Kodiak, re: Many of my economic disagreements with liberals revolve around a single issue: not only do they not believe in democracy, but they do not believe in capitalism, that is, they ascribe no value to capital.
Your blanket indictment of "liberals" implies dogmatic and incomplete thinking where the "liberals" are inherently anti-democratic and anti-capitalism. One sure thing, it's probably not hard to feel superior since once you've attributed such stupid and simple views to the "others," then no matter what "they" say, there's probably some anti-capitalism or anti-democracy element in there somewhere.
But what about such "conservative" supported measures such as converting privately handled security at airports into government handled security? How about no-bid contracts? What about tax breaks for capital expenditures? What about farm subsidies? What about regulation of securities on the exchanges? What about "oil incentives" for our large oil concerns? What about the whole federal reserve system of tinkering with the economy on a daily basis? Are those too "anti-capitalistic" for your rigid conservative sensitivity? Too liberal?
We don't have, and never have had a pure "capitalistic" market and you should know that, or you should learn that. The question is not "whether" government will control and regulate the free market; it's a question of "how much" is harmful and how little is enough.
There are sound reasons why the "free market" is sometimes unable to make efficient and wise economic choices. You can club all the seals for short term profits but you can't sustain the existence of seals that way. You can maximize short term profits by ignoring the environment, but when the hidden costs come home to roost it becomes apparent that the efficient market would have taken a different course. You can allow the Hunt brothers to corner the silver market and monopolize silver but that isn't good for the economy. You can let Standard Oil monopolize the oil market but that isn't good for America.
Similarly, a wise society cannot allow a majority to rule unfettered when important rights are involved. That is, of course, why our forefathers placed constitutional limitations on the power of the majority to legislate in areas such as religion, speech and other fundamental areas of rights and why they so carefully protected the rights of the accused. Once again, it's not "whether" there will be limits on democracy, the question is "when and under what circumstances" will the power of the majority be curtailed.
It's not all stop or go, black or white, right or wrong. And it's certainly not about all liberals being somehow unAmerican. |
