In a sense you are misunderstanding my assertion. On the face of our currency, it says, "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private." Our currency is indeed the property of the Federal Reserve and may be seized for misuse. Its a bearer note that comes with warranties for its negotiation.
A fully libertarian form of government could not support the inherent value the American Dollar carries. Argentina is finding its economy and government can't support the value of its peso.
I’m not sure how you come to that conclusion. Libertarians (overwhelmingly) don’t advocate for no government but for minimal government. We are not opposed to currency at all. Would prefer it not be fiat currency, with all the manipulation and inflation that comes with it.
Our government does a much better job in allocating resources and providing guardrails on our economy than you give it credit for. Im not sure where our country would be if the oligarchy of the robber barrons of the early 20th century had been allowed to persist. I would wager that we would not have engaged in WWII. If you let people with all the power or all the money make the decisions, you get bad outcomes for everyone including them, eventually. Even in a libertarian society, an apex predator emerges. And I would say it would be much easier to do so with its laissez-faire bend toward government.
Government is overwhelmingly a testament to waste and stupidity. The examples are endless. California has been trying to build the word’s slowest bullet train for a decade, is currently $100 billion over budget, and maybe will have something resembling a train line in another decade. Boston’s Big Dig. Alaska’s bridges to nowhere. And virtually every other infrastructure project is a joke regarding cost and time to completion, largely because much of the cost is shifted to taxpayers outside the state in question. When you don’t pay your own bills, there is no incentive to be smart with someone else’s money. That is a recipe for ensuring waste and abuse of public money. Beyond spending on infrastructure, nearly every government contract – big or small – has massive (or total) waste. I’ve been providing firsthand examples for 17 years.
So, government bureaucrats allocating resources absolutely fail all the time. It will never be remotely as efficient as the market.
Look at the failures that are affordable housing programs. When I worked with a homebuilder, I saw firsthand how the result was anything but affordable. Typical of government plans to make things cheaper, they don’t. They just shift costs and distort markets.
This happens in multiple ways. Many times I encountered a city or county that required 25% “affordable” housing. The house must be sold at cost. To make up for getting no profit on that 25%, I must increase the cost on the 75% “market-rate” houses to make up the difference. (So, there is no market rate housing in this area – only premium-cost housing.) That’s a significant cost borne by responsible future homeowners, which increases their mortgage debt and risk. That’s a dishonest and stupid way to regulate housing.
Another way … Say, I have some land where I can build 120 homes. But the government says any development over 100 homes must have a significant “affordable” component. More than likely, to make the deal work, I will build 99 homes or less to avoid that regulation. The 99 homes must absorb the cost of the 21 homes that didn’t get built.
Affordable housing limits supply and raises prices, which is the opposite of what it claims to do.
Compare with Argentina’s experience of ending affordable housing regulations. Supply of housing increased 30%, which brings down prices. Markets provide more desirable results than bureaucratic dictates.
And you are not an apex predator type, but there are certainly those who i regularly engage with who are and identify as libertarian. They are states rights absolutists and view the smaller the government the more it can be manipulated, aka, small enough to drown it in a bathtub.
If you could condense a political philosophy down to a sentence, libertarianism is the philosophy of “leave me alone.” And by quid pro quo I’ll leave you alone. Now, realizing that there are predators and moochers in the world, there must be recourse for when someone doesn’t leave you alone. That’s where regulations for things like safety and antitrust prohibitions and police for protection and the courts for enforcement of contracts are justified. Again, limited government and not anarchy.
And I don’t know what a predatory libertarian is, but by definition that doesn’t exist. The people who call themselves that are either fooling you or fooling themselves. That makes about as much sense as when certain posters on this board defined libertarians as fascists. That’s just stupid by definition. A person who advocates leaving others alone with all interactions being based on consent and being mutually beneficial can’t be predatory.
We need enough government large enough to effectively govern and regulate the largest businesses in our country. Because they will not willingly be sympathetic to its citizens. We are the prey. If you want smaller less intrusive government, then you should be advocating for more equitable tax laws and stronger anti-trust laws that are enforced. I know that sounds ironic but it is the correct approach. Its well documented that smaller businesses place greater value on its employees, customers, and community.
Just as I fundamentally disagree with your cynical view towards people, I similarly disagree with your negative view toward business. Why would you do business with an entity that preys upon you? In a free market, there’s no reason why you would. A business has to earn your patronage. Of course, abuse happens. People are still people, after all, with some following their worst impulses. And that’s why the police and courts exist. But, to say that a business exists to abuse its customers is just not right. The business plan is to make money by giving the customers what they want and doing so better than the competition.
Most of the work I do now is funneling government contracts to small businesses. But these are ot small businesses as anyone would recognize. Washington deems all sorts of large businesses to be small – plenty of nationwide(!) small businesses doing government work. These businesses would not exist if it were not for government re-defining terms to suit their goals. (No too much unlike deeming that a small, limited government really means a government of unlimited size and power.) And because competition is greatly limited, since I have to award to certain businesses, the cost balloons several times over. I’ve written about this for years.
In a free market economy, there is plenty of room for all manner of businesses, big and small. Some people will feel more comfortable working for a small business. Others determine that oftentimes large businesses can offer better pay and benefits and opportunities for advancement. To each their own. Interestingly, your call for an overbearing government favors big businesses, which can absorb the increasing costs of regulation far better than small businesses.
Big government allows itself to be manipulated to favor wealthy businesses and individuals. It’s been like this forever. You can see it now. Big government is big waste, big corruption, and big abuse. And the bill for all that inefficiency is paid by everyone else.
And at the extreme, but certainly not an uncommon occurrence, big government is the predator on (to misuse a word) an industrial scale. Communist China. USSR. Pol Pot’s Cambodia. And endless other examples. 100s of millions dead via war or designed starvation. And, more widespread to include almost every country that doesn’t value individual personal and economic freedom, crushing poverty on billions of people has been the norm. Should we ever meet and my wife is around, she can tell you firsthand what it’s like to have the government tell you what you can do, say, read, see, own, etc.
I’m also not sure what you mean by equitable taxation. "Equity" is a vague term that is often used to allow the government to treat people differently. And, as we know, the government can't favor some without disfavoring others. I want everyone to be treated equally by our government. You success should be determined by merit, not by getting the government to put it's thumb on the scales. The purpose of taxes shouldn’t be to punish but to only fund limited constitutional governmental functions.
We disagree, but that’s more than ok. This is a good conversation. I’ll be heading out of town later today through the weekend, so I’ll be away from the board for a while. But, I enjoy the honest discussion.
