Saturday, August 28, 2010

Live Free or Die

Obama Misreads Message of ‘Live Free or Die’: Amity Shlaes - Bloomberg

The founders wanted states to be the "labratories" that allowed Americans to test various government policies to see what worked, and to allow people to choose between different approaches, yet remain American. Shales does a good comparison between Maine and New Hampshire (thus the "Live Free or Die" ... state motto). As should surprise nobody, larger government loses.

This jury has been in forever, the only problem is that peoples memories are too short, and they confuse best available and unattainable perfection as goals. Free market policies are more successful, they are not perfect (humans are still involved). Recessions and potentially even depressions will happen, but there is nothing that can't be made worse (or less good) by the intervention of the government! As in the '30s, government can always make the pain deeper and longer lasting.

Just look at the current TX economy relative to CA or NY. The world had the best laboratory case that one could ever see with East and West Germany for 50 years + of the difference between more free and less free -- same people, different government, vastly inferior result on the more government side.

Greed is a deadly sin, but so is envy. Humans are very prone to both, but capitalism harnesses greed to grow the economic pie for all (imperfectly). Socialism harnesses envy to get supporters, but it only "produces" increasingly angry people fighting over an ever shrinking economic pie.

No comments:

Post a Comment