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Free Market Fanboys
I was reading the blogroll over at Overcoming Bias and, naturally, encountered quite a number of economics-focused blogs.
What struck me was how overtly anti-Obama and anti-regulation they were. One after another they kept railing against regulation and government intervention designed to control human greed and stupidity. The answer was always the same: Let the market work!
I expect this from uneducated parrots that spew neocon rubbish all day, but not from the high-end types linked to by Dr. Hansen. I don’t get it.
How can people not see that government performs a very-much needed function when it puts rules and regulations in place? “Trust the consumer to make the choice” is great up to a point, but then it just becomes stupid.
If we left it up to consumers, they’d be asking for shards of glass covered in MSG. And there would be companies lining up to sell it to them. Government is the reason they’re not allowed to. Tobacco products is the perfect example.
One of these economists was talking about how it was so horrible that the government was pushing the auto companies to go smaller and greener, and about how people wanted SUVs so the market should be allowed to provide them.
Bollocks.
People want monopolies. People want unsafe products. People want addictive foods that’ll kill them in three years. People want SUVs with jet engines that’ll use all the world’s oil within a generation.
People don’t look out for the long-term interests of the country, and of the world. That’s what the government is supposed to do.
Getting off of oil, helping the environment, having safe foods, requiring education for everyone through 12th grade–all things that are required by government, and if we didn’t have them we’d be far worse off.
These fools worshiping the free market are living in a fantasy world where everyone is educated and altruistic. What a bunch of idiots. ::