Haiti Was An 'Unfettered Free Market' Paradise Before The Quake
-No regulation on business,
-No welfare
-No Old Age pension plan,
-No unemployment insurance programs,
-No public health care programs,
-No public education (to speak of),
-Almost no income taxation,
-Almost no corporate taxation
-No occupational health and safety regulation
-Small limited government
-No Worker's Compensation plan
... and yet, the main flaw in the ideology of 'unfettered free markets' is that when they fail ... it always takes public/'social' dollars to rescue the situation and clean up the mess.
-If The Free Market System Works So Bloody Well - Why Does The Corporate Sector Always Seem To Need Billions Of Public Tax Dollars To Bail The Bastards Out?
UPDATE:
And for those who argue in favor or Haiti's 'unfettered free market' .. please explain why Haiti has the lowest life expectancy and lowest literacy rate in the Western Hemisphere ... and an annual GDP of $733!
AMEN! Thanks for pointing this out. I'd love to hear the Ayn Rand crowd's response.
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Posted by leftdog | 2:30 pm, January 22, 2010
Corporations talk a good game, but they're not truly free marketers. Look at how they ask for government handouts and subsidies.
Cut them off!
Posted by Suzanne | 3:37 pm, January 22, 2010
The fact is an idealised classical liberal system won't work for the same reasons an idealised communist/marxist state won't work.
A classical liberal state requires that everyone be fully responsible for their own actions, and responsible for the actions of others that might affect them.
Never happen.
Social responsibility and demands for shared responsibility will arrive in the system somewhere and begin to distort it away from its pure form.
In a communist/marxist society people have to fully buy into the notion that they are never going to be in it for themselves - only for the collective.
Again, never happen.
Both are contrary to human nature.
That is why some variety of system that understands and facilitates both the needs of the collective and of the individual is the best.
Posted by jmburton | 4:03 pm, January 22, 2010
I've been trying to talk the Rushpubliscums I know into moving to Haiti for years. I've pointed out in Reconstitution many times (well before the quake) that Haiti is exactly the sort of place they all say they want to live in.
Isn't it a shame that their racism prevents them from enjoying their Utopia?
Posted by Jolly Roger | 7:32 pm, January 22, 2010