Supposedly, I'm a statist. That's a fun new word all the teabaggers have learned from objectivist Utopians. It apparently means someone who's secretly a commie or a Nazi or both (they don't seem extremely clear on the difference). Or someone who believes in global warming and thinks we ought to do something about it before a bunch of people die. Or those who think that maybe not getting reamed by insurance companies might make for a helpful change of pace. Or someone who thinks that someone ought to do something about the fact that women make less on average -- for the same jobs -- as men. You know, crazy, pie-in-the-sky stuff like that. I love me some of that "Big Gummint."
And I do, to a point. I believe that government can be a force for good. If you have trouble believing that, then you need to consider big government programs like the GI Bill, the Civil Rights Act, and rural electrification. I think it's probably a good idea to make sure kids can read and, further, have some understanding of history, literature, science, and the arts. I think we have a responsibility to make sure houses and cars aren't death traps and that the food and pharmaceuticals sold to us are safe. Call me irresponsible, but I don't put a lot of trust in the Invisible Hand of the Market. Anyone who looks at the market meltdown, anyone who's paying attention to the Goldman Sachs fraud case, anyone who remembers Enron and Tyco and WorldCom, the dot-com bubble or the housing bubble, knows that this Invisible Hand is attached to a very visible mental invalid. The Genius of the Market is really just a drooling moron. It turns out that the financial world isn't greater than the sum of its intellectual parts. The opposite is true. It's prone to groupthink and a herd mentality that occasionally stampedes us all off a cliff.
Strangely, I harbor the belief that maybe we shouldn't let stampede happen. I guess this makes me part of some commie plot to institute a one-world government and crush out the light of liberty in the world... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
And I do, to a point. I believe that government can be a force for good. If you have trouble believing that, then you need to consider big government programs like the GI Bill, the Civil Rights Act, and rural electrification. I think it's probably a good idea to make sure kids can read and, further, have some understanding of history, literature, science, and the arts. I think we have a responsibility to make sure houses and cars aren't death traps and that the food and pharmaceuticals sold to us are safe. Call me irresponsible, but I don't put a lot of trust in the Invisible Hand of the Market. Anyone who looks at the market meltdown, anyone who's paying attention to the Goldman Sachs fraud case, anyone who remembers Enron and Tyco and WorldCom, the dot-com bubble or the housing bubble, knows that this Invisible Hand is attached to a very visible mental invalid. The Genius of the Market is really just a drooling moron. It turns out that the financial world isn't greater than the sum of its intellectual parts. The opposite is true. It's prone to groupthink and a herd mentality that occasionally stampedes us all off a cliff.
Strangely, I harbor the belief that maybe we shouldn't let stampede happen. I guess this makes me part of some commie plot to institute a one-world government and crush out the light of liberty in the world... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
