https://mises.org/wire/coronavirus-panic-trillion-dollar-paternalism-cash-bunkersLove the Austrian's asking the tough and unpopular questions.
Our liberty and property rights are being jeopardized and the Leviathan that is the state grows.
In an age where popular Keynesian thought has taken hold, is there still room for freedom?
As many call for price controls is it not obvious that the solution to falling prices is lower prices?
Comments
It is government not individuals who have led us to war and debt? Is it noble and just to sacrifice one's self for the "crisis". Isn't t this what monsters like Stalin ask?
I am not for bailouts.
If my neighbors become sick I should be free to help them, and would. I would not want the state to compel me to or take my property to do so.
But hey. I know "conservatives" that think I'm a downright "communist" because I voted for some Democrats.
Politics are closer to an M* style box than they are to a L-R spectrum.
You don't have to do manual labor to add value. Investors, inventors and others add plenty too.
Some moderate taxation is useful for services.
It is government that benefits, through getting more power and $ from the other half of their often corrupt symbiotic relationship. (Haliburton)
The military is often grossly misused and squandered (Iraq).
Can one not despise government and corporate corruption?
We are currently saving and supporting both with record debt.
Neocons like their political opponents that you describe, are not liberty loving free market sorts.
They are statists. They are both on the right. (I do like the "M" idea)
More on rent seeking. Last four paragraphs really.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarotta/2013/02/24/what-is-rent-seeking-behavior/#22f23e81658a
(Investors add value? No. Investors drive up prices. Or they lose money, when they're wrong.)
Crash, Edison was corrupt and corrupt government protected him and ignored him too long. The book Empire of Light is great and describes the battle with Westinghouse.
From Don Mathews
The social engineer is by nature arrogant and self-righteous. What else but arrogance and self-righteousness would lead him to think that he is fighting the good fight by using government coercion to engineer society as he sees fit? But the social engineer is more than just arrogant and self-righteous. He is also a con artist.
It is tempting to compare the social engineer to the snake oil salesman, but the snake oil salesman would take offense at that. Rightly so. The social engineer is more depraved. The snake oil salesman serves up phony medicine for real ailments. The social engineer serves up phony medicine for phony ailments. His patient is the body politic. He gets the body politic to take the phony medicine by tormenting the body politic into thinking it’s sick. Where the body politic notices a blemish, a stretch mark or an ingrown hair; the social engineer sees illness, sickness and disease--which he calls Crisis, Social Injustice and National Tragedy. He berates the body politic with warnings that it’s riddled with Crisis, Social Injustice and National Tragedy; and when the worn down body politic finally yields, the social engineer crams his medicine down its throat. His medicine is always intrusive, and very expensive.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2
If you want to see where you come out on this political grid, there's a "test" you can take. The site "strongly recommends that you take it before viewing" the page cited above. Emphasis in original.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/test
I don't know where I was the last time I did this. These days I'm ESE of Gahndi.
>>Edit>> Found it on another website I hang out on. Back in September 2004 I was further north. About where Dvorak is. https://www.politicalcompass.org/composers
OJ
I really do not understand such resentment of ability and it's natural rewards on an investment site. Entrepreneurs create business, not the hinderance of state law and bureaucracy. Those of you participating in this discussion obviously have different experience from me. I live in rural Michigan where there are no big corporations and people do not generally feel the victims of them. Here people love to own land to hunt or ride on and many work for or own small businesses.
To the original point, are we just going to hunker down, wait out the depression and pray for a cure, or what? If so, that's not much of a plan.
But once you admit the government into the process of encouraging you to do what you want to do without messy restrictions, all of the citizens are invited to ask the same from their government, and have an opinion contrary to yours.
If you have a complaint about licensing, take it up with the citizens in your town that are licensed. They may not care to have just anyone parachute into town claiming to be a doctor, realtor, surveyor, barber, veterinarian, or whatever your fellow citizens have asked to be licensed.
Just like you, they are looking to government for encouragement of their efforts and protection from the vagaries of life.
- out there in rural land, asks this ex-rural-buckeye, are y'all eating your own deer and cattle and crops? or forming small coops to do so?
we assume you (and your service providers) use the highways and the connectivity to post here, and all that. so not accusing you of being libertarian nor as unhinged / imbalanced as mathews, ...
but seriously, how much of a principled loner are you and yours?
not seen 'resentment of ability and its natural rewards' here, actually.
Ray Gun's damage, which was hardly new, was ginormous and has been sooo longlasting
@parsig9,
Thoughtful reflective response seriously appreciated