Friday, August 05, 2022

Because it's hard to trust libertarian opinion


 

3 comments:

John said...

Everyone should have a few libertarian bones in their body because governments all too often over reach and being skeptical towards powerful entities is a good disposition.

Blaming the US for Ukraine is bollocks. I am amazed at all the blather about it when it just comes down to an autocrat seeking to extend power and wealth.

GMB said...

They are right about Ukraine at least. But these are Washington libertarians. I wouldn't take them too seriously. Their economics never works in the real world since they want to have the rest of us face the cold wind of the market, but they want to subsidise the banks with fractional fiat. That kind of policy leaves a country in debt peonage, trade deficits and poverty everywhere its tried.

When South Korea had its 5 year plans it was getting richer and happier. Now its gone the Cato way and let the financiers plan everything and South Korea's growth has tanked, its inequality has gone through the roof, and its suicides are at the top of the world. But Cato's version of free enterprise is going to fail wherever its tried. If they were tried these on a 100% backed silver standard then sure they would work well. But they persist with their silliness in the face of empirical realty giving them the thumbs down.

GMB said...

"Blaming the US for Ukraine is bollocks."

No no John its their fucking fault. Staging a coup in 2014 is not cool. Then targeting civilians for the next 8 years is not okay either. Fighting on the wrong side of the war in Syria and creating ISIS is not okay either. That would have really pissed the Russians off.

You are too young to remember the glorious peace that Reagan and Gorbachev put together. Any subsequent Western behaviour that detracted from that is really not okay. Because the Soviet Union had the best geopolitical territorial situation in "Russian" history. All bases covered. They were fundamentally unassailable from a conventional point of view. And they let the wall fall, set Eastern Europe free, when they really didn't need to. The subsequent collapse of the USSR was more involuntarily of course. But a lot of the peacemaking was done with goodwill and what Reagan and Gorbachev did, by cutting out huge numbers of medium range nukes, is make the planet safer.

So when these ass-clowns came in and stole all the assets of the Soviets and gave it all to a handful of reprobates, then started moving NATO steadily eastward ... this is a huge betrayal that deserves a big comeuppance. I couldn't imagine more unhealthy juju than that. You couldn't manufacture worse karma than by this methodology.

Fortunately the Russians are so much more competent than the Americans they are barely breaking a sweat out there. I know it wasn't like that early on, and sure they've lost a lot of guys. But basically they are so powerful now that they won't start losing their shit and nuking everyone.