Voice For Liberty

Tag: Laissez faire

  • Pragmatism must recognize reality

    Any editorial that starts with “Karl Marx was right about at least one thing …” deserves close examination, especially when it appears in Kansas’ largest newspaper and is written by that newspaper’s former editor. The thrust of Davis Merritt’s article is that the theory of free markets hasn’t worked: “We’re painfully experiencing right now the unraveling of neat free-market theory.” (Pragmatism needs to trump ideology, November 18, 2008 Wichita Eagle)

    Here’s the first problem with Mr. Merritt’s argument: what we live in is anything but a free market society. George Reisman details just how far removed we are from anything resembling free markets in The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis.

    Then, Mr. Merritt warns that free market theory is doomed to fail because “perfect theories require perfect people.” I don’t know precisely who he refers to as not perfect, but judging from the tone of the article, I think he’s condemning greedy businesspeople who are the cause of the present financial crisis. In particular, investment bankers. Demonizing these people on general grounds doesn’t help. Instead: Did they steal from their shareholders? Did they commit fraud when they issued sub-prime loans? These acts are illegal, and to the extent they were committed, let’s prosecute them.

    Greed — human self-interest — is a constant factor. It’s what drives people to expend tremendous effort to accomplish great things for the betterment of mankind. It can also drive people to accept a sub-prime mortgage loan that they can’t repay in order to buy a house they can’t afford — but, greedily, want nonetheless. It works both ways. So we need good rules that prevent people from using theft, force, and fraud to unjustly enrich themselves. These good rules are easier to create and enforce, and more reliable, than a false hope the people will start behaving “good.”

    Besides, couldn’t we also say that good government requires good politicians, bureaucrats, and administrators? I’m surprised that an editor of a newspaper — someone who must have experienced the political process close-up — would have such confidence in government instead of people.

    Mr. Merritt cites the “hands-off, no-regulation attitude of the current administration” as bad for people and economic welfare. If we had been experiencing a period of reductions in regulation, we might have evidence for this claim. The Heritage Foundation report Red Tape Rising: Regulatory Trends in the Bush Years debunks the myth that regulation has decreased during the presidency of George W. Bush: “Far from shrinking to dangerously low levels, regulation has actually grown substantially during the Bush years. By almost every measure, regulatory burdens are up.”

    Mr. Merritt’s editorial, if its advice is taken, will lead us towards more regulation and reliance on government. That’s not what we need.

  • Joe Scarborough: Please Stop Saying Laissez-faire

    I’m listening to Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, and he says: “Laissez-faire capitalism is a wonderful thing except in this case …”

    I’ve heard stuff like this over and over the past few months: A politician says “I’m a big free-market guy, but …”

    What’s sad to realize is that these people think that what we have in American is free markets and laissez-faire capitalism. We don’t have these. See my post The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis.

    The sooner that we understand that it is largely government that is the cause of the present crisis, we can realize that relying on government for a cure is dangerous and predetermined to fail.

    Resources: The Bailout Reader at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and Global Financial Crisis at the Cato Institute.

  • The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis

    Professor George Reisman contributes the excellent (and lengthy) article The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis. I’ve had the distinct honor of attending a number of Professor Reisman’s lectures at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and I’m slowly working my way through his monumental book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. Here’s a few excerpts from this article:

    “Laissez-faire capitalism is a politico-economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and in which the powers of the state are limited to the protection of the individual’s rights against the initiation of physical force.”

    Then Professor Reisman lists some of the ways in which our present system is far removed from anything resembling laissez-faire capitalism:

    The utter absurdity of statements claiming that the present political-economic environment of the United States in some sense represents laissez-faire capitalism becomes as glaringly obvious as anything can be when one keeps in mind the extremely limited role of government under laissez-faire and then considers the following facts about the present-day United States: 1. Government spending in the United States currently equals more than forty percent of national income … 2. There are presently fifteen federal cabinet departments, nine of which exist for the very purpose of respectively interfering with housing, transportation, healthcare, education, energy, mining, agriculture, labor, and commerce … 3. The economic interference of today’s cabinet departments is reinforced and amplified by more than one hundred federal agencies and commissions … 4. the Federal Register contained fully seventy-three thousand pages of detailed government regulations. This is an increase of more than ten thousand pages since 1978, the very years during which our system, according to one of The New York Times articles quoted above, has been “tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules.” 5. And, of course, to all of this must be added the further massive apparatus of laws, departments, agencies, and regulations at the state and local level.

    What this brief account has shown is that the politico-economic system of the United States today is so far removed from laissez-faire capitalism that it is closer to the system of a police state. The ability of the media to ignore all of the massive government interference that exists today and to characterize our present economic system as one of laissez faire and economic freedom marks it as, if not profoundly dishonest, then as nothing less than delusional.

    Then, under the heading “Government Intervention Actually Responsible for the Crisis:”

    Beyond all this is the further fact that the actual responsibility for our financial crisis lies precisely with massive government intervention, above all the intervention of the Federal Reserve System in attempting to create capital out of thin air, in the belief that the mere creation of money and its being made available in the loan market is a substitute for capital created by producing and saving. This is a policy it has pursued since its founding, but with exceptional vigor since 2001, in its efforts to overcome the collapse of the stock market bubble whose creation it had previously inspired.

    I could go on for some time with more quotes from this article, but it is well worth reading the entire piece. Please do so at The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis.