Answer to David K. Post on Acceptance Without Justificaiton

Another long comment response that could also function as a blog post I believe - read it if you are interested in the debate over constructing the free market .... everything is a construction .. and every action has a justification and a subtextual meaning

David -

First, societal focus is important. It is an integral part of combating the negatives to the human condition. To put this into context, I will supply an analogy. Killing is wrong – we all know this is true – no one person should kill another – if I have to provide warrants for this I quit. Stealing is also wrong – this is another claim I do not think I need to support much to prove true. Absent the criminal justice system, though, it would be impossible to control individual’s incentives to commit these crimes.

The same concept applies to economics. Stealing is wrong – and government regulations are in place to stop people from gaming the system.

We are the only truly industrialized country that does not provide a national healthcare service for all of its citizens. This forces regulations to be put on small businesses that crushes their revenue and makes them fail.

In France, for example, the upper classes are taxed 60 percent of their income (both capital gains and normal income taxes) and the lower classes are taxed near nothing (in fact the lowest common denominator is not taxed at all).

This progressive tax system allows for massive government investment in institutions of education and healthcare that we in the United States desperately need.

It may be easy to see the world through the rose colored glasses of privileged white males such as the cove of entitlement that is the north shore and the politics of Mitt Romney and Co. propose we do – but the education that we are provided is not indicative of that which the rest of the nation is provided.

This may seem like a tangent that does not relate but here is how it supports my argument – in the animal kingdom, the animals that survive are the fastest, the strongest, and the ones with the biggest jaw strengths. In human society however, the ones that survive are the ones with the most money.

The ones that get the most amount of money are the ones that successfully play the system.

I am not saying this is a bad thing; I myself am a free market capitalist (a Keynesian one at that) but when you get to the point that we did in 2008, when derivatives and bundled mortgages (the kind of things that are a result of uncontrolled greed) and the entire economic market fails – you need to take that as a sign that something is massively screwed up.

China is able to compete so well with the United States for two reasons – the first reason is that their government developed programs (from the massively high tax rates that they impose) protect (at the most basic level) their proletariat citizenry, and second because the companies that provide compensation for their workers are not forced to a minimum wage – they have developed a system that feeds off of our exploitation incentivized economic system.

Our founders did not warn us of mob rule - this they warned us against rules that could be instated to favor classes - this is representative of the status quo fetish with protecting the richest, maybe we need some mob rule to straighten us out (1% reference).

Second, the private sector is a machine that's only drive is to make more money - it needs to be regulated because within a world of a single incentive all other issues get thrown to the side - wages, labor rights, working conditions, hierarchies of power, political sway, all of which would be highly infringed upon in a world of solely free market as the golden rule would hold true: "Whoever has the gold, makes the rule".

Your next argument I have already addressed - the idea the free market is the only thing that allows for an increase in the standard of living is fictitious - it relies on an ignorance towards the massive changes that government programs and non-pressurized incentives have created - multiple empirical examples are outlined in the father post.

The difference between the poor and the rich is not the type of car they have; although that would be amazing if that were the case. Take a moment to stop and reflect on the flaws of that one sentence.

The problem with a lack of regulations and government programs is that the poor get exploited and go hungry – half of my own family that lives in Chicago and deals with these problems on a daily basis do not even own a refrigerator, nonetheless a car.

This is the reason that a stable basis for living needs to be established and families of poverty need to be given healthcare, access to government education programs, food programs, and all of these “leviathans” alike. Nice Hobbes reference by the way – although I think he probably supports my side of the argument.

I always find it laughable when people dismiss the New Deal and the Great Depression as the free market fixing itself – please provide a warrant for this – it is just not true.

The great depression is an empirical example of the elimination of the middle class as well as an unregulated greed that crashed the stock market. People were forced to cut their losses and move on, and the New Deal made that possible.

In the most basic sense, sure, taxes are “stealing” and “coercive” – the difference between the government doing it and individuals doing it is in the effect I guess – if you do not like it, please leave society and live on an island somewhere that you bought with the billions of dollars you stole from the middle class in bundled mortgages friend.

If the government puts it into social programs, at least the base standard of living is increased for a vast majority of people – sorry you can’t benefit, but you already have enough cash money.