imported post
AWDstylez wrote:
So when confronted with the astounding stupidity of the "omg obama is killing us with taxes" people (that just got a tax cut, BTW), what do you expect me to say?
Nothing.
Besides, its not like they're totally wrong. Their interpretation of the causal history may be all @#$%ed up, but it's hard to deny that the government is a parasitic drain on the economy, and it accomplishes this through taxes.
For every $1 government spends on services the people have invested in, it blows $100 on crap. Check out our budget for overseas military expenditures.
I'm still waiting for the energy to write a compelling rebuttal to the assertion that our current economic system is "free market" in anything other than name only, that economies of scale are limitless, that competitive success inevitably leads to a huge divide between upper and lower class, and that a truly competitive free market has existed in America and failed, devolving into our current mess. None of the above has any merit, unless you define what we've been building in America as a "free market", which it isn't in any meaningful sense.
From the perspective of a free-marketeer who doesn't use it as an excuse for corporatist apologia, I feel quite comfortable agreeing with your interpretation of the causal history. Reagan did start this mess. But he didn't do it by advocating a "free market". He did it by implementing anti-competitive, corporatist/statist policies, all the time disingenuously calling it "deregulation" and working towards a "free market". If anything, one of the biggest harms he accomplished was the misappropriation of the term "free market".
I think you'll find surprising overlap between what you and I believe is wrong with our economic system, only you'll never be able to prove to me that truly free markets had anything to do with it.
Murray N. Rothbard, The Reagan Phenomenon
Edit: Do me the favor of reading that article. I actually read your Rolling Stone article before I rejected it.
I don't get the impression you spent much, if any, time with the Roderick T. Long material I referenced you to. Dr. Long addresses nearly identical concerns as your own, yet he has never come to the conclusion that freedom is to blame for our problems. If you had read some of this work, although I don't expect you would immediately agree with all my views, I feel as though you would be more accepting of the idea that, while there are a great many problems with how our economy has been managed by self-proclaimed "free marketeers",
those same people have never pursued truly free market strategies and are thus not evidence for the failure of free markets.
Reagan is evidence of the failure of your beloved statism, not free markets.
