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"I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves." |
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Posted on 08/18/2009 12:39:43 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Since the bailouts last fall, lawmakers have been behaving as quasi-owners of the bailed-out banks and businesses, leading to calls for increased regulation of executive compensation and other wasteful expenditures. We have heard much about bonuses and executive pay packages that sound more like lottery winnings than an honest salary.
Many lawmakers voted in favor of these unconstitutional bailouts, believing that these corporations were too big to fail, and allowing them to go under would precipitate widespread economic disaster. This second wave of citizen outrage at the bailouts has left these lawmakers with a bit of egg on their face, and once again, they feel the need to "do something" to "fix" it. Shouldn't there be a regulatory structure in place governing executive compensation? Politically, it seems quite feasible. People are outraged that the system has once again gutted the many to make a few at the top fantastically wealthy. But they are incorrectly demonizing the free market.
What we need to realize is that there WAS a regulatory structure in place that was attempting to stop bad management, including overpaying executives. That regulatory structure is the free market, and when poor management brought these companies to the point of bankruptcy, Congress circumvented the wisdom of the free market, and inserted its own judgment at our expense. And now because of that intervention, we will be burdened with massive new regulations. We can be certain this effort will fail.
The free market is a naturally occurring phenomenon that can't be eliminated by governments, not even totalitarian ones like the former Soviet Union. It can be regulated, over-taxed and manipulated until it is driven underground. Lately it has been wrongly accused of doing so many things it just doesn't do, that are really the fault of crony corporatism and convoluted government policies that brought on the crisis. Too many people equate the free market with big business doing whatever it wants, but that is not the free market. Unconstitutional taxpayer funded bailouts are what allow giant corporations to run roughshod over the economy. The free market is what puts them out of business when they misbehave.
The free market is you and your neighbors working hard to produce what you produce, and exchanging goods and services voluntarily, in mutually agreeable arrangements. The free market is about respecting property rights and contracts. It is not about building up oligarchs and monopolies and confiscatory tax theft - these are creatures of government.
We must watch out when government comes up with interventionist solutions to interventionist problems. The root of our problems lie in interventionism. Trusting the free market is the solution.
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Ron Paul gets it. Jim DeMint gets it. Sarah Palin gets it. Who else is out there?
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"I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves." |
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Michele Bachmann is pretty good.
Tom McClintock too, if I recall correctly.
Bill Redpath here in Virginia is top-notch.
Oh, wait, he’s a Libertarian who was attacked for being too cozy with Ron Paul’s folks and Republicans of a more libertarian persuasion.
This is a democracy where voters evaluate the economic system based on how they are doing. If the ‘free market’ does not produce current jobs and prosperity, something else gets a chance. Only success is rewarded at election time, majority wins.
Uh, RuPaul, try and let some reality mix with your views. AIG was a direct result of Phil Gramm getting credit default swaps EXEMPTED from regulation - freeswinging selling of such derivatives with NO oversight.
The GOP and the Dems both had the wrong approaches over the last decade, and their respective failings (lack of regulation in many areas as pushed by the GOP, and Dem fiascos such as Fannie/Freddie) both played a role in the meltdown. We cannot go back to the old partisan model regarding the role of government, because both sides failed. It should be clear that the government should NOT be involved with the operation of markets (Fannie/Freddie) but DOES need to act as a regulator and referee (credit default swaps, regulating ratings agencies, enforcing basic reserve levels). This country needs to learn from past mistakes, seeing how expensive they have become. RuPaul is still failing to do such - hardly a surprise, seeing how he clings to an 18th-century viewpoint on foreign affairs.
So who’s for a free market in crack, heroin, and marijuana?
Thought so.
Milton Friedman.
That’ a moral argument, not an economic one.
Ping
Thought so.
LOL. Black markets are the closest thing to a truly free market that we have in this country.
BTTT
The market's freeswinging correction should have followed, instead of the government's bailout.
...Yea, yer lame aurgument always comes back to the fact that he voted against an un-constitutional war against Iraq...
“hardly a surprise, seeing how he clings to an 18th-century viewpoint on foreign affairs. “
Seems proper to me, since it was in the 18th century the US declared independence from a foreign nation. Right on Ron Paul. Maybe dirtboy is an acronym for dumber than dirt?
So more regulation is the answer eh? I doubt that.
Except a lack of adequate regulation and reserve requirements would have led to a complete financial collapse. That's the point - basic regulations would have prevented a lot of the mayhem in the first place.
Another Paultard with a warped notion of the Constitution. Some wild shrimp? It's really delish wrapped in Paul's pork.
Maybe takenoprisoner is as stupid and hypocritical as his hero Ron Paul?
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