"Aye, free! Free as a tethered ass!" —W.S. Gilbert
"All the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and . . . the State should be abolished." —Benjamin Tucker
"You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." —James Madison
"Fat chance." —Sheldon Richman
Friday, May 06, 2011
TGIF: No Laissez Faire There
What’s often unappreciated is that writers sympathetic to the free market have disparaged the Gilded Age as broadly illiberal and contrary to the spirit of free enterprise.
When we buy something from another person, there's this underlying feeling, suspicion, that the seller purchased it at a much lower price (if we only knew where), and shrewdly, he's up to no good, the sneaky low-life.
We want to know what he paid for it and where he got it from. The seller is perceived in a very bad way. Sometimes, though, we really don't want to know (as if the seller is doing something crooked or immoral), we're just happy to be able to obtain the thing at an affordable price.
The democrats think its a crime the owner of an ATM machine would charge a user fee to withdraw money via the machine. They would create another law prohibiting these 'immoral' fees. How could any honorable person charge a fee to allow a relatively poor person to acquire HIS OWN money ?
It's a difficult thing to understand (completely) why torture is not allowed, and easier and convenient to just torture people to keep everyone safe. Ask Bill O'Reilly. The same for ATM's. ATM owners MUST charge fees or they won't be able to pay for the machines, maintain them, and then profit from owning them (the reason for providing them to the public in the first place.)
When we buy something from another person, there's this underlying feeling, suspicion, that the seller purchased it at a much lower price (if we only knew where), and shrewdly, he's up to no good, the sneaky low-life.
ReplyDeleteWe want to know what he paid for it and where he got it from. The seller is perceived in a very bad way. Sometimes, though, we really don't want to know (as if the seller is doing something crooked or immoral), we're just happy to be able to obtain the thing at an affordable price.
The democrats think its a crime the owner of an ATM machine would charge a user fee to withdraw money via the machine. They would create another law prohibiting these 'immoral' fees. How could any honorable person charge a fee to allow a relatively poor person to acquire HIS OWN money ?
It's a difficult thing to understand (completely) why torture is not allowed, and easier and convenient to just torture people to keep everyone safe. Ask Bill O'Reilly. The same for ATM's. ATM owners MUST charge fees or they won't be able to pay for the machines, maintain them, and then profit from owning them (the reason for providing them to the public in the first place.)