[_andromeda_]

Do you value your liberty? I bet you do and you just don't realize you've been slowly but surely losing it.

I would venture that the only extremism, so to speak, that exists is in how government has increased in both its size and ineffectiveness. When you have a combination of the two aforementioned features, then things inevitably get worse.

> Oh boy. Anti-government extremists like yourself love to grandstand about the merits of unfettered capitalism without understanding that government creates the conditions for market capitalism to exist.

> There would be no property rights without the police, legal contracts without the courts, no medium of exchange without the Treasury. Governments provide minimal standards of worker safety, public health, and public education - all of which are necessary for a productive workforce.

Just because monkeys can ride bikes doesn't mean that only monkeys can ride bikes. Due to government's inherent inefficiencies and its tendency to grow and encompass ever more aspects of life, two things happen; you lose your liberty and it becomes very expensive to sustain government.

I really don't see how you can't see that government really is bad for you and that there's always a better way. I don't like the fact that as the human race we've resigned ourselves to thinking that we can innovate/disrupt most other things except for governance. When I hear statements like, 'democracy is the worst form of government except for all others', I cringe. Here's an idea, how about less or where possible, no government. These demagogues and bureaucrats really aren't as important as you think they are.

Let John Galt be. Let the markets be. Obama and the rest of them have no place dictating how innovation and businesses should be run.

[ethbro]

You have some valid points in critiquing government, but you're doing them a severe disservice by the way you present them. Context-appropriate facts, not rhetoric.

> In the late 19th century, when there was less government intervention, America saw the most rapid rate of economic growth.

The late 19th century of American history featured a large number of one-time-only economic improvements and wholescale pillaging of large amounts of natural resources.

The completion of a transcontinental railroad (completed 1869 with government sponsorship via the Pacific Railroad Acts), Pennsylvania oil rush (1870s), the settling and harvesting of the West (1850-1900), and implementation of manufacturing economies of scale on the back of the new rail system.

Additionally, unrestrained consolidation of competition into cooperative trusts gave rise to monopolies that Theodore Roosevelt spent considerable political capital resolving in the early 20th century via lawsuits under the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). See Northern Securities Co. v. United States (1903) and Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911).

[_andromeda_]

>You have some valid points in critiquing government, but you're doing them a severe disservice by the way you present them. Context-appropriate facts, not rhetoric.

I think you just don't like that I'm right about this. If I'm making a valid argument, should it matter that I'm presenting it in a manner that is inconsistent with some form of political correctness?

>Additionally, unrestrained consolidation of competition into cooperative trusts gave rise to monopolies that Theodore Roosevelt spent considerable political capital resolving in the early 20th century via lawsuits under the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). See Northern Securities Co. v. United States (1903) and Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911).

No one is saying that monopolies are good. In fact, one could argue that they aren't very capitalistic (capitalism requires that there's voluntary exchange and when you as a consumer have only one option to choose a basic necessity from, then that looks more like the very opposite of voluntary exchange).

As a side note, it is however curious that when you bring up these facts that sort of demonize the likes of Morgan, the fact that he single-handedly led the financing of the bail out of America during the economic crises of 1907 and 1893 never comes up. In 1893, the then President, Cleveland, borrowed $65 million in gold from J.P. Morgan to support the gold standard thus ending the panic.

[alexbeloi]

Here, I've boiled y'alls argument down for easy digestion

When the economy does well:

    Pro-government: government fueling/supporting industry into prosperity

    Anti-government: markets make everyone richer as expected

When economy does poorly:

    Pro-government: capitalist greed/exploitation leads to ruin

    Anti-government: government regulation/strangulation leads to ruin

Feel free to repeat this argument for every boom/bust in the past/future

[_andromeda_]

I never quite got what your preference is. Are you saying that it is all futile and we should just leave the markets be?

[alexbeloi]

My stance is that this a nature/nurture kind of debate, to argue either extreme is ridiculous, there are clearly elements of both sides that are true.

No positive/negative turn in the economy can be isolated to a single cause, so neither side will ever be convinced by the others arguments.

A third point, which I think is often lost in these arguments, is that governments have interests that are beyond improving the financial standing of its citizens. A pure market capitalist probably wouldn't think subsidizing farming or shipbuilding a particularly good idea, but the government might be willing to accept some market inefficiency in exchange for food security or having an established ship building industry for times of war. Similarly, high income inequalities may cause high social unrest, it's in the governments own interest to prevent this, so it may be willing to accept lower total nation wealth in exchange for more evenly distributed wealth among its citizens by imposing progressive taxes and creating welfare programs.

Everybody agrees that markets work, the main questions are: are they optimizing for the thing you want? and are there cultural/political externalities that the market doesn't care about but a government might?