" While there were a few scholars (including several of my teachers) who cared deeply about the issues that had led me to the field, most were unconcerned about inequality; the dominant school worshiped at the feet of (a misunderstood) Adam Smith, at the miracle of the efficiency of the market economy. I thought that if this was the best of all possible worlds, I wanted to construct and live in another world.
In that odd world of economics, unemployment (if it existed) was the fault of workers. One Chicago School economist, the Nobel Prize winner Robert E. Lucas Jr. , would later write : "Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution." Another Nobel laureate of the Chicago School, Gary S. Becker , would attempt to show how in truly competitive labor markets discrimination couldn't exist. While I and others wrote multiple papers explaining the sophistry in the argument, his was an argument that fell on receptive ears.
Sophistry!! Google defines it as "the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intent to deceive."
I will grant some Libertarians some slack on that definition, which I do believe applies to many Libertarians. The thing is, there are also the narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths who may actually believe the pule and garbage put out by libertarian economic minds. I really do think that the people who come up with these sophist theories are pandering to the worst instincts of people.
Pornography aims to stimulate sexually. Libertarian economics aim to stimulate heartlessly.
The beneficiaries of libertarian theories are indeed narcissists-- people who are extremely selfish and self centered. That also applies to sociopaths and psychopaths. And of course, that applies to corporations, which are, by nature and charter, psychopathic.
It is sad, not, make that disgusting and despicable (it would be sad if it was by no fault or by accident, which is not the case) that Barack Obama has embraced a team of Robert Rubin economists who don't give a flying f*ck about people or the middle class.
The fact that Obama is gearing up to appoint Larry Summers, the point man Clinton used to end Glass Steagall, to replace Ben Bernanke for a ten year term as head of the Federal Reserve is no less than a total betrayal of all the dupes and suckers who still believe in him. It should come as no surprise. Obama has surrounded himself with Robert Rubin acolytes since day one. What does that mean. It means he's been working to empower and strengthen bank deregulation, helping to enrich the worst criminals in the banking world.
Greg Palast recently wrote about how Summers was instrumental in instituting world trade organization policies that forced most of the nations of the world which were signatories to WTO, all except Brazil, to allow policies that supported the kinds of bank trading that led to the financial collapse of 2008.
After Obama puts Summers in to replace Bernanke, it will be time to fast track the Trans Pacific Partnership-- TPP-- which will be worst and last trade agreement the US signs. I wonder whether the US and its middle class will survive this weapon of economic mass destruction.
Any legislator who ratifies it should be jailed as a traitor. That tells you what I think of Obama, for pushing it so hard and in such secrecy.
The ironic thing is that the big government deals that authorize these trade agreements area ll eroding government regulations-- you know, the protections that prevent psychopath corporations from hurting people, cultures and communities.
The reality is that Libertarianism is being brought to life, but in a way that does not support individual freedoms, but instead, the support of corporate freedoms. Those corporations, particularly banks and finance companies, are viciously deadly predators. Economics visionary Ellen brown writes, in her latest article, The Leveraged Buyout of America
"Giant bank holding companies now own airports, toll roads, and ports; control power plants; and store and hoard vast quantities of commodities of all sorts. They are systematically buying up or gaining control of the essential lifelines of the economy. How have they pulled this off, and where have they gotten the money?"
After Obama appoints Summers to the Fed, they will ram through the TPP and make it much, much easier for the banks to do to all nations what they're doing to the USA.
When libertarian, Ayn Rand admiring tea partiers attack government, they are really attacking the protections that keep the corporate wolves at bay. Their hypocrisy is screamingly obvious as they ignore the cancerously massive military, surveillance and police states-- excusing them.
Libertarians are a mixed bag. I realize that some believe they are fighting for freedoms, particularly from government control. But the truth is that Libertarians are the willing helpers and enablers of the worst corporate intentions.
There are a lot of libertarians out there. They are on the right track when it comes to social issues. And there are ways that government is bad
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