5 ms·

Punishing regulators? Sure. What about punishing the people who snuck it by the regulators? I absolutely cannot stand the libertarian line on this. For deca

by jbooth 14y ago

Punishing regulators? Sure. What about punishing the people who snuck it by the regulators? I absolutely cannot stand the libertarian line on this. For decades, it was all "don't regulate the banking sector, you're hurting freedom, they should have the ability to combine investment and consumer banking, don't regulate them", and then when they fuck up the economy? "Oh, you should have let them fail. That would have been free market." Great, that's a lot of help. We should've let your ideology destroy the modern economy. You know how much it burned non-libertarians to have to bail those banks out, after listening to all this crap from you guys for decades about how deregulation was the way to go? But we still supported it, because we're adults, and didn't want to flush the economy down the toilet. So here we are in 2012. Still hearing that the banks shouldn't be regulated. They're the "free market". Sure.

dllthomas 14y ago
Per my understanding, most libertarians are in favor of prohibition of fraud...
- specialist 14y ago
  Opposing fraud and for the "free market" (aka laissez faire) are mutually exclusive. Just wishful thinking. On open market requires regulation. For instance, we need contract law, transparency, fair and impartial court system, for the market to work efficiently and effectively.
  - dllthomas 14y ago
    Are you saying that, for practical reasons, fraud cannot be effectively punished without more regulation than most libertarians would support? This is a coherent claim that may or may not be valid, but I would be interested to hear support of it rather than simple assertion. On the other hand, if you are asserting that most libertarians oppose a court system in which people can (at least in principle) be tried and convicted when they commit fraud, then I think you are incorrect in your assessment of the position of most libertarians. Even anarcho-capitalists (per the wikipedia article) seem to view fraud as something that can be responded to with force - they just don't want it to be a "government" that does so.
    - specialist 14y ago
      Ok. In the libertarian utopia, who covers the cost of running the courts?
      - dllthomas 14y ago
        That depends on which "libertarian utopia" you're talking about. The American Libertarian Party would probably say that the court system is paid for by government revenues from taxes and tariffs like the Constitution says. Anarcho-capitalists would say that it's paid for by whatever revenue stream Courts, Inc[1] develops; they wouldn't presume to enforce a single business model, you see (I assume). In the case of "left libertarian" thought, it again depends on the particular society envisioned - I don't really have enough understanding of the various models to give a clear answer, but most left libertarian utopias are even further from our modern situation than the right libertarian ones. Of course, most wouldn't have the financial infrastructure at the heart of this particular case anyway. This is not to say that I have any high degree of confidence that any of the models discussed or glossed over above would actually work (well or at all), but disagreement does not sanction misrepresentation. [1] Although I think some of them are opposed to limited liability, so it might or might not be "Incorporated"...
anamax 14y ago
> What about punishing the people who snuck it by the regulators? You're missing my point - "they" didn't sneak anything by regulators. Regulators (and policy makers) wanted "the market" to do certain things. Those things blew up. For example, "real" LIBOR values would have spooked the market during 2007 and probably caused the collapse of various banks. What should a regulator tasked with stability do in that circumstance? Add in the fact that many regulators (and policy makers) are, in fact, tools of the folks they're supposedly regulating, and regulation can't do what you want it to do, especially if you're unwilling to punish regulators and policy makers. > We should've let your ideology destroy the modern economy. Now you're just babbling. Either you want stability, which will require things like the LIBOR "fraud". or you're going to have to let banks fail. You can't have no failures and no fraud. (You can have both fraud and failures.) As to "too big to fail", surely the same applies to govts as well. After all, regulation is, by definition, systemic risk. If everyone plays by the same rules, you've got a problem when those rules don't work.... > all this crap from you guys for decades about how deregulation was the way to go The problems didn't come from deregulation. (Besides, there actually wasn't significant deregulation, apart from the repeal of Glass-steagal, which actually helped a great deal during the crisis.) The problems came from govts "encouraging" (and subsidizing) bad economics to accomplish social goals. They got out of hand in part because GSEs lied.

by jbooth 14y ago

dllthomas 14y ago

Per my understanding, most libertarians are in favor of prohibition of fraud...

specialist 14y ago
Opposing fraud and for the "free market" (aka laissez faire) are mutually exclusive. Just wishful thinking. On open market requires regulation. For instance, we need contract law, transparency, fair and impartial court system, for the market to work efficiently and effectively.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  Are you saying that, for practical reasons, fraud cannot be effectively punished without more regulation than most libertarians would support? This is a coherent claim that may or may not be valid, but I would be interested to hear support of it rather than simple assertion. On the other hand, if you are asserting that most libertarians oppose a court system in which people can (at least in principle) be tried and convicted when they commit fraud, then I think you are incorrect in your assessment of the position of most libertarians. Even anarcho-capitalists (per the wikipedia article) seem to view fraud as something that can be responded to with force - they just don't want it to be a "government" that does so.
  - specialist 14y ago
    Ok. In the libertarian utopia, who covers the cost of running the courts?
    - dllthomas 14y ago
      That depends on which "libertarian utopia" you're talking about. The American Libertarian Party would probably say that the court system is paid for by government revenues from taxes and tariffs like the Constitution says. Anarcho-capitalists would say that it's paid for by whatever revenue stream Courts, Inc[1] develops; they wouldn't presume to enforce a single business model, you see (I assume). In the case of "left libertarian" thought, it again depends on the particular society envisioned - I don't really have enough understanding of the various models to give a clear answer, but most left libertarian utopias are even further from our modern situation than the right libertarian ones. Of course, most wouldn't have the financial infrastructure at the heart of this particular case anyway. This is not to say that I have any high degree of confidence that any of the models discussed or glossed over above would actually work (well or at all), but disagreement does not sanction misrepresentation. [1] Although I think some of them are opposed to limited liability, so it might or might not be "Incorporated"...

anamax 14y ago

> What about punishing the people who snuck it by the regulators? You're missing my point - "they" didn't sneak anything by regulators. Regulators (and policy makers) wanted "the market" to do certain things. Those things blew up. For example, "real" LIBOR values would have spooked the market during 2007 and probably caused the collapse of various banks. What should a regulator tasked with stability do in that circumstance? Add in the fact that many regulators (and policy makers) are, in fact, tools of the folks they're supposedly regulating, and regulation can't do what you want it to do, especially if you're unwilling to punish regulators and policy makers. > We should've let your ideology destroy the modern economy. Now you're just babbling. Either you want stability, which will require things like the LIBOR "fraud". or you're going to have to let banks fail. You can't have no failures and no fraud. (You can have both fraud and failures.) As to "too big to fail", surely the same applies to govts as well. After all, regulation is, by definition, systemic risk. If everyone plays by the same rules, you've got a problem when those rules don't work.... > all this crap from you guys for decades about how deregulation was the way to go The problems didn't come from deregulation. (Besides, there actually wasn't significant deregulation, apart from the repeal of Glass-steagal, which actually helped a great deal during the crisis.) The problems came from govts "encouraging" (and subsidizing) bad economics to accomplish social goals. They got out of hand in part because GSEs lied.