"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 1 Jul 2008 22:41:41 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:

--minor (several hundred line) snippage here--

Stu said:
Well Ed I have come to the belief from watching your postings that you
are
one of the brighter bulbs in this string, but I can't imagine that you
believe that the present path being taken by the Federal and State
governments of increased size and increased borrowing and increased
inefficiency is going to lead to a positive sunny future.

Hardly. I think the economic policies we've followed under Reagan and Bush
are absolute disasters. And libertarian policies would be even more
extreme,
except that we wouldn't get *any* of it back. With no income taxes, they'd
be unable to pay debts and they would strangle the infrastructure until
the
economy collapsed for good.

Ed, libertarian principles aren't anarchy and they aren't a total
dismissal of government. They're just a lot more limiting on the
government. I think you're totally overreacting here.

What I've described is the consequences of the libertarian program, Larry,
and they should be no mystery at this point. Libertarians oppose government
regulation of business. We've seen what happens in the world of finance when
regulations are too lax; take the regulations off, and you'll just be
clearing the sea lanes for the financial pirates.

Libertarians oppose government ownership of property, and an end to
restrictions on cross-national flows of capital. China needs lumber; they'll
clear-cut the national forests, and it won't take them more than a few years
to do it. They've already been exploring the purchase or lease of large
tracts of western timberlands.

I suppose you know about how current grazing policies have wrecked the land
and the water in the plains. Take off the regulations, and the plains will
be a desert.

And so on. The entire libertarian program is something that you'd expect
high school students to cook up for a civics class project. It's mindless of
consequences, and ignorant of the signals and trends that are already
getting us into trouble. It would be hard to imagine a dumber set of policy
ideas than the ones in the current Libertarian Party platform. As I said,
it's a letter to Santa Claus.




As I said, Stuart, it's a good program for grumblers and for people who
resent all kinds of things that are going on. It's a lousy program for
running a country.

The way you're talking, you seem to think the change from what we have
to what we want would be overnight. That surely wouldn't work. It
would have to be gradual, allowing for all those displaced gov't
employees to find honest work as their worthless agencies are
disbanded. Most could immediately find work in the EU, with their
politically correct fellows, don't you think? snicker

So, you want to bleed the economy to death slowly, rather than all at once.
d8-)

--
Ed Huntress