Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? Message Board

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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It?

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To: JBTFD who wrote (119564)	12/10/2011 6:10:20 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) of 224748

I just would like to see libertarians admit that human nature corrupts the private sector just as much as the public sector. There is a common misconception that Libertarians believe in Libertopia where everybody lives in harmony if only we let them. This isn't true. I don't know of any libertarian who denies the existence of human nature along with all of its foibles. The concern that libertarians have is the marriage of private and public sector. If the public sector organization is on its own and misbehaves, the free market will take care of it (not necessarily immediately, again, we are not talking about some type of utopia where nothing ever goes wrong). But when you have the government passing regulations that make it nearly impossible for competition to enter the market, it allows the incumbents to get away with pretty egregious sins. The derivatives shell game being engaged in by the private sector is going to bury us all. B Again, this was the results of mandates and influence by the government on the private sector coupled with the twin safety nets of government underwritten loans and finally rewarded with bailouts. The government practically begged for the financial institutions to pull the crap that they did. No profit driven bank would have considered loans to the lower income buyers unless coerced by the government. No profit driven bank would have actually followed through with the loans to the lower income buyers unless they government underwrote the loans through fannie and freddie. And finally, now we have set the precedent that we will bail out the banks who clearly should have been left to fail, thus putting ethical financial disadvantage in the competitive market. In a free market, sure there could be some bad actors in the financial industry. But there is no way that it could be systemic like what we saw in the 1990s and the 2000s (we conveniently forget that dotcom bubble which was exacerbated by government policies.....and the collapse of the bubble was a big part of the motivation to mess with the real estate market). I think that one of the things that many progressives neglect to acknowledge is that where the benefits of a systemic policy can be widespread, the liabilities are equally as widespread. In a free market you may have individual sectors that go through boom/bust cycles, it is unlikely to affect the whole economy. Economies that are heavily influenced by the government are going to have systemic market wide booms and busts that we have been seeing.

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