|
|
|
The Great Bailout and Incoherent Conservative Mythology 3 Years, 8 Months ago
|
Karma: 2
|
|
I'm looking at the news this morning about the $700 BILLION bailout of Wallstreet, and the prospect of a Global Recession. Everyone agrees (even McCain has been forced to agree) that deregulation made this mess possible, and greed made it inevitable. So my question is this:
Moral conservativism has generally held that human beings are selfish by nature. Economic conservativism has generally championed the free market and deregulation. But how did anyone think these two, fundamental human greed and deregulation, could go together without producing the kind of result we are now facing? If you believe human nature is fundamentally selfish in the Hobbesian sense, you wouldn't give up having a police force or a military to defend your freedom, so why would anyone (any Hobbesian about human nature) think that a banking industry without strong oversight was a good idea? How could anyone think that the blind hand of the open market couldn't turn into a fist or a talon?
|
|
|
|
 Logged
|
|
|
I have the questions for all of your answers
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
|
|
|
Re: The Great Bailout and Incoherent Conservative Mythology 3 Years, 8 Months ago
|
Karma: 1
|
Because having cake and eating it too is a national pastime?  |
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The kind of philosophy one chooses depends upon what kind of person one is. ~ J.G. Fichte
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
|
|
|
Re: The Great Bailout and Incoherent Conservative Mythology 3 Years, 8 Months ago
|
Karma: 0
|
|
The 'hidden hand' of competition is supposed
to subvert greed into a gift for the consumer.
This assumes the clear perception of true value.
When fraudulent representation is allowed,
and even encouraged, by the government in a market,
this becomes the "hidden gland', and the competition
is to make the greatest promises and extract the
greatest hidden terms later.
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
ljtsg
Moderator
Posts: 5294
|
|
Re: The Great Bailout and Incoherent Conservative Mythology 3 Years, 8 Months ago
|
Karma: 0
|
|
Not ALL conservatives are just worshippers of the free market. I personally have always thought the repeal of the glass steagall act was a bad idea, even before it became clear, long before. This is mostly because I don't think sweeping changes should ever be made at the federal level unless absolutely necessary. If it's not broke don't fix it.
For the record, the repeal of the act was a bipartisan eff up, the result of 25 years of lobbying by the banking establishment, 12 attempts to get the act repealed that failed, and hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into congress. The final bill was passed 90-8-2 in the Senate and 362-57-15 in the house. Biden voted for it, btw, and McCain abstained from the vote. Clinton signed it into office. To be fair, this was mostly a republican idea the democrats just acquiesced to, but I think both sides had a lot of green lining their pockets and a lot of hopes they could artificially prolong a real boom so they could get re-elected (rather than let the natural up and down cycles in an economy do their thing).
Conservativism is supposed to be about federalism, and testing things on smaller levels before implementing them at higher levels, and not mucking with systems just assuming the alternative will solve problems, but rather believing any change is going to involve a trade off between various tragic situations. Sacrificing this awareness at the alter of any single overriding value (including free markets) is a violation of conservative philosophy, imho.
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
"Spirit aint worth spit without a little exercise"- Clint Eastwood
"The great religious conceptions which haunt the imaginations of civilized mankind are scenes of solitariness: Prometheus chained to his rock, Mahomet brooding in the desert, the meditations of the Buddha, the solitary Man on the Cross. It belongs to the depth of the religious spirit to have felt forsaken, even by God." -Alfred N Whitehead
"He was one of Gods own prototypes: a high-powered mutant never even considered for mass- production. Too weird to live, too rare to die."- Hunter S. Thompson
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
|
|
|
Re: The Great Bailout and Incoherent Conservative Mythology 3 Years, 8 Months ago
|
Karma: -1
|
|
the "supposed to's} have becomea list far too long. its now an issue of treason, theft, class imperriallism, and the destruction of society for a few imbeciles that change money in sick temples........drop it
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
"them damned dutchmen, wearing those wooden shoes: when we all
know there aint no carsmiths in holland" dane
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
|
|
|
Re: The Great Bailout and Incoherent Conservative Mythology 3 Years, 8 Months ago
|
Karma: 1
|
|
"Having" to bail out institutions that fail is clearly not part of the classical conservative vision of a free market. In economic libertarianism, a failure means the venture in question was not a good use of resources. I think libertarians are mortified by bailouts of huge enterprises at taxpayers' expense.
I think it's misleading to characterize the system as being organized around an idea. The laws that govern financial institutions were negotiated between people who favored, on pure philosophical grounds, free markets; people who wanted to protect the wealth of the country, however that was best achieved; and so on. It is only a contradiction in the sense that democracies contain contradictions.
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
Solitude, my mother, tell me my life again. -- O.V. de Milosz
|
|
|
The administrator has disabled public write access.
|
|
Facebook.com
Twitter.com
