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Blame bridled capitalism

By Staff | Jul 10, 2009

To the Editor: Clayton Rye, in his column “A gallon of ignorance” (July 3 issue), shows that he has a lot of knowledge about the production aspects of ethanol and milk, and very little about economics; or maybe he has given up on freedom.

Realizing the concept has been washed from our minds by government schools and electoral politics that only offer the choice of too much government, or way too much government, he feels he should abandon moral principle in promotion of his own agenda.

This is something that suits beneficiaries of the fascist state very well.

In all this talk about low milk profits, how we got there is not discussed. We got there because of a government-run pricing system that distorted the market to such an extent that milk production filled a bubble, rather than meeting real demand.

The same is happening with ethanol.

As so often happens, government incentives created a problem and now the call rings out for more government to correct it. I suppose that when that solution leads to more unintended consequences we will find the dictatorship will instigate yet more “reform.”

Each step will cost us more in wasted infrastructure.

Prices will rise and “unbridled capitalism” and “greed” will be blamed for hardship on the middle class and the poor.

It would be more truthful to blame bridled capitalism, however, because capitalism without freedom is not capitalism at all.

In a capitalistic economy, milk would be priced by the buyers and sellers alone.

Ethanol would compete with petroleum without tax breaks or government protection from the oil business.

Everybody has a gripe about the way things are going in their world. When they call for action, they mostly seek favors in the form of theft from fellow taxpayers who are having problems of their own.

Some critical thinking outside their little world would reveal they all have the same problem – big government.

Booms and busts are not the result of free markets, but are the result of intervention by a central authority that could not possibly out-guess the decisions of billions of producers and consumers.