Source?
Is it possible the unfathomably complex economic machine will simply adapt to the subsidy? If the subsidy was limited to a couple liters per person per day (e.g., sufficient to ensure survival), could this be less reckless than letting people die of dehydration?
It's very annoying when people make bold statements like this without any evidence or factual support. Please provide some examples of free market economics leading to people starving.
>which is why both approaches have been rejected by Western countries, that, in general, try to aim at some middle ground.
I don't know if you know this but Sweden was the most free market economy in the world from 1870 to 1950. After it adopted social welfarism in the 1970s, its growth stagnated. It fell from being the third richest country in the world to the 17th. Imagine how much higher its standard of living would be today if it had maintained the rate of economic development it had in the early 20th century.
You assume that since Western electorates have chosen a particular path, it is the optimal path. I see that as hubristic.
In a completely free market, how does someone without money not starve?
> I don't know if you know this but Sweden was the most free market economy in the world from 1870 to 1950. After it adopted social welfare is in the 1970s, its growth stagnated.
I have no idea if this is even remotely true, but I'll assume for a moment that it is. Does the fact that Sweden adopted welfare not tell you something about the consequences of their free markets? The free market was just so awesome that they passed welfare for all the rich Swedes who didn't need it?
>Does the fact that Sweden adopted welfare not tell you something about the consequences of their free markets? The free market was just so awesome that they passed welfare for all the rich Swedes who didn't need it?
People are shortsighted when voting. They are easily misled by election promises that give them short-term benefits at the expense of long-term development. In the long run it is much better to sacrifice short-term benefits for greater long-term growth period that will maximize the rise in standard of living and life expectancy.
The only thing a free market does perfectly is use resources as fast as humanly possible. Efficiently, of course. Why waste resource you can't profit from?
This is logical extrapolation, and it's more or less validated by empirical evidence. It's not scientifically proven because we're dealing with incredibly complex phenomena where there are always potential confounding factors, but a reasonable case can still be made based on real world events.
See Venezuela for an extreme example of the consequences of interventionism.
The theory that intervention does harm is based on the fact that this complex system we know as an economy exists the way it does because of carefully weighted decisions of millions of people, each trying to meet their own needs in the most efficient manner available to them that does not cause harm to others (since harmful action is generally illegal in a market economy [there are edge cases of courses, like misleading advertising]). That carefully wrought symphony of welfare-maximizing human interaction is crudely disrupted by authoritarianism any time a legislature signs a law in effect that forces millions to act a certain way, that they otherwise would not have, or refrain from engaging in some voluntary interaction that they otherwise would have engaged in.
An authoritarian intervention to force several million to do some action to benefit several other million is going to have innumerable unintended consequences, that could not possibly be a net positive for the world.
I don't believe that markets will solve everything but I do believe that the best chance we have to solve problems is through voluntary market action as opposed to authoritarian action.
It's really not. It's not authoritarian when a democratically elected government creates regulations that it's citizens want. That's just governance.
Otherwise every law a government passes is authoritarian, in which case the word is meaningless.
Not all laws punish voluntary action. For instance, a law against theft is not authoritarian.
The idea of being free to act in any way other than violating the rights of others (though violence, theft, etc) is a pretty widely accepted principle of a free society.
Eh, depends on the law in question. Banking regulations, for example, protect consumers and the broader economy from short sighted actions in the part of bankers. I don't think the justifications are hollow given the history.
> and usually premised on the idea that adults are too incompetent to make correct consumer, employment, etc decisions for themselves.
Well, if you believe citizens are too short sighted to vote rationally, then I don't know how you can argue that they are not too short sighted to make other decisions rationally.
But more to the point, some laws are truly intended to protect people from their own decisions (often in the context of hardships, such as usury laws), but many are intended to protect society as a whole, where the belief is that individuals are harmed collectively by the actions of others.
> E.g. laws against selling dangerous products like drugs to adults.
I don't feel like drug laws and market regulations have much in common.
A regulation that prevents me as an adult from investing in a high risk instrument is not protection against aggression (which is a justifiable prohibition). It is nanny state authoritarianism and denies me as a banking customer options because of an assumption on the part of busy-bodies that I can't be trusted to make wise investment decisions for myself.
>Well, if you believe citizens are too short sighted to vote rationally, then I don't know how you can argue that they are not too short sighted to make other decisions rationally.
Can't you see that this argument can be made more compellingly against your position than mine? If you think consumers are not smart enough even to make purchasing decisions for themselves, how could you possibly entrust them with to elect politicians that will impose thousands of force backed mandates and prohibitions on the economy, that intimitaly affect every aspect of our lives, and determine the winners and losers among thousands of companies?
Either we accept the precepts of liberal democracy, and assume an adult has a right to determine their own path in life, or we give into fascism and make decisions for them. If we choose the latter, there's no principled reason to preserve the right of the masses to vote.
All of the arguments given for prohibitions on mutually voluntary actions to "protect society" or "protect consumers" seems like hollow justifications for authoritarianism to me.
Harm others or harm themselves? Or are you referring to the restrictions themselves, and whether they harm others? I don't think the threat of imprisonment should be used to restrict human action that is nonviolent. This is not just libertarianism. This is common sense and basic decency.
As for private property rights and their scientific justification: they are the manifestation of the first possession principle that is found in game theory experiments to be an emergent behavior that maximizes social welfare, and which even other animals exhibit.
Violating property rights, by prohibiting financial transactions outside of state licensed banks, or demanding a percentage of all earnings made in private trade be transferred to politically appointed authorities, is often a great contributor to the concentration of wealth, and maintains the status quo, so your intuition that anti-authoritarianism and private property rights serves the rich is wrong.
That's not what authoritarianism means. When society restricts some individual freedoms that's not always authoritarianism. You personally may not like it; you may be ideologically opposed to it, but that's not enough to make it authoritarian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism
Otherwise, every possible society would necessarily be authoritarian for a simple reason: a society comprises more than one person. For simplicity assume there are only two. Either person A is allowed to do as they like -- including things that may restrict B's freedoms -- in which case the system is authoritarian, or there is some social mechanism in place that forbids A from behaving in this way, in which case the system is also authoritarian.
I'm referring to the more generic meaning of authoritarianism, as in imposing authoritarian measures, from Google:
au·thor·i·tar·i·an adjective favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.
Personal freedom means being able to do anything you want outside of violating other people's person or property without their consent. The idea of being free to act in any way other than violating the rights of others (though violence, theft, etc) is a pretty widely accepted principle of a free society.
That means any consumer protection law, that restricts the right for a party to offer a particular product/service, by fining or imprisoning those who do, is authoritarian.
A law against theft or murder is not authoritarian.
Not only possible: it happens all the time. There are very few industries in the US that aren't subsidized by the govt one way or another. Agriculture and oil being one of the best examples.
Any recent news from Venezuela.