6 ms·
Here is the libertarian response, maybe: I'm not going to feel we should protect the oil industry because of potential economic disruption. Winners. Losers. Fre
by SubiculumCode 10y ago
Here is the libertarian response, maybe: I'm not going to feel we should protect the oil industry because of potential economic disruption. Winners. Losers. Free Market. Credit markets are about predicting future trends and credit worthiness. If creditors do a poor job, so be it.
This argument is generally pursuasive to me most of the time. Should I be convinced otherwise in the present case.
-a layman.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- brianobush 10y agoThe future changes are clearly written on the wall. If the credit markets continue to ignore the trends and the risks of oil, then they deserve to loose money.
- ams6110 10y agoRemember "peak oil" ? Never happened. The death of oil has been greatly exaggerated.
- brianobush 10y agoThere hasn't been a contender until recent.
- JulianMorrison 10y agoIt absolutely would happen one way or the other, eventually, even with shale oil. Finite amount of oil-bearing rock is finite. But also, even if there was vastly more oil than thought, that wouldn't matter because if you dig it up and burn it, Earth turns into Venus. Peak "oil we can afford to dig out without fucking ourselves over thoroughly" is already in the past and receding.
- cybertronic 10y agoYes. It's just Econ101. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction
- baq 10y agothe problem is that creditors are often also the same institutions that hold deposits. maybe it's a sign that this shouldn't be the case.
- drcross 10y agoThat's not a libertarian response, it's a capitalist response, the way capitalism is supposed to be. We don't (read shouldnt) protect anyone, we only should step into a free market where we see monopoly.
- ycombinatorMan 10y agoI've heard most monopolies are the spawn ofgovernment intervention, and that in general natural monopolies cant sustain themselves.
- riskable 10y agoNot just a monopoly, but also when power concentration becomes too much of a risk to the market. If just one of the big banks were to fail it could take down the entire economy along with it. Even after all the stress tests... Because they don't count the interconnectedness of these backs. For this reason even the Libertarian and staunch capitalists should be clamoring to break them up into smaller chunks. There's no reason why such an action should be bad for investors or the banks themselves. It could merely be a forced diversification.
- ookdatnog 10y agoI don't think it's by default bad if the government artificially keeps a dying sector alive for a while to soften the blow to the families who depend on that sector for income. If government intervention can prevent a lot of people falling into poverty/homelessness at the cost of slightly delaying technological progress, I think that can be a price worth paying.
- hilop 10y agoThe political question isn't a out bailing out losers, it's about overall total economiic value. Stability is incredibly valuable, and it's even worth taxing the beneficiaries of a bail out (by taking an ownership stake) to help finance the recovery.