Yes, it's poorly defined but you want to stick to the extreme definition anyway.
How is this "extreme" in anyway?
Hyperinflation is something that happened in Bolivia or the Weimar Republic. Hyperinflation has an extreme definition because it is an extreme term. Galloping inflation or whatever economists decide to call it is far more realistic and still fairly dangerous.
And really, the press was going to call Swine Flu a pandemic; it's not like they are well known for their lack of exaggeration.
Libertarians are retarded, but you already knew that.
The philosophy is certainly.
Under Libertarian principles, union busting would be illegal. Individuals are free to from collectives, as long as they are voluntarily entered into. It would also be illegal to misrepresent your product (breach of contract) or to produce an unsanitary product (breach of contract, causing physical harm).
Breach of contract? Do you really think you can sue a drug company over a faulty product for breach of contract? They can simply stick a no-guarantee clause in there and get away with it easily.
Also, "union busting" does not have a nice clean methodology. Its not like companies
will blatantly fire all union workers and publicly announce this, but there are literally hundreds of ways for companies to pressure worker unionization. Saying "oh it will be illegal" doesn't fix anything because it is illegal now and it still happens.
Under Libertarian principles this would be countered by the above mentioned principles of contract and harm and by competitors operating in a free market.
We had all of this in 1890. It didn't stop anybody then, and it sure as hell won't stop anybody now. So its somewhat obvious we need more than just the above.
Then you will have to explain why deregulation resulted in lower consumer prices in both telecom and energy. And why new companies are entering these markets all the time.
Telecom
quality is abysmal and getting worse, broadband is ridiculously expensive in areas where telecos have a monopoly, and telecoms are essentially refusing to upgrade their infrastructure and want to initiate download caps and throttlign to artificially lower traffic. Just look at the US's broadband penetration if you think deregulation was a success.
Also, our power infrastructure, quite frankly, sucks and we desperately need a new one.
The assumption was that home prices would continue to rise. And any fair assessment of the mess leads back to the Feds slashing interest rates to prop up the economy after the dot-com bust, and congress writing tax laws to favor real estate investment and home ownership by low-income individuals.
If by fair you mean "I don't wnat to blame any financial companies whatsoever."
The assumption was that the
economy would rise (AIG had CDS insurance on more than just mortages), property value just being the largest chunk of it. This whole thing would have never happened if CDS and CDS insurances were properly regulated.
Sure, low interest rates and easy loans helped it. But they by no means caused it. (Especially the former, which is essentially standard practice in a recession)
Greed and shenanigans flourished under these artificial economic conditions. You want to make this illegal, but to achieve that congress would have to develop supernatural powers of foresight.
No, congress would have to develop a spine and start regulating the financial sector.
We can pretty much blame this one on bill: the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which basically made CDSs exempt from regulation. If this bill hand't been passed, AIG would not have been allowed to take an essentially insolvent position.
This is the same bill that caused that created the Enron loophole.
We can, and did, regulate the financial sector perfectly fine up until the 1980s or so. There is absolutely no reason why we can't do it again, rants about "ineffeciency" aside.
Yes, but this doesn't mean turning a blind eye when companies like Enron and Worldcom are defrauding investors. Libertarians do not say that vigilance by regulators is bad,
They just say that regulations are bad.
We are talking about a group that was against desegregation laws for buisnesses.
Sure. I give you Social Security and Medicare as examples of how socialism has failed. You counter with a sausage factory from the 19th century.
Jackytar
I can also point to about half of South America and half of the former USSR as examples of how capitalism has failed. Whoopdeedoo.
Also, Social Security and Medicare are both horrible examples. Medicare should really be universal healthcare and social security's main problem is that we tend to borrow massively from it (not to mention the problem the baby boomers bose), but we could easily make it work if we used the marginal tax rate from the 1960s. But that won't happen, given that people tend to start yelling about class warfare if we raise tax rates by a couple of percent.
