Okay, I'm gonna try to make this brief. I hate labels, but I guess, politically, I fall in the realm of a social democrat but I also think I'm something of a libertarian. Now, libertarians generally say that government only exists to do for citizens what citizens can't do for themselves. Right-libertarians tend to say this means government should only provide national defense, infrastructure, roads, etc. But fuck that shit. Rand Paul, douchebag that his is, and other wannabe Goldwaters aren't advocating that the government do for citizens what citizens themselves can't. They're just supporting a corporate-dominated society. For example, in America, millions of people can't get healthcare. So, by a right-libertarians logic, shouldn't the government provide it? And what about protection from corporate corruption? Credit card companies with hidden interest rates that destroy lives? These are problems most citizens don't have the means to protect themselves from.
Well, I would assume the reply would be on health care would be that it's not the government's role to provide health insurance and it interferes with the free market, while on credit card interest rates, one of the main roles of a libertarian government in theory would be to protect against fraud, and "hidden" interest rates are not fraud, it's consumers not reading what they sign up for.
^^^ Something you said illuminates my point. You reference "protecting the free market". What I find disturbing about right-libertarians is that they seem to care about little BUT the free market. And you have a point about hidden interest rates to a certain degree, you can't just pretend that the victims of predatory lending practices are just people who should have read the fine print more closely. I just find it odd that right-libertarians go to so such lengths to support the free market, private property, etc. in regards to corporations. Yet they have no problem with corruption (how many right-libs would support regulating interlocking directorate, a practice that makes the free market much less free)? More and more, right-libertarians don't seem very libertarian at all. It just sounds like Objectivism to me. ("Let's let people starve to prove some vague point about how awesome capitalism is!" -- Ayn Rand...paraphrased )
Well they're pro free market on that level because the theory along with Austrian economics is that you can't predict the markets, supply and demand are god, and anything that interferes is taking away resources from what it should truly be going to and fucking with the equilibrium of supply and prices, and hurting the long term economic and financial health of both individual people and the country. As for credit cards and such, sure I can argue that, look at the sub-prime crisis, sure many people are victim to banks that were just honest enough to not be committing fraud, but at the same time how many people knowingly took an adjustable rate mortgage knowing full well that they could barely afford their payments as it is, let alone if they went up. Remember you gotta look at the argument from the other side. American consumers are just as guilty as the American government for borrowing and spending money like it's water.
Sure, financial responsibility is important. But we're talking about entire sectors of the economy making money off little more than scamming regular people with asterisk-style interest rates that are very difficult to uncover. What kind of chance does a poor or working-class family have against such practices -- put into place by folks whose job it is to make sure borrowers don't understand what type of interest their going to get smacked with the moment they miss a payment -- when they're scrambling to put a roof over their heads? And yes, I understand your argument perfectly. You just seem to be dismissing mine. This isn't a black and white issue. The whole "free markets and personal responsibility" idea works fine on paper but, unfortunately, not in practice. All I have to ask is this: At what point in history have we seen a economically libertarian society benefit a nation as a whole? In America, the greatest periods of prosperity for the majority of citizens came in the 50s, when corporate taxes went as high as 90%. Unlike right-libertarianism, we actually do have historical evidence showing that a bit of social democracy mixed with capitalism works very well as far as a standard of living goes. A tenant of right-libertarianism is (more or less) "corrupt businesses will eventually fall because consumers will go elsewhere". But how does that happen when most major banks, credit card companies, and mortgage companies make so much of their money off predatory lending? The so-called economic freedom espoused by right-libertarians really just decreases the freedom of choice for all but the wealthy.
I find hypocritical the dichotomy between the "get the government off our backs" true believers on the one hand and blaming the current administration for the oil leak and demanding the government fix it on the other. Blatant political opportunism that shows just how they like to play the game.:ie=whatever's handy at the moment to further their cause.
Corporate America employs an army of Harvard lawyers whose only job is to create deceptive contracts for the purpose of hiding or playing down fees and percentages. Most people don't bother to read these contracts because 1, they know they can't understand them, and 2, they trust the government to regulate these matters and protect them from fraud. Many people believe it's illegal for the banks to be deceptive. They also employ Psychologists, Sociologists, advertising experts and media outlets to manipulate the public. And don't forget the payments to Congress for laws protecting them from accountability. Enough Money can buy anything up to and including your death. So, yes, the average Joe is at a bit of a disadvantage here. A little protection might be nice. .
Exactly my point. It's not just that these companies mislead regular people, it's the extent of how they do it. And right-libertarians ignore these practices, chalking it up to a lack of personal responsibility on behalf of the little guy. C'mon, that's a load of shit! And just to be clear, I'm not wishing for some radical form of collectivism. Although I think social democracy is the most logical and humane system (and I believe there's enough evidence to back up this claim), I still think capitalism can work as long as we have a government buffer between the interests of the wealthy and the vulnerabilities of the working-classes. Responsible and non-corrupt capitalism could be a wonderful thing, if we just had a government who could keep it in line without drifting too far rightward toward that Friedrich Hayek bullshit and, just as importantly, not drifting too far to the left.
