The cronyists and politicians are part of a stable feedback loop to maintain the status quo. The state socializes risks and losses while the cronies keep the profits.
The state created limited liability and "intellectual property", giving out monopolies and absolving those responsible of any repercussions.
Greenspan and Co's systematic dismantling of regulations directly led to the financial crisis, fraud and a 4 trillion bailout. At the moment corporates lobby to get their way. Without state power and regulatory constraints they will and do whatever they want anyway.
Just like banking fraud does not discredit the idea of banks bad governance does not discredit the idea of governance that balances various interests and tempers greed .
Lesser government power is not the same as lack of governance. Indeed, government having the power to pick and choose winners and losers is fundamentally unjust and violates the rights of the people.
> Greenspan and Co's systematic dismantling of regulations directly led to the financial crisis, fraud and a 4 trillion bailout.
The "deregulation" narrative makes for a good story, but it's not that true. There are several examples of additional government intervention which played an important role:
- Incentives for sub-prime mortgages. The government provided incentives for banks to provide mortgages to people who normally wouldn't have a good enough standing. This was done in the name of helping minorities buy houses.
- Previous bailouts. The government bailed out banks multiple times in the past. When banks make risky loans and investments, fail, and then get bailed out by government because they're "too big to fail", this signals to the banks that they should keep being riskier and risker, because the government will cover their risk.
- Housing incentives. The mortgage rebate on income tax is a direct incentive for people to buy expensive houses instead of renting or buying within their means.
- Monetary policy. The Fed unnaturally driving inflation and interest rates distorts investment and development. This is covered extensively by Business Cycle Theory.
The myth floated by libertarians of the CRA causing the subprime crisis was thoroughly debunked as early as 2008, yet we are in 2018 and this continues to be repeated never mind the facts.
The crisis was a result of systematic and willful fraud by private players not subject to the CRA. $3 out of $4 dollars of subprime loans were not made under the CRA. [1] [2] [3]
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/10/subp...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/02/13/no-ma...
[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/loans-to-low-income-households-...
So I don't quite buy your libertarian "all government is bad" viewpoint, I don't buy it at all.
Look at all the countries that are leading the world when it comes to quality of life, affordable health-care, high social mobility, low income inequality, non-intrusive bureaucracy - how many of those are right-wing libertarian leaning?
I don't see any.
Denmark is well above the US in rankings of economic freedom [1], which was exactly my point. While it does have high taxation, by some metrics it isn't that much worse than the US, especially including the rent-seeking parasites in our current complicated system.
Supporting practical solutions in the size and scope of government includes things like tax reform, which is why I support removing all loopholes, rebates, and deductions. I'd like to see an income tax where you plug your income into a simple mathematical function, and it calculates what you must pay.
> So I don't quite buy your libertarian "all government is bad" viewpoint, I don't buy it at all.
My point is not that all government is bad (though there is an argument to be made), but that more government is generally worse. The more complicated, more taxes, more beurocracy, more military, more spending, etc, the worse it is for the people.
> Look at all the countries that are leading the world when it comes to quality of life
Standard of living is proportional to economic freedom
> affordable health-care
US health-care is a great example of how much damage government can do to the market. The fact that US healthcare isn't absolutely the worst is a testimony to how much punishment the market can take.
> high social mobility, low income inequality, non-intrusive bureaucracy
All proportional to or responsible for economic freedom
> how many of those are right-wing libertarian leaning
There's a good argument that while the welfare policies and whatnot are far in the other direction, these places actually have much more right-libertarian economic policy than the US. In fact, there's good evidence that the prosperity of these nations are because of previously much more libertarian policy in general.
Sadly the operative condition :(
I feel like businesses should never have been able to grow so large that they can essentially make government useless. What you have now is a government that offers welfare (as precarious as that is in the US) and a profit-driven corporation seeing that as basically an offset of responsibility. Fuck over your staff and let the government that hates welfare pick up the tab; be dependent upon a job that gets far more out of you than you get out of them.
In any sane world this is a gregarious abuse of corporate responsibility. In the more compassionate (i.e. socialist) places you do not get such a cut-throat attitude towards profit at any cost.
And this is not big business in the US, it's the damned American Dream. You go from rags to riches, all fame and splendour and a hell of a struggle to talk about at the end of it. So you get every mom-and-pop shop and every other sole trader digging for prosperity the same way: pinch every penny you can, avoid paying your staff as much as you can, treat them as expendable, nothing is lost in the pursuit of wealth. You work hard by making others work harder for you.
And everyone wants it because that's what greed is.
Welfare gaps are not unique in the world, and neither is corporate exploitation, but what you have in the US is just a smooth veneer atop the roots of slavery; it's all money and property. You don't have to look hard to see that the language has changed but the dynamic has not. Not for a lot of people.