I read an article over on Making Light and it got me to pondering.
What libertarians (and the softheaded quasi-libertarian burghers of science fiction fandom, most of whom think the Economist is a voice of reason) need to learn is that capitalism is never about free markets, or in fact “freedom” of any sort; it’s about using the power of the state in order to make it easy for large amounts of capital to get together and rearrange the rules for its own convenience. “Privatize the profits, socialize the losses” is the logical consequence of capitalism’s prime directive. What we wind up with is socialism for the powerful, and tough shit for everybody else.
“Privatize the profits, socialize losses” seems to be a very apt description of Wall Street Capitalism. Every decade or two we seem to need to learn the lesson all over again. If rules and regulations get set up, the players learn to game the system while continually trying to undermine the regulators – Oh! they’re not needed anymore since we learned that lesson!
But I did start to ponder about the full matrix that the statement creates.
- Privatize profits ——socialize losses
- Socialize profits——socialize losses
- Socialize profits——privatize losses
- Privatize profits——privatize losses
- is straight Wall Street Capitalism
- is probably straight Socialism
- is never going to happen, or is it philanthropy?
- is complete anarchy/ true capitalism
I must continue my pondering.