At 09:21 PM 10/4/2011 -0700, you wrote:
>On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 8:45 PM, Joanne Landy <joanne.landy at igc.org> wrote:
> > Below is the comment I posted on Facebook after seeing the YouTube of
> Joseph
> > Stiglitz and Jeff Madrick speaking at the Wall Street Occupation:
>
> >
> > I watched most of this, and enjoyed the jovial and relaxed presentations.
> > But I didn't agree with Stiglitz's apparent argument that if we only had
> > "real" capitalism things would be ok. Though of course we have to try to
> > regulate the Wall Street highway robbers, the corrupt "distortions" of the
> > system are endemic since those with hugely disproportionate economic power
> > will always be able to distort the political regulatory process in their
> > favor. That's why we need socialism.
> >
> > --Joanne
>
>A good point. Dean Baker does the same thing even with regard to other
>left-liberals. That is he makes some really good arguments about how
>we really have a conservative nanny state biased in favor of the rich
>and to a lesser extent the top tier of professionals. But then he
>argues that it is "loser liberalism" to criticize markets at all ,
>that liberals should argue that strong regulation and single payer
>health and so forth are the "real" free market policies. I think
>defending policies that really are NOT market policies on grounds that
>they are somehow free market is a mistake on two grounds. It is not
>true, and not true in a way that is obvious. Single Payer would indeed
>make capitalism work better, but not because single payer is in any
>way a market solution. And it is ignoring one of the few real bits of
>wisdom in the whole framing debate, which is that it is a mistake to
>advance a position on grounds that advance a larger story that
>undermines it. Joining the drumbeat of "markets uber alles" even to
>advance genuinely left policies is the real loser liberalism.
>
> >
> >
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