Libertarian accuracy

One wonders how such intelligent people throughout the history of the country could not have seen that government interference was a causative agent in practically all the turmoil and inequity suffered by small businesses, workers and farmers.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Gompers' passionate crusade against the evils of industry was misdirected -- government favoritism was the primary culprit. I can understand how someone can be influenced by the ideas of their time, but surely he'd read Paine and the original libertarians and was aware of the dangers of an over-reaching government. Surely he saw that industry couldn't stack the deck unless government controlled the game and enabled the unfair play.

Once a reasonably perceptive person has studied human nature for any length of time, it's obvious that corrupt systems breed corrupt players. Demonizing the Captains of Industry because they utilized a corrupt system to gain an advantage is like cursing the pain yet not addressing the trauma, or cursing the darkness yet not looking for candles. Many modern critics of capitalism point to these same symptomatic effects yet are mum regarding fundamental causes.

It's fairly obvious that if government has the power, and uses the power, to pick favorities, there will be those in society who lobby and manipulate to be favored, and, as a result, others, the unfavored, who will suffer. It does little good to blame the favored, except from a moral stance, but in a real, hard world that's a tad naive, although you can admire the principle. It'd be best to blame the fundamental cause if you're looking for the necessary leverage to create change. It's always been a systemic problem, and an obvious one at that.

Could it have been that critics of industry avoided the fundamental cause because they, too, would seek advantages? And could it be that modern critics avoid the fundamental cause because they merely believe government power favored/favors, the wrong side?

Perhaps there's an acceptance that government is an inevitable, needed, interfering force and now it's only a matter who wins government favor. The libertarian approach looks to the fundamental cause. If there's to be real change and hope, this is where the leverage lies.

Nothing new under the American sun

So you think we are presented with unique circumstances and problems? Check out this excerpt from Andrew Jackson's presidential veto of the Bank of The United States renewal in 1832:

Experience should teach us wisdom. Most of the difficulties our Government now encounters and most of the dangers which impend over our Union have sprung from an abandonment of the legitimate objects of Government by our national legislation, and the adoption of such principles as are embodied in this act. Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union. It is time to pause in our career to review our principles, and if possible revive that devoted patriotism and spirit of compromise which distinguished the sages of the Revolution and the fathers of our Union. If we can not at once, in justice to interests vested under improvident legislation, make our Governmet what it ought to be, we can at least take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prostitution of our Government to the advancment of the few at the expense of the many, and in favor of compomise and gradual reform in our code of laws and sytem of politcal economy.

For those who think that government intervention and central-planning beyond Constitutional limits didn't take place from the start, I suggest brushing up on history.

M

Libertarian 12 steps for government recovery

Lowering taxes, loosening regulations and cutting government spending is so foreign an idea in Washington DC right now it's like asking an alcoholic still on skid row to drink orange juice, excercise and get a full time job.

The alcoholic at that stage of alcoholism needs treatment, a total psychic change and the right nourishment for a long period of time. There are no shortcuts to recovery and the last thing an alcoholic needs is more alcohol, except maybe for a short term delay of delirium tremens until he/she receives the needed treatment.

If all the financial rescue efforts were built on a solid plan to stabilize the economy then completely reform government, it might have a chance of working. There would be confidence that the fundamental problems are being addressed and that fundmental solutions are forthcoming. What government is doing right now is dealing with symptomatic problems with symptomatic solutions. Government is in a reinforcing loop spiraling downward that Peter Senge described in The Fifth Discipline. Until the government can creatively break out of the loop, the symptoms will continue and the loop will continue -- intervention > unintended consequences > crisis > intervention > unintended consquences > crisis, on and on.

Our problem is that no one is looking at fundamental problems and coming up with fundamental solutions. Like the first step in Alcoholics Anonymous, the government must realize it's powerless over intervention and its life has become unmanageable. The intervention is creating more and more uncertainty which will cause investors to guess and churn, businesses to wait and see and consumers to hold on to their money. Until government can get intervention under control, start cutting spending and come up with a way to limit its destructive actions, it's like trusting an alcoholic to do the right and smart thing.

But government is the classic alcoholic, in denial, blaming others (the free market) and lost in a confusion that tells the alcoholic the thing that's killing them is the very thing most needed. Here are the following 11 steps the government must take to recover, borrowed and rearranged from AA by the author:

Step 2 -- Come to believe that a power greater than them, the Constitution, can restore them to sanity.

Step 3 -- Make a decision to turn their lives and wills over to the care of the Constitution as it was written.

Step 4 -- Take a searching and fearless moral inventory of itself.

Step 5 -- Admit to the ghosts of the Founders, to themselves, and to the people, the exact nature of their wrongs.

Step 6 -- Become entirely ready to have limitations remove all these defects of intervention.

Step 7 -- Humbly accept the removal of its shortcomings.

Step 8 -- Make a list of all the harm done and become willing to make amends.

Step 9 --  Make direct amends to the people and limit its ability to do more harm.

Step 10 -- Continue to take performance inventory and when its wrong promptly admit it.

Step 11 -- Seek through honesty and transparency to improve its conscious contact with the Constitution, claiming only protection of individual rights and the limited power to carry it out .

Step 12 -- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, try to practice these prinicples in all its affairs.

 Government needs a different type of intervention, on itself from concerned friends, family members and tax payers.