IBD is not the only voice in favor of Paulson’s plan. Many cry out.
Some perceive the unprecedented opportunity to command vast resources to serve pet aims. Dreams are coming true for the many totalitarians among us.
Others fear the unwinding of this system from which they thought they had enriched themselves — even as it becomes clearer each day that such a painful process is necessary and unavoidable.
For example, Mark Cuban is all for the proposed actions because allegedly ” the economic future of this country depends on the funding of the plan Secretary Paulsen has proposed.”
I might agree with Mr. Cuban’s description, from a particular vantage point. The future of “this” economy may in fact depend on Paulson’s plan.
But do we really want to continue “this” one? What if this system has fundamental, even fatal, flaws? What then? What other alternatives might we consider? The socialists (who are seemingly ubiquitous although most of them do not even realize that they are socialists) know what they would like to do. What say the capitalists? Where is John Galt?
Mr. Cuban ends his post by throwing privatizing Social Security under this same blown-out bus. Even if we all agree that privatized social security would have led to more leverage in this system, it does not necessarily follow that privatizing social security is a bad idea.
One could argue that privatizing social security would also lead to more decision makers, more views, different approaches, in the marketplace. As it stands, the social security “trust fund” is neither a fund nor worthy of any trust.
We must dig deeper into the primary enabler of all of this reckless leverage and the ongoing gradual centralization of so much of this economy.
Can we not now admit that we need something other than the future of “this” economy?
Does anyone really believe that a particular set of bureaucrats and/or elected officials would ever have enough power and information to get these levers right? Why design a system that is so vulnerable to and contingent upon a tiny set of folks managing nearly infinite complexity? And yet we are now considering giving the Treasury Secretary absolute unreviewable power with no upper limit on cost.
Some folks may like and trust Hank Paulson based on his tenure at Goldman Sachs. Others may distrust him for these very reasons. Regardless, he has announced that he will leave his post with the next election, i.e. after 2008. The proposed plan, though, will provide these gigantic powers for at least two years.
Socialism and radically increased centralization of power are not the answers to this problem. These very ideas and forces, in fact, have contributed mightily to this current crisis. If this proposal passes, we will witness and suffer the unintended consequences for a long, long time.
All of these issues stem from one root cause. Even now, at best, we’re just dancing around the real issue.
