A Libertarian's view of Trump's SCOTUS pick.

[Eric the Green]

(02-13-2017, 07:48 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(02-08-2017, 07:51 PM)Marypoza Wrote:

(02-08-2017, 02:54 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(02-07-2017, 09:10 PM)Marypoza Wrote:

(02-07-2017, 05:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: They will try; meanwhile they have clever sloganeers, like Reagan, Trump and our own Galen and Warren Dew who deceive us into thinking that libertarian economics is "individual liberty." They are enslaving us with slogans of freedom. Freedom is Slavery. War is Peace. They don't bother with David's question.

-- that's bcuz David's question requires them to think

It's because David will ignore the answer.

If you're interested, I'm happy to answer it for you.

-- ok go 4 it

Big business is less of a threat than big government because corporations aren't, generally, monopolies.  That means if I don't like a business I'm dealing with, I can quit doing business with them and go to a competitor instead.  The government can come after me with a gun and force me to "do business" with them, a business cannot.

Libertarian theory is charming, but it doesn't stand up very far to consideration.

For starters, businesses ARE often monopolies, or close to it. Without government regulation, businesses are or would be certainly monopolies. With the lax regulation under Reaganomics for 40 years, concentration of ownership of the economy has grown, especially in the media and various consumer rackets. Small businesses are driven out and replaced by chain stores.

It's not a "threat" if you don't like a business or a government. The government can't come after you with a gun unless you break the law, and if you don't vote Republican or Libertarian, then you are helping to ensure that the laws are fair and just for all. If you are running a small business, or are fortunate enough to be a CEO of a big one, then you have nothing to worry about from the government IF you are behaving as you SHOULD anyway.

In the USA it may seem like you have no alternative to a government monopoly, but in most places, you can move not very far away and choose to live under another government. In any case, the government and its holdings belong to the people, who are the rulers. It protects some lands from development and helps preserve Nature. You have a vote and a voice. In a big business, you have none; only a few rich CEOs and stockholders (often the same folks) make the decisions, solely for their own benefit. They own us.

Quote:Now, you may point out that big business often has little competition.  But, let's face it, that's often because of collusion with government.  Big pharma can charge ridiculous prices because the government prohibits reimportation, that would force their prices down through competition.  Big agriculture can sell mass produced junk masquerading as food because the government subsidizes them and regulates the market in a way to promote the products with the biggest profit margins at their behest.  Big banking survives because of government bailouts.

Quite the opposite is the case. Under a Republican/Libertarian-type of government, the greediest company or bank forces the others out of business. Anti-trust laws are not enforced, and mergers are allowed. Free trade allows businesses to send their factories and offices overseas for cheap labor and lax laws. Unions are destroyed and laws that protect consumers and workers are repealed, so we have no voice in how business pays or treats the people. The Republicans and Libertarians are keeping drug prices sky high in the USA by restricting competition from drug companies abroad. The "socialist" Bernie Sanders is the one who tries to remedy this situation, not the libertarian Republicans who maintain it. It's mostly the Republicans who insist on subsidies to big agriculture. The farm states mostly vote for Republicans who boost them.

Quote:Get rid of big government, and we could get more reasonable drug prices, real food, and banks which do a good job instead of banks that are just "too big to fail".

It's the libertarian Republicans who want lax banking regulations, and the repeal of Dodd-Frank which can be used to break up banks too big to fail. Without big government, banks operate as they please to rip off the people, speculate with their money, and cause recessions that starve the people.

Whenever big business colludes with big government, that's because libertarian conservatives are in charge, so that government does business' bidding rather than regulating and taxing it to make sure it works for the people. Your libertarian president just repealed the "fiduciary" requirement that financial counselors must serve the people. Now that's your "libertarian" philosophy in action!

Trump has appointed a bunch of these alligators to his cabinet. Their purpose is to tear down government agencies that protect the people, so that they can continue to abuse and steal from us as they have already been doing. The Republican-libertarian approach to government is to appoint wolves to guard the chicken coop, according to the laissez-faire philosophy that business should be left alone to exploit and screw the people as much as it wants, in the name of "liberty." Liberty for WHOM?

It's easy to say that the big banks should be just left to fail, after they screw up the economy thanks to libertarianism. But the government has to step in one way or another. Liberals preferred an orderly break-up of banks too big to fail. But in any case, depositors and customers had to be protected or the economy would have plunged over a cliff. Your libertarian conservative Mr. Bush bailed out the banks and left them without any oversight; at least the Democrats required it.

from http://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html :

Without government support and investment, the railroads and canals could not have been built. There would be no open highways, no airports, no air-traffic control, no lighthouses, no signs or lights to regulate the flow of automobile traffic. Radio and TV signals would interfere with each other and nothing could be broadcast. Without government, conflicting needs could not be resolved and commerce would stop.

Noted Stanford historian Gordon A. Craig writes: "A much-read spokesman for classical liberalism" (and Social Darwinism), "the English publicist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), commenting on the relation of government to business, once wrote, "Perpetually governments have thwarted and deranged growth, but have in no way furthered it, save by partially discharging their proper function and maintaining social order." The most striking thing about this dogmatic utterance is its remoteness from the truth. As we have seen, economic growth is dependent in the first instance upon the creation of an efficient transportation system and other forms of social capital. During this phase, government is generally called upon to play a most important part, since projects that do not promise a quick return on investment often find it difficult to obtain financial support. Students of American history are well aware of the role of federal government subsidies during the construction of the transcontinental railway systems. The same sort of thing occurred in many European countries..." (Europe 1815-1914, Dryden Press, p.265)

The government gave us regulations that allowed the benefits of capitalism and freedom to be enjoyed by more of the people. The government has provided minimum wage laws, anti child-labor laws, anti-discrimination and civil rights laws, consumer protection laws, the 8-hour day, laws guaranteeing the right to organize unions, the GI bill and housing assistance, public education that creates universal literacy, libraries, social security and medicare, unemployment insurance, our money and coinage, the post office, our court system, our police and fire departments, our coast guard and civil defense, disaster relief funds, anti-pollution laws, national and local parks and recreation areas, lighting and plumbing systems, the space program (which spurred the development of computers), and more.

Without government, the conditions of unregulated capitalism would still be in effect. In those days, if you lost your job, you lost your home and starved. If you were poor, you most-likely stayed poor. Most people were illiterate and uneducated. A few aristocrats of capitalism had most of the wealth, while the majority lived on substandard farms or crowded city tenements. There was little or no sanitation, sewage, lighting, electricity, or water supply. Disease was rampant and plagues frequent. If a natural disaster struck, there was no relief. If you spoke out against low wages and bad working conditions, you were fired, and any strike was busted by strike-breakers and thugs. If you were black and lived in the south, you were a slave or sharecropper and denied all rights. If you were gay, you stayed in the closet, or got beaten up. If you were female, you could not own property and could not vote. If you got sick, unless you had some good "home remedies" you had no medical care except from the local quack. If you got injured on the job, you lost it. If you tried to go into business, you faced competition from monopolies who drove you into bankruptcy-- for which there was no protection. The capitalists and aristocrats had all the cards; the people had none.