It's hard to repeat libertarian ideals -- businesses should pay for the things businesses need -- and the government should only be focused on protecting the liberty of the people when that ship has, for all practical purposes, sailed so long ago. But I'll meet you half way: how about identifying things that qualify as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) and creating a GSE (government sponsored entity, like the Post Office) to oversee that thing. One example could be the electrical transmission grid which is both critical infrastructure and easily argued to be within the domain of interstate commerce. For things to be categorized as CNI they would need to be nominated by The Executive and approved by a vote of Congress (simple majority for temporary -- up to 10 years -- CNI status or 2/3 majority of both houses to get permanent CNI status).
It's far from perfect but we do need to put rules around what we fund or we're going to be into hyperinflation faster than we know it. Re-read the history of 1920s Germany for more info.
I don't want to be the guy who looks past an argument to make a needling correction, but... couldn't you use a better example here? These GSEs/CNIs that you advocate for could not possibly have protected 1920s Germany from hyperinflation -- war reparations were forcibly imposed onto a puppet government installed by outside powers.
> government sponsored entity, like the Post Office
I don't believe this is a good model. If you give a single entity a monopoly on a critical service, you are implictly agreeing to prevent it from failing, because there is no backup plan. Just look at the Post Office... it's not allowed to go bankrupt, so instead it just accumulates more and more debt forever. The incentives are all out of whack and it all amounts to the worst of both worlds.
Kinda hard to see how this would fix anything. Germany had harsh reparations that they had to pay back with little way to do so. Adding a mega entity to control something like the power grid would seem to be the antithesis of a libertarian idea, and I don't see how that fixes anything at this point.
If the interest rate on your debt is less than the rate of inflation, you make money by holding a loan. The current rate of inflation is 5%, the interest rate of a margin loan on IBKR is 1.5% and under. When inflation finally slows, expect a ton of money to come out of the stock market.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 38.6 ms ] threadIt's far from perfect but we do need to put rules around what we fund or we're going to be into hyperinflation faster than we know it. Re-read the history of 1920s Germany for more info.
Are you basically arguing for price controls? CNI would be under government control and could thus set prices?
That was tried in the past and failed.
I don't want to be the guy who looks past an argument to make a needling correction, but... couldn't you use a better example here? These GSEs/CNIs that you advocate for could not possibly have protected 1920s Germany from hyperinflation -- war reparations were forcibly imposed onto a puppet government installed by outside powers.
> government sponsored entity, like the Post Office
I don't believe this is a good model. If you give a single entity a monopoly on a critical service, you are implictly agreeing to prevent it from failing, because there is no backup plan. Just look at the Post Office... it's not allowed to go bankrupt, so instead it just accumulates more and more debt forever. The incentives are all out of whack and it all amounts to the worst of both worlds.