You are mistaken my friend. There ARE people who want to expand the government. We call them The Government. They give themselves more and more power. This is true and will always be true. That is why we need to place strong limits on the power of these people. They have proven on many many occasions that they are going to abuse their power.
My outmoded style of government paved the way for your country, sir. If there were not strict limitations placed on our government at the outset, the country would have imploded.
You’re all over the place here. Originally you said “voters have opted for an expanding government” but now the government itself?
At any rate, you’re right. People can and will abuse power, governmental or otherwise, if given the opportunity. Which is why we have various checks and balances built into the system. Paul’s (and other libertarian’s) plan would dismantle much of those protections.
Well, you’re assuming I’m American, which happens to be right, but is not something you should just assume.
As for your “outmoded style of government”, it’s hard to respond since you haven’t actually defined what that it. But I will say that times change and it’s easy to look at the past through rose-tinted glasses. Sure, the early US helped set the stage for the development of modern liberal democracies, and a part of that was those checks and balances mentioned above. But that doesn’t mean we need to throw out everything that’s happened since.
Could you be more specific? or is it just generally looming danger?
Deflated. Whatever. Congratulations for catching a mistake on my part.
Inflation means the amount of stuff money can buy is less. The gold standard won’t prevent this.
Also: learn to use multi-quote. It’s fun and easy!
First of all, the whole point of a gold standard is that the government is fixing the price of gold by fiat. If the government controls the price, they control the industry. I’d rather let the free market decide the price of gold, just like it decides the price of everything else, but this idea is apparently anathema to libertarians.
Second of all, there’s not enough gold in the country, by a factor of 10, to support a gold standard in the current economy. So trying to go onto the gold standard would be a huge and traumatic shock to the economy. Inflation’s fine, when it happens gradually (like, say, over the course of a century), but when it happens overnight, things crash and burn.
The United States went off the gold standard in 1934 or 1973 depending on how you define it. The Great Depression of 1929 happened while we were still on the gold standard. So did the Panic of 1796-1799, the Recession of 1802-1804, the Depression of 1807-1810, the Recession of 1812, the Depression of 1815-1821, the Recession of 1822-1823, the Recession of 1825-1826, the Recession of 1828-1829, the Recession of 1833-1834, the Recession of 1836-1838, the Recession of 1839-1843, the Recession of 1845-1846, the Recession of 1847-1848, the Recession of 1853-1854, the Panic of 1857-1858, the Recession of 1860-1861, the Recession of 1865-1867, the Recession of 1869-1870, the Panic of 1873, the Depression of 1873-1879, the Recession of 1882-1885, the Recession of 1887-1888, the Recession of 1890-1891, the Panic of 1893-1894, the Panic of 1896-1897, the Recession of 1899-1900, the Recession of 1902-1904, the Panic of 1907-1908, the Panic of 1910-1911, the Recession of 1913-1914, the Recession of 1918-1919, the Depression of 1920-1921, the Recession of 1923-1924, and the Recession of 1925-1927. And this is the economic wonderland you want us to return to?
Have there been any recessions since 1934? Yes, but fewer and they’ve been much shorter in duration. Why? Because we now have government financial institutions that take steps to end recessions. And we haven’t had any panics or depressions.
And the GDP during the period since 1934 had increased 1650%. In constant dollars. That’s a sixteen fold increase in wealth.
Well, for many reasons, what has come before isn’t exactly what he’s proposing. The primary reason being that he hasn’t really defined what regulation would be placed on his competitive currency idea. IIRC, even when we did have a mishmash of privately issued currencies, the states regulated them. Given his bent for deregulation, I expect that the former systems that we abandoned would be the paragon of stability in comparison.
Still doesn’t matter. There are pools of buyers and sellers. No matter how you slice it, all the money from the buyers’ pool winds up in the sellers’ pool. Scrupulously avoiding buying from Chavez just means Chavez sells just as much oil for the same price to Japan or whatever.
You seem to have a decent grasp of how corporations operate, but you seem to be blanking on the role of the actuary and the attorney.
If a drug company produces a drug on which they can make a profit of $10 billion, but the actuary and the attorney pop in to tell them that when the drug starts killing grandmas all across the country, they’ll end up shelling out $2 billion in settlements … guess what?
That’s right, the price of a bottle Fuckitol goes up by $5 to cover the cost, and Dr. CEO gets another yacht.
If they don’t want LAWSUITS? Why would they have any fear of lawsuits? In the absence of data that implicates a product in an injury, an army of good lawyers (which could arguably be cheaper than an army of scientists), a product liability lawsuit could be trivially easy and cheap to defend.
What’s his attitude on the general subject of tort reform? Does he tend to be inclined to make it easier or harder to bring a product liability complaint before the courts?
Yuh, let’s get rid of all those “onerous” regulations!
It’s baffling how a physician like Ron Paul can be so clueless/heedless about regulatory measures that protect public health. Here’s a guy who’s against mandatory public immunizations, wants to allow unpasteurized milk to be shipped all over the country and is for curtailing what limited powers the FDA already has to prevent false health claims for “dietary supplements”. A belief that the FDA is not needed to assure safe and effective pharmaceuticals is pitifully naive.
Actually, this scenario only works if you think that everyone involved in developing and marketing new prescription drugs is a sociopath who doesn’t care about his/her own health or that of their relatives and friends.
A more realistic scenario without FDA oversight is that we get more new drugs that do not add significantly to treating disease, are more expensive (but not more effective) than available generics, and have serious side effects that do not come to light until the drugs have been on the market for awhile. Don’t expect U.S. or foreign manufacturers freed from regulation to take all the precautions they now do with pre-market testing mandated by the FDA.
And why does Ron Paul think that we (via health insurance) should have to pay for every single drug that manufacturers want to jam onto the market? The FDA provides at least some control over this; the “health freedom” types have the motto that Anything Goes (see the saga of Avastin for advanced breast cancer to understand more about this).
Why would I ever think that a corporation wouldn’t give a shit about nameless, faceles little guys who can’t do a thing to touch their bottom line? That’s crazy talk.
It’s already possible to measure them objectively. The costs and benefits would look different - it might be simpler to evaluate the financial side, for example - but this doesn’t make sense.
I don’t see how eliminating programs like Medicare and Social Security can cause more harm than continuing them, nevermind the concept of throwing a tenth of the federal workforce out of a job. These programs are expensive and there are elements that could work better, but the costs of not having them (in terms of lost lives, reduced productivity, and the humanitarian side) are also high and shouldn’t be ignored.
Right, the only people who want the government offer additional programs are The Government, and they are EVIL. Vote for Ron Paul so that he may slay the dragon.
I believe it should be between the patient and the doctor to decide what’s good to put into your body. If there are no convincing trials on a particular drug, dont’ use it. There’s no reason a private company couldnt step into the void here. A little outside the box thinking is required.
Will – you seem like you’re quite fond of Congressman Paul. I have a question that no Paul supporter has ever been able to give me a straight answer to. It is a little off-topic, but I hope you won’t mind too much.
We all know about the offensive, racists things that were written in the Ron Paul Report, the newsletter that was published in his name for the better part of what, two decades or so. Paul says that he was not aware of the racist articles, and that he fired the employee who was responsible for them.
Some people say that Ron Paul must have known about the racist articles, implying that he is actually a prejudiced person. I’m inclined to take him at his word that he did not know about them, because there’s not much in the way of conclusive evidence that he did, or did not, know about them.
But clearly, if someone is publishing a newsletter with one’s own name on it, someone should know what the contents are – especially considering that it was not just one offensive article, it was numerous ones. Which leads me to believe that Congressman Paul wasn’t fit to run an eponymous newsletter if he had no idea what the contents were. If he cannot effectively manage the Ron Paul Newsletter, why would he be fit to run a government?
It is. And you should know are also free to decide to treat your cancer with St. John’s Wort or vitamin C or homoepathic nonsense or anything else sold over the counter at the drugstore or grocery. Those things have rarely been tested, and they certainly aren’t tested in scientifically controlled studies, so for all you know, they could work. Don’t you feel like a better informed consumer already?
While I think doctors should be in a position to judge those trials themselves, I don’t know that they are. Even under the current system, companies can hide the results of unfavorable studies for major products. I think you’re going to have a hard time with that if there’s nothing requiring them to release any studies.
There are already private companies that help drug companies set up and run clinical trials. What are you proposing they do?
Voters continually put in place officials who opt to enlarge the government. Its not hard to get.
How will libertarian’s dismantle checks and balances? The Constitution is the ultimate check on federal government. A liberal interpretation of it has caused expansion of the gov’t’s duties.
Maybe you’re talking about regulations? They’re for private industry bud. They don’t check federal power, they are an exercise of it.
The folly of my assumptions should give you no grief.
No but some of it, like out of control militarism, should be thrown out. I’'m not advocating a return to 19th century republican democracy. I feel that government involvement in certain areas causes more harm than good. For example, subsidies and corporate welfare should be completely done away with.
That’s the basis of our argument I believe. Your side contends government should protect us from everyone and everything all of the time. I believe we should err on the side of liberty, and limit the gov’t’s functions.