A friend came over for dinner one night and as is inevitable, we talked politics. He mentioned an article he'd read recently and later sent me a link to it.
In response to a link to this article:
http://www.fee.org/PUBLICATIONS/THE-FREEMAN/article.asp?aid=479
I wrote this:
Frank,
It was great seeing you too. Those two boys are total studs just like the old man!
...of course I'm talking about my boys...
Thanks for bringing all that food over when we invited you to dinner! I guess that means when we come to FLA we have to bring dinner.
And thanks for indulging with me in all that political rant, and for forwarding that article. It was a good time. Easy to get me going on that stuff these day's I'll admit.
That's an old article. I'd never heard of "Olson's Law of Groups" but it was very compelling. Also interesting to read about Milton Friedman's observation that interest groups desire government regulation as long as they are the one's doing the regulating, and it always leads to higher prices. Just look at the medical and pharmaceutical industries for solid proof of this. This would seem to be an argument against regulation, but there's no discussion about the corruption that is inevitable without effective oversight, because that would erode the idea of pure market magic.
The part about future based programs like jobs training and public education being a failure because the poor live only "in the present" was ridiculously simplistic, and extremely chauvinistic. It nearly blew the whole article even if it wasn't merely a 28 year old validation of pure market driven and unregulated trickle down economics.
I agree in principle that market based solutions are superior to government dependent ones, but I'm skeptical that without effective oversight, market based solutions will benefit anyone other than the few who construct their "iron triangle". One only has to witness the recurring deregulated financial industry collapses and subsequent bailouts to see who's benefiting and who's paying for all the pure market driven solution fuckups. Do I even need to mention how energy industry deregulation resulted in Enron's collapse? Did the energy industry suffer?
Any more I believe inn fact that they are not fuckups at all. It is by design that these unregulated markets fail and are bailed out by the taxpayers. They wrote the laws for their own industry, and are in effect playing the bankruptcy game, for which they are held unaccountable, because they have constructed their "Iron Triangle". Government exists to be ridiculed and gamed, and the taxpayers are to be played as suckers.
Beyond the well exampled market driven solutions that benefit from the "Iron Triangle" effect of self regulating (read no oversight) industries, there is a much more dangerous derivative economic theory that is being realized. It is much worse than being simply corrupt.
What's going on now is that there are entire industries that benefit from government failure and in fact are motivated to make sure that government does fail so they can jump in and provide their "market solution". This solution doesn't solve anything, in fact it insures that the failure is perpetuated and enlarged so that they can continue to profit from it. Witness the military industry, and what has become the "Disaster Capitalism Complex". The economic theories of Milton Friedman are central, and provide the adherents with a kind of intellectualization and validation for many of the economic and geo-political policies of late. In fact, even if the policies fail, they use the failure as evidence of success. Totally Orwellian, Dude.
This is the premise of the book I mentioned during our rant session. It's called "The Shock Doctrine", and it's just as truthfull and well documented as it is dark and apocalyptic. Everything I've written above is my own take (rant) on it all, so I urge you to read it, or as I did, listen to the audio book, rather than listen to me. Unfortunately, I know that with two kids, a job and graduate school, reality will get in the way of you're getting to read it.
So, anyway, thanks for the visit. I hope we can see Jen next time,and I wish you well in grad school and career stuff.
Hang looose, baby
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