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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (3272)	4/26/2001 11:11:51 AM
From: MeDroogies	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

I remember something similar to this in The Federalist Papers about the nature of government. The line "If men were angels, there would be no need for government" sticks out. I happen to agree. I'm a small "l" libertarian. I err to the side of the individual, because I think people have to be allowed to make mistakes. However, I ABSOLUTELY agree that Hobbes and Lewis were dead on, and that there is no such thing as the utopian ideal of libertarian culture. In reality, most purebred libertarians are hypocrites. I was a member of the libertarian thread here for some time, but left it after disagreements on the Elian Gonzalez episode. A true libertarian would want to see him reunited with his remaining parent. For some reason, the libertarians sided with his family in Miami...something I couldn't figure out. It defied all the current laws, it defied all precedent, and it defied the nature of the libertarian ideal. Elian, as a minor, doesn't (and couldn't) have the ability to decide where HE wanted to live. While I am sure that he enjoyed his stay in Miami and all the creature comforts afforded him, I'm certain he would have preferred to be with his natural father, regardless of political implications. That was pretty much when I had a break with that group. Still, it's compelling and makes alot of sense. And it's the way I raise my kids....respect the needs of your group and peers, but look out for yourself without interfering with the rights and needs of others. Oddly, it's just this thing that kind've circles back to the whole concept of the "impossibility" of a stock market bubble...if people are willing to pay for something, whether right or wrong, then THAT is what it is worth. As such, you can't say what occurred is a bubble (though we all know that is exactly what it is) because a bubble implies irrational thought and behavior, and (as I have pointed out) lacks a firm practical definition. What I find compelling about people who criticize laissez-faire is that they ALWAYS discount the benefits it has provided without considering the costs additional regulation will incur. And even when they do consider the costs, they forget that the payment for those costs DOESN'T come out of the corporate pockets they are hoping to clean out, but rather the consumers who pay for the product they are purchasing. One of Bush's best comments in the debates was when Gore promised a slew of new gun-control laws to prevent another Columbine. Bush replied that (I don't remember the real number) 22 gun-control laws were broken in that event, so what will another 5 or 10 laws do to prevent another episode? I agree. Fact is, laws will always be broken as long as there is somebody willing to break them...and there always will be. There will never be enough, and they will never be stringent enough to make us all fat, happy and rich. In fact, quite the opposite is true. What's nice to see is that more people are beginning to realize this, and there continues to be a move away from the central-authority concept.