Re: Leftists knocking Friedman ?

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:00:06 -0600, "John Galt"
<whoisjohngalt@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>I would personally say that the goverment has a role in mitigating the 
>negative effects on certain members of society whilst such "lurching" is 
>taking place, to the extent that they are reasonably able (thinking about

>the avoidance of moral hazard, here, but there are other considerations);

>but if the goverment intervenes in the process itself, they tend to
distort 
>the market and ultimately accentuate the negative effects that one was 
>hoping to mitigate.


Government also has the ability to dampen the swings of the pendulum
in this process, resulting in more stability.  Stability is a good
thing, under valued by too many laissez faire types. They focus on the
boom and ignore the crash or right it off as an economic
inevitability, a culling of the herd if you would. But stability
allows planning and more accurate planning. And that results in more
investment and more productive investment. 

(This stability is one of the reason markets and the economy perform
better under Democratic administrations that push regulatory policies
that increase stability. ) While the very richest don't get to make
the massive profits we see under GOP de-regualtory and nonenforcement
policies, overall the stability allows most of the rest of the herd to
move forward to greater growth. Thus airline deregulation may allow a
surge of profitable small airlines for a time, in the long run we get
numerous failures, bankruptcies, and abandoned obligations.