I've spoken previously of the libertarian response to problems. The answer is the status quo. In other words to deny there was a problem. We see this with the history of healthcare in political debate.
Henderson praises neoconservative William Kristol in a telling way for the way he tamped down on any reform of the healthcare insurance system.
"There is one issue, though, on which I think Suderman is off-target: his view on a famous 1993 memo by William Kristol that set in motion the Republican steps to kill HillaryCare. Suderman is both too uncharitable and not critical enough."
"That's accurate, but my take at the time, given the way Americans were feeling about health care, is that Kristol chose the right strategy. If you kill a bad idea for almost 20 years, you've done a lot. Suderman is right that the Republicans "learned" what he says they learned and that that was ultimately wrong. I'm not sure Kristol is to blame, though. The Republicans, once they won the majority in both the House and Senate in the November 1994 elections, should have undertaken health care reform by free-market principles. They didn't. That's bad for them--and, more important, bad for us. But Suderman does not confront what might be the truth: that Kristol made the best out of a bad situation."
"It's not clear what kinds of "relatively simply changes to insurance regulation" Kristol had in mind. But if, as I think, he meant prohibiting insurance companies from pricing for risk, that's not a tweak: that destroys insurance as insurance."
Henderson praises neoconservative William Kristol in a telling way for the way he tamped down on any reform of the healthcare insurance system.
"There is one issue, though, on which I think Suderman is off-target: his view on a famous 1993 memo by William Kristol that set in motion the Republican steps to kill HillaryCare. Suderman is both too uncharitable and not critical enough."
Suderman writes:
What Republicans learned from the defeat of the Clinton plan was that they could win health care debates by refusing to provide an alternative. An enormously influential 1993 memo from Bill Kristol cautioned Republicans to avoid the temptation to "[help] the president 'do something'" on health care, which would only lend credence to the Democratic idea that the system was broken. Instead, Kristol advised Republicans to question reforms that would upset a system with which a majority of the middle class was already satisfied, and to concentrate on tweaking the system as it already existed.
"That's accurate, but my take at the time, given the way Americans were feeling about health care, is that Kristol chose the right strategy. If you kill a bad idea for almost 20 years, you've done a lot. Suderman is right that the Republicans "learned" what he says they learned and that that was ultimately wrong. I'm not sure Kristol is to blame, though. The Republicans, once they won the majority in both the House and Senate in the November 1994 elections, should have undertaken health care reform by free-market principles. They didn't. That's bad for them--and, more important, bad for us. But Suderman does not confront what might be the truth: that Kristol made the best out of a bad situation."
"And how is Suderman insufficiently critical of Kristol? By referring to his proposed reforms as "tweaks." Some of them were tweaks. One of them likely was not. In the 1993 memo, Kristol wrote:
Relatively simple changes to insurance regulation, for example, can eliminate the barriers to health insurance for people with pre-existing medical conditions.
"It's not clear what kinds of "relatively simply changes to insurance regulation" Kristol had in mind. But if, as I think, he meant prohibiting insurance companies from pricing for risk, that's not a tweak: that destroys insurance as insurance."
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/06/suderman_on_rep.html
Well his 'criticism' of Kristol here is part of the revisionist history of the Right. They conveniently forget that Obamacare was once the Right wing alternative and they had no problem with it when Romney passed it in Massachusetts.
But I think his praise of Kristol is telling too. He's basically saying that Kristol is to be praised for killing healthcare reform for 20 years. Ie, the preferred libertarian solution was the status quo with 52 million uninsured Americans.
This is true today. Despite the Charleston killings, libertarians don't feel there's anything to see here really. They don't want to do anything that would meaningfully change the status quo. This comes back to a point I've made a few times: there is no difference between libertarians and conservatives-the words are synonymous for the most part.
Does Scott Walker sound like someone who cares about seeing to it that we have no more Charlestons?
"WALKER TO EXPAND GUN RIGHTS: The Post reports:
Walker plans to sign two new laws on Wednesday that expand the rights of gun owners by removing a 48-hour waiting period for those looking to purchase a firearm and allowing off-duty or retired police officers to carry concealed weapons at public schools. This action will come one week after a suspected gunman shot and killed nine people in an African American church in South Carolina, yet again prompting a national discussion about gun laws in the U.S.
"The signing was scheduled before the shooting. But one imagines Walker’s handlers don’t mind the renewed attention to the gun debate, if indeed the goal is partly about playing to a national audience."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/24/morning-plum-hillary-cant-run-from-the-trade-debate-forever/
There you go. The answer to the problem of too many guns on the street is to put even more guns on the street.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/erika-soto-lamb-if-so-so-what.html
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