GENIUS FORUMS

Ron Paul on Real Time

Go to the 1:55 mark. Bill asks, "isn't the free market what got us into this situation? I know this is a hard pill for free capitalists like yourself to swallow" (something along those lines).

Bill goes on to say "its the screwing up of the free market that brings us socialism"

Ron Paul replies by saying "this is a very crucial issue" and tries to explain to Bill how we should fight for a free market, arguing that the US has never really had a free market to begin with.

Do you agree with Paul's argument?

Is there any where in the world where Paul's idealized "free capitalism" exists? If not, why is such a thing so hard to preserve?

My problems with all libertarian or anarcho-capitalist theories are centered around the question: how exactly? The complexity of modern society and international, globalist markets cannot be resolved just by releasing much of the control. The controlling bodies are the so cherished "self-organization" of the system. Removing those will usher self-destruction, the wheels will come off. Actually they might already be coming off and surprisingly many people desire "the end".

This has many examples in the last two hundreds years, in smaller and bigger scales. True, regulation sucks too. It's supposed to hurt, it's the "lesser evil". There are only two practical realistic approaches left to the libertarian leaning:

1. simplify life: abandoning the global complexities and mass-consumption driven economical structures. In essence go back a hundred years. Decrease foot prints, redefine progress, "small is the new big", etc. Then all the social contracts and responsibility the libertarians are so fond talking about could get some space to work.

2. change the way people think on a fundamental level. Cool down the fevered minds. Preach rationality. Educate. Give people more room in their minds and lives to become smart in how they manage their life and values. Only then there's a road toward handling the powers and complexities of an interconnected world economy which works completely differently than anything localized one can come up with from a glorified past. So many theories are just dead in the water by now.

To me the whole dream of "free capitalism" is just another pipe-dream, dreaming of a new enlightenment, a freedom that can only develop between deeply rational people or 'agents'. The dream might be noble but foolish when the root cause of this lack in realizing the dream is being ignored. Of course it has to be: it would demand giving up a few deeply seeded attachments, which Ron Paul still harbors as well, making him talk the right talk but still dreaming about the road to walk the right walk.

Strangely enough this would make Bill right in saying the free market is the cause of the current crisis and capitalist are not able to swallow the pill (like that the large banks are doing nothing but pure capitalism, bubbles included, and could take a whole nation with them; they grow just the same as government). But also Ron is right that the answer doesn't lie in overweight centralization and oversight - structures which indeed will only start working for its own survival, like all organisms do. So any changes need to be way more fundamental than that.

Ron Paul idealizes a totally free market as one where corporations are not in bed with government, and the central bank is not corrupt and biased to all the spending bodies of the economic structure. IE: military, oil, and finance.

He believes the system would function best with limited government that allows corporations to compete for market share, whereas Bill envisions a busier government that is constantly keeping corporations in check through regulation. I fall under the middle somewhere.

I'm not quite a full blown BIll Maher or Noam Chomky thinker, but I don't have as much faith in corporations as Ron does. He believes if you fix government and the monetary system, every thing else will fall into place, but he is naive in that sense. Things would definitely be a lot better than they currently are in the USA if the government immediately adopted many of Ron's ideas, but corporations will always exhibit some degree of corruption as long as humans are deluded, and some regulation will be needed.

The problem amounts to this: People with the most wealth make the rules, and have all the influence, simply because their say in how the economy is run means more to politicians because they represent a portion of the nation's wealth, so politicians are pressured to submit to their demands, rather than challenging them. And the working middle class are left performing whatever labor is necessary for the system.

The USA is a lot like a category 5 hurricane that is burning itself out from within, and eventually it will be downgraded to a tropical storm, then maybe it will achieve some sort of calm, or maybe it will continue to degenerate further.

The main thing that turns me off about capitalism and market incentive is that on the large scale, there is no intelligence. They worship "the market" with the belief that, if left alone, it can solve all our problems by ensuring through the rule of law that the profit motive and consumer demand remain the only two forces at work. This is problematic for a number of reasons.

First off, it's way too "theory based" for me. Idealizing market forces, profit incentive, contracts, etc. is to ignore human nature and has almost no practical application in "real life". It's an attempt to harness the basic egotistical impulses in people through a reactionary system instead of intelligently addressing the problems we face. It also does nothing to address the reality of the situation where, when someone becomes rich and powerful because of market forces, they are going to do everything they can to ensure for their self more profits, and often times that leads to them "manipulating" market forces in their favor, e.g. bribing politicians and judges, under producing, overproducing, etc.

Again, it's not an intelligent system. It is a completely reactive system. Why wait in hopes that market forces bring something about when we can quite simply use our intelligence to make the conscious decisions to get something done? If I can foresee a problem, I'd rather do something about it ahead of time than wait for the problem to start affecting me directly in what they call market forces, and run the risk of not giving myself enough time to adapt to future circumstances.

Lastly, it causes one to lose sight of the big picture. Because no matter how the economy is being managed, we have to be able to step back and see who is actually reaping the benefits of such a system. When we have a society like we do in the USA, with all it's capital and massive infrastructure being controlled by a relative hand full of people because they are fortunate enough to benefit from existing laws, it's no wonder we have this tremendous wealth gap where 1% of the population controls 95% of the country's wealth. Again we can attribute this to too much faith in a system, rather than coming up with intelligent applications for the means of production in society which can benefit the most people.

I'd much rather see an intelligent society where we make conscious decisions about the direction of society and the way it functions than rely on some "deatched" theory that market forces will tell us what's best. I think this speaks to the faith based mindset that many people in this school of thought posses, e.g. the market will provide for us = god will provide for us. What's ironic is that the only time these people believe in intelligence is when it comes to intelligent design as described in the book of Genesis. God didn't wait for market forces to cause him to create man right? Plus it's a proved fact that when people move as one, instead of being pitted against each other, they are much more effective at getting things accomplished.

It's time for an intelligent proactive society/economy.

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Ron Paul idealizes a totally free market as one where corporations are not in bed with government, and the central bank is not corrupt and biased to all the spending bodies of the economic structure. IE: military, oil, and finance.

He believes the system would function best with limited government that allows corporations to compete for market share, whereas Bill envisions a busier government that is constantly keeping corporations in check through regulation. I fall under the middle somewhere.

I agree with the idea that government being very much in bed with corporations is a big problem - there is very little separation. The problem really is corruption. Any "system" will only work as well as the people in it, whatever you call it. It is said that people get the government they deserve.

However, the alternative usually put forward to capitalism is socialism, where the government is even more completely in bed of with industry; the two become indistinguishable. You have the problem of way too much power being concentrated into the hands of a few. Eventually, inevitably, that power falls into the hands of someone who will use it for their own ends, rather than the greater good (e.g., a politician).

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:1. simplify life: abandoning the global complexities and mass-consumption driven economical structures. In essence go back a hundred years. Decrease foot prints, redefine progress, "small is the new big", etc. Then all the social contracts and responsibility the libertarians are so fond talking about could get some space to work.

This is my preferred solution (for myself) - my goal is to have a sustainable lifestyle that does not depend much on all that external structure. That is the direction I am heading, although it seems very slow going sometimes.

Of course I can only choose for myself. The rest of "society" will do what it does; I'm just trying to get out. I continue to learn about farming, sustainable living, and so on.