Laissez-Faire economics is an unrestricted free market, that is, the government doesn’t force any company in anything unless they are violating the rights of others. A major violation of rights would be fraud, and I think the OP grasps the concept quite well in it’s most basic sense.You have a fundemental misunderstanding of the term. You should spend less time watching fox news and more time reading.
I thought I read it right, but then I looked back and the compendium said no such thing. There seems to be no cure for my idiocy…would you post a reference? It’s not at all clear what you are writing/asking about.
Well, I can’t begin to tell you how angry I am that you would go the standard attack of the small minded and accuse me of preferring socialism or communism over Capitalism. You are a pathetic excuse for a human being. I am curbing my desire to use stronger language out of respect for this forum. Assuming you are capable of reading, you may want to go back and read my post. I was equally derisive of socialism as I am of Laissez-faire economics. You are equally ignorant of economic history as you are of the philosophical undderpinnings of these subjects. I unlike you have spent a good deal of my life studying these, but as usual intellect is wasted on cretins like yourself. I doubt you can find a period of hisrtory where Laissez-faire economics has been applied. Thus, your assertion that it has produced greater output and higher wages is utterly false. The name that the bible most often assigns to satan is the deceiver. You sir are a deceiver. Furthermore, you utter lack of intelligence is demonstrated by your circular logic. We should let people starve in order that the economy might progress? This is exactly the kind of evil that Stalin, Paul Pot and so many other disgsuting dictators have used to oppress people. There was never a period of history in the USA in which Laissez-fair was utilized. There has been governement regulation and intervention in the economy since day one. It was Alexander Hamilton, under the Administration of George Washington, that proposed the National Bank. A clear effort to place some control over monetary markets. There were numerous other laws and policies designed to affect the supply and demand of various commodities and goods designed to affect the economy. Some produced good results, others bad results. This process has been going on up to this very day. My argument requires a subtle and nuanced understanding of history, economics, and public policy. So, I guess I should be more understanding that an ignorant extremist like yourself would be incapable of understanding. I have a standard policy for people that accuse me of being unpatriotic or a communist. You’re lucky we’re online. I am unsubscribing from this thread and if I never have contact with again it will far too soon.Even IF I granted that laissez-faire was evil, I wouldn’t just ignore its good points: lowering prices, greater output, and it isn’t the case that all businessmen were providing bad working conditions to their laborers, not to mention the government of britain was itself treating the poor and workers like slaves in its workhouses. Plus, we all know why the economist would be against free food -lower prices would just cause everyone to overbuy and there would be another famine, and to starve is against natural law.
Also, whatever evil capitalism perpetrates, socialism did it better. This is not to say capitalism was the best thing since sliced bread but good grief man, if you don’t like bad working conditions then you wouldn’t have liked the soviet union! FYI the reforms of the progressive era onwards were basically enacted by the rich for the rich so the mixed economy also isn’t as good as people constantly say it is.
Fair enough, I do have a tendancy to mix my economic (Laissez-Faire obviously) opinion with the rest of my politics and just label it laissez-faire anyway.With all due respect, you are simply wrong. You may have a right to your own opinion but you don’t have a right to make up facts as you see fit. First of all, I believe in capitalism. I believe in a free market that also has a moral underpinning. The concept of Laissez-faire is precisely the idea that the market place should be allowed to function without any restrictions whatsoever. There is no where in the history of this preposterous idea of 'as long as it doesn’t offend the rights of others". Laissez-faire raises the Rights of Property over the Rights of humans. (The capital “R”'s are not a typo). This was a justification used repeatedly by the Slave holders of the South before the Civil War.
Once again, good point. My opinion then is Laissez-Faire with emphasis on individual rights. That is, the rights to Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness, and Property are equal. You could call me a religious Ayn Rand.One example of the immorality that this concept brings can be found in mid-1800’s Europe. The British newspaper, The Economist, in response to the Irish famine, in which more than a million people died of starvation, said that to provide free food to the starving Irish people violated “natural law”. The paper was founded to be a champion of Laissez-faire economics. Further evidence can be found in the early periods of industrial development that occured in Englnd and later in the USA. The wonders of Laissez-faire economics such as child labor, indentured servitude, deplorable working conditions, as well as all manner of fraud and abuse fourished. It was these wonders that Karl Marx was oberving when he proposed the equally ridiculous Labor Theory of Capital. And, by the way, Adam Smith never used the term nor was his seminal work, though flawed, a proponent of Laissez-faire economics.
Here I’m going to have to disagree and say the Great Depression was primarily caused by the Federal Reserve’s creation and setting of artificial interest rates instead of the market figuring them out. Mainly the goal of short term gains used by the fed is the problem. They kept the interest rates way to low, like the recent housing bubble where the fed allowed and encouraged banks to give sub-prime loans. There’s obviously more to it, but it’s beyond the scope of an internet forum discussion.More recent examples of the pernicious nature of this concept are found in the Great Depression and the current “Big Dip” (my term) we are experiencing. The root causes of the Great Depression lay in the refusal of Governement to accept and rise to the challenge of managing an economy which had evolved away from a mainly rural, agrarian foundation to an industrial and urban base. The Administration of Herbert Hoover and indeed those before him were well aware of the excesses that had crept into the market place. They clung to an outdated and unworthy philosophy and allowed the catatstrophy to occur. More recently, the repeal of Glass-Steagal is at the root of the Big Dip. It lead to many of the abuses in the real estate markets (i.e., default swaps, liar loans, Enron, and on and on) that exposed the weaknesses of an economy that manufactures nothing.
Agree on bank bailouts, except that the government shouldn’t have given incentives for the banks to give sub primes loans in the first place. Disagree on health care reform as it should be privatized ( a whole other topic I’d also rather not get into in this thread) and as opposed to it violating Laissez-Faire economics, I firmly believe taxes are stealing if they are not being used to protect individual rights, paying bureaucrats is not one.And even today, the echos of the Irish famine can be heard in the protestations of many that see fit to bail out irresponsible big banks while working Americans struggle to keep their homes, find jobs and keep their children fed. They oppose reasonable reform in healthcare, the single biggest threat to the middle class, on tha basis that it violates their precious Laissez-faire economics. It’s evil.
Also agreeable, although like above my idea of a moral underpinning (outside of religion) is the preservation of individual rights. You might agree with this, maybe not.To be sure, government regulation can go too far and often produces unintended consequences. A freer market is mostly preferable to an overregulated market. However, a market devoid of a moral underpinning is never acceptable.