20th January 2008, 8:36 PM
A Black Falcon Wrote:Anyway, the free market left alone? Well, look what happens when we do that... monopolies, trusts, industry elites telling the government how to spend its money... these things are bad and should be avoided. Capitalism as practiced, without government action, turns toward monopoly, as history shows. There must be government controls. Of course, the issue of how far exactly to take those controls is an extremely difficult one, and I'm pretty bad at economics, so I can't really say...
Neoclassical economists would tell you that it's government intervention that causes monopolies and the like - and if industry elites can tell the government how to spend its money, that's because the government has money to spend, which is the problem in the first place. Libertarians are opposed to big government because it disrupts the free market, yes; but they're also opposed to it because it allows all kinds of lobbies and interests to have a say. If the government has simple tasks and little money, it won't become a pole of attraction for all these financial and political interests.
Roosevelt's New Deal (and its succession today) was the work of Keynesian economists who said that the government should intervene to "fix" the market that was broken at the time of the Crash of 1929. Still, there are some even today that say the Great Depression was the work of governments that failed to properly follow natural market cycles (by greatly expanding the currency reserve at the time of the crash, for example) because they weren't properly understood at the time. Like I said, I don't know nearly enough about economics to decide who's right and who's wrong, but I definitely think it's a big mistake to say "oh well it's as clear as day, these guys are just sold to big business" or whatever.
To get back at the original topic, John McCain is doing well, and I like him quite a bit as well - he was actually my favorite at the start, but totally lost me when he started going on about religion some six months back, and then he just seemed to disappear over the summer... fingers crossed, he'll get the nomination. If it turns out to be Romney or Huckabee against Obama, then I'll go for Obama - on the other hand, if it comes down to either of those two against Hilary, I might as well just shut down the TV.