Originally Posted by shakran

I still find it interesting that none of the advocates of "American Capitalism" (by which they mean "government cannot intervene") have commented on the fact that capitalism collapsed, and would have completely disintegrated but for the intervention of the government.

If you're going to preach an anti-socialist, pure freemarket ideal, then you should be very angry when government steps in to help any business out. Whether that be bailing out the banks (who caused this mess in the first place) or the car manufacturers (who's deserved reputation for making crappy products for 3 decades finally caught up to them), or the corn farmers (who are paid a subsidy for every acre of corn they grow). If you want a truly hands-off government, then you should be opposed to all of these things.

Trouble is, that with a truly hands-off government, capitalism is doomed to failure, because as has been proven time and again, left to their own devices, businesses will seek to maximise short term gain even if it sacrifices longterm viability. In other words, the banks knew that eventually the subprime mortgages on their house of cards would collapse, and spectacularly, but they didn't give a crap because they were getting rich in the interim. If we adopted a pure hands-off government, we would currently have no banks. Period. Because the economy would have completely collapsed, and without an economy, even the few banks that didn't get involved in the subprime scam would be unable to survive. We would then quickly find ourselves with no infrastructure, no industry, no retail, no food, and no civil order, because once people start starving and become unable to buy anything, they tend to get just a bit pissed off, and they tend to vent that frustration by mass civil disturbances.

The government exists for a reason, and the people that like to claim the government shouldn't get involved in anything would be very upset if their wishes actually came true.