Quote:
Originally Posted by DTK
i sure don't think that. and i'm a libertarian.
the definition of libertarianism that i adhere to is that government's function is to protect the people from Force and Fraud.
Successful people aren't inherently evil, but a taste of big money makes a lot of people totally amoral. for fuck's sake, we've seen that in the porn biz a zillion times. what makes you think it would be any different in the government biz, where the dollars are infinitely higher?
And that's why you need regulation. Look at the deregulation of the S&L's (in the '80s, where owners of S&L's turned their 'banks' into their personal piggy banks) and the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which sewed the seeds of the financial crisis that we're still dealing with.
Ivory Tower libertarians forget one core thing. HUMAN NATURE.
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I have two issues with your post
One, on regulation:
There has NEVER been any "deregulation" that actually happened in the US. It's a political myth perpetuated to get us to buy into yet more regulations.
And two, on human nature:
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
― Frédéric Bastiat,
In other words, people in government as just as bad, or worse, then the rest of us. The only difference is that they can use FORCE in order to make us comply with their decisions.
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