3 ms·

I can't say I've read much from this publisher (although I appreciate the sidebar articles on Gabbard and Gorsuch, two of the rare public figures I admire), but

I can't say I've read much from this publisher (although I appreciate the sidebar articles on Gabbard and Gorsuch, two of the rare public figures I admire), but I wonder how much of this skepticism of neoclassical dogma can be credited to our Orange Leader's determined protectionism? After a century of kowtowing to country club Republicans, conservatives are finally allowed to question the price of "anything goes". The Orange One is no fan of regulation, but he cannot possibly stick to a consistent ideology and besides he probably has been pissed off at lots of Wall Street reptiles.

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
The Great Cheeto can say "I don't like regulation, but I don't like China more" and be consistent. As a conservative leaning US citizen, things like these have me seriously questioning what the point of all this is- our nation obviously needs to do this differently, but as someone who ostensibly believes in a "free market" / laissez-faire economics, this is a hard problem to swallow. Personally, I've found that anti-trust regulation, Government involvement [iterference, if you don't like it], and forbidding horizontal consolidation, is necessary to the maintaining of a free market, because as companies grow huge (IE Google) they seem to always become anti-competive to keep growing. Maybe the thing to do is change the way that companies report financial gains to promote a more long-term approach- just as China has been operating on the basis of four- and five-year plans, it might be better for everyone (except Wall Street's HFT bots) if the financial structure of the US was changed to encourage longer-term planning.
- api 7y ago
  > they seem to always become anti-competive to keep growing. They also tend to sort of merge with government. At some point they figure out there is better ROI in buying government influence and using it to insulate themselves from competition than in investing in a better product. Libertarian idealism says that economy and state should be separate, but I don't think that's entirely possible in practice. The trouble is that sufficiently large concentrations of wealth are able to easily buy access to state power or even tend to become indistinguishable from the state.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Another possibility: there's nothing particularly "conservative" about the corporation as a created entity. That was an invention of Congress and the courts, and Congress could decide it should be diminished or even go away entirely. Fewer corporations would mean fewer victims of corporations...

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago

The Great Cheeto can say "I don't like regulation, but I don't like China more" and be consistent. As a conservative leaning US citizen, things like these have me seriously questioning what the point of all this is- our nation obviously needs to do this differently, but as someone who ostensibly believes in a "free market" / laissez-faire economics, this is a hard problem to swallow. Personally, I've found that anti-trust regulation, Government involvement [iterference, if you don't like it], and forbidding horizontal consolidation, is necessary to the maintaining of a free market, because as companies grow huge (IE Google) they seem to always become anti-competive to keep growing. Maybe the thing to do is change the way that companies report financial gains to promote a more long-term approach- just as China has been operating on the basis of four- and five-year plans, it might be better for everyone (except Wall Street's HFT bots) if the financial structure of the US was changed to encourage longer-term planning.

api 7y ago
> they seem to always become anti-competive to keep growing. They also tend to sort of merge with government. At some point they figure out there is better ROI in buying government influence and using it to insulate themselves from competition than in investing in a better product. Libertarian idealism says that economy and state should be separate, but I don't think that's entirely possible in practice. The trouble is that sufficiently large concentrations of wealth are able to easily buy access to state power or even tend to become indistinguishable from the state.
jessaustin 7y ago
Another possibility: there's nothing particularly "conservative" about the corporation as a created entity. That was an invention of Congress and the courts, and Congress could decide it should be diminished or even go away entirely. Fewer corporations would mean fewer victims of corporations...