# Did hippies cause the US financial meltdown?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [February 27, 2010, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698 "2010-02-27T22:40:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698/61 "2010-03-01T15:20:28Z")
> [@elucidator](#):
>
> You mean the government that keeps greed freaks from turning our rivers into chemical baths, or the government that sends our kids off to futile and pointless wars? Goes a long way when we consider whether or not government is groovy.
I think the point is that they are the same government. And the more power and money you give them the less they are like the first one and the more they become like the second.
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### Author:  [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698/62 "2010-03-01T15:50:37Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> From what I can tell, Liberals and Conservatives are “anti” and “pro” government when it suits them. They just believe the government should be doing different things. Do you think hippies want MORE government?
Hippies were against the govt. They tried to shut down Washington with sit-ins in front of the Pentagon, not paying “war taxes”, opposing the draft, supporting legalization of drugs, getting rid of Jim Crow laws, and many other things. My hippie sister opposes govt mandated vaccinations (argh), building codes, nuclear research facilities, and other govt functions.
Liberals, to some degree, have supported additional responsibilities for government, but they want other government functions to go away: tobacco subsidies, the DNS, the drug war, prohibitions of importing prescription drugs, building dams and changing the course of rivers, etc.
It was the conservatives who had the govt restrict what water fountains you could drink from, what schools you could attend, what kind of sex you could have and with who, the methods of birth control, what crops were legal to grow., and on and on. It was conservatives who supported drafting teenagers and sending them off to die in a remote jungle while exempting themselves with college deferments or boils on their asses.
We need to distinguish between things like the culture war, the religious divide, and rural vs urban attitudes from the real issues like the role of the Federal govt, the power among the three branches, and how much regulation of business is acceptable. The latter are the real liberal vs conservative principles, not whether NASCAR is better than F1 or whose God is the right one.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698/63 "2010-03-01T15:51:57Z")
Of course, only a very small minority of the Baby Boom generation ever were “hippies” however broadly defined.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698/64 "2010-03-01T15:52:44Z")
> [@elucidator](#):
>
> It has always amazed me that people who regard taking away someone’s money because you’re bigger and stronger is wrong, but outsmarting people is ok.
Define “outsmarting.” I don’t know anyone who thinks fraud is okay.
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### Author:  [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698/65 "2010-03-01T16:00:59Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> Define “outsmarting.” I don’t know anyone who thinks fraud is okay.
Except Enron, AIG, Madoff, the tobacco companies, and health insurance companies.
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### Author:  [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698/66 "2010-03-01T16:12:26Z")
> [@DanBlather](#):
>
> Except Enron, AIG, Madoff, the tobacco companies, and health insurance companies.
Don’t forget Goldman Sachs, Keith Brown & Root, and Enron either.
They used to call them “robber barons”. All the anti-trust and trust busting and Teapot Dome sort of stuff we learned in history class, was because of this sort of “business”. Dishonesty, monpolisation, fraud, predation, etc.
It’s just history repeating itself.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698/67 "2010-03-01T17:34:08Z")
> [@DanBlather](#):
>
> It was the conservatives who had the govt restrict what water fountains you could drink from, what schools you could attend, what kind of sex you could have and with who, the methods of birth control, what crops were legal to grow., and on and on. It was conservatives who supported drafting teenagers and sending them off to die in a remote jungle while exempting themselves with college deferments or boils on their asses.
I think most of the people spared by the college deferment weren’t conservatives. In fact, it was done away with just before the draft was done away with, partially to get those damn rich liberals in college drafted.
I’m rather fond of the college deferment myself, since it kept my ass out of the Army.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698/68 "2010-03-01T19:55:55Z")
> [@SteveG1](#):
>
> Don’t forget Goldman Sachs, Keith Brown & Root, and Enron either.
> They used to call them “robber barons”. All the anti-trust and trust busting and Teapot Dome sort of stuff we learned in history class, was because of this sort of “business”. Dishonesty, monpolisation, fraud, predation, etc.
>
> It’s just history repeating itself.
He said Enron and Goldman Sachs hasn’t been accused of doing anything illegal.
The companies and individuals \*\*DanBlather \*\*mentioned may have thought that fraud was ok, but society, regulators and law enforcement have a different opinion on the subject.
Also, the “robber barrons”, by which you presumably mean the likes of John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Milton S. Hershey, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt and many others actually built shit. Maybe you would have more respect for them if they built it out of hemp instead of iron and steel and unstoppable will (and I guess chocolate in the case of Hershey).
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> I’m rather fond of the college deferment myself, since it kept my ass out of the Army.
As my dad used to say, General Electric paid a lot better than General Westmoreland.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-hippies-cause-the-us-financial-meltdown/530698/69 "2010-03-02T02:16:26Z")
I think blaming the hippies for our financial problems is a sign of progress. In past times, we’d have been blaming the Jews or witches.
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