The basic problem with libertarianism, and by no means just them, is its "magic bullet" solution to problems of all kinds. The Market ( hallowed be thy name ) will take care of everything. The remedy for all that ails us is "freedom." This is the foundation view. Sure, it is finessed in different ways, depending on which kind of libertarian you are talking to, but this is the floor beneath everything else. And I just don't buy it -despite liking the market approach and despite genuine faith in the value of freedom. To return to an analogy I have used before, you can't have a football game unless you have referees, a league that makes rules, and, for that matter business planning and court oversight for any serious abuses ( like violence which results in injury, illegal gambling on outcomes, hard drug use, and so forth.) You can play sandlot football without any of this, but what you get is, well, a sandlot game, not what any of us think of when we want to see Notre Dame in action, or the Seattle Seahawks play the Bears. This is, after all, the real world of the 21st century. We need some equivalent of the NCAA or the NFL, reforms notwithstanding. In other words, and to make this clear, about no magic bullet solutions, this is a principle that applies to flat taxers, Marxists, Greens, or anyone else, as well as libertarians. We need to be iconoclastic toward them all, in so many words. No sacred cows, thank you. No economic anti-blasphemy shibboleths , either. Do we have All The Answers ? Not hardly. But every so often we inch closer to that kind of objective. I think that today we actually took a major step in the right direction. Billy ====================================================== In a message dated 4/20/2010 9:24:37 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
Hi David, On Apr 20, 2010, at 8:52 PM, David R. Block wrote: > Dear Billy and Ernie, > > "And contrary to the libertarian dreams, we can't really freeze development at a certain stage. We can and should make regulation smarter and leaner, but we can't go back to the pre-New-Deal America, unless we execute a dramatically non-libertarian edict to simultaneously shrink all companies, social organizations, and even educational institutions back to their previous tiny size. Otherwise, whatever modern-scale institutions left would end up filling the void. Like it or not, we live in a complex world, and complex governance (for all its flaws) is the only thing that can handle it." > > Majoring in overstatement just a bit?? > > No libertarian that I have read has suggested going back to pre-New Deal America. None have suggested that we shrink all companies, social organizations or educational institutions. And for heaven's sake, no suggestion has been made to freeze development at a certain stage, particularly economic development. > Sorry, I skipped a step in my argument, though I think you also missed my "unless". The standard libertarian argument I've seen is that government should basically go back to what it was doing before FDR: e.g., national defense (that's the "weak" version; the strong version is that we should go back to before Lincoln, and the really strong one is to the Articles of Confederation :-). That implies eliminating the FDA, EPA, SEC, etc., and letting the market take care of issues like financial regulation, health and safety, and so forth. Is that an overstatement? If so, I apologize. The only "intrusive" government function I've seen libertarians advocate is "full disclosure"; however, it was never clear to me that a) it would work, or if it did then b) how it would be an less susceptible to "regulatory capture" than any other form of oversight. Do you know? > What ARE we going to do about Social Security and Medicare, now bankrupt, with the impending fiscal disaster of Obamacare waiting in the wings? I have some sympathy with the idea that "too big to fail" should be "too big to exist." Particularly if the taxpayers are on the hook for it all, and we are. > I agree it is a legitimate concern. But if you're saying that the solution is to have never implemented Social Security, then that supports my point about libertarians wanting to go back to before the New Deal. If you're arguing that we need a better way to budget and assess costs to avoid things like the "balance of payment" gap between entitlement outlays and income, then I completely agree, and would love to hear the libertarian proposal for that. The traditional conservative solution was to let people invest in the stock market instead of Social Security, but oddly I haven't heard anyone mention that lately... -- Ernie P. _______________________________________________ Centroids mailing list: [email protected] http://radicalcentrism.com/mailman/listinfo/centroids_radicalcentrism.com Archives at http://radicalcentrism.org/pipermail/centroids_radicalcentrism.com/
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