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0 pointstracker113y ago0 comments

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'd have rather taken Iceland's approach and let them fail... their assets would have been redistributed and bought out, and things would have probably recovered much faster, though a harder short term. Which may well have been better than what seems to be a long drawn out recovery.

I'm also against a lot of the subsidies that are out there.. if we really want available food for the poor, then those expenses directed at the farmers directly are the wrong place. I mean we have food stamp programs, and school lunch programs that could be expanded to cover more people, or even everyone domestically.

I'm against the expanded protectionisms in copyright and patents as well. I think they are important to have, but the terms are far to broad and lopsided. Corporate personhood is a directly related problem... I'd much rather see corporations far more limited, including requirements on distributing profits to shareholders, and not being able to make corporate donations to charities (especially politically driven ones) or for that matter employ lobbyists. If an investor wants to directly employ a lobbyist more power to them, the protection of a corporate vail is definitely abused.

I believe personal freedom and ensured competition are key to advancement of society, and protectionist corporatism is just as bad as outright communism, or extreme/fascist socialism for that matter. Then again, people often confuse what it means to be pragmatic, or a libertarian for that matter.

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madaxe13y ago

Oh man, agricultural subsidies. Farm bills in the US, CAP in the EU. They're criminal, and socialist in form and nature. They're designed to protect the livelihood of farmers who wouldn't be otherwise economically productive and would fail in the face of labour from other regions which are cheaper, in other countries. This not only impedes development, but results in people selling subsidies to one another, buying agricultural land en masse in order to claim vast subsidies to grow nothing (see Tate & Lyle in the UK - over £1bn a year), and vast amounts of food being burned and buried because it exceeds quota. This is positively insane, even though the rationale (price control - equally insane) makes sense in an obtuse protectionist sort of fashion. Some farmers will fail. Others will prosper. Food won't magically disappear overnight and leave us all starving.

Competition is essential, but so is cooperation. Again, though, you need the rule of law to set universal finite bounds on both phenomena, otherwise you end up with cancer in your soda and PMCs in your back yard, even more than already happens in the US.

I suppose that at least we live in interesting times.

tracker1OP13y ago

I'm not saying we should eliminate regulation, or outright allow crap in our food (which to a large extent we do), only that we should really limit out spending/subsidies and gear our regulations toward increased competition, not less.

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madaxe13y ago

I suppose that at least we live in interesting times.

tracker1OP13y ago

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