Quote:
Originally Posted by HMenke
For those of you who are essentially new to the topic of free market economics, you could do a lot worse than to become familiar with the writings and statements of Milton Friedman. The wiki article is actually a pretty decent introduction. |
I've read Friedman, Hayek and Rand when I was a few years younger. During my teenager years I was a staunch conservative (I did a reverse Churchill). I'm fully aware of their arguments, but I think they're a bit too bleak. Although they raise valid points about the limits of tyranny by the majority, I also think, for example Hayek's analysis, to be too fatalistic. Western Europe has, for the most part, been experimenting with a mixed economy system where the state intervenes to some degree to achieve the best results. Just looking at the plain old facts reveals nothing of some kind of slavery.
To respond to the other statement about crashing into a neighbours house. I find it highly unlikely. I know I will end up with a salary 2x the modal income, so I hardly think I'll ever be in need of crashing into someone else's house. I do think that it's both reasonable and wise to keep inequality at bay. First because it's a way of keeping society safer - not depriving people of basic needs as that they would act outside the framework of rules and customs of the political entity (e.g. stealing). Second, because the failure of an individual (e.g. a parent of a child) should not be deflected to another individual (the child). Should someone lose their mother because even with her 2 jobs she can't maintain health insurance? I'm just hypothetically wondering about the consequences about not having Obama care; I can remember reading about a few incidents where people were just left to die on the street because without insurance the hospital didn't want to risk the costs of taking a patient in.
That's why I'm no longer a conservative, we happen to live together and the individual certainly doesn't always have their failure because of their own actions (can an individual be blamed for the economic crisis, losing his/her job?).
