It's time for grown-ups to take back the country: Repetition #9001

I think we can safely say that reliance on government planning and regulation has failed. Politics has become too much of a power game and the presidency has been elevated to absurd heights of gang war, causing far too much disruption in the private sector. With politicians scrambling constantly to grab power, interference in economic matters is throwing calculation off and businesses will soon not have any comfort and assurance to plan long term.

The game has to be stopped unless we want to spiral further and further into the chaos of political battles. To quote Thomas Paine, we need to avoid "the splendid extravagance of court rioting at its [industry's] expense". Paine was writing about America's genius ability to cooperate among diverse people and national backgrounds to build and achieve without the heavy control of government -- "taxis" and "kosmos" as Michael Polanyi wrote about in Two Kinds of Order. We've had enough "taxis".

We the people need to take back government from the petulant children of politics and media and limit it to its proper functions. These power-drunk yahoos are reducing principles and long term planning to daily crises which require more government control after control has caused them (see Mises), so that the spinning confusion of the markets destroys the foundation of capitalism creating a constant emergency in need of government solutions.

What we lose sight of is how much better it could be if "kosmos" had been allowed to develop years and years ago, the free market left to its ability to produce and develop cooperation. Yet, government intervention at every turn evolved into a system of political gatekeepers and engineers whose puny plans are now being realized in confusion and panic, frustration and anger. And the media "awfulizes" it gleefully, praying for the proper salvation, their chosen knight of enlightened management -- the true guidance that we've all been waiting for to rescue us from the greedy villians of capitalism. A great story once, but the plot is weak, old and pathetically tired.

It is now time for grown-ups to stand up and say enough is enough. The experiment is over and all the rules that intended fairness have backfired. The damage done isn't irreparable because we are a strong and capable nation. The interference in the financial markets is the unfortunate result of government schemes to expand home ownership by engineering lenders to loosen requirements and suspend rational, financial judgement in favor of social considerations and now the system must  cleanse itself of the damage. McCain's recent indictment of lenders and Wall Street is typical of the misguided reaction from government. People know what happened. Too many people were given loans who couldn't pay them back. Government created the relaxed environment, cajoled lenders to avoid charges of racism, made it easy to keep lending, and are now bailing them out. This is just one example of social engineering and central planning gone awry.

Of course lenders and Wall Street deserve a part of the blame, but only to the extent they have partnered with social engineers and central planners. A blanket condemnation of predatory lenders and Wall Street investors misses the target by a mile.

We are faced with fundamental problems that require fundamental solutions and all the symptomatic finagling in the world won't fix this problem. We need a restructuring of government to limit its function to protection of rights and borders and dispute resolution. This is said over and over by freedom loving people, yet no one understands the urgent need to make it happen. The grown-up producers in the country and everyone who is sick of the mess will need to demand government limits.

Only those with a vested interest in the status quo of social engineering and central planning can plead in its defense. Any man or woman who has no vested interest in the status quo will answer the question -- Can local communities and a free society manage their own individual lives through cooperation better than a relative handful of social engineers and politicians in Washington DC? -- in the affirmative. Even west coast Birkenstock liberals will agree that freedom from control is best once they have looked at the big picture. The problem of giving up power to government control is that once you do, you can no longer pick and choose your masters. The indefensible position that proper government control by the proper party is okay crumbles when the wrong gang gets control and starts passing laws that interfere with your perceived right to act otherwise. If you want freedom then you can't give government the power to take that freedom away -- it's freedom for all or freedom for none, and that's why we need limits on government power. The minority or the majority of any given ideology is at risk when power is not limited -- if the wrong gang gains unlimited power then you understand the evil.

The spontaneous order created by myriad free choices in a market economy is superior to social engineering and central control, but it scares the hell out of controllers, so government planners sell their control through fear of inequality and injustice. They have no rational basis for their argument and all their plans have failed miserably, yet, they play on class envy and fear to keep the scheme going. They also keep the scheme going by co-opting groups who then have a vested interest in the status quo. People must tear away from this crippling dependency and find the courage to live in freedom. There is no other way.