I like to say that libertarians are to public policy making what cat ladies are to animal husbandry. But, here is a libertarian with some sober, easy to understand reality regarding capitalism and the incentive aspect of government policy. Try to forget Ron Paul and the fools who support him and give Epstein nine of your precious minutes.
Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side?
Richard Epstein, New York University School of Law
PBS NewsHour, Air Date: Oct. 26, 2011 - 9 minutes
I think I’m a liberal but no latter day liberal is willing to have me. I gave up being a libertarian some time ago but I remain a proud, hedonistic, running-dog capitalist.
Unfortunately, economics is only part of national policy making. Libertarians are unable to even discuss safety nets and progressives are always only inches away from chopping up the golden goose and handing out the parts.
In my old age, I have a growing concern for America’s ever expanding underclass and what I see as decades of wrong-headed government policy regarding the “poor” and our national “safety net”. Think Pat Moynihan. Voters are ready for a change but the only alternative on offer is the same abyss from a different route. Government is failing us; the culprits are Congress followed by the Presidency, the Judiciary and the Forth Estate; the responsibility is ours. The only truely evil lobbies are the Democrats and Republicans.
Both political Parties are part of the problem and in no way part of the solution. Their biggest contribution has been to divide the voting public and persuade us to passionately take sides with one of two equally destructive and fact-free public policy attitudes. To make matters worse, the “sides” are dividing into even less rational splinter groups whose representatives would have been booed off their soap boxes just a generation ago. Our political parties strain to absorb these fringe loonies creating a kind of alternate reality in government where nothing sensible is possible.
If you imagine a clock face and make 6:00 the political center, then you can imagine the political left and right moving away from one another and becoming ever more radical as they move separately toward midnight. At midnight the two sides meet and becoming basically indistinguishable as anarchists and libertarians – no government crazies. On the way, the two pass through communism and fascism respectively.
America is a 6:00 nation and we should be passionate about “taking back our country” from anyone who strays too far from our treasured, mixing pot, pragmatic – think compromise and individual liberty – center. Following these rules, Mitt Romney is the quintessential model for American political leadership. Lefties and righties: look around you; suck it up.
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