In his recent letter published by LEO Weekly, Louisville’s alternative publication, St. Matthews’ resident Paul L. Whiteley Sr. makes a weak, but deceptively empty, case against a free-market economic system.
Whiteley suggests "combin(ing) the best ideas" from socialism and capitalism to "forge a system in which compassion is abundant and greed is rare." He adds: "Capitalism is not all good, and socialism is not all bad."
Mr. Whiteley doesn't bother to honor us free-market underlings with specifics of what is "good" about capitalism or "bad" about socialism, other than offering the worn-out mantra: "Greed is bad."
Those who think that sounds reasonable should consider Whiteley's concluding statement: "'Enough is a feast' is a good economic philosophy to live by."
Whoops! Not only does Whiteley misquote 16th century English writer John Heywood, he also fails to tell us who determines what is "enough.”
Apparently, he thinks government determining what’s “enough” is one of the “good” things about socialism. He’s as wrong as his quote.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
'Enough'
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"Free-market economics" is anything but free, and has little if anything to do with capitalism.
That's just so much conservative drivel.
"Free-market economics" is nothing more than feudalism's belief that the lord of the manor is free to do whatever he wants with his manor and to his serfs.
Efforts to uphold this feudalistic philosophy are efforts to circumvent government regulations, as occurred in the A.I.G. situation.
Under the American system, government has an obligation to control the system. That is consistent with American ideals and values, which conservatives loathe and detest.
In Federalist Paper 51, Alexander Hamilton and/or James Madison wrote:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
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