"Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong." -Jacob Weisberg, in his piece on Slate.com, "The End of Libertarianism"...
"Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong."
-Jacob Weisberg, in his piece on Slate.com, "The End of Libertarianism"
Weisberg doesn't know much about Libertarianism nor does he know much about economics.
First off, Libertarianism, or classical liberalism, is responsible for gigantic strides in human freedom and value since its inception. Weisberg seems incapable of understanding that Libertarian economic principles are a subset of a much larger ideology that has objectively done a lot of good. His false equation of libertarianism, objectively successful, with marxism, which again objectively has led to mass poverty and mass murder, shows a total lack of understanding of political history.
Second, libertarians have been railing against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, enablers of the current crisis, for years. Greenspan has some points about the limitations of libertarian philosophy but the roots of this crisis are in government intervention, not free market thinking.
Finally, libertarians have never held that free markets will make everything good all the time, only that overall they are the best approach. Schumpeter, a very prominent free market economist, thought that free markets were demonstrably best but that they could not survive because people would reject the stress from the economic cycles and 'creative destruction' they caused.
Weisberg also fundamentally misreads the Japanese experience where heavy government intervention to prop up failing banks resulted in a long term recession.
Posted by: Robert www.neolibertarian.com at October 26, 2008 4:12 AM