The question libertarians just can’t answer

[Oddball]

How is consumer protection and environmental protection working out? Not as well as it should. WHY? Because corporations, monied interests and their lobbyists have achieved what is called 'regulatory capture'. What is regulatory capture?

Regulatory capture occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.

And we face trying to stop REALLY ignorant regressive teabaggers that have infested Washington and have created The Most Anti-Environment House In History. House Republican leaders have pushed through an astonishing 191 votes to weaken environmental protections.

In other words, regulation agencies stemming from government are FAILURES. Yet you want to pursue even more of it and defend it as a realistic, efficient and workable concept.

You clearly are way more confused than previous assumed. You sit right there and show the failures of the State and then turn around and tell us that without this failure we'd all be poisoned by Joe the food guy because this failed regulatory agency wasn't there to fail.

It's even worse...Lolberal whacks like him point to failure of the nanny state as evidence that even more meddling and central planning are called for....It borders on psychotic.

The government is the problem in "regulatory capture", not the corp. that lobbied them. If the reg agency didnt exist, and the government wasn't in the business of dishing out favoritism in economic sectors, the only legs these corps would have to stand on is their own merit against competition.

It's clear that you have got your wires not only crossed, but not thoroughly tightened down either.

I believe the clinical term is "paranoid delusions."

 

[Circe]

No, that's where your misunderstanding of the virtues of a free market get you confused. 'Self-regulation' just means that people get to decide for themselves how much regulation they want. If you don't want to go to a doctor who hasn't been authorized by the AMA, you don't have to. If you don't want to buy food that hasn't been inspected thoroughly, you're not required to.

On the other hand, if you know a doctor you trust, who hasn't been licensed by the AMA, you're free to contract his services. If you want to buy food from the farmer down the street without the overhead of an inspection authority, you're free to do that as well. The free market is about freedom. That includes the freedom to decide for yourself how much risk you're willing to tolerate. There's no magic involved.

At this point, it is illegal to practice medicine without a license, so if you go to this quack, he will be getting arrested soon, presumably.

I suppose you mean that under a libertarian form of government, doctors wouldn't have to have licenses.

 

[rightwinger]

No, that's where your misunderstanding of the virtues of a free market get you confused. 'Self-regulation' just means that people get to decide for themselves how much regulation they want. If you don't want to go to a doctor who hasn't been authorized by the AMA, you don't have to. If you don't want to buy food that hasn't been inspected thoroughly, you're not required to.

On the other hand, if you know a doctor you trust, who hasn't been licensed by the AMA, you're free to contract his services. If you want to buy food from the farmer down the street without the overhead of an inspection authority, you're free to do that as well. The free market is about freedom. That includes the freedom to decide for yourself how much risk you're willing to tolerate. There's no magic involved.

At this point, it is illegal to practice medicine without a license, so if you go to this quack, he will be getting arrested soon, presumably.

I suppose you mean that under a libertarian form of government, doctors wouldn't have to have licenses.

When you think about it, Doctors don't need licenses, the free market will weed them out. As people go to unlicensed doctors, word will get out that people who see that doctor are dying. That doctor will eventually go out of business.

Licensing doctors is just another example of BIG GOVERNMENT interfering in the lives of people with intrusive regulation

Life is so simple when you are a libertarian

 

[Circe]

Should the state step in when a business pollutes the water supply, the air we breath?

As a nascent Libertarian starting to study, I think this is a reasonable role for government: policing the air pollution as companies use air and land and water as free inputs even though that may harm citizens.

Government is supposed to stop harm. The question is, how do we define "harm"? Gross contamination of public goods like air and water certainly seems to me to qualify.

I don't see this as a problem for libertarianism. I could be wrong.

Could there be coercion on the part of non government third parties? Let's say you are a manufacturer of ABC widgets, and you also create or fund a 'consumer widget 'testing' entity. You appear to be an independent adviser, when your real purpose is to coerce consumers into buying ABC widgets.

This was my first thought during the discussion on third party raters. Corruption, always so common. However, government is also easily corrupted this way and also lazy and incompetent. I see no difference, actually. Who will watch the watchers? We have to watch ALL the watchers, public or private, because they will be corrupt or incompetent if they can get away with it.

 

[PredFan]

"If your approach is so great, why hasn’t any country anywhere in the world ever tried it?"

Because governments are not usually created to ensure they don't have too much power.

 

[kaz]

How is consumer protection and environmental protection working out? Not as well as it should. WHY? Because corporations, monied interests and their lobbyists have achieved what is called 'regulatory capture'. What is regulatory capture?

Regulatory capture occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.

And we face trying to stop REALLY ignorant regressive teabaggers that have infested Washington and have created The Most Anti-Environment House In History. House Republican leaders have pushed through an astonishing 191 votes to weaken environmental protections.

In other words, regulation agencies stemming from government are FAILURES. Yet you want to pursue even more of it and defend it as a realistic, efficient and workable concept.

You clearly are way more confused than previous assumed. You sit right there and show the failures of the State and then turn around and tell us that without this failure we'd all be poisoned by Joe the food guy because this failed regulatory agency wasn't there to fail.

It's even worse...Lolberal whacks like him point to failure of the nanny state as evidence that even more meddling and central planning are called for....It borders on psychotic.

The government is the problem in "regulatory capture", not the corp. that lobbied them. If the reg agency didnt exist, and the government wasn't in the business of dishing out favoritism in economic sectors, the only legs these corps would have to stand on is their own merit against competition.

It's clear that you have got your wires not only crossed, but not thoroughly tightened down either.

I believe the clinical term is "paranoid delusions."

Government is controlled by corporations and the wealthy, so as a solution we should make government more powerful. Hmmm...that is delusional and psychotic...

 

[Mac1958]

"If your approach is so great, why hasn’t any country anywhere in the world ever tried it?"

Because governments are not usually created to ensure they don't have too much power.

Yup.

It would require humility on the part of national politicians, and we couldn't be further from that.

.

 

[Circe]

When you think about it, Doctors don't need licenses, the free market will weed them out. As people go to unlicensed doctors, word will get out that people who see that doctor are dying. That doctor will eventually go out of business.

Licensing doctors is just another example of BIG GOVERNMENT interfering in the lives of people with intrusive regulation

Life is so simple when you are a libertarian

Life is so simple when you think in the abstract..........

But I know such a case in life, and the mother involved (two generations older than me) never really recovered from it, as you don't recover from the death of a child. She would weep when she talked of it, in her 70s.

In this town in West Tennessee there were pill doctors and rubbing doctors, and they had their clientele and people had to commit to one or the other, they wouldn't take each other's patients. The boy at age 15 had appendicitis, and was taken to the rubbing doctor. Of course, he didn't do surgery, which is the only possibility for appendicitis. Nor did he have antibiotics, not that this usually works with appendicitis. He got worse and worse and was in agony, and in desperation this relative went to the pill doctor and begged him to take this case, but he refused: he would not see patients of the other doctor.

The child died in terrible pain, of course, after days of suffering, and the mother broke down and was unwell for years.

My daughter also got appendicitis at age 15; we took her to a licensed doctor and they did surgery in a hospital and saved her.

There would be a gazumpteen quacks of all kinds if it were allowed. Because people have terrible loyalty to their "doctors," even if they aren't really doctors. Perhaps a third party rating agency would be enough, but evil thieves who are just in it for the money and have no idea what they are doing do a lot of harm. If libertarianism allows government to stop bad people from harming others, this issue should be looked at. Currently it's working pretty well.

 

[Bfgrn]

How is consumer protection and environmental protection working out? Not as well as it should. WHY? Because corporations, monied interests and their lobbyists have achieved what is called 'regulatory capture'. What is regulatory capture?

Regulatory capture occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.

And we face trying to stop REALLY ignorant regressive teabaggers that have infested Washington and have created The Most Anti-Environment House In History. House Republican leaders have pushed through an astonishing 191 votes to weaken environmental protections.

"The House Republican assault on the environment has been reckless and relentless, in bill after bill, for one industry after another, the House has been voting to roll back environmental laws and endanger public health."

THAT is not the object of government our founder's envisioned. And wise men from both parties have warned us about the threat of excessive corporate power and the corrosive impact that has on our democracy.

Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, said that America would never be destroyed by a foreign power but he warned that our political institutions, our democratic institutions, would be subverted by malefactors of great wealth, who would erode them from within. Dwight Eisenhower, another Republican, in his most famous speech, warned America against domination by the military industrial complex.

The 'form' of government our founders created is still intact. The Constitution, Bill of Rights, 3 equal branches of government serving as checks and balances.

But the danger we face today is not the size of government, it is exactly what Teddy Roosevelt and Ike us warned about. Our government is being subverted by malefactors of great wealth.

Great public servants like Elizabeth Warren and other liberal/progressive Democrats are trying to change that. But they are being blocked by Republicans who are in bed with big money.

"Harry Truman once said, 'There are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of the other people - the 150 or 160 million - is the responsibility of the president of the United States, and I propose to fulfill it.'"
President John F. Kennedy

Good grief, is there any end to your victimhood?

"Regulatory capture" is, by far, the biggest mythical straw man booger man argument in the lolberal arsenal.

Corporate interests didn't capture jack shit....Huge corporations are players in making the regulation because the regulators want it that way.....Your "malefactors of great wealth" got that way by exploiting things like rights-of-way and mineral rights that were granted to them by people with the monopoly on the use of force......And those people don't populate the eeeeeevil corporations.

The republic that the founders created had been bastardized beyond recognition, since at least the T Roosevelt administration and a century of progressive central planner tinkering, meddling and futile attempts at social engineering.....Listening to that monumental jerk preach about how wealthy people being the ruin of the nation would be like getting missives on the virtues of sobriety from Lindsay Lohan.

And your assessment of one of the biggest socialist cranks in the Senate, while downright amusing, is delusional beyond description.... But it is always great to start the day with a big laugh...Thanks for that anyways.

Can there possibly be a more infantile, polarized mind than yours? You are the very embodiment of Rush Limbaugh's propaganda. The problem; it IS propaganda, it is not truth.

You possess the mind of a RETARD. But let's take a look at how your brain deciphers. Let me get my microscope.

The only evil people in the whole wide world are in government, and in that government, the only evil people in government are liberals and progressives.

And only good people are in the private sector, run corporations and become lobbyists.

Gee, if we can just castrate government, only the good people will be left! Holy fucking shit Jethro, just imagine if we apply your logic to all areas of society. Why, if we could just get rid of cops, burglers would become monks. Racists would open day care centers for poor black children.

U fucking topia!

And then, we must never forget. It was the fucking hen who invited the wolf into the hen house.

Tell me Einstein, WHY would regulators WANT banks to create 30 page credit card applications to swindle people out of their hard earned money?

WHY would regulators want health insurance corporations have Wall Street investors punish any corporation that doesn't deny enough claims to patients to meet their demands for low medical loss ratios?

Victimhood Jethro? Damn right, that is who and what you right wing turds are all about. You so worship your hierarchy, the beloved CEO's and 'captains of industry that you remove all personal responsibility from them because: The EVIL government made me pollute. The EVIL government made me swindle people out of their life savings. The EVIL government made me cower to Wall Street investors and create REAL death panels.

But you did make one true statement:

The republic that the founders created had been bastardized beyond recognition. Yes, by MONEY, GREED and MORONS like you.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Edmund Burke

 

[Circe]

If your approach is so great, why hasn’t any country anywhere in the world ever tried it?

Mr. Woods shouldn’t waste his time responding to stupid questions.

There are no stupid questions. Just stupid people who dont like questions that make them think and challenge their world view.

I think it's a good question and deserves an answer.

Don't get hung up on the idea that some systems are "cultist," or improbable, etc. -- that means nothing. There are lots of improbable systems of government: hereditary monarchy has always struck me as particularly unlikely, with the high rates of inherited mental weakness that occur so often in history. But it lasted for millennia. The only good kings tend to be the ones who reign by right of conquest, but that system, of course, is dictatorship.

Political systems don't have to seem plausible at first! They just have to get institutionalized. Libertarianism was certainly a main theme of the early American polity and echoes of it lasted well into the 1950s. So I don't see how anyone can say it was never tried. And England had a lot of libertarianism, too.

I think what happened, simply, was the French Revolution. That's why libertarianism didn't spread: The French Revolution sucked all the air out of the room, and its historical result, communism, got its try in many places, and failed disastrously.

I suspect it's libertarianism's turn now. That's why there is so much conversation about it by so many people.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

No, that's where your misunderstanding of the virtues of a free market get you confused. 'Self-regulation' just means that people get to decide for themselves how much regulation they want. If you don't want to go to a doctor who hasn't been authorized by the AMA, you don't have to. If you don't want to buy food that hasn't been inspected thoroughly, you're not required to.

On the other hand, if you know a doctor you trust, who hasn't been licensed by the AMA, you're free to contract his services. If you want to buy food from the farmer down the street without the overhead of an inspection authority, you're free to do that as well. The free market is about freedom. That includes the freedom to decide for yourself how much risk you're willing to tolerate. There's no magic involved.

At this point, it is illegal to practice medicine without a license, so if you go to this quack, he will be getting arrested soon, presumably.

I suppose you mean that under a libertarian form of government, doctors wouldn't have to have licenses.

When you think about it, Doctors don't need licenses, the free market will weed them out. As people go to unlicensed doctors, word will get out that people who see that doctor are dying. That doctor will eventually go out of business.

Licensing doctors is just another example of BIG GOVERNMENT interfering in the lives of people with intrusive regulation

Life is so simple when you are a libertarian

Right, because "government will save us!" isn't simplistic at all.

 

[rightwinger]

At this point, it is illegal to practice medicine without a license, so if you go to this quack, he will be getting arrested soon, presumably.

I suppose you mean that under a libertarian form of government, doctors wouldn't have to have licenses.

When you think about it, Doctors don't need licenses, the free market will weed them out. As people go to unlicensed doctors, word will get out that people who see that doctor are dying. That doctor will eventually go out of business.

Licensing doctors is just another example of BIG GOVERNMENT interfering in the lives of people with intrusive regulation

Life is so simple when you are a libertarian

Right, because "government will save us!" isn't simplistic at all.

Very true

We don't need BIG GOVERNMENT to save us from unlicensed doctors. We can figure it out ourselves.

 

[PredFan]

When you think about it, Doctors don't need licenses, the free market will weed them out. As people go to unlicensed doctors, word will get out that people who see that doctor are dying. That doctor will eventually go out of business.

Licensing doctors is just another example of BIG GOVERNMENT interfering in the lives of people with intrusive regulation

Life is so simple when you are a libertarian

Right, because "government will save us!" isn't simplistic at all.

Very true

We don't need BIG GOVERNMENT to save us from unlicensed doctors. We can figure it out ourselves.

In fact we can and do already.

 

[kaz]

Can there possibly be a more infantile, polarized mind than yours?

Our telling you to stay out of our shit is "polarizing." Your insistence to be in our shit isn't. Got it. You're an asswipe.

 

[kaz]

When you think about it, Doctors don't need licenses, the free market will weed them out. As people go to unlicensed doctors, word will get out that people who see that doctor are dying. That doctor will eventually go out of business.

Licensing doctors is just another example of BIG GOVERNMENT interfering in the lives of people with intrusive regulation

Life is so simple when you are a libertarian

Right, because "government will save us!" isn't simplistic at all.

Very true

We don't need BIG GOVERNMENT to save us from unlicensed doctors. We can figure it out ourselves.

Suppose government required doctors to accurately disclose their credentials so you could make your own informed choice instead of government insisting on making it for you?

Obviously this isn't your issue. You not only support government making it for you, but you demand government regulate every aspect of health care and government be the provider of health care.

Yeah, what you want it "big government." You always do, comrade.

 

[Pop23]

No, that's where your misunderstanding of the virtues of a free market get you confused. 'Self-regulation' just means that people get to decide for themselves how much regulation they want. If you don't want to go to a doctor who hasn't been authorized by the AMA, you don't have to. If you don't want to buy food that hasn't been inspected thoroughly, you're not required to.

On the other hand, if you know a doctor you trust, who hasn't been licensed by the AMA, you're free to contract his services. If you want to buy food from the farmer down the street without the overhead of an inspection authority, you're free to do that as well. The free market is about freedom. That includes the freedom to decide for yourself how much risk you're willing to tolerate. There's no magic involved.

At this point, it is illegal to practice medicine without a license, so if you go to this quack, he will be getting arrested soon, presumably.

I suppose you mean that under a libertarian form of government, doctors wouldn't have to have licenses.

When you think about it, Doctors don't need licenses, the free market will weed them out. As people go to unlicensed doctors, word will get out that people who see that doctor are dying. That doctor will eventually go out of business.

Licensing doctors is just another example of BIG GOVERNMENT interfering in the lives of people with intrusive regulation

Life is so simple when you are a libertarian

And let's look into this a bit deeper.

When the doctor screws up and kills someone even though he is government regulated, does the government take responsibility for the death?

Obviously they should, but don't

Life is so easy when you can assert authority, but duck the responsibility.

 

[rightwinger]

Right, because "government will save us!" isn't simplistic at all.

Very true

We don't need BIG GOVERNMENT to save us from unlicensed doctors. We can figure it out ourselves.

Suppose government required doctors to accurately disclose their credentials so you could make your own informed choice instead of government insisting on making it for you?

Obviously this isn't your issue. You not only support government making it for you, but you demand government regulate every aspect of health care and government be the provider of health care.

Yeah, what you want it "big government." You always do, comrade.

You FASCIST

Keep your Nanny State away from my doctor

 

[Circe]

We don't need BIG GOVERNMENT to save us from unlicensed doctors. We can figure it out ourselves.

In fact we can and do already.

I don't see why you say that: the government has so many laws about medicine and prescription drugs --- far more than in Africa or South America, where you can buy drugs over the counter --- that you don't have to figure it out for yourselves, and really can't: there is already a path you have to follow.

If you want to go to a quack who does chiropractic or massage or incense or gem therapy, you can, but there are a lot of laws against them prescribing and against them claiming they can deal with "real" (treatable) illnesses.

I think the libertarian question is: what is harm? Doctors can and often do produce a lot of harm, especially if they are quacks and con men and thieves. I think it's a legitimate question for libertarian consideration --- are quacks and their terrible persuasive power a harm that is a proper function of government police power?

Because there is another side, too. A lot of "therapy" is beneficial and harmless and access to such massages and aromatheraphy and willing listeners relieves pressure on an overused medical system. I think the balance is about right, now.

 

[TakeAStepBack]

We don't need BIG GOVERNMENT to save us from unlicensed doctors. We can figure it out ourselves.

In fact we can and do already.

I don't see why you say that: the government has so many laws about medicine and prescription drugs --- far more than in Africa or South America, where you can buy drugs over the counter --- that you don't have to figure it out for yourselves, and really can't: there is already a path you have to follow.

If you want to go to a quack who does chiropractic or massage or incense or gem therapy, you can, but there are a lot of laws against them prescribing and against them claiming they can deal with "real" (treatable) illnesses.

I think the libertarian question is: what is harm? Doctors can and often do produce a lot of harm, especially if they are quacks and con men and thieves. I think it's a legitimate question for libertarian consideration --- are quacks and their terrible persuasive power a harm that is a proper function of government police power?

Because there is another side, too. A lot of "therapy" is beneficial and harmless and access to such massages and aromatheraphy and willing listeners relieves pressure on an overused medical system. I think the balance is about right, now.

Of course "quacks" can cause harm. So can high trained, experienced and licensed "qucks".

What you're referring to has nothing to do with anything other than the typical appeal to emotion assertion.
If a quack commits fraud, then it's the governments job to arbitrate and protect the rights of people. That is, once a crime has been committed. Not running around making people criminals before the act with arbitrary rules that more often than not, are useless.

If someone chooses to go to a "quack", signs a contract for their services in which the quack protects themselves from any retaliation from a botched procedure, that is the on the person who signed the contract. People have to take responsibility for themselves and stop asking someone else to do it for them.

more times than not, these extreme examples are useless in everyday circumstances. Most doctors who would perform a service arent looking to kill a patient since that would mean they are probably not going to receive any more patients and likely will face fraud or wrongful death charges.


It's like wheeling out the cancer lady with you people all the time. Always the fucking boogeyman behind the corner and hes gonna getcha!!! Govt please save me!!!!

 

[regent]

In a way all these hucksters of economic systems are like Marx, they paint a picture of utopia and say it can be ours if only we practice what they preach. They've all been tried and dropped, and the only thing that seems to work is a mixed system. The real argument is how much of this and how much of that should be added to the mix.
Perhaps if we could come up with goals for an economic system we might do better in the mix. Should an economic system make the rich richer, the poor poorer or something else? It won't happen during our lifetime, however.