On Free Markets and Government Regulation:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

One thing that does not surprise me these days is to see people making multiple millions of dollars advocating laissez-faire systems where they'd benefit greatly but very few others would. The question I have is a simple, if provocative one: isn't it better said that free markets are best made free by government regulation? The height of the Laissez-Faire era co-incided with the robber barons, and it was not a co-incidence. Bereft of things like the income tax and anti-trust laws, essential government regulations for any society making a pretense of freedom much less trying for the real thing the result was the emergence of wealthy and powerful men like Gould, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Astor, and Carnegie.

The "free market" system led not to freedom but to things like said robber barons calling in the US Army to disperse strikers with gunfire into the ranks of said strikers. It led to things like Black Friday, a known incident where a Robber Baron deliberately triggered an economic depression in 1869. The regulations that emerged under the Progressives, FDR, and the Great Society have led to a much deeper prosperity minus the brutality of right and left that resulted in the age of Laissez Faire at its finest, when poverty was also much vaster and deeper than it is today (when one out of every five Americans goes hungry).

So the question I have is simple: if Tea Party anarcho-capitalism gets its wish to rescind things like the income tax, like direct election of Senators, like the Federal Reserve, and like the various anti-trust laws that have been in effect for most of the 20th Century, how do they intend to deal with the emergence of latter-day Jay Cookes who'd have immense sums of money and like their predecessors would be just as keen to have Federal troops disperse any workers foolhardy enough to ask for their rights?

X-posted to my LJ and The_Recession.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Er.....wut? You just said the poor would be fucked over worse so how is fucking over the poor better policy?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I said nothing of the sort.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Do you have an actual counter-argument to the point as to what good comes to the people who under the present system go hungry if the welfare state is abolished and the United States returns to the political system of the late 19th Century?

^Me.

Not at all. Those people are going hungry now, though, so we're not really changing much.

^You.

If this means something other than "Sure it'd fuck them over worse but society is of, by, and for the rich so it doesn't matter" please clear that up.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

We "gained" those things and people still go hungry. So your entire premise is invalid.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, I forgot that the political right-wing sees economics in black-white terms, so the failure of a weak welfare state can be cited to reject all subsidies to the living standards of the poor.

Glad you cleared that up.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

When was that said?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It grew to one out of every five going hungry under George W. Bush.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

No, it didn't. It grows every year, for sure, but don't assume food stamps = going hungry. Food insecure is not going hungry, either, and until we understand why we're getting to that point (food is expensive because of stupid tariffs and farm subsidization)...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, food insecurity is not hunger any more than a police action is a war.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Correct.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You appear to have missed my point which is that both are Orwellian re-definitions so the rich can be Pilate and wash their hands of what they're creating.