ronnyreagan:
"These men realized that the doctrines of the old laissez-faire economists, of the believers in unlimited competition, unlimited individualism, were in actual state of affairs, false and mischievous. They realized that the Government must now interfere to protect labor, to subordinate the big corporation to the public welfare, and to shackle cunning and fraud exactly as centuries before it had interfered to shackle the physical force which does wrong by violence."
I'm not a really strong student of history, but it seems to me that shackling physical force and fraud are legitimately not socialist, but shackling cunning (when not accompanied by fraud) and subordinating the big corporation to the public welfare are socialist ideas. Getting some oversight to the food and drug industry to ensure that customers don't get poisoned is fine, but regulation of railroad fares is not.
Theodore Roosevelt said elsewhere in his autobiography that he disagrees with Marxian Socialists, and doesn't think class warfare is occurring or is even necessary. He wasn't a dedicated socialist, but some of his ideals apparently were socialistic. When people subjugate the rights of others, there is a legitimate case for government action. When railroads charge what they want for use of their transport structure, there is not.
McCain is far from a laissez-faire economist. Obama is further. His contemptful attitude towared "this notion" of a free market is very telling. The fact is that socialist policies will not turn America into a cesspool in four years. However, once entitlements are put forward, it is exceedingly difficult to retract them. Obama wants to expand the system of entitlements. Socialism is not a waterslide to destruction--it's more like an economic swamp. You sink a bit, slowly, and, by the time you sink more, you've gotten used to being where you are. It doesn't kill you, it just makes you a little less comfortable at a time. The average person is tall enough that he won't drown.
The extended order of the market has provided enough plenty that the world can basically sustain the current population of 6 billion. Local situations in industrialized nations are, generally speaking, much better than they were fifty years ago, and sustainable population densities keep growing. The expansion of the sustainable population is the result of innovations and improvements largely brought about by self-interested individuals whose work frees people from sustenance labor, permitting further division of labor and a larger sustainable population. Socialistic policies, while professing to aid the general populace (and, in some cases, actually doing so), create disincentives for individuals to innovate, which, in the end, result in a slower expansion of the "6 billion" number, which, in my opinion, offsets the short-term gains we see.
I don't know enough about the market to make a strong case for the reasons behind the current situation, but I can speculate--investors are probably exercising a bit of caution right now, so that, even after the bailout, their perception of the market has not returned to its condition before this whole mess got started. Market drops are quick; rebuilds take more time, as investors who lost money take less risks for a while, until they think things are back on track.
