The invisible hand is caught in a reacharound.

Lets see what that invisible hand is up to today | hell's handmaiden: "The story, the day the music died, is a sad tale of corporate shenanagins and consumer pain. Read the article and ask yourself, “Where exactly is that invisible hand in all of this?”

The answer I’d like to propose is that it doesn’t exist. It isn’t there, not in the way that most of your hard right free market proponents need it to be. Ponder. I’m going to leave it at that for now, though if you wondering why I claim to not bash Smith but only the right wing twits who never read him: Smith “made it clear in his writings that quite considerable structure was required in society before the invisible hand mechanism could work efficiently.” The twits tend to forget that ‘considerable social structure’ part and head straight for ‘get the government the hell out of everything’ thus creating what I like to think of as a government so minimal that it stops working."

As I've dryly noted here and there, now and again, I'm a great believer in the free market. And some day I'd like to try it for myself to see how it works.

In fact, Smith was pretty firm on that, that considerable "market intervention" was required to keep the market from being "cornered." Proponents of "lazez-fair" regulation see no problem with that - or apparently milk and gas hitting the four dollar mark.

There can be no individual liberty if we are reduced to slavery in effect by economic means. And that has always been the preferred option - serfs are ever so much easier to maintain than slaves. Worse yet, one has legal obligations toward slaves.

So, as a libertarian, I'm pro choice (as the gag goes, on everything), pro fair trade, pro social justice, pro infrastructure, pro just-big-enough-government and pro REAL , fair and free markets.

The closest thing that we have ever had is the Web, by the by, and you can tell that the Faux Libertarians are doing their damnedest to turn it all into AOHell.

Isn't it odd that in order to be that sort of Libertarian, you have to both deny your own individuality while also denying the possibility that individual definitions of value and reward might apply?

At this point you may wonder why I don't just call myself a Liberal and be done with it. Re-read the above paragraph and substitute the word "liberal."

Having the wrong thing done unto me for the wrong reasons under the delusion that it's possible to meaningfully calculate "the greatest good of the greatest number" in most areas of social policy leads inevitably to the struggle over the right to choose what "blessings" we will receive.

Oddly, it seems that the same people who decry regulation - are all too willing to advise "prudent" intervention when Liberals are in power.