by Garnet
If there’s anything the recent economic turbulance has shown us it’s that laissez faire economic policies – aside from being blatently oppresive – simply don’t work.
But so far the talk in the mainstream press has completely bypassed the question of how to solve our financial system and rather focused on propping it up.
In the United States, the governments hopes to solve a problem brought on by bad debt by, you guessed it, lending more money from foreign investors: $150 billion worth.
In Canada, they decided $60 billion in tax cuts that will primarily benefit the rich, and which will likely lead to deficiets and thus service cuts, is the best way to keep a dying system on life support.
These, obviously, won’t work.
But in the discussion of how to fix the system that is beginning to pop up, we must avoid the temptation of quick-fix regulations. While regulations do a good job of keeping a malicious dog on a leash, they don’t change the nature of the beast.
The major banks will still try to dupe lenders into taking expensive loans with hidden fees, and will do whatever they can to pass off the risk to others on the open market – only they will have to work around whatever new rules are cocked up.
They will do this just like every other sector continues to employ similar tactics to achieve their goal of higher profits at any cost.
It’s tough to stay true to solving the larger problem when you’re out of work or facing lower wages and the government is holding a big wad of cash to ease your worries, but just accepting that cash means accepting your position at the bottom of the heirchy. We will all be back in this situation in a few years, and as the markets grow ever more complex, the fallout will grow ever more severe.
The only permanent solution is to change the system that created the problem in the first place
1 response so far ↓
Alex // February 29, 2008 at 9:11 pm
This article is quite good. Short, sweet, to the point. Very nice.
However, I think I might change one word:
You use the term “laissez-faire economic policies” in the first sentence. Laissez-faire economics, and capitalism itself, is not a policy. While you correct this later, I think it would be best if this word was changed, because using the word “policy” implies that it is something that can be fixed by “saviors” from above as opposed to a sudden shift in power from the bourgeoisie to the working class (i.e. revolution).
I know you’re not a reformist, and that you’re not trying to sell the illusion that capitalism can be gradually reformed away. Your position is made clear by this sentence:
But the first sentence is the one that will hook readers, and although it is a small error, I think it would be best if the words “laissez-faire economic policies” were replaced with something like the one word “capitalism.”