I am from Portugal - a little, irrelevant, poor european country - and here the main view is that we should have more state, more government meddling on economic and individual affairs. we even have a communist party with parliament sits. the reason why people crave for more government control over everything is because they have the wrong idea that capitalism and free market have brought this crisis, and although i argue - a lot - about what a true free market capitalist society is - or would be - and try to explain why what we have is merely an interventionist, corporatist state, the majority of the people still think capitalism is bad, and free market capitalism is worse.
what i wonder is wether this view of things is particular to my country, or is it the main view in other places in Europe. and, if so, why do you think it is that way.
At least you have a pro-free market party to choose fom. I’m from Ireland, our right-wing party wants to bring in a health care system to the left of Obamacare. If you google Corporatism, Irelands social partnership is given as a modern day example.
we have two right wing parties in parliament: one is a center-right party who is as statist as the socialist party (center-left): they don’t want to shrink government, they want to control it themselves (and they often do). and then we have the right-wing party, which is socially consevative (for the most part this party is controlled by the grandsons of the people who ran the dictatorship in the country 30 years ago) and is in general as statist as any other party. two of this party’s politicians were ministers in a coalition government with the center-right, and one of them increased the defense budget by half and bought five world war II submarines (what for?) - while keeping policemen the worst payed in Europe; the other increased most of the taxes and doubled the budget for education, agriculture and culture. this coalition government created a lot of public-private partnerships on health-care and energy (socializing loss; privatizing profit) pratically banning competition on these sectors and creating huge government-supported monopolies. and also, they supported the war in iraq, which no right wing think-tank thought he could oppose from the right, since everyone on the left was against it. in Portugal, also, there is virtually no liberal, much less libertarian, intellectual or public thinker. it’s quite depressing.
I’m a Romanian Libertarian and must report, with great sorrow, that the situation is dire in my country. We don’t have Politics per se, just small talk and big words from different groups that want to take over the country. The so called parties aren’t from the right or left but the men of some or other person.
The common man isn’t better - everyone wants more “free” money. For example there was a train derailment whitch causee delays in a region of Romania. A TV station interviewed some fellow who was waiting, in vain, for his commuter train to arrive. Ask what he think of the situation he said that the cause was the low wages of the employees of the State run railroad company. Should I add that the cause of the accident was human error?
So everyone wants more but doesn’t investigates the source of the funds. Sad but true. Seems my fellow Romanians think the State just… makes money appear out of nothing. But it’s from pur pockets. I received a letter from the Fiscal Authority. In it I found out that my employer spent on me (before all taxes) about 1500 euros and, of that, I received, at the end of the month, just 680. And the VAT for whatever I spend is 19%.
What about you? How’s your situation in this crisis and how is your Goverment making it worse?
I live in england but have lived in scotland too.I was saddened as I grew up living in scotland and especially in recent years scotland has become very socialistic.most of the people employed in scotland work for the government!.
It’s no better in england but there is hope here because unlike scotland england has the history of the classical liberals and their legacy remains today in a small few -libertarians and non libertarians- who do actually believe in private property.In the UK we have Gordon Brown as PM and to get out of the recession he’s turning to keynesian economics.