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

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

"And I do not cite the reign of Amenhotep IV or Pachacuti Yupanki at the drop of a hat."

We aren't as steeped in the kind of specialized knowledge as you are. In essence, you are doing a not-so dissimilar thing to which you hate jeff for. If we don't know the reference, it's up to us to research it just to get your point. That's nice if we were here to pick up and learn obscure references, but this is a simple political discussion group.

When some of us hear you make one of those references, we imagine you do so by typing with one hand on the keyboard. It's like you're not even talking to anyone but yourself and for your own benefit, whatever that is.

I don't believe there are two forms of expression available to you (flamebait and obscure historical references), but in looking at how you go about your business here, you seem determined to box yourself into those two options.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No it's not. You could for instance ask and I'd be perfectly willing to clear anything up, perhaps with 6-7 links I'd explain what the links actually state. If you ask I explain something, if you don't I don't.