"letting the market figure it out" is unregulated capitalism. Unregulated capitalism is exactly the extremist economic policy nonsense that created the mess we are in. When Bush eliminated most of the regulation on the financial services industry, what that "let the market figure out" is that it is very, very easy to steal money when there is little regulation.
Libertarian economics policy advocates utterly fail to recognize that when money is laying around with no regulations/regulators protecting that money, people steal that money.
I don't know why libertarians can't figure out people steal money that is left around unguarded, but they just don't comprehend that fact.
> When Bush eliminated most of the regulation on the financial services industry
Since Bush did no such thing....
> Libertarian economics policy advocates utterly fail to recognize that when money is laying around with no regulations/regulators protecting that money, people steal that money.
Libertarians recognize that govts don't protect money all that well and that big thefts always involve a govt.
""letting the market figure it out" is unregulated capitalism."
No, Adam503 chooses to misinterpret "letting the market figure it out" as unregulated capitalism so that (s)he can go off on a more-or-less entirely unrelated rant.
What letting the market figure it out really means here is that instead of a glorious upper authority picking the "winner" by handing out government funds to a proven-loser business model to prop it up ("winner" hardly seems like the right word), that we unleash the creativity of thousands or millions of people in the confident belief that where there is unmet demand, someone will find a way to supply it.
Did you think my example list was just randomly tossed in there or something? It's the core of the point; government action can only look to the past. Your actions will simply guarantee the extinction of journalism, because the system you want to prop up is dying before competition even fully matures, which is the ultimate proof of economic death.
What regulations you may or may not want to lay down on such actions is an entirely separate point, and if you can't see that, you're simply being willfully blind to the point I'm making because you've been so conditioned in your response to the word "capitalism" that you can't see past it anymore. The fact that Amazon.com created a new meeting point for supply and demand is neither here nor there in the question of whether they are regulated (hint: yes).
Again... this sort of thing has happened millions of times. It's not a wacky theory, it's how we got from the dark ages to the economy of today. (The wacky theory is that this creation is impossible and only happens when central authorities help it along; this flatly contradicts the historical facts.) This time is only different because now the town crier is facing disruption, and he's being loud about it. Other than that, it's hardly different than any other industry which has been transformed over the past 50 years, which is most of them.
Libertarian economics policy advocates utterly fail to recognize that when money is laying around with no regulations/regulators protecting that money, people steal that money.
I don't know why libertarians can't figure out people steal money that is left around unguarded, but they just don't comprehend that fact.