Racism Scopecreep in the Liberal Media

I was reading the blogroll over at Overcoming Bias and, naturally,
encountered quite a number of economics-focused blogs.

What struck me was how overtly anti-Obama and anti-regulation they were. One
after another they kept railing against regulation and government
intervention designed to control human greed and stupidity. The answer was
always the same: Let the market work!

I expect this from uneducated parrots that spew neocon rubbish all day, but
not from the high-end types linked to by Dr. Hansen. I don’t get it.

How can people not see that government performs a very-much needed function
when it puts rules and regulations in place? “Trust the consumer to make the
choice” is great up to a point, but then it just becomes stupid.

If we left it up to consumers, they’d be asking for shards of glass covered
in MSG. And there would be companies lining up to sell it to them.
Government is the reason they’re not allowed to. Tobacco products is the
perfect example.

One of these economists was talking about how it was so horrible that the
government was pushing the auto companies to go smaller and greener, and
about how people wanted SUVs so the market should be allowed to provide
them.

Bollocks.

People want monopolies. People want unsafe products. People want addictive
foods that’ll kill them in three years. People want SUVs with jet engines
that’ll use all the world’s oil within a generation.

People don’t look out for the long-term interests of the country, and of the
world. That’s what the government is supposed to do.

Getting off of oil, helping the environment, having safe foods, requiring
education for everyone through 12th grade–all things that are required by
government, and if we didn’t have them we’d be far worse off.

These fools worshiping the free market are living in a fantasy world where
everyone is educated and altruistic. What a bunch of idiots. ::