Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (545149)	1/20/2010 5:58:04 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1587370

Actually, there is a real danger to allowing our economy to go laissez faire. If the prospect of going laissez faire was real, then there would be danger from it, but also the opportunity for greater growth, more freedom, and less corruption. But unfortunately its not a real prospect. Arguably we've never had laissez faire. If you apply the term widely than ok we may have had something that resembled it once (but not neatly as much as many people seem to think, government intervention was not really rare at any time in our history), but we've been moving away from it from before the birth of my grandparents. There are numerous minor blips, and occasional significant moves counter to the trend, but the trend continues. We didn't have even a blip away from it under Bush. The only time we moved significant moves away from the trend since I was born, was the deregulation in the late 70s to mid 80s, where airlines where deregulated, price controls on fossil fuels where removed, and taxes where simplified. But every 20 year period, and almost every 5 year period, at least since Hoover was president, moved us further from laissez faire. So there is essentially no real danger from allowing our economy to go laissez faire, at least not for the next 50 years or so, even if the momentum started to shift now (something which I think is rather unlikely), it would take at least that long to undo all the decades (or centuries?) of movement away form really free markets. Where no competition exists, the government needs to step in. That's plausible, but still somewhat questionable. Government stepping in can help in such situations but it can also cause harm. Esp. if it defines the markets narrowly, in terms of figuring what counts as a monopoly. There are several problems with justifying extensive government intervention based on this idea. 1 - Most intervention has nothing to do with this point. 2 - Even when the subject is this point the effort of intervention is often not focused on increasing competition or even mitigating the effects of the lack of competition. 3 - Most monopolies are created by and/or supported by government. It interferes far more to reduce competition than it does to foster competition. In strategic industries, it also makes sense for the government to step in to provide regulation, competition, and incubation of businesses when necessary. That's even more questionable. Generally we do just fine on any number of important items without heavy government involvement, and the involvement that we do get often doesn't help much, instead tending to increases costs for little benefit. That is what the finest minds in economic history tell us. Many of the finest minds, Smith, Friedman, Stigler, von Mises, Hayek, Buchanan, to name just a few, mostly tell a different story.