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We don't have a free market. Blaming the crash on freedom is ridiculous.

• yters 18y ago
  The article says we are in the problems we have now b/c 3 people who explicitly believe in libertarian or libertarian like ideas followed their philosophy and deregulated specific portions of the market. The added, and somewhat implicit premise, is that these actions are logically implied by libertarianism, since libertarians are known for logical consistency and the people at fault are a good example of this libertarian virtue. Thus, their failure of policy is an implied failure of libertarianism. This is analogous, which the article points out, with the failure of communism - the best practical example of the ideology in practice is unsuccessful thus invalidating the ideology. So, claiming that we don't have a free market does not address the argument the article makes. Instead, it is like the communists claiming communism hasn't worked so far only b/c it hasn't been implemented purely. Even if this is true, arguments like this only mean that the proposed philosophy is practically unworkable, since it is not possible to purely implement any ideology.
  • TomOfTTB 18y ago
    Ummm...No. The article says that this is a failure of libertarianism because the 3 people you mentioned believe in libertarian ideals and their policies led to the current economic failures. The person responded that those 3 people failed to create a free market and you then countered by saying they did the best any people could. If those 3 people were in turn the very pinacle of competence than your counter argument would hold some weight but that's clearly not what the original comment is saying. They're saying those 3 people failed to live up to the ideas of libertarianism and so their actions are not a good example of the libertarian ideal. I don't even agree (at least not fully) with the person you replied to but I can see how your logic is flawed here.
    • walterk 18y ago
      I would agree that the crash doesn't refute libertarianism to the extent that libertarianism demands a completely free market. On the other hand, the chances of libertarians getting their way in a large-scale society like the US is exactly nil, and there's an excellent case to be made that injecting libertarian-motivated policies in a non-libertarian environment, for no reason beyond their agreement with libertarian ideology, can be more disastrous than the alternatives. I have a friend who was beginning to think anarchism was the way to go, but I nipped that thought in the bud by pointing out that the arguments for anarchism are highly intellectual and incapable of swaying the masses. The same is true of libertarianism. Democratic and socialist revolutions had their origins in highly intellectual arguments, but the confrontations their ideologies demanded were easily translated into something that the non-intellectual populace could forcibly get behind (to whatever extend this was actually necessary). It's hard to see how you'd sway a majority of the American populace into backing the sort of completely free market libertarians want to see. And if that's not doable, libertarian proponents would better spend their time figuring out how to make a decidedly interventionist society work more efficiently.
      • TomOfTTB 18y ago
        I agree that we’ll probably never see true, pure libertarianism in American Society. But part of guiding society (as you suggest) is trying to push it towards an ideal even if you know it will never fully reach that ideal. The issue here is "what ideology led to our current economic problems" and the author (and yters above) is trying to say these 3 men claimed to adhere to libertarian principles so that means libertarianism caused this problem. That’s simply not true. The fact is this problem started when the U.S. government started encouraging loans to people with bad credit (which started with Bill Clinton but has continued through the Bush Administration). Banks felt empowered to give risky loans because they were all but guaranteed (and through this bail out actually guaranteed) by the U.S. Government. This was done during the tenure of the men being mentioned above and is the antithesis of libertarian ideals. So the question is never "will we ever achieve a true libertarian society" its "how can we push society to be as libertarian as possible." The biggest component in doing that is making sure libertarian principles don’t get blamed for things they weren’t responsible for.
    • netcan 18y ago
      Actually I think yters deals with your sort of complaint. He deals with it fatalistically. Libertarians will continue to say that libertarianism never had a clear shot. Communists will continue to say the same. Both are not particularly easy to test. This argument is stuck when you encounter this. But we do have a situation that is not high level theory that we need to make a decision about: We can push Governments to be more/less liberation, elect libertarian politicians etc. etc. What are the likely consequences of these actions assuming that an imperfect world exists where there will be opposition from politicians of different opinions etc.
  • qqq 18y ago
    Many of the problems were blatantly and directly caused by Government intervention, for example when they forced lower lending standards on banks in the name of anti-racism. And Fannie and Freddie were not private companies. One thing they did was use their connection to the Government to get better deals than any private company could get (because dealing with the Government = no risk. The tax payers won't all go broke.)
    • neilk 18y ago
      I am hearing this claim more often these days, that the government somehow caused this by 'forcing' lower lending standards, but I don't know of a factual reference. Can you help me out? The idea of home ownership for minorities probably does appeal to politicians, especially Democrats. But my understanding is that the real engine here was a worldwide glut of capital, creating demand for new sorts of high-yield securities, such as the now famous securitized mortgage pools. Finally, the worst of it only became possible with deregulation, which incents fraud committed by thousands of individual lenders (particularly victimizing low-income people). In other words I can easily imagine a Kennedy signing a bill and proclaiming "mortgages for all!" but the real force behind such a bill would be on Wall Street.
      • qqq 18y ago
        if you type this into google you will find sources: government forced lower lending standards
        • deleted 18y ago
          [deleted]
        • ohhmaagawd 18y ago
          that didn't help.
        • deleted 18y ago
          [deleted]
        • gscott 18y ago
• dood 18y ago
  A far stronger case could be made that the crash was because markets aren't free enough, since those taking risks knew governments would back them up. It's an interesting and very complex topic, but this article is little more than nakedly partisan mud-flinging. The crash proves nothing, except that modern economics is beyond the ken of modern man.
  • greendestiny 18y ago
    I think your last sentence is most telling. Neither the free agents trading in the market nor the regulators would have continued as they did if they knew what would happen. The answer is to understand and then set up more diverse, failure tolerant economies.
    • netcan 18y ago
      answer?
    • orib 18y ago
      And how would you do that? what would make the economy more fault tolerant, specifically?
      • magoghm 18y ago
        The same way you do it with computers: avoid central control. Central control is fragile, non scaleable (and promotes corruption when human beings are involved).
        • harshavr 18y ago
          Self-fulfilling rumours which trigger bank runs can be a distributed phenomena, no one person needs to engineer it. It just needs to start somehow. More importantly, it is possible that most people are wrong on some particular question about a market. If so, a sudden discovery of the truth by the mainstream might lead to a desertion of this market.
• compay 18y ago
  I wish I could vote your comment up more than once.
• deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
• theschwa 18y ago
  Is it telling that this comment has more points that the article?