One of the most ridiculous anti-libertarian posts I have ever encountered

[Zach_the_Lizard]

I quote here one of the most ridiculous attacks against libertarianism I have discovered. This post comes from Slashdot and is, at the time of this writing, rated “+3 Informative.” This guy is not the only one who thinks this. So, let’s get to the post then, shall we?

The part in italics is a post the guy was quoting, in agreement. All other emphasis is my own, placed in the text for those who will inevitably skim through it.

Libertarian *uckwads like you have the infuriating habit of comparing everything but Laissez-faire capitalism to authoritarian command economies.

That’s as concise a summary as I’ve seen. They really are the mirror image of communist lunatics like Lenin. Although I must say, the way the free market halfwits crashed the world’s largest economy only 20 years or so after being handed partial control, authoritarian command economies certainly seem to work better than laissez-faire free for alls.

Both wind up with psychopaths running things after a certain amount of time (Stalin, Mao, the lunatics at Enron, AIG, Citibank, etc.). But at least the command economies can keep the trains running on time.

The really odd thing about laissez-faire cluster*ucks is how much they behave like command economies. In a command economy you wind up with political psychopaths in charge who enforce groupthink thru ideological propaganda. The ideology influences policy and behavior, so you wind up with insanity like the Soviet government refusing to fund the study of genetics because it clashed with the Party line. Or the insanity of Mao’s great leap forward, which was anything but. Irrefutable evidence which contradicts the ideology is simply ignored or shouted down by propaganda-baked fanatics. So the society as a whole follows utterly irrational beliefs right off a cliff.

In a laissez-faire economy you wind up with a few wealthy psychopaths - a kleptocracy - in charge of the economy and government. Command authority isn’t vested in a single individual, but that doesn’t seem to matter much. If anything, it’s worse - you wind up with an uncoordinated gang of crazed thieves in charge, stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, destroying the economy in the process. They use propaganda to incite bigots, psychotics and religious fanatics to vote against their own best social and economic interests, in order to seize and maintain control of the government and prevent it from stopping their psychopathic rampage (indeed, government is now feeding their rampage - witness the recent multi-trillion dollar “bailout” of Wall Street).

It’s something like having a cabal comprised of folks like Jeffery Dahmer, David Berkowitz, and Charles Manson running the country. Their primary interest isn’t in running anything - they’re only invested in keeping anything from interrupting their rampage, as (in this case) they steal everything in sight. These psychopaths are so greed-crazed, they don’t even seem to realize they’re destroying the very system they’ve been stealing from. They’re parasites that are killing their host. The whackjobs running Enron are a textbook example. And just as in command economies, the society as a whole follows these nuts right over a cliff (witness the housing boom and bust).

The solution seems to be having a government structured in such a way that it simply doesn’t allow psychopaths to gain enough power - political or economic - to have any substantial influence over either the government or the economy. So companies the size of AIG or Citibank would automatically be broken up, or taxed so heavily they’d be better off broken up. Extreme concentrations of wealth would be taxed out of existence, and exotic “investment” vehicles would be taxed and treated like what they really are - gambling. Government itself would be structured in such a way that no single position, or even large group of positions, would have enough power to substantially alter either the structure of the government or its relationship to the economy - particularly when it comes to allowing any individual or corporation to become too powerful.

[Praetyre]

If laissez faire capitalists have been running the USA since the 80’s, why the heck is it that regulations (the Federal Register’s contents) have increased by ten thousand pages between 1978 and now?

And as for Enron.. http://mises.org/daily/872

[Laughing_Man]

This is the exact strawman that Karl Marx postulated.

It goes as thus:

Laissez faire capitalism is deregulated to the point of free trade, free buying/sell

Businesses have sought cartelization and regulation through government and use the power of government to censor trade and buying/selling [ We call this mercantilism ]

Therefore laissez faire capitalism [ when it is actually mercantilism ] is responsible.

[kaiwaldron]

“So companies the size of AIG or Citibank would automatically be broken up …”

Hah! The government itself is “too big to fail”. With trillions in welfare obligations and a permanent warfare economy, this bloated monster touches all aspects of our lives. And it is going bankrupt. Is this not “systemic risk”? So I say lets take his advice and break it up.

[BioTube]

I like how he ignores the fact that a corrupt government in no position to do damage is in no position to do what he deems good.