Ayn Rand (and Ron Paul) Madde This Nation More Selfish

And then we'll make murder and theft illegal, and corporations will run everything!!!1! Unless the government saves us from ourselves!!!1!!

 

You wish bromeo.

There's no middle ground with L. Rond - it's this kind of stark, nice, direct black and whiteness that his fervent internetbrigades appreciate him for.

Abolishing the SEC, CFTC, MSRB etc and all federal securities laws requires no rhetorical slippery slope - it's exactly what he has proposed, to a word. Same for any number of issues.

Consequences, of course, will never be the same. And that's the joy of dealing with Paulistas.

 

These agencies do try to provide the oversight with which they were created for, but at the same time, it's almost an impossible mission for them. The amount that they have to review is far too immense and large corporations have the ability to lobby their own agenda first. What these agencies do provide is a barrier for new entry into the market place and a false sense of security which leads to the Madoff's and Enron's of this world and people shaking their fist wondering why the government didn't catch what they should have seen in the first place.

Also, SamFisher, you mentioned that my response was "silly" because there was no reason for them to back a losing horse. I do see Huntsman with 12 billionaires supporting his campaign. I would think his chances of winning the GOP candidacy are quite a bit less then Dr. Paul. Regardless, the tone of your responses needs to be calmed down a bit. Don't assume that people have made up their minds about who to vote for. If this discussion changes my mind, it will be because of an intellectual debate that provided me with an epiphany. Calling Paul supporters "dupes" doesn't really add any credibility to your argument. Remember, ultimately, everyone wants what they assume is best for America in the long term.

 

But you'd never actually consider those ramifications. You'd just regurgitate what you've heard from somebody else on the subject -- something along the lines of, "L. Ron is nuts!11! Getting rid of those agencies would spell doom for the world economy!!!1 L. Ron wants us to be slaves to corporations!!1!" In all seriousness, the Federal government has a role in regulating interstate trade, so I'd think that the SEC, or something like it would be a legitimate role for the executive branch to take on. For me, its moreso an issue of what sort of regulating the SEC (and other agencies) are doing.

 

I know the ramifications full well, bro-manji, certainly way better than some silly confederate romantic OB GYN from Galveston with a stiffy for Atlas Shrugged, and better than you too.

But you don't really have to know them that well. It's just common sense in many cases to know that it's just plain idiocy to suggest, in plain English, that things like national exchange regulation and broker-dealer compliance is more efficiently done by 50 state governements and common law fraud statutes.

I mean that's not even a viable suggestion. it's not even remotely an answer, and a problem hasn't even been identified.

Ron Paul saying we need to abolish the SEC and repeal all federal securities laws is like saying "how do we solve this problem of rabbits eating our crops?....We need to ABOLISH PUMPKINS and SET OUR BARN ON FIRE, then do jumping jacks on the fence"

Wow, I wonder how they'll recoup that $2000 investment!

The problem is not in your numbers, friend, it's in the implications you are trying to draw from them. Which are stupid.

 

You really didn't even need to say this.

I think this is the first time you've ever responded to me with something substantive. I agree with you on this. Paul is wrong about corporate fraud being regulated at the state level. It is an interstate trade issue. If the individual states had their own particular regulation, interstate trade would be irregular. It doesn't make much sense for the federal government not to have a role in this. They are Constitutionally empowered to do so, and it helps regulate interstate trade.

 

Boom. Intellectual discourse! Thank you sirs.

No one is going to agree 100% with any candidate. I think we agree that corporations left to their own vices would lead to a corrupt colluded system, but at the moment it looks like the regulatory commissions aren't built to help the little person. Rather I see the little person hurt in two ways. First, the little person as a small business. Regulations become so difficult that at a smaller scale it becomes almost impossible to enter the marketplace because the fixed cost is so high. Second, the little person as a consumer, because lobby groups are so influential special considerations are put in place to where dumping, etc is tolerated. Ultimately, self-policing in non-profit organizations brings the issues to the forefront, but from my biased viewpoint, you see the different regulatory commissions making more "blunders" then "finds" these days so in the least a bit of a revamp and some transparency is needed.

 

The specific regulations I'm discussing here and throughout this thread really have nothing to do with the mythical small-business entrepreneur of populist imagination - things like broker-dealer compliance and municipal securities regulation and monopolies don't really impinge on these mythical, noble smallbusinessers at all as they are specifically designed to exempt and/or protect them. Likewise, you'll find that most plaintiffs in downstream antitrust direct purchaser claims are small businesses themselves.

And as for things like environmental regulations, the barrier to entry to building a power plant isn't the extra few tens of millions compliance will cost, it's the billions of dollars it costs to enter the market in the first place. I coudl go on but no real need here.

 

Pretty funny!

 

glynch, you so cray.

 

Thank you for this bit of knowledge. I'm obviously not as competent on this subset of the subject matter as you are. Could you give me a real life scenario where this plays out? I'd love to ask someone more knowledgeable then me on the subject matter, how a non-regulatory system would still work based on the scenarios you outlined.

I'm assuming they're going to say something along the lines that private entities can do a better job policing these types of transactions then public entities as was done in the past, but I'm sure they'll give more detail and real life examples.

 

I don't want to make a new thread, but this was a good read on the delusion being force-fed to "conservatives" and then co-opted by the radical anarcho-capitalists of the libertarian social politic:

Much more at the link - good read.

 

The social reality.

Rest of the article is fairly uninspiring, but the quoted bit above is the simplest retort ever to those advocating Rand-ian GOP policies.