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Whither the Social Contract?

Started by TLF · 8 months ago

Geese are flying overhead. Leaves are orange. The election is over. A historic moment. And I will be optimistic, and hope that although the economics of the moment seems to be a return to things past… to the 1930s, it will turn out to be otherwise, for a good bit is known now that ... Continue reading »

5 comments

  • MikeRT

    8 months ago

    It would help if more free marketers were focused on enabling people to use their talents to make money. I've long predicted that an economically conservative group could make inroads in the inner city and similar places by making themselves the enemy of government bureaucrats who license things like hair styling, taxi services and such. There is a real populist angle to capitalism that has too long been ignored.
    reply
  • Peter

    8 months ago

    The free market didn't fail. Skewed policies failed. Having politicians trying to run the economy with unbalanced secondary goals (home ownership for example) failed.

    Home ownership rates should not be a government policy objective. Who cares if all the houses are owned by 1 person, but everyone else owns more productive assets? Perhaps I don't want to negotiate all my home maintenance, and would rather have a landlord deal with it.

    Anyway, couldn't quite get if you were serious, but saying free markets fail would imply the markets were free. And the bail-out is not the free market solution, having failed companies, well, fail, would be the free market solution. If we don't try the free market solution, how can we know it failed?
    reply
  • mwendy

    8 months ago

    This is excellent insight - especially as it pertains to empathizing with one's audience. We don't speak like they do, so why do we expect them to understand where we're going.
    reply
  • SolveigS

    7 months ago

    IJ, alas, is an isolated exception.
    reply
  • Gerald

    6 months ago

    You left out two problems of free-marketeers:

    - overreliance on the theories of unemployed, self-loving bloggers who believe they have something to add to discussions about communications to the public despite the massive weight of evidence to the contrary

    - privileging of comments from people who can't hack it in the real world and have little or no experience of success with anything like production of goods for which others will pay.
    reply

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