One of the reasons I am not a big fan of libertarian politics is the idea that lack of government regulation = freedom. This is something the entitled would adopt because it allows them to act with impunity.
To me all it means is one exchanges a potentially oppressive government with potentially oppressive private actors.
The whole point of government regulation in a representative government is that voters are using their power collectively to counter those who would normally buy their way out of responsibility and fair dealing.
The markets can’t be free unless forces seeking to monopolize them are kept at bay. Personal liberties cannot be guaranteed without enforcement of penalties against those who violate them.
Fascists love laissez faire economic policies because it allows them to use force to monopolize and control markets Fascists love laissez faire policies concerning speech because it allows them to use force to monopolize and control speech.
Well sure. It also favors those with lots of capital–and most people, including myself, are not members of that class. The task of libertarianism, as a nascent political movement, is to persuade individuals to act against their natural interests.
Agree, and it’s so obvious and so frustrating. Every now and then I’ll try and have a good faith discussion with a libertarian about actual history. And every historical example I mention of a supposed “free market” corporation becoming a horrendous tyranny, is somehow an isolated incident. That is then forgotten moments later.
The Dutch East India Company? US company mining towns? Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell etc. in Africa? Straight down the memory hole.
There is something so fundamentally irritating about talking to a person who supports the ability of humans to collaborate socially in the “free market” to better their lives but then stands against literally every social and evolutionary mechanism by which human beings throughout history have achieved that goal.
Ah yes and how do we keep all the people from being poisoned to death when there’s demand to be met? How do we keep “the market” from valuing something we will die without in such a way that a critical mass of people don’t die before “the market” corrects itself?
The libertarian “Free Market” is such a self-contradictory fantasy too. As humans, we can only trade with each other reliably if there’s structure preventing robbery and fraud. (At minimum.) Which requires relative impartiality of enforcement. Which means that by definition, enforcement can’t be incentivized by money. And the market itself will be efficient to the agree that order is impartially enforced.
A market without an outside authority impartially enforcing rules, would be like a hockey game without referees. Interesting to watch from the outside maybe. But if the game being played is the economy, literally no one is outside it.
)
