The other night I was relishing in the irony that during the era when the American government became most regulation averse, fully touting and embracing the idea of free markets, it also had to save a core sector of our market, leading effectively to a partially nationalized financial sector. I was going to write about the irony made visible by our current financial crisis but Karl beat me to it and said it better than I could or did. Most papers have not mulled over this irony but here is one place where it was raised
September 20, 2008
No Regulation to Lot’s (oh!!!) Regulation
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Funny, despite the rhetoric against regulation, the U.S. economy and markets have been increasingly regulated every year since 1861. We’ve had periods of true free markets previous to the Revolution, shortly after the revolution, during the early 1800′s, during the 1820′s, and in the 1840′s-50′s. Since then, we have found excuse after excuse to regulate the markets and violate the natural laws that control markets. What we are facing now is a natural consequence to many years of regulation, but then you wouldn’t know that, you buy into many of the Marxist lies that are told anyway, even though, it is this same principle that caused the Soviet economic collapse in the early 1990′s.
Comment by Libertys Bell — September 20, 2008 @ 4:49 am
Liberty Bell,
Two comments: 1) The regulation I am referring to is not control. For example we regulate drugs, right? This type of regulation is about creating some structure of transparency and accountability not about directing what can and cannot be done. Regulation can be and should be done in the spirit of checks and balances, which seems important to deal with the pooling and corruption of power which happens with governments and corporations alike. To act in freedom with no checks of power leads often to a mess and abuse of power.
2)This has nothing to do with Marxism. Liberals, socialists, and Marxists all believe in forms of state regulation. Why you pick out Marxism in this case is just your own bias.
3) I would like to point out that the period you speak of was before massive industrialization and the rise of the modern corporation as we know it (that is before it was declared that a corporation was a “person” for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment). Perhaps very little state intervention was possible back when the population of the nation was tiny and the economic sector was based primarily on small landowning farmers and small scale craft. But of course, there was still then massive state intervention, for example in the building of the roads and the massive postal service, which required a lot of government effort and money. Markets, commerce, and politics thrived as a result but it was the nation that ponied up the cash.
Comment by Biella — September 20, 2008 @ 5:01 am