I agree that Government intervenes into market; however, it is this intervention that has caused our current economic crisis. Show me one aspect of the subprime loan crises that was not distorted by Government.

Government collusion, corruption, distortion and interference into the market created these concentrations of power that you rail against. Government colludes with business to create monopolies, not Laissez Faire. We demand a firewall between Government and business like the separation of church and state.

We all live in “mixed” economies, with various degrees of socialism and capitalism. The opposite of Communism (a fully collectivist slave state) is Laissez-faire (inalienable individual rights with absolute economic liberty). Hayek’ The Road to Serfdom starts with the “mixed: economy of America, then leads to Canada and Norway, eventually arrives to Zimbabwe, and ends with North Korea.

Unfortunately, the U.S. already has too much socialism and Big Government oppression. We are saying “Enough!” Let’s turn this economy around and return to enjoying to the economic freedoms and constitutional liberties that our founding fathers intended.

In capitalist system, free people keep the majority of their earned wealth. Of course, Obama is advocating an European style socialist system where Government collects and the reallocates approximately 50% of a nation’s GDP. You are merely ignorantly indoctrinated into feeling that our socialism is good because Obama’s Big Government socialism is nice. But pigs are pigs. Socialism is immoral here, there and everywhere, Sam I am.

The US system is qualitatively better than the European welfare state. We reject the European Nanny State model as oppressive and inferior to our freer market system. No! We do not want to become Germany, France, Canada, Zimbabwe or Venezuela. We want to retain our liberty and economic freedom because American liberal democracy coupled with free market capitalism is superior to the welfare State. America is already the most prosperous freest, most powerful nation in world history. Obama would destroy America for a more egalitarian society.

Don’t give me any apples to oranges statistics where you compare a nation of 300 million to a tiny country, because such comparisons are meaningless. Even Canada, for example, is able to finance its welfare state ONLY thru selling goods to the capitalist economic engine. 80% of Canada’s economy is based on selling things to America. Destroy the economic engine, and you destroy the socialist parasites taking from the free market. Obama creates parasites, and destroys wealth creators.

Good left-wingers: Defend progressive economics with research, logic and facts; or admit your dogma is inferior. I challenge you to provide empirical research supporting Keynesian economics, interventionism and/or wealth redistribution. You cannot because your dogma is false.

Hurry! Run! He's a socialist!

You have no idea, what a thread of good luck you're hanging by. You think it's all solid, your family, your job, your purpose in life. It's actually extremely frail. You can fall quite a distance with nothing stopping your fall, and only your own screams to keep you company on the way down. Interventionism's purpose is meant to protect you from the worst (people, events), despite yourself.

Smores, Unchecked free markets incline toward monopolization, since those already at the top use their wealth and power to accumulate more wealth and power, to the detriment of mid-level players (often bought out or pushed out) and ordinary laborers (who you think are somehow able to compete with the titans of industry on an equal playing field). You give the rather sad impression of someone wholly unfamiliar with the theoretical arguments and, better yet, historical examples that would reveal your "philosophy" for the simplistic and dangerous twaddle that it is. Free markets have some virtues and some vices. Surely the goal should be to enjoy the former while minimizing the latter. Free markets are never really "free," since they exist within a culture and society governed by a political and legal order. This order establishes the rules and institutions that allow markets to function. They do not operate in some abstract space. Free markets are also highly artificial, that is, they were the product of particular changes consciously undertaken at a particular time and place (basically the dismantling of lingering feudal structures in early modern Europe). Free markets are not products of nature. Since free markets are always both historically contingent and made possible by the values of a particular political order, there is absolutely no reason why that political order can't regulate them to help serve other ends (e.g., a progressive income tax). "Redistribution" is a meaningless phrase and a red herring. Wealth is always being distributed. There's no base condition. Let the rich do whatever they want and hope for the best, then wealth will be redistributed, as it has been over the past thirty years, into the coffers of the rich. Tax them more and use that money to help provide for the health and education of other citizens, and that wealth is then redistributed back out of their hands. When viewed against the larger backdrop of American politics over the past hundred years or so, Obama is basically a moderate. He's no more of a socialist than LBJ was. That you can't recognize this tells me everything about your grasp of history, theory, and current events. cheers, ribalding

The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: <link> Even today, most important enduring monopolies or near monopolies in the United States rest on government policies. The government’s support is responsible for fixing agricultural prices above competitive levels, for the exclusive ownership of cable television operating systems in most markets, for the exclusive franchises of public utilities and radio and TV channels, for the single postal service—the list goes on and on. Monopolies that exist independent of government support are likely to be due to smallness of markets (the only druggist in town) or to rest on temporary leadership in innovation (the Aluminum Company of America until World War II).

Simple-minded feelers claim intellectual complexity by ascribing everything to the balanced center. Complex thinkers know there are truths. Ignoramuses feel everything is relative. But I’m not in the mood now to discuss why moral relativity is a false dogma; however, no more feelings. Support your dogma with research, as I have.

Tell me: How do the poor create the wealth that you claim is being appropriated by the wealthy?

You have your false dogma; you spout about your intellectual complexity; now prove to me you can reason. Think through your dogma, as I have done with my philosophy.

Have you really never heard of the "Gilded Age"? Rockefeller? Morgan? Carnegie? The truth and desirability of whether some monopolies are artifically supported by government policies is probably worth debating, but it says nothing about the inherent tendencies of unchecked markets toward monopolization in the real world (as opposed to in a textbook or an abstract model). Marx understood this better than most, and if events didn't follow the logic he foresaw, it's because capitalism proved more capable of reforming itself than he thought -- reforming itself through smart, limited government regulation and oversight of the sort you so desperately want to remove. Oligopolies are perhaps more likely in many markets than pure monopolies, but it doesn't change the fact that it all leads to the steady concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. We live today in a state that is basically an oligarchy by democratic means, and I certainly have reservations about the corporatist mingling of government and business, but a radical free market agenda is hardly the solution. The things it would fix would be outweighed by corresponding evils. You ignore about two hundred year's worth of counter-evidence, exercise a sort of pseudo-pedantry when it comes to evidence you like, and are ultimately impervious to real argument (I've read plenty of your previous posts). I have no idea where your muttering about relativism (especially moral relativism) is coming from, unless perhaps you equate relativism with complexity and nuance. And if you're unable to see examples of economic exploitation in our world, to say nothing of the ways in which great disparities in wealth imperil political freedoms, then I rather doubt I could make you see them. Have fun with your "dogma" -- a word whose overuse in your writing I find very telling -- and feel free to write whatever you want. I won't be responding.

“Marx understood this better than most”

Another left-winger who uses Marxist reasoning to paint his world view.

I wonder why intellectually complex left-wingers claim intellectual loyalty/kinship to monsters such as Marx and Mao? (For example, Obama’s Communication Director’s favorite philosopher is responsible for the death of 60 million Chinese.) Is it nuanced understanding that contributes to progressives idolizing socialist monsters?

Marx understood nuance; and his progressive followers have caused 140 million worldwide deaths with hundreds of millions more forced into perpetual socialist caused misery and poverty. Socialist caused human suffering and destruction is a complex, nuanced issue; moreover, rationalizing that human destruction is complex, “liberal” and so progressive.

Of course, the left-winger ran away from this debate because he could not defend his flawed dogma. Accordingly, I’ll end this thread with the question, why do all the greatest mass murderers on Earth say they are socialists?

Is there another complex nuanced progressive, who wishes to address this quandary?