explain where I did Peter Schiff wrong.

@Smiling Dave

2. You assert that the debtor nation creditor nation stuff is complete BS. And your proof is?

• There is no such thing as a nation. It’s an abstraction.
• Trade account deficits are offset by capital account surpluses.

[Smiling_Dave]

I said “you have never proven that anything specific Peter said is wrong”

You replied “this is incorrect”

By the law of the excluded middle, there are two and only two possibilities. Either 1. you have never proven that anything specific Peter said is wrong or 2. you have proven that something specific Peter Schiff said is wrong. You have stated that 1. is incorrect. Ergo, you are stating that 2 IS correct.

Now you are saying that 2 is not correct either. Your debate is not with me, but with Aristotle, the explicator of the law of the excluded middle.

OK, now for the other part of your post.

“There is no such thing as a nation. It is an abstraction.”

1. Justice is an abstraction. Are you saying there is no such thing?

2. Here is what I wrote to Prateek about your claim:

Of course it is people and households and businesses that produce and consume. But we can look at all the people and households and businesses that are in the USA, and see what is going on with the sum total of their activities. A shorthand phrase for “the sum total of all the people and houses and businesses in the USA” is the word “nation”. The Austrian emphasis that nations “don’t exist”, that certain people are parroting here without understanding, is not relevant. Those Austrians are talking about the use of the word nation in a different context. And the nation is borrowing 50 billion dollars a month that will have to be repaid somehow.

“Trade account deficits are offset by capital account surpluses.”

Since you claim to have read Crash Proof [and supposedly found some errors in it], you can go to the very first pages of the book, where he explicitly refutes your argument. And if the dog ate your copy of the book, I just posted a long reply to Esuric where he also made your argument, and I copied from Peter’s book to rebut it.

OK tell you what. I’ll quote it here too.

… the balance of payments, the book-
keeping system for recording transactions between countries, is
made up, among other items, of a trade account, which is the part
of the current account that nets out imports and exports, and a
capital account, which nets investment flows between countries.
Because dollars we send abroad in payment for goods and ser-
vices are returned as investments in U.S. government securities
and other assets, one account can be viewed as the flip side of the
other. Acountry, like the United States, that is a net importer will
therefore typically have an offsetting capital balance, the trade ac-
count being a deficit and the capital account a surplus.
But “surplus” as it is used here is a bookkeeping term mean-
ing simply that more cash flowed in than flowed out. The rea-
son cash flowed in is that an asset, say a Treasury bond, was
purchased by a foreign central banker. But selling a bond doesn’t
make us richer; it creates a liability. Sure, we initially have cash
in hand as a result of the sale, but it’s money we are obligated to
pay back with interest.
So the word “surplus” has a positive ring to it, but a capital
surplus has the opposite meaning of, say, a budget surplus. Sur-

pluses can be bad or good. A surplus of water in a reservoir dur-
ing a drought is good, but when it’s in your basement during a
rainstorm, it’s bad.

[liberty_student]

@Smiling Dave

I said “you have never proven that anything specific Peter said is wrong”

You replied “this is incorrect”

By the law of the excluded middle, there are two and only two possibilities. Either 1. you have never proven that anything specific Peter said is wrong or 2. you have proven that something specific Peter Schiff said is wrong. You have stated that 1. is incorrect. Ergo, you are stating that 2 IS correct.

Now you are saying that 2 is not correct either. Your debate is not with me, but with Aristotle, the explicator of the law of the excluded middle.

Dave, it is very possible I have made an error here. This is because you keep restating my position for me, instead of sourcing my position directly. Consider all of my responses to this line of questioning void, as though I did not answer. Then source what I did say, or ask me a question directly, and I will do my best to add clarity to your concerns.

@Smiling Dave

OK, now for the other part of your post.

“There is no such thing as a nation. It is an abstraction.”

1. Justice is an abstraction. Are you saying there is no such thing?

Non sequitur

@Smiling Dave

2. Here is what I wrote to Prateek about your claim:

Of course it is people and households and businesses that produce and consume. But we can look at all the people and households and businesses that are in the USA, and see what is going on with the sum total of their activities. A shorthand phrase for “the sum total of all the people and houses and businesses in the USA” is the word “nation”. The Austrian emphasis that nations “don’t exist”, that certain people are parroting here without understanding, is not relevant. Those Austrians are talking about the use of the word nation in a different context. And the nation is borrowing 50 billion dollars a month that will have to be repaid somehow.

This is also a non sequitur. The nation is still just an abstraction. If an artificial entity created from nothing, starts creating debt, I don’t have to worry about how it is repaid, and neither do you. You are not the nation. You are not in the nation.

@Smiling Dave

“Trade account deficits are offset by capital account surpluses.”

Since you claim to have read Crash Proof [and supposedly found some errors in it], you can go to the very first pages of the book, where he explicitly refutes your argument. And if the dog ate your copy of the book, I just posted a long reply to Esuric where he also made your argument, and I copied from Peter’s book to rebut it.

OK tell you what. I’ll quote it here too.

… the balance of payments, the book-
keeping system for recording transactions between countries, is
made up, among other items, of a trade account, which is the part
of the current account that nets out imports and exports, and a
capital account, which nets investment flows between countries.
Because dollars we send abroad in payment for goods and ser-
vices are returned as investments in U.S. government securities
and other assets, one account can be viewed as the flip side of the
other. Acountry, like the United States, that is a net importer will
therefore typically have an offsetting capital balance, the trade ac-
count being a deficit and the capital account a surplus.
But “surplus” as it is used here is a bookkeeping term mean-
ing simply that more cash flowed in than flowed out. The rea-
son cash flowed in is that an asset, say a Treasury bond, was
purchased by a foreign central banker. But selling a bond doesn’t
make us richer; it creates a liability. Sure, we initially have cash
in hand as a result of the sale, but it’s money we are obligated to
pay back with interest.
So the word “surplus” has a positive ring to it, but a capital
surplus has the opposite meaning of, say, a budget surplus. Sur-

pluses can be bad or good. A surplus of water in a reservoir dur-
ing a drought is good, but when it’s in your basement during a
rainstorm, it’s bad.

The dog didn’t eat my copy, I gave it to a friend who thought he would start day trading. I thought it would have more value, hopefully keeping him from losing his home and family chasing a dream that doesn’t exist. I am not a stock market investor. I’m an entrepreneur. I invest in myself and my business.

I’m not sure what that quote proves. It just shows Peter is cognizant of what I am talking about. You and he seem to be obsessed with the idea that US federal debt is something paid by either of you.

We’re balls deep into this, and still don’t have an actual argument to debate. Do we still have outstanding differences that can be resolved in this format, or are we wasting both of our precious time?

I’ll continue if you want to continue, but let’s actually find a topic to discuss.

[Smiling_Dave]

I say we can close it. I have nothing further to contribute. And I’ve discussed the Peter Schiff quote at length in the defense of Peter Schiff thread.

It was manly of you to void the first part of the debate. Hope we can continue interacting on good terms.

[liberty_student]

Fair enough.