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Re: The Racist History of the Democratic Party 1864-2020

By: Cactus Flower in ALEA | Recommend this post (0)
Thu, 22 Sep 22 9:04 AM | 44 view(s)
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Msg. 47194 of 54813
(This msg. is a reply to 47186 by Cactus Flower)

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I am not going to write a long screed about that sentence, after all. But just a few further comments because it surprised me.

You seem to have emerged from a far right environment about which you have questions, but haven't quite reached a full on critique. It seems to me, with your mention of [e]utopias, you are particularly interested in the pursuit of happiness, which seems sensible to me. Way better than "all government is bad and the market is always right."

Here's my advice (for what it's worth) on a good place to start. Avoid the use of right wing Limbaugh labels. Most of them are just thoughtless simplifications and some are outright misrepresentations.

To me, to be a liberal does not mean a person wishes to grow government like crazy. It isn't the antithesis of the idea that all government is bad. The aim is to write law where it is needed and not to write it where it isn't. Thus, being a liberal using an American definition means I want an efficient government, not an ever-increasing one. Being an English conservative means I want much the same thing. The major difference is that American liberals are more interested in addressing new issues using the levers of government and English conservatives are less keen to.

In my previous post, I offered two examples of why free markets are governed by laws. One was about a farmer tipping slurry into a river. The other was about the new issuance of stock.

A real life example of problems of the latter type happened in 2008-9 when it turned out American stock brokers were selling junk bonds to buyers worldwide with essentially fraudulent AAA ratings. You might say, let the buyer beware. But the negative externality was that the misrepresentation of the worth of American bonds almost wiped out the world economy. It damaged all sorts of people that had done nothing wrong. The reputation of US capital markets was badly damaged, as was the sense of American integrity. It turned out that regulating the bond market is an important thing.

So is governing in such circumstances restricting people's freedoms? Or is it defending them?

What do people even mean by freedom anyway? I suspect a lot of people are quite confused. I've said it before: freedom isn't the same thing as anarchy. The environment of liberty emerged from law, not in distinction from it. It involves questions of how we make laws for ourselves and how extensive they should be? It isn't the absence of laws altogether.

For instance, absent law, property rights don't exist. Generally, we think property rights are a good thing and advance the ideals of freedom. But they also represent a restriction. Another person cannot use the property I own without my permission. Debits and credits.

I am not saying that all government is good. Excessive regulation makes enterprise hard. The point is to find the equilibrium point so that businesses are free to operate and innovate, while also seeking to avoid the harms that certain activities produce.

So the interesting issues are in the details, not in the labels. How can we build the happiest society possible using the tools we have?

The tools we have include both markets and governments.




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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: The Racist History of the Democratic Party 1864-2020
By: Cactus Flower
in ALEA
Wed, 21 Sep 22 8:03 PM
Msg. 47186 of 54813

I am going to reply to this line, but I need to think about it a bit.

"Since 'to govern' MEANS 'to restrict degrees of freedom, how can you be 'liberal' while going crazy growing government?"

I certainly don't begin where you do as to the implication of the word "liberal" or the meaning of the words "to govern". Law is an essential slice of liberty. It's just anarchy without it. And anyway, sometimes restrictions create opportunities. What are property rights but a form of restriction? And yet they are the underlying essence of ownership and markets, which we count as freedoms of a sort.

And for myself, I imagine there's a quantity of government that is the most efficient amount, but I have no idea how a person can calculate what it is, so I don't try. Nor do I care much if an idea is labelled socialist or capitalist. I only care if things work better than the alternative, recognising that any choices we make often have BOTH benefits and costs. The market is the right solution for many things. Government works for others. There's also the space in which markets and governments operate in tandem. Different countries make different choices, and may reasonably do so, because our freedoms allow us to define different answers to the questions that we face.

But this is all rather abstract and highfalutin. I'm going to answer later with some examples.


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