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> No, no, no. Libertarianism is not the philosophy that free markets will never crash. I don't think the author ever made that claim. You'll notice he links to
by walterk 18y ago
> No, no, no. Libertarianism is not the philosophy that free markets will never crash.
I don't think the author ever made that claim. You'll notice he links to a range of arguments, running the spectrum from "government intervention is to blame for the crisis" to "let crises take their due course."
> Libertarianism is the idea that government intervention is morally wrong
I'm curious as to what bases libertarians (particularly those reading HN) rely upon to justify this claim. I've read Nozick, and for a year or two I was actually a staunch objectivist. (I went to an objectivist meeting once and think I scared some of the attendees by insisting upon a fixed-sum tax rather than a flat-rate.) What are the major reasons why libertarians believe government intervention is morally wrong, and what works would you cite as persuasively making the case?
- mattmaroon 18y agoLeaving aside the moral issue, there's no reason to believe government intervention would have improved the situation in either the short or long term. It's easy enough to look back in hindsight and say what could have been done, but governments don't intervene in hindsght. And even if they could, it's quite possible that what we're dealing with now will make us stronger in the long term, whereas were it prevented we may have been weakened. It's just too unknowable to say, and too easy to point back in hindsight and say "here's where government could have helped." Unfortunately, that's not very useful.
- walterk 18y agoI honestly don't know enough about the situation to say what could have been done, if anything (which makes me incapable of knowing whether your claim of unknowability is true :P). But while governments don't intervene in hindsight, driving ideologies largely determine what possibilities a person pays attention to, and thus the capacity of their foresight.
- Prrometheus 18y agoIf you read Nozick and were once an Objectivist, then I would guess that you've been exposed to most of the popular libertarian moral arguments.