I totally disagree. Neocons have never been opposed to corporate welfare. I'd argue that neoconservatism has much more in common with national socialism than it does with libertarianism. (This is not an intentional call to Godwin's law. I really think that the policy comparison is legitimate.) The only reason that the Bush administration has given lip-service to libertarian tenets is to hang onto the votes of the oldsters.

I think I agree with you. Surely hard-core Libertarianism would scorn nationalization, but I would say that the Neocons maybe only oppose that notion rhetorically, but are ready to act flexibly/opportunistically to snatch or divest as circumstances dictate (like when we pull the rug out from under state-owned businesses in Iraq and send in Halliburton or GE). The whole nationalization thing just seems so far from the speechifying that "small government" Bush leagues spouted 2000-2001.

The strategy of the Bush-supporting Norquists in 2000+ seemed like an admitted desire to starve federal programs until they withered away. I guess that just didn't extend to preemptive wars or bank bailouts. It is still just astounding to me. On a bet the "small government" Republicans just printed an extra $85 billion to nationalize a finance/insurance company.

I would like to think that if I was really a principled Republican, and not a "whatever makes me some dough" not-so-free-neo-marketeer, I would be pretty embarrassed.

But this is all liquidity under the bridge. I guess my main concern is "what next"?

Actually, a "Big L" Libertarian does not see the role of police as protection. Police are there to enforce the law, not to proactively stop people from breaking the law; personal (self-) protection is the responsibility of the free moral agent.

It's an important distinction because if you see the role of the police and government as "protection" or "prevention", then it opens the door to all of the nonsense we have today, from smoking bans to the war on drugs.

This is exactly what I was getting at (and didn't find the time to respond to Tony) that, to me, both parties are 95% in agreement. Both parties believe in big government interference in the lives of individuals and organizations -- they only differ in exactly how and why to interfere. Nobody, with the exception of Ron Paul I guess, is talking about the validity of this basic premise. There is *nothing* libertarian about either major party.

I also find it amusing that those on the Democratic side complain about "neocon" bailouts of banks, but generally tend to support nationalization of the health care system. That is the *exact* same position, merely applied to different areas. That's why I feel the two are 95% identical. Whether you nationalize banks or health care is a stupid point. Whether or not to allow free moral agents to participate in choice (whether in banking or health care) and keep the fruits of their labor is a much more important debate. Unfortunately, it's a point that both parties agree upon -- they agree we are too stupid to be entrusted with such decisions.

The whole problem with the banks now has to do with allowing massively leveraged positions. If you're going to lend someone money, you should be required to assume the risk of a default. It's not OK to lend money and take the interest, but then have us all foot the bill if the loan goes into default. Regulation can decrease allowed leverage multipliers, but it won't restore prudence, because prudence only exists in a world of self-responsibility.

The sinister thing about government taking care of everyone, whether that's national health care, smoking laws, war on drugs, or propping up big banks is that it deprives people of the opportunity to become a self-responsible, autonomous human being. Why learn self-discipline, prudence and autonomy when Big Brother is going to take care of you? Being a free man means being free to make some big mistakes and being held accountable for the results.

I'm not a "Big L" libertarian because I believe that we need to address systemic bias of opportunity for people. I also have been persuaded that the "Invisible Hand" does not act benevolently; market participants do not have an incentive to protect the market mechanism itself -- that requires regulation. But I do agree that we should be guided the principle that more freedom tends to be the answer.

That's like saying you and I are 95% in agreement because neither of us is a racist. There's more than one axis to political theory.


No, it's not. Most liberals are dejected by the bailout because there should have been more control over the companies to begin with to prevent this situation from occurring. We generally agree that at some level at least some of these companies have to be bailed out in order to protect the country's economy.


Clearly "we" are, as evidenced by the fact that huge numbers of huge companies are going bankrupt and affecting the entire economy.


That's all well and good until these companies start affecting the livelihoods of people who have no direct connection with them at all. Are we to allow all of those innocent people to bear the brunt of their default? I know, we are now. But since what's really happening is that the Federal Reserve System is backing their defaulted loans, and not actually expending money on their behalf, the effects are far less than what would happen if the company simply went out of business.


Unless you also plan to outlaw corporations, that sort of self-responsibility is already gone. The people making these decisions are so far removed from anyone who's actually going to be affected by the ramifications that that notion is nearly irrelevant to them.


Okay, let's take your examples one-by-one:

You got cancer and can't pay for all the treatments? Gosh, you should have been more responsible and not gotten cancer.

Yeah, because smoking affects no one but the person smoking. Everyone should have to deal with smoke-choked grocery stores. After all, if you get cancer, you'll be taken care of. Oh, wait.

Agreed.

I already covered this one.

Basically, all your arguments assume that each individual is an island that affects no one that doesn't initiate specific contact. And that's simply not true.


The two major axes of political thought are those of civil liberties and economic liberties. They are, of course, related, but they can still be viewed independently. By and large, one ends up talking about them as individual liberties and corporate/business liberties, respectively. At least I do.

Big-L Libertarians believe in both strong civil and economic liberties. Which means that they think there should be no restrictions on what a company can do or what a person can do. My argument is that this is an untenable situation. A small number of entities will gain more and more power until there are no liberties left for the rest of the people.

The current Bush administration, call its ideology what you will, seems to believe in reduced personal liberties (PATRIOT Act, for example) and increased corporate liberties (retroactive immunity from wiretapping prosecution, for example), but also with increased corporate welfare and decreased personal welfare. Which is totally absurd.

Liberals tend towards increased personal liberties and decreased corporate liberties. Obviously, we're talking about a large collection of people with varied opinions, but that tends to be the case. It is certainly the case for me.

Personally, I find the notion of giving rights to non-sentient entities repugnant. Companies should have no rights beyond those conveyed to them by their human constituents.

Your argument is that because "liberals" want the government to support individuals at the cost of companies and "neocons" want to support companies at the cost of individuals they are the same because they both support governmental intervention. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, that is absurd.

I've just got time for one, then I need to run off. I'll get back to the rest later.



We see the world quite differently. I believe I should be allowed to open a business catering to people who smoke. My business, which I create using my own capital and labor on my own property should be allowed to serve whomever I wish. I ought to be able to open a restaurant to cater to people who smoke, as long as I am honest in representing that fact to potential customers. You, as a free person, should be allowed to not eat in my restaurant if smoke and smokers bother you. You could even open a restaurant to serve people who share your preferences.

What is not OK, in my moral framework, is for the majority (non-smokers) to band together and say that nobody should be allowed to smoke in ANY restaurant because we find it distasteful.

This avoids the issue of whether "second hand smoke" is dangerous to others, because ideologically it's not relevant because nobody is forcing you to patronize restaurants that allow smoking. The danger of second hand smoke, incidentally, is not proven.

My position on health care is not that you should have avoided getting cancer somehow, which is silly, but that you should have provided for your (inevitable) declining health if that was a priority for you. And before you mention children, parents should provide for the needs of their kids, and that requirement should be a factor in deciding whether to have kids. Where do you draw the line? Financially irresponsible parents "can't afford" clothes for their kids, so the People provide them?

A free market in health care services (and complete revocation of drug prohibition, including prescribed drugs) would drop costs significantly. The 3rd party payer model breeds corruption. Most importantly, it would place the burden of deciding which treatments were economically justified squarely on the person who both pays and potentially benefits form the treatment.

Yes, rich people will get better health care. This happens in countries with socialized medicine also. It's a fact of life. It's better to be wealthy than poor, which is a motivation to become wealthy by engaging in the process of providing someting of value to society. Removing bureaucracy and corruption of health care will lower the price for everyone.

We do not have a "health care crisis" in America. If we did, you would see people walking down the street with untreated diseases or dying from broken bones or cholera or any of the nonsense you see in the third world where there really is a health care crisis. We have a situation in America where nobody wants to pay for their own health care because it is expensive. Part of the reason it's so expensive is because consumers aren't careful buyers of services when they aren't paying for them. In America, the people who are legitimately hard up get treated; nobody dies in our gutters except by accident. Hospitals do not turn sick people away just because they can't pay for treatment.

In my view of the world, nobody has the "right" to get all of the latest, most advanced, and most expensive treatments available in the world. If that's a priority for you, you ought to be willing to pay for it.

So in your world, there would be a separate business for each dichotomous choice out there. So I'd need to go to the non-smoking, sanitary, fire-marshal approved, treat-employees-well businesses. Four things: you'd need sixteen different stores to service all the options. I know, you claim that the marketplace would weed those other places out, but people are willing to sell out almost anything for a widget that's 3¢ cheaper. (See: Wal-Mart.) And the ramifications of an unsanitary building that's likely to burn down while playing their employees shit extends well beyond the people who choose to do business there. Contagious disease, spread of fire to adjacent buildings or farm- or woodland, economic stagnation.


Imagine the totally feasible scenario of someone losing their job due to, let's say, bankruptcy of their employer, who loses their health insurance. Before he can find a new job, he falls seriously ill. At this point, no insurer will touch him. He has done nothing irresponsible, yet is in the lurch. He can't pay to get better without a job, and he can't get a job until he gets better.

Right now, that problem is solved by the government requiring that healthcare providers provide health care without questioning the patient's ability to pay. That ignores medications, though, which would likely be unaffordable to that person.

So in your no-government-regulation scenario, what happens? He dies?


So what happens when the parents fail to take care of their kids? No irresponsible people in your utopia? Or does the government regulate what they're required to do? What about when that unlucky bastard above dies? The kids die, too? I guess they were just unlucky, too.


In your world, I guess, they just go naked.


Bull. Shit.

Here's the scenario: Patient: "I'm dying of cancer, but your medicine will help me. Give me some." Pharma: "Okay, that will be $100,000, please." Patient: "But that's all the money I have in the world." Pharma: "Too bad. Buy the medicine or die."


And you think that's going to come about from deregulation? A company's sole goal is to make money. It will do everything in its power to maximize profits. This almost inevitably means pricing out a good 20% of the market.


People walk down the street with untreated diseases every day. They cannot afford their medications. Hell, my family pays several hundred dollars each month for medication that is covered by a pharmaceutical plan. That's just copays. I'm fortunate to have a well-paying job, but not everyone is so fortunate.

Yeah, people seldom die from simple trauma in the US, but that's because of government regulation requiring hospitals to treat them regardless of the likelihood of getting paid. People declare bankruptcy all the time due to medical bills. In your world, more people would die from broken bones because the hospital would have no reason to treat someone who isn't going to pay them.


Due to the exorbitant cost of healthcare in this country and the contingent lowering of general health, people are not able to contribute to society because they're spending all of their resources on being sick all the time.

Which brings me to another point. The world you're describing is not society. It is small ragtag groups all out for themselves. There's no common good that is the hallmark of society. You're describing some sort of plutocratic neo-feudalism.

The thing that strikes me the most about your arguments is that almost every one has a "aren't allowed to do that" or "won't do that" element to them. But the only way you be assured that that is the case is by regulating those things.


Your view of the world is bleak, my friend.

It is a priority for me that everybody has the right to the best healthcare possible, and I am willing to pay for it. No one likes to pay taxes, but they are what make societies possible.

I gladly accept this correction as, you are right, it does seem an important one. I am glad that, in the main though, that my notion of "Big L" is not totally off track even if am not precisely correct (is the Big L manifesto written up anywhere? I looked on Wikipedia but there were 28 flavors.)

Now I have to say that your correction does nothing to diminish my sense of Libertarian weirdness and it bring to mind the Onion's Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department.

I appreciate the correction, though.

I find that a very strange position.

On the one hand, bailing out a bank is essentially handing out money to a private business, whose business model failed (and failed because of unscrupulous, greedy practices). IMHO, they deserve to fail.


On the other hand, this is exactly what nationalization of the health care system is trying to do -- addressing a systematic bias of opportunity for people.

Those two aims are, as far as I can see, nowhere close to deserving a "95% identical" sticker.

Yes they do. It happened to my wife, after she was in a car accident. I took her to the nearest hospital (which, incidentally had only one person sitting in the waiting room), and was told that they didn't accept her insurance, and she'd have to go somewhere else. We ended up driving another 20 minutes to the next hospital, which did take her insurance (and had >20 people waiting for care).

All systems of health care have their up-sides and down-sides, but having lived with (and used) both the US and Canadian systems, I'd much rather have the Canadian system.

If that was the emergency room, I'm pretty sure that was blatantly illegal.

They probably didn't say she "had to" go somewhere else they probably said "she should". That's my bet anyways- then it's not illegal. And actually I think only certain hospitals in the US have to take everyone no matter there insured status.

Semi non sequitur:

Kevin Phliips tonight on Bill Moyers Journal.

Phillips rambles quite a bit in print, but I enjoy his analyses.

It was a few years ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but that's probably correct. Either way, it was a rankling experience.

This article does an excellent job explaining how deregulation caused this current economic calamity. In particular, it points out that the potential unregulated insurance payouts were, in all likelihood, more than the combined GDP of the entire world. It's not that these companies decided to jump ship. It's that it was mathematically impossible for them to pay.

As a terrified but disinterested foreigner I found this article by Sam Harris in Newsweek to be rather chilling and yet very plausible.

A potential US president who probably has a literal belief in the rapture. <shudder>

Welcome to the idiocy of the American populace. It's not ours exclusively, but we do have an interesting flavor of it.

Now McCain wants to delay the first of the debates. This is quite the political play he's worked here. Obama has to accept this or he'll seem "petty". Palin has yet to field questions from the press in a open forum. They also tinkered with the VP debate to only allow time for a short answer period, to appease the GOP who seem deathly afraid to letting Palin speak her mind.

Even by American standards this election is a sham. McCain says he wants to "set politics aside". Isn't "politics" the whole point here? To have differing ideas debated and discussed in an open forum?

At this point, the Obama camp has said it plans to go forward with the debate.

I don't buy that he'll seem petty. At this point, there's nothing useful either of them can do but vote on proposed bills.

Perhaps Obama can pull this on off. The talking point on this one seems to be "We can walk and chew gum at the same time". Interesting stand-off. McCain also canceled his Letterman appearance today. Olberman is the replacement!

Someone please send John McCain a book on walking and chewing gum at the same time.

What happens if he becomes President and there's a financial crisis at the same time as a foreign policy crisis? "Excuse me, Mr. Ahmadinejad, could you please call of your attacks? We're trying to bail out Wall Street right now."

Ridiculous. What a transparently desperate move from a desperate man.

"Well, after my heroic dash to Washington DC and my herculean efforts, I think we are close enough to an agreement that I can meet Senator Obama on the field of combat in Oxford."

I have to believe he'll spout something like this and show up at LSU. If he doesn't he can probably kiss Mississippi goodbye -- maybe more of the Gulf.

My very low opinion of Katie Couric just came up by one-tenth of a percent. Listening to Palin's imbecilic responses to Couric's press on "Alaska is close to Russia!" was enjoyable.

But then I reflect that other people will enjoy this exchange for different reasons: "Yeah! That's telling her Sarah! Alaska *is* close to Russia!! You go girl!!!"

My respect for Couric went up more than that. She actually pressed Palin for answers to questions she was avoiding, which is more than can be said for any other journalist in the US that I'm aware of.

Palin-related laugh of the day:

http://www.boingboing.net/images/x_2008/putinrearshishead.jpg

I shouldn't be so hard on Katie. Not exactly Owen Bennett-Jones, but I am certainly pleased that she pressed Palin.

The cynic in me says that making Palin look like an airhead is like shooting fish in a barrel (once you get her tied to the chair and bar the exits). And there's now some blood in the water. News organizations that 3 weeks ago were marveling at the Palin phenomenon will now have to get in on the kill or they'll look stupid...er.

So maybe a little easier to "get tough" now?

So, who won tonight?

I don't think either one of them scored any kind of overwhelming victory.

Given his untenable position (he and his ilk are pretty much responsible for the trouble we're in today) McCain did a creditable job of not going down in flames, so from that point of view he was as much a winner as anybody. But I still maintain we're not electing a president, we're electing a scapegoat.

tanstaafl.

So I am told. I had a dinner date, so I am relying on 2nd-hand reports and pundits.


Sounds like it. Although a couple of people told me that Obama polled much better afterwards among independents.


I thought it was an apropos time to read another FDR biography when I spotted a new one (by Jean Edward Smith) at the university bookstore. I don't have any feeling that Obama has the connections, wit and nerve to pull an FDR, nor does he have the possibility of 3-4 terms. I would like to think that he doesn't have the prospect of WWIII to elevate his role to savior-in-chief but that remains to be seen.

So I wouldn't disagree re: scapegoat. Bush makes Hoover look like a bright, popular guy.

I finished Bacevich's book. He doesn't spare Obama or anyone who thinks a simple, orderly regime change will make a significant difference. But the book was more critique than prescription.

I am told that Rudy Giuliani and his wife flew with McCain to Mississippi. I *am* looking forward to watching the VP debate on October 2nd and to seeing Palin in St. Louis. I hope I won't be disappointed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7638435.stm seems to have good coverage of the debates, with a streaming feed still available, along with scorecards from various places and fact checking on some of the things that came up during the debate.

I don't understand this whole preconditions nonsense. Since when will you agree to talk to someone only when they agree to agree with you beforehand? And what is the possible negative outcome of simply talking with someone?

He might get a peek at the Big Board!!!