Bulerias said:
Umm, yeah, they were brainwashed to think that Obama is a fascist maniac who will tax everyone into oblivion! These people really don't know what they're talking about... what they also fail to realize is that capitalism or socialism exclusively will fail. There needs to be a healthy mix of both. Under ideal circumstances, both systems are actually pretty good.
If we assume that the free market will not take advantage of having no regulations, then capitalism by itself should be fine... if we assume that the government will not take advantage of its regulatory powers, then socialism should be fine... but that's called a utopia. Anyone who relies on either political ideology exclusively is a moron.
Hello. I am a lurker here but I decided to make my first post to respond to your comments.
First off, I do contend that there is some truth to your comments about the attendees of the tea parties. Indeed, some of them are quite ill-informed, and have accepted the ridiculous notion that the problems we face are because of the "liberal democrats" and Barack Obama. However, the growth in government has been a bipartisan phenomenon. The prescription drug program, no child left behind, and the first bailout all occurred under the so-called "conservative" administration of George W. Bush. Obama himself is not a radical change from his predecessor, but instead has continued his big-government policies of deficit spending and bailouts. For this reason, such protests need to focus on the direction of the federal government rather than the current puppet in office. You must concede that certain folks, libertarians especially, recognize this and are expressing discontent over the entire system rather than the socialist tendencies of President Obama.
My main purpose for posting is that I find great fault with your criticism of the free market. You insist that anyone who supports an entirely free economy is a moron. This comment is offensive to me, considering I have spent a great deal of personal research before concluding that capitalism is the greatest source of prosperity the world has ever seen. I must make this distinct point, though - any economic problems we face, or have faced, have not come from excessive reliance on the free-market but instead from deviation from it. Take, for instance, the current crisis. Many in congress like to point to "deregulation" as the source of the sub-prime catastrophe. If only these banks were more closely regulated, they maintain, they would not have been so greedy as to take all of these risks that ultimately brought them to their knees.
The truth is, the acquirement of these toxic assets had little to do with "greed." After all, greed wasn't suddenly invented in the year 2000. As Peter Schiff notes, George Bush's assertion that "Wall Street got drunk" was not the worse of analogies. What the former President left out was "who was giving them the alcohol?" The answer? The federal reserve, then overseen by Alan Greenspan, had been maintaining a policy of artificially low interest rates for a decade. This, coupled with affirmative action programs such as the Community Reinvestment act, made acquiring risky assets more desirable to these banks.
None of this would have occurred in a completely capitalist society.
In a free market, the greatest regulation comes from the fear of loss. A bank will not take as many risks out of fear that the borrowers will default. If a company chooses to make mistakes, it will suffer financially, and eventually go bankrupt so new, more effective firms will replace it.
Our current system perpetuates fraud. The federal reserve's monopoly over our currency, the ridiculous ponzi scheme known as "fractional reserve banking," and other government mandates interfere with the system by creating tremendous moral hazards. It has been a historical consistency for the overseers of "mixed" economies to cause problems by government intrusion, but blame them on the "free" part of the society so as to maintain further control.
I recommend the following resource:
www.mises.org
