Bleeding Libertarianism

[chris_gerrib]

For thousands of years in Europe, if you visited a doctor and were running a fever, he would bleed you. He would use leeches or a knife and drain out some blood, then send you on your way.

This did no good, of course, and probably harmed the victim patient. More to the point, one would think that doctors would eventually notice this fact. After all, they'd bleed some patients to no avail, and other, unbled, individuals would recover. And occasionally the doctors had to infect the site of the bleeding, which would be obvious.

Yet doctors kept on bleeding people. They did this because they had a theory - a simple, attractive and plausible-sounding theory that said "if X do Y." They (in my opinion often willfully) ignored the fact that bleeding had no better results than just leaving the poor sap alone.

Thus unto libertarianism. We've seen what happens when you mix libertarianism and an industrialized society - the Gilded Age of monopolies and people dying on the street. The Gilded Age sucked so mightily that we got socialism and communism out of it.

But yet libertarians persist. They have a theory, and will pursue it unto the ends of the earth. From james_nicoll comes word that the current CEO of Sears is sacrificing his company on the altar of "competition."

Competition among divisions works in some companies, like GE. But nobody walks into a "GE Store" looking to buy a jet engine and ends up picking up an MRI machine as well. People do walk into Sears looking to buy a power drill and end up picking up a shirt as well.

If you are running one retail business with various departments of merchandise, cooperation is required. Somebody's got to be the loss leader to get people into the store. The Sears model as described makes about as much sense as having milk competing with beef in a grocery store, and both of them having to argue with the refrigeration department over who got billed for cooling.

The bleeding must continue until the patient recovers.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I saw it in a company I worked for.

The poster child for cost cutting in retail was Circuit City. The CEO was charged with improving the bottom line and noticed they were paying sales associates as much as $19.00 an hour, and that he could sack them all and get people on for $12.00 or less.

So he did.

He was feted as a genius and got a 7 figure bonus from the board.

Within a year they were out of business. They had not grasped that the only thing keeping their sales figures up over the internet was well paid sales people that could sell that people liked speaking to.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

The problem with such analogies is that they get turned around so easily. The notion that the only cure for the poison miscalled medicine, is still more of it, is the very essence and principle of the Federal Socialist American Worker's Party aka the Democratic Party as it has existed since FDR. Taxation and regulation are driving businesses out of business? Well, regulate them! And raise taxes to pay for it! We know what's best for you! We determine what's “fair,” and we'll tell you how to run your business to ensure “fairness”! And you'll pay us to do so!

So everything you buy is Made in China, and still the Federal Socialists point to the top-hat robber-baron capitalists (who built the prosperity they now subsist upon) as the Great Evil, and all the greying ponytails wax rhapsodic over how “fair” is Communist Cuba.

This is called, flunking your IQ test.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

So the answer is a race to the bottom in terms of workers conditions and rights?

Seriously I read daft nonsense like this and utterly despair of the USA. I'm sure that free market industrial monster that is Germany has all those well paid manufacturing jobs because of their low taxes, low rates of union membership, lack of social services and supports and lack of regulations...

Sure regulation can be damaging and so can taxes. But as a small business owner, I can't say I find them overly so.

Facts are stubborn things at the end of the day, and the reality is, the federal government really isn't that much of a problem nor impediment to business in the US. And at least, thanks in no part to the GOP, at least the US hasn't gone the route of Europe in the current crisis.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

Sounds more like a heresy of Objectivism than the real thing. Rand's good guys were not in direct competition with each other, so they cooperated.

Community Entry and My Comment Thereto

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

“An interesting lesson, for those willing to learn (http://vintage-ads.livejournal.com/4587980.html?thread=41667532).”