Barney's Blithering Misunderstanding of Business: 'Your Being There Means Somebody Else' Won't Be

NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Two days ago I ordered online a used copy of Milton & Rose Friedman's classic "Free to Choose," hoping a liberal loved one would be willing to read it. That doesn't look like it's going to happen, so now I'm tempted to send the book to Barney Frank—since it's apparent that, like many liberals, he doesn't understand the most basic notions of how free markets work.

On Steve Kornacki's MSNBC show today, Frank described business creators as being "given privileges." Barney then added this mind-boggler: "there's only a limited amount of space, there's only a limited amount of businesses. Your being there means somebody else wouldn't be."

View the video here.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Liberals like to paint Barney Frank as a great thinker. Yet as this quote makes clear, he doesn’t understand the most basic notions of how free markets work. Ping to Today show list.

[skeeter]

Barney understands butt.

[jsanders2001]

Buiness owners are given privileges? The exact same privileges that the liberals have. If they’d get up off their butts and stop whining and try to create their own businesses they could own one too. It takes a lot of effort though I’m guessing they’ll probably just stay whining on their sofas eating EBT bought potato chips, receiving free healthcare, and living in Sec 8 housing that I paid for in taxes while they whine about how privileged I am to pay for all their $hip. Word of advice to libs - stop being idiots and parroting each. Have an original thought sometime, will ya?

[9thLife]

zero-sum-Malthusian-ignorance.

[jsanders2001]

Buiness owners are given privileges? The exact same privileges that the liberals have. If they’d get up off their butts and stop whining and try to create their own businesses they could own one too. It takes a lot of effort though so I’m guessing they’ll probably just stay whining on their sofas eating EBT bought potato chips, receiving free healthcare, and living in Sec 8 housing that I paid for in taxes while they whine about how privileged I am to pay for all their $hip. Word of advice to libs - stop being idiots and parroting each other. Have an original thought sometime, will ya?

[headstamp 2]

Ah, the old zero sum game. The hallmark of liberal economic dogma. “Life’s Lottery” and “You didn’t build that” hokum.

[stylin19a]

holy crap.
I’m growing a beard until I get a job interview.
My beard looks like Barney’s.
Time to shave.

[Texas Eagle]

Liberals like to paint Barney Frank as a great thinker.

And, interestingly enough, Barney Frank likes to paint his toenails.

[albie]

Frank is excited because all of this gay news keeps him relevant and in the talk show circuit!!

[Calvin Locke]

IIRC, the last real job the Dancing Queen had was pumping gas one Summer in the late 1950s

[mjp]

there's only a limited amount of space, there's only a limited amount of businesses. Your being there means somebody else wouldn't be there.

He is thinking about "the law of the jungle" and survival of the fittest, where there is competition over a limited, nature-given supply of means or subsistence.In a free, modern division of labor economic system, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth.In capitalism,producers chase dollars which they gain from willing customers only by virtue of exchanging for dollars more and better goods-goods which they have created.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Tertiary syphilis.

[TheCipher]

IIRC, the last real job the Dancing Queen had was pumping gas one Summer in the late 1950s

That probably wasn't the only thing he was pumping...

[COBOL2Java]

Liberals like to paint Barney Frank as a great thinker.

Of course, it all depends on the meaning of "great thinker". Barney's a "great thinker" just as Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty was a "great thinker"

[muir_redwoods]

I explained this to a leftist once by asking whether there was more or less wealth on earth 200,000 years ago. She insisted that there had to be more back then because we had obviously “used up wealth” in the interim.

I asked which amounted to wealth, loose rocks or a stone wall. She looked at me confused. It took a long time but I finally managed to get her to understand that wealth is created from resources and is potentially unlimited.

Any view of wealth as a limited attribute of human culture is a view most closely held by people who want to limit it.

[RWB Patriot]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/objectivist/2011/06/14/when-it-comes-to-wealth-creation-there-is-no-pie/

[latina4dubya]

if some businesses limit the customers they're willing to serve, that actually creates an opening for the creation of other businesses that do not so limit themselves.

there it is... this is what libs do not get...

Barney Frank thinks there is one pie to be divided... there is more than one pie... there are lots of pies... and there can be even more pies...

[Rummyfan]

What does the old queen know about business? Nothing. He spent his entire adult life in the public sector, where he made it his business to rob the productive and give to the non-productive.

[elcid1970]

Who cares what some faggie thinks?