Thursday, January 19, 2012

Waking up from the long sleep of reason

But to the horror of radical free-market ideologues, the myth of no-fault capitalism is under scrutiny. No one is arguing against markets, which are indeed the best way to create wealth and thus the best weapon against poverty. No one is arguing that investors who risk their capital in a company should not be able to reap rewards. What the ideologues ignore, however, is that workers also have “capital” at risk — in the form of mind and muscle, creativity, loyalty, years of service. Why is this investment so casually dismissed?

Reexaming the myth of no-fault capitalism

Or, as I would have put it, reexamining Reaganomics.

It is entirely possible to be for free-market capitalism without being for unregulated free-for-all winner-takes-all economic savagery. Just like it is possible to be for a strong social safety net like national health care, retirement, education, and welfare without being for totalitarian land-redistribution communism.

Extremism in the defense of liberty, it turns out, is a vice; because liberty cannot exist at the extremes. Everything in moderation turns out to not only be older, but wiser. And even more conservative.

3 comments:

  1. Should be "Waking up from the long sleep to reason"

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  2. Oh, I mean it as waking up from the "sleep of reason."

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  3. Implying, I suppose, that there was a period of reason before, so I guess I see your point. :D

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