Dodging the writing of yet another article, I bring you the following video. It covers so many things I’ve written about, reassuring me that my own ideas are not so original after all. It’s long, and I may not agree with the strength of some of the arguments (I don’t think the opening postions is quite as cut-and-dried, for example), but the common sense that follows is solid as a rock. (If you prefer, just watch the first 15 minutes, before the sales pitch for “Anarcho-Capitalism”.)
The speaker covers many points I’ve iterated in my articles here, and brings it all into an ideological, yet unambiguously practical context. Seriously, you may not agree with the conclusions they intend to prove, but ignore the reasoning at your own peril.
The speaker talks about the limitations of democracy versus the free market, where the state is a monopoly paid for by other people’s money and dictated by other people’s choices, the individual hoping enough people agree to get their way at least some of the time and impose their own choices on others.
Economically, it shows “privatizing gains while collectivising losses” as an inherent function of big government and the [[Tragedy of the commons]] is placed in a context of statist communizing of resources. This results in unsustainable waste, something I attacked recently to mixed reviews.
Even the idea that “if we just voted in the right leaders and give them all the power to make the right choices” is challenged — and summarily brow-beaten as a utopia that even if could somehow be sanely defended as possible politically would not work economically. This is also why I consider [[Progressive]] attacks on [[Corporatism]] but defense of [[Statism]] the gretest political hypocrisy of these times, and why the admittedly well-intentioned “Occupy Wall Street” will always (hopefully) remain more of a running joke for those of us in the know instead of an effective political movement.