Sounds like the same argument used in marketing SUVs
Are you implying that people bought SUVs against their will? That they were marketed into buying them!? People loved those things, loved them! They were extremely popular, so popular that there were times when I would park at my local supermarket and be the ONLY non SUV in the lot and I live in the bluest of blue states where everyone wants to talk about conservation. Their popularity wasn't all about the low gas prices or even about what the US car companies needed to sell, almost every single foreign car company followed on the US car companies success in selling SUVs.
The upswing in SUVs here coincided with two events, one was the worst winter in East Coast history where we had no less than 12 ice storms that lingered all winter and the other event was the spreading virus of car jackings. People began to feel extremely unsafe in their little foreign cars.
Now I didn't think having an SUV protected you from either of these two things but for others they told me they tended to to feel safer in their big SUV. We own a truck and I can tell you I hate driving it, the last thing I wanted was a passenger vehicle that was just a luxury interior on a truck. Frankly, in my much smaller Subaru Outback the presence of so many SUVs made me feel less safe even though my car was at least twice as good in ice and snow than an SUV, but that's another issue.
And you call also say that about Hitler and the Nazis
For sure, people have to be receptive to evil for it to succeed. There is a lot of evidence that long before Hitler and the Nazis came to power Germans had handed over expanded powers to the government under the guise of "for the public good". This is why it scares me to have a president elect who is so popular during a period of intense economic stress. Even if he turns out to be a saint I worry about the next president. People tend to hand over their personal freedoms during these times. It takes a freakin revolution to get back the power from the government once you hand it to them.
Just because you have the power to influence doesn't mean you abuse it for your own benefit
This is the mistake all liberals make, they think it is just a matter of getting the "right" people in there, good people like themselves, instead of the "evil" ones they want to replace! What they refuse to see is that evil is frequently done with the very best of intentions.
The problem is all in giving the power to government in the first place. People do that because they concede their own individual rights for the "common good". What could be more well intentioned and yet more wrongheaded? Hayak made a very compelling argument in Road to Serfdom that if you hand the government enough power the "wrong" people will always end up in power.
Where is it in the damned Constitution that the Federal government is responsible for the economy? They have no business doing most of the crap they do. They were handed these expanded powers in the last big financial crisis, the Great Depression, and greatly expanded that role during the inflationary depression of the seventies, a great inflation caused by government interference in the first place. We had a small short lived roll back in the power of the Feds during the eighties but since then their role has continuously expanded and looks to make a quantum leap here with this latest crisis.
They were deluged with bailout protests
Congress doesn't answer to the electorate anymore
They would have been deluged with the electorate if they stood back and allowed large banks to fail. What preceded the "extraordinary bailout" on the part of the Fed was one fairly large popular MM fund broke the buck and precipitated a run on all their funds as well as other unrelated MM funds. My husband happened to have a small amount of money in that particular fund. It is now three months later and he has yet to have use of his money. Now multiple that fund by 50 or 100 and see where it leads. People are angry about the bailouts yet they'd be even angrier had the government allowed the failures and it was their money that evaporated overnight. If anything the government acted to preempt being deluged by the electorate. |
