Principle Is Something, Its Not Everything
Saturday, 18 October, 2008 12:15
From: "Dr Sean Gabb"
I am in two minds. On the one hand, I'd like to see the whole rotten system collapse.
On the other, I have money invested long term that I'd rather not lose.
JC writes
Whoever told you the one about the man in the well was having you on.
The difference is that a good libertarian will help the person out. A liberal will call for the government to do something.
I was at dinner tonight with JS - yeah I know, name dropping, and since he had spoken in his little lecture about the credit crunch I did suggest that the banks ought to have been allowed to go to the wall and he too was outraged with pretty much the same line as you - the consequences would have been so terrible.
It seems to me that this is because of the way the UK handles bankruptcies. In the US the route to go I suspect would have been for those who could not meet their immediate liabilities to file for Chapter 11, let the system wind down relatively orderly and then to start from fresh with something new - eg specie currencies and proper loan brokering banks with unlimited liability.
The whole situation is utterly bonkers. There are apparently USD 61 trillion in these credit default swaps out there. That's one and a half times the ENTIRE global market capitalization, in fact it's more than all the financial assets, bonds, equities and government stock in issue around the world.
And we are trying to prop it up.
One thing J S did say, however, is that nobody knows what is going on.
Not Gordon, not Hank, not the bankers if truth be known.
They are throwing everything they can think of at it so that they cannot be accused of standing by and creating a 30's style depression through inaction.
That does not mean that they won't succeed in creating one through their actions, however.
And propping up such a bonkers system that has insured effectively every financial asset on the planet against default is madness.
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Sean Gabb Director, The Libertarian Alliance sean@libertarian. co.uk Tel: 07956 472 199 Skype Username: seangabb
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I strongly agree on both counts. This mess is the result of governmental and plutocratic *activity*, and as I have long contended, the more government and big business do the more evil they do - in our lives. Like Judas Iscariot they think that silver is more important than the soul, but unlike him they have not done the only right thing remaining to them. If the government was 'helping' the man down the well, they would accidentally push a few more down in the process. A disaster is looming because the cause of the crisis is the absence of spirituality, and money will never compensate for it. Indeed, the love of money is a principal cause of it.
Principle Is Something, Its Not Everything
Government economic policies got us into this mess. There is no reason to believe that government can get us out.
Its been pretty apparent from what I’ve heard & read that the libertarian solution to the current banking crisis has been to do nothing. In my perception it’s often been with libertarians that holding to principle is the best thing to do never mind whether the world’s going to shit.
Somebody once said to me the difference between a libertarian & liberal, is if there was a man at the bottom of a well then a libertarian would say the man was still able to move where as a liberal would think that was a ridiculous notion & give a hand to the man to get out of the well.
Personally I don’t believe that liberty is the environment where people having to barter or prostitute for root vegetables on the street. If the government hadn’t intervened then we’d of had of been having to deal with a global economic catastrophe. If the government hadn’t intervened as libertarians had wanted then there would have been an economic catastrophe which would of made the great depression look like a mild downturn, the consequence of such of a catastrophe would of been dire as in millions dead. I’m not sure principle is worth the cost of human lives.
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