November 19, 2008



IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

ON LIBERTARIANS

In my view the word "mandatory"is one of the ugliest and oppressive in the English language. When someone tells me something is "mandatory" it immediately raises my hackles. So I probably have a little libertarian in me. And yet, overall, I think the ideas libertarians advocate are utopian at best, destructive at worst. I agree with libertarians on social issues. I want government to butt out when it comes to what I watch, read, think, listen to, what religion I practice or don't practice, and other personal issues. But I also like things like clean and safe drinking water, safe over the counter drugs, safe food, a decent infrastructure, public libraries, a functioning air traffic control system, a system to make television and radio frequencies work, and so on. This article by Ernest Partridge is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Libertarians routinely trot out horror stories about government waste, fraud, and abuse, and measure these troublesome anecdotes alongside an unrealizable ideal of a "perfectly functioning market." However, this argument commits the fallacy of disparate comparison by comparing what the perfect market would do in theory with what imperfect governmental agencies, at their worst, have done in fact. No thoughtful liberal defender of public regulation of the environment in liberal democracies will pretend that this approach is perfect. In fact, as everyone knows, regulatory agencies are under constant assault and their public service is constantly compromised, usually by the very free market forces and private interests that are celebrated by the libertarians. But if the libertarians have a better alternative, then it must be shown to be preferable in practice, rather than in ideal theory. However, history shows that the unconstrained free market, privatization and the absence of "government interference" has given us opium in cough medicine, spoiled meat, child labor, mine disasters, black lung disease, air and water pollution, depletion of natural resources, and now the collapse of the financial markets.

"The free market," that cornerstone of libertarian theory, cannot survive without a governmental referee, for the unconstrained and unregulated "free market" contains the seeds of its own destruction. Though free market theorists are reluctant to admit it, capitalists are not fond of free markets, since open and fair competition forces them to invest in product development while they cut their prices. Monopoly and the elimination of competition is the ideal condition for the entrepreneur, and he will strive to achieve it unless restrained not by conscience but by an outside agency enforcing "anti-trust" laws. That agency, necessary for the maintenance of the free market is, of course, the "government," so despised by the libertarians. Evidence? Look to history. Then it was John D. Rockefeller, now it is Bill Gates.