The COVID Death No One is Talking About
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.
OK, I read it all. Good one, El Jeffe! Now her eis my Master’s Degree?
1I know I’ve seen that chart before.
Business class at Adelphi or Fr. Guido Sarducci’s
Five Minute University? I can’t remember those years
very clearly.
Nice write up JJ.
One more like that and we can get a Masters.
2Got a minute?
Well this seems like a somewhat scholarly bit of work for this blog, but well done professor.
Libertarianism has strong appeal to young people who crave simple solutions to complex social and economic issues. I avoid arguing with them but if it isn’t avoidable I recommend pointing out an obvious fact that they never area able to answer.
Which is: There will always be someone with power and capital that is more than willing to trade your long term interests for their short term interests.
To visualize it imagine spending five years pursuing a lawsuit to collect damages because you are now living in a toxic waste dump. During that time you will be spending lots of money paying lawyers to argue with the defendant’s lawyers. During that time and even after you get some sort of settlement the guy who profited off of destroying your environment has been living in the Bahamas with his cigarette boat and new trophy wife.
That is basically what you will get when Trump leaves office.
3Speaking of victims, how is Congersman Louie G. doin’?
Can I hope he is in an agony of doubt, self-recrimnation and regret?
4Harry Eagar, that would require the mental capability to do those things.
5My minor was economics and I thoroughly agree El Jefe. I deviate somewhat in the blame – we in Texas have spent generations starving our public education system. The classes I had a hundred years ago are non-existent now and as far as any give and take in the classroom, non-existent as well due to overcrowding. Teachers are now retiring or going to private tutoring and Governor Dithers wants schools to reopen. I must be living on another planet from our Austin/DC overlords.
6Yup. Good piece. One myth about totally deregulated Free market capitaliism is that competition thrives.
7When the reality is that without government protections corporations destroy their competition to get monopolies.
Libertarians would like us to believe that markets are the ideal solution for all problems economic, and that they function best with the least state interference. The truth is that, historically speaking, there have never been economic markets without states. In fact states and their rulers are the origin of markets.
How is that possible? Say the king wants to employ 1,000 soldiers. Housing, equipping, training, etc. all these people would be a logistical nightmare. The king cuts the difficulty by paying the soldiers in his official currency (call it “crowns”), then taxing the entire population, payable in crowns. People create the market to serve the soldiers…and themselves…so they can get crowns. (Note: taxes are what make crowns valuable).
If that weren’t enough the inevitable destination of libertarianism is feudalism. See https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-hidden-internet-can-t-be-a-libertarian-paradise
Libertarians have a naive “philosophy” that they are at liberty. The truth is just a little different. For one thing, they want to enforce property rights absolutely.
8For libratarianism, communism, and democracy to work they ALL need the same things…bright, intelligent, rational, thinking, empathic, people in the system. This is why russia was NEVER a communism, america was never a democracy, and libratarianism will never work. The trumpig is the symbol of the exact opposite of those qualifications.
9P.p.7
Too true. Indulge me with a letter to the editor of my local paper that was published yesterday. It was inspired by one of the paper’s regular columnists who called Russia a Communist country, which is a nearly universal belief in the reddest county in Maryland.:
The news may not have reached Mt. Airy yet, but — contrary to Rick Blatchford’s column — Russia is not a Communist country any more. Has not been for three decades.
Mr. Blatchford may have been misled by the name the press has given to Russian capitalists: oligarchs. But what is an oligarch but a man controlling immense capital?
You could make a good argument that Russia is now the most capitalist country. Russia’s capitalists are unconstrained by rights of workers, by pesky environmental or financial regulations or by enforceable contracts. It is a capitalist paradise.
10Spot on, Harry Eager #10!
Also, history is not going to be kind about much that the US has done in the last four-or-so decades. Many a PhD thesis will be written, tracing the roots of our Fascist takeover through those decades. “All for me and mine, and tough luck, everybody else.” has been the theme song of at least one political party for a long time, now.
11I also minored in econ, and one critical item missing from this list is a means of peacefully resolving disputes between the parties. this would be our formal legal/judicial system. it’s a lot cheaper (and cleaner) to litigate business disputes, than it is for every business/customer to have its own private army to resolve them. guess what pays for that formal judicial system to exist and operate effectively?
12EJ, how would you categorize Trumpf’s main economic “expert advisor” Larry Kudlow (besides crazy)?
13cpinva has the right of it.
The rule of law, and thus enforecability of contracts without resorting to clan feud, paid assassins, or private armies, is another requirement.
There are markets without the rule of law; it’s a mistake to call them “free”.
14Minnesota’s primary earlier this week showed just how far past Libertarianism Minnesotans and most are.
The turnout was the highest it’s been since 1970. That’s FIFTY YEARS!
4 old white guy incumbent state legislators lost. One lost to a young Somali American man. The other 3 lost to young women. Two of them were Black, one white. None of the votes were close.
In addition, Ilan Omar handily beat her opponent, a nice, very moderate Ethiopian American gentleman I’m acquainted with. That one wasn’t close either.
This is not the election of 1988 or 2004. This election belongs to women, LGBTQ and BIPOC. It belongs to all those marvelous young BLM people who were beaten by cops; those Portland moms who were teargassed, shot with those dirty rubber bullets, beaten and arrested; all the women and girls who marched on 1/21/2017; the Me Too people; and all the BIPOC and LGBTQ who have been treated like dirt for centuries.
Jen McEwen is one of the young women who unseated an old white man in Tuesday’s Minnesota primary. She said, “What that movement represents is a shift in our politics toward caring for one another.”
Libertarianism, or, Idontgiveadamnism, can go take a flying f*ck.
15@Steve – Kudlow is a hack. Loud mouth, typical for CNBC. Remember he’s the one who breathed life into the Teabagger movement back in 2010. His opinion aren’t worth a bag of manure. BTW, CNBC is much more informative with the sound turned off.
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