I am not for or against libertarianism, some of its ideas appeal to me and others don't. What I want to know is:

1. Can total individual liberty and total economic freedom work? Wouldn't the lack of regulations cause chaos?

I have heard many different things about this ranging from my friend saying libertarians are psychos to Andrew Galombos in "Sic Itur Ad Astra" dedicating several volumes to the topic.

That's the problem with libertarianism. It assumes that all people in that libertarian society are good, honest, capable, hard-working people. IF you could get a group of people who meet those characteristics as well as others like them, then maybe it has a chance. But sadly the world is full of lazy, stupid, ignorant, apathetic people and there is nothing we can do about it.

Of course not, it's pure fiction. Just look at history.

When the Depression hit, everyone knew Capitalism was dead. This wasn't the first time this had happened. Although they don't mention it much, there had been many, many Depressions before this, during a time when we didn't interfere with the economy much. There had been over eight. Eight depressions! That's pretty serious. This one, however, saw no hope of economic recovery at all. There seemed to be no end in sight.

Then, the answer came. Fascism happened. Every country it happened it, the economy immediately bounced back. It happened in Germany, and they came right out of the Depression. It happened in Italy, and they came right out of the Depression. It happened in Japan, and they too started booming. We had economic orders coming down from a central command that told the entire economy what to do. And it worked wonders. They didn't need any invisible hand when they had an iron fist. Now, because there was militant nationalism attached to all these countries' economic fascism, they invaded a bunch more countries.


Well, those that weren't immediately overwhelmed by the Axis' military force adopted the same economic system as them: fascism. It happened in Britain, it happened in America. Corporations stopped making what they used to make and started making war materials, and the orders and money) were all coming from a central authority, be it London or Washington. And they too got out of the Depression.

Now, when the war was over, people just assumed the Depression was going to come back. You see, all the things that were being made, all the factories that were being run, all the money that being made was coming directly from the government. And so, when there were no more Nazis left to fight, we all figured that we were just going to go back to the Depression. But not so. Every country that's even had a stable economy in the past 60 years has kept spending money. It's called Keynesian economics; it comes from a guy called Keynes.


Like, here in America (and most of the West) we spend a lot of money on the military. We spend money elsewhere, but we spend the most on the military. The military spends that money to both build and develop new weapons. The only reason we're her having a debate on an internet forum on our personal computers is because the government, through the Pentagon, funded the development of what, at the time, they called "fifth-generation computers." In fact, the entire high-tech industry exists pretty much because we've funded it. And let's not forget all the jobs that are created when we build bombs, guns and warplanes.


So no, we can't just go "hands off" on the economy and expect it to work. That's just not the way economics works. In fact, industry knows this. They don't oppose it. They are definitely for looser regulations, but if you tried to eliminate our current system, industry would throw a fit and it'd never happen. I actually agree with industry on this one, I just think there are better places to spend our money.

It's not like we have anything to worry about. The corporations pretty much run this country anyway, so they'd never allow this to happen, because they know quite well that our economy would implode if we tried to take away government subsidization. You can whine about property rights all you want, but in the end, it's economics that matters.


So no, libertarianism would never even have a hope of ever happening, much less succeeding. So don't hold your breath.

As usual people associate libertarianism with Ayn Rand. Try reading some J.S. Mill or Hayek, or Friedman or Smith. No, anarchy will not work.

And, by the way, it was government screwing up the money supply and ignoring Ricardo that led to the Great Depression. It is amazing how when government fails the liberal solution is more government. It would be funny if it did not cost me so darn much money.

Will a government that deprives everyone of the product of their labor work?

Actually Rattlesnake is partly right, existing corporations love barriers to entry created by government. Drug companies love the FDA, trucking companies love the DOT; they both reduce competition, thus increasing corporate profits. Big government can be quite good for corporations. Now if you are a little guy who wishes to compete with these corporations, all I can say is good luck. The classical liberal realized government power would always be used for the benefit of the haves. The modern liberal is too stupid to recognize this fact.

This is simply untrue.

The cause of the Great Depression was the stock market crash of '29. The cause of the stock market crash was unwise investing, which the government took no action against, among other things. Your "causes" actually happened after the Depression began, in 1929.



It's also amazing that libertarians claim that our system of government intervention in the economy is so terrible when it cured the Great Depression and has helped make us the greatest economic powerhouse in the world for the last 60 years. However, that is of no intrest to the libertarian, who instead would rather talk about fanciful ideals of a perfect "free market" in which everything works out perfectly under a system of "spontanious order." Economic history simply doesn't accept such ideals.




Well, the modern liberal is still smart enough to use logic to prove his points, cite sources and avoid personal attacks. Can you say the same?


Please. You addressed only a few points out of a post that was quite long. The US economy is kept afloat by US government funding of the private sector. Do you really think if this stopped everything would just turn out peachy? No, of course not, the economy would just collapse without that influx of capital.

Isn't that the "problem" with all economic and political structures?



No, there have to be some rules. But certainly not as extensive as the ones we have currently as far as personal freedoms go... corporate freedoms... I would have to learn more about that before I could judge.

O.

It was no mere coincidence that the stock market crash occurred the same month as Smoot-Hartley got through a key House committee. Let me repeat these facts posted on abother thread. They are important.

Oct 1929, It becomes clear to investors that repressive tariffs are about to be unleashed.
Result: Stock Market Crash

1929-1933, money supply drops by over 1/3rd.

1930 Federal taxes increased, top rate goes from 25 to 64%

1933 Crops burned, cattle killed in an attempt to raise prices.

To sum it up [b]Government imposed tariffs. Government raised taxes in a recession. Government shrunk the money supply. Despite shrinking the money supply Government tried to raise prices by destroying the product of labor.

Libertarianism did not lead to the Great Depression, it was government failing in some of it's most basic duties. Socialists have continued to use the failings of government to promote new government programs ever since.

Seeing as we're just copying posts from other threads ...


Here's a good article on the causes of the Great Depression.



Post Hoc

You'll need to give evidence as to why this caused the stock market crash as opposed to unwise investing if you want anyone to believe it. You haven't. Under a system you that you claim is terrible, we've become the biggest economic superpower in the history of mankind. Under your system, which you paint as utopia, we had depression after depression after dperession. Why would you want to go back to such an unstable system?

How many times have I told you that 1929 America was not a libertarian government? If it was bad stock investing then the P/E ratios would have beeen substantially lower after the recession hit. They were not. The stock market crash was triggered by government actions. The economy did not actually go into a deep recession until 1930 when taxes were raised. The money supply was allowed to drop by a third. Women, blacks and other minorities were not equal under the law. You can read all this in Friedman's "Free to Choose".

Of course you also ignore the fact that the economy was much smaller and much less diversified, thus more subject to booms and busts. In a democratic capitalist society capital accumulates and technology increases thus each generation is better off than the next. Capitalism creates such a great production of wealth that capitalist societies inevitably give in to parasites that wish to obtain this wealth through government. It harms capitalist societies, but providing the parasites are not allowed to go too far, it does not prevent growth, just reduces it.

How many people did the FDA kill in the AIDS epidemic of the '80s?

An article confirming the causes I stated for the Great Depression, even though the author is definitely a liberal and his conclusions about the automatic stabilizers is Keynesian garbage can be found here

As you can see this article is written by a Keynesian who properly states that the stock market boom was improperly fueled by government. Followed by government taking deflationary policies during a recession and imposing protectionism.

The Federal Reserve and the income tax were both less than a generation old when they combined with protective tariffs to destroy ours and the world's economy. The Great Depression another gift from government. This time badly mishandling duties that are legitimate roles of government.

That article you referred to as your source of causes of the Great Depression appears to have been written by a rather uninformed high school student.

Not only can libertarianism work, it does work everyday. The fact that parasites come in to tax the producer and consumer and reduce the benefits to both is a sad fact of life. The fact that these parasites intentionally confuse cause and effect, stating prosperity is the result of socialism, instead of the truth that, socialism is the product of prosperity, is another sad fact.

Prove it. You have offered no proof to this effect, only a post hoc logical fallacy. I've provided article links and cited sources, you've huffed around and made conjecture. Please, either condede or offer proof.




Again, post hoc.

When the stock market crashed, 40% of the paper values of stock just went away(1). That's a big hit. They lost $16 billion, that's a huge amont of money with inflation(2). That was a big problem. The things you're talking about had an affect, but they were by no means the only reasons, nor would the Depression have not happened without them. The US economy was destroyed. The banks did not fall because we lowered the money supply, the fell because they weren't worth money. They invested most of it, assuming no one would ever want to take all their money at once. When the stock market crashed, their stock values were decimated and they lost all that money.

The economy before the Depression was unstable. After we started pumping money into it during WWII, it started booming again, and we continue to do this same very thing today. It helps the economy, regardless of what rheotric on "freedom" you have.




It wasn't really that much smaller considering inflation, and the reason it was much less diversified was because businesses that couldn't turn a profit but were necessary for a stable economy couldn't exist. In these days, we fund those types of corporations, instead of making and entire economy based only on certain consumer goods.



Please, seeing how you claim that government interference always hurts the economy, how do you explain the economic boom caused by WWII and our continued funding of the economy?

Bearing all this in mind, how would you explain the business and stock market booms we encountered during Clinton's term in office when he slashed military spending, balanced the budget, and passed a welfare reform bill?

The influence of war and military spending on prices and production is self- limiting. A level of military spending high enough to materially alter price level will undermine (eventually) the economic capacity of a country to continue spending. Military spending is only a solution if you believe that debt can indefinitely compound faster than income. Our wealth (and engagements entirely on foreign soil) cushions costs.

To quote Sam Johnson:
Yet reason frowns on War's unequal Game,
Where wasted Nations raise a single Name,
And mortgag'd States their Grandsires Wreathes regret.
From Age to Age in everlasting Debt

[QUOTE=Rattlesnake,Jul 7 2003, 10:16 PM]


[QUOTE]Of course you also ignore the fact that the economy was much smaller and much less diversified, thus more subject to booms and busts.[/QUOTE]

It wasn't really that much smaller considering inflation, and the reason it was much less diversified was because businesses that couldn't turn a profit but were necessary for a stable economy couldn't exist. In these days, we fund those types of corporations, instead of making and entire economy based only on certain consumer goods.





By the way military spending is less than 4% of GDP, and as mspigpen shows is not beneficial to the economy. It is only beneficial to the point it protects us from outside aggressors, thus allowing security in investments.

That's funny. The economy was much smaller. Do you understand the concept of real GDP growth. Do I have to provide a link to prove that our economy is much larger today?

Wait a minute ... you're actually admitting Clinton's policies caused our economic boom? But yet again, this is a post hoc argument. Bush gave out huge tax cuts, mostly to the rich, and that didn't make our economy bounce back, now did it? I'll leave it up to you to prove one way or the other what affect Clinton's policy had on the economy, I don't have time to get sources right now. Basically, there were a lot of things that happened under Clinton, and not all of them had anything to do with him. I can agree that his balancing of the federal budget helped our economy, but I don't know if shrinking government spending did anything. Please, by all means, try to prove that it did.


And I don't understand your military spending argument. What's your rationale for believing that? Also, I never said military spending was the only way to stimulate the economy, but just the preferred way.

This is getting rather old.... If a tax cut occurs then the ones who pay the most in will see the most money, dollar wise, from those tax cuts.

On a side note, I cannot stand how the Democrats say a tax cut will cost so and so billions. What COST!?!
It's not a damn cost, it is a reduction in money coming into the government. They just spin it that way to make it sound as if a tax cut is spending money.

Back on topic...

Libertarianism, in moderation, can work. As they should all work together. If you toss away your blinders and look at how our country actually runs you will see: capitalism(stock market, free enterprise), socialism(welfare, social security, medicare), and Libertarianism(Bill of rights) all working together.

There would be a lot more gay males around today if we had a libertarian government back in the '80s.

hugo, you know better than to post unsupported one-liners. Care to substantiate that - within context of this thread?

I suppose I should add that I’m not backing most of Clinton’s policies. I agreed with welfare reform, which wasn’t his idea (but he took credit when it worked). I believe in cutbacks to defense spending, but not at the rate he did. He cut back in human intelligence, too, which wasn’t an asset in a post 9/11 world…One might even say it was a contributing factor. The bottom line is…what happened to the economy during his administration, and how could those fortunate effects be the result of government spending, when it actually decreased on his watch? Bush is a big government Republican, BTW. Libertarians are for small government… Decreased spending, decreased government intervention in most areas, and a more isolationist military ideology.

I am not an economist. I have a vested interest in knowing a bit about a very specific and small segment of the economy, most of which centers around the military.

Military spending simply does not promote prosperity, long-term. The benefits are very short term. WWII did restore demand to languishing sectors. It did that by curtailing supply and destroying capital overseas, not by increasing spending. Europe and Asia were destitute. Many cities and factories had been bombed to rubble, and the productivity of surviving resources was limited. The effect of that particular war, was to increase demand of US goods in the world- a development that stands in stark contrast to effects of simply spending money.

http://www.joshuagoldstein.com/jgeconhi.htm

The professor presents the case, in historical context, better than I can.

Continued war causes inflation, which eventually leads to economic decline or bankruptcy. Peace frees resources for productive use. More production raises output and lowers prices. The opulence we enjoy in this country is a result of the private industry, which is productive enough to fund all of these ventures…not the industrial military complex.
The quote I gave on my post from Sam Johnson dates back to 1749. It is much more accurate today, in a world where the victor doesn’t usually get the spoils, but instead incurs a negative sum gain. If the government (of Johnson’s poem) attempts to wipe away ‘everlasting debt’ with the printing press, they would lose further access to credit markets, diminishing their strategic positions. When nations lose the financial capacity to fight, they lose wars.

In ‘The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers’, Paul Kennedy emphasized the importance of financial stability, “sound money, secure credit, and regular repayment of debt” in producing military success. In one case after another, the leading powers were powers because they were rich. “Success in war depended upon the length of one’s purse.” It still holds true today. Governments cannot afford to continuously siphon off significant percentages of national wealth for military purposes without courting bankruptcy- and thus ultimate military weakness.