One of the failings of the libertarian school of thought on economics that I've been trying to communicate for some time to theVoid (and yes, I still understand that you're not a laissez-faire capitalist) and others involved the laissez-faire capitalist movement is the fact that it does nothing to prevent capitalists and plutocrats from gaming the system and winning.
American history is rife with this very thing (the railroad companies of the 19th and early 20th century) and Standard Oil and their price fixing once they had market dominance.
Pharma and health insurance companies are the modern examples.
There is just no one around to protect the population against big business from ruling the population authoritatively given the libertarian position of minimal influence of the economy. All it does is allow companies to make 'devil deals' where the enforced contracts are vague and always favor the company's bottom line, assuming there are any contracts at all.
American history is rife with this very thing (the railroad companies of the 19th and early 20th century) and Standard Oil and their price fixing once they had market dominance.
Pharma and health insurance companies are the modern examples.
There is just no one around to protect the population against big business from ruling the population authoritatively given the libertarian position of minimal influence of the economy. All it does is allow companies to make 'devil deals' where the enforced contracts are vague and always favor the company's bottom line, assuming there are any contracts at all.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
