![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
underlankers.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpoliticsOne 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.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 21:57 (UTC)No.
Government regulation brought us the great housing bubble. Government regulation failed to stop a massive leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Government regulation first helped cause, then worsen the S&L failures. Government regulation has caused inflation, stagflation and the devaluation of the dollar.
"Robber Barons" like Soros may cause mischief but it's with the help of government regulation. Soros plays currency games with governments that set foolish, arbitrary limits on their currency exchange rates (for example). I'm more concerned about what Soros does with his billions to undermine governments (via legal, regulated processes of course) after he fleeces spineless governments for it.
This is not to say that any regulation is bad. Just that the same people you accuse of being "bad for society" when they are outside of government are the very same kinds of people who will be setting and running the regulatory agencies and processes. Will they suddenly turn into saints because they work for the government?
(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:13 (UTC)Anti-Semitism coming back on the Right. I suppose that's inevitable when the Right-Wing *is* a Christian nationalist movement.