Over the last 3 years and 7 months, Trump’s incompetence and abject corruption has laid bare many weaknesses in our democratic republic which used to be known as the leader of the free world. 5 million Americans have been sickened by it and over 160,000 have died because of it. The one death we don’t talk about, though? The myth that Libertarianism as a system of government works. Libertarianism doesn’t work, has never worked, and never will work. The problem is that a huge number of Americans and the majority of Republicans have bought into the myth, and that buy-in is literally causing one COVID death every 80 seconds.
Libertarianism now dominates the rhetoric of all Republicans, and many idiots like Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott spout bullshit in a continuous stream. The ideology puts all responsibility on individuals, mistakenly asserting that the “free market” drives all aspects of society, therefore society will be most efficient in that free market. That’s nonsense, of course, but that’s what they believe. The problem is, though, that people who believe in this ideology have no actual understanding of markets and how they work. Free markets require 5 factors to exist: The first two factors are parity between buyers and sellers where negotiations are on level ground. There also needs to be active competition within the market. The last two factors are readily available alternatives to buyers and low barriers to entry of new entrants.
These are the only conditions where a market can thrive and call itself “free”. So, let’s look at a market, say, healthcare. In the US, healthcare is employment based. Your company determines your health care plan not you. If you don’t have employment based healthcare, it’s worse; insurance companies have so much power that they dictate what you get and what you pay. There’s no price negotiation as they wheel you in to the emergency room. How about utilities? Again, not a free market. States like Texas claim to have an open market in electricity, but the choices are limited and larger power companies dominate AND own all the infrastructure to provide electricity. Negotiation nibbles around the edges of a gigantic protected market. I could go on and on, but you get my point.
So, any objective person who understands markets knows that Libertarianism is the snake oil of politics, and will NEVER work. Ever. And that truth is playing out daily in our lives as the US economy continues to stumble from one virus outbreak to the next, hospitals overrun and businesses destroyed because Libertarians stupidly believe that Trump is playing out their fantasies that global health risks will just solve themselves. It’s the law of the jungle kind of thing, where only the strong survive.
Most other developed countries have figured out this problem. Most of Europe is open and back to some level of normalcy. Those countries, with functioning central governments, locked down early and longer (they listen to their scientists), beat back the pandemic, and are now open with some restrictions and rapid response to outbreaks. Those countries also kept paying the payrolls of companies who were shutdown, preventing the grief and crisis created by our own non-functioning government of passing out short term pittance and sporadically ordering businesses closed with ZERO support. It’s no wonder there is unrest among the unemployed and bankrupted businesses, but even those people tend believe the manure pumped out by Trump News Channel that it’s all somehow a hoax or the fault of the party out of power.
The actual fault for this continuing disaster lay in two places: Trump for sure, for his corruption, and incompetence; but worse, the Libertarians in the Congress and state governments who have abandoned their jobs and left individuals and companies to fend for themselves. History will not be kind to the handling of this pandemic.
