Regulation coerces individuals. The mind is the source of all value (contrary to the labor theory of value), so people can be most productive when they are free to act on their judgment. Regulation interferes with peoples' ability to act on their independent judgment.
The subsidies to consumers take several forms. Medicare/medicaid, and benefits when you get hired full time for a job. The tax code makes it so companies can pay you more by giving you benefits, because the money a company spends on your benefits isn't taxed. If a company gave one person a straight $16 an hour and another gave someone, say, (I'm just pulling numbers out of nowhere here) $12 an hour in cash and $4 an hour in benefits, The $4 an hour isn't taxed and the $12 is. So business can gain a competitive edge by offering benefits, because they can give a little more money to their employees via benefits than without benefits. So now everyone with a job can go to the doctor willy nilly for simple things like colds and stuff. And since everyone loses their insurance when they lose their job, preexisting conditions are a big deal. If there wasn't this incentive to tie insurance to a person's job, and if insurance companies were free to compete across state lines, it would be much easier for a person to just get personal insurance and keep it between jobs. And preexisting conditions wouldn't be such a big deal. And premiums would probably be cheaper because people wouldn't be using health insurance to pay for everything under the sun, like going in for a cold or sniffles or whatever. In a free market, medical care would be more affordable, and medical insurance would probably be more like car insurance. You'd just go visit the doctor on your own dime, but if something huge happened to you like a giant tumor, then insurance would be used.
Caring about the welfare of others is called benevolence. Benevolence doesn't include forcing people to pay for other peoples' needs. If you care so much, you should go help them yourself. Donate to a charity. Volunteer. Etc.
I don't really know much about most of those people. But I find it interesting that you bring up Ayn Rand. I'm an Objectivist. I've been studying Ayn Rand's philosophy on and off for the past several years.
It doesn't shock me that an anti-capitalist such as yourself brings up William Hickman. I see it all the time. You narrow your vision to what looks like a gotcha and you ignore the rest of the context. Ayn Rand did not condone Hickman's crime. She was a writer. She merely admired certain character traits, like how calmly and pridefully he stood against the whole world when the world was against him. She abstracted away the positive traits as potential character traits to put in her characters. She condemned the rest. Your effort to make out Rand as someone who supports child murderers is just another attempt at misdirection. Either that or you just listen to what other people tell you, and you didn't know they were being dishonest with you.
I'm surprised you didn't throw in Alan Greenspan while you were at it. He's a popular one for anti-Capitalists to drag around, because he used to be an Objectivist and used to be part of Ayn Rand's inner circle. He even wrote essays in Ayn Rand's book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, which makes the moral case for Capitalism. However, when he became chairman of the fed, he abandoned Objectivism because he didn't think it worked. So it was an abandonment of Objectivism rather than embracing it that influenced his destructive monetary policies. (And the fact that the federal reserve is just a destructive institution anyway. There's no right way to run it other than to destroy it, stop printing money, and let banks set their own interest rates.)
'Progressive' is a term hijacked by the left as a name for their statist policies. Nothing more. It's an accepted term because nobody ever challenged it.
My views ARE extreme! Nothing less will do. To quote an obscure comic book artist who I admire, "Can't bring gray to a black and white fight."
Regulation coerces individuals. The mind is the source of all value (contrary to the labor theory of value), so people can be most productive when they are free to act on their judgment. Regulation interferes with peoples' ability to act on their independent judgment.
The subsidies to consumers take several forms. Medicare/medicaid, and benefits when you get hired full time for a job. The tax code makes it so companies can pay you more by giving you benefits, because the money a company spends on your benefits isn't taxed. If a company gave one person a straight $16 an hour and another gave someone, say, (I'm just pulling numbers out of nowhere here) $12 an hour in cash and $4 an hour in benefits, The $4 an hour isn't taxed and the $12 is. So business can gain a competitive edge by offering benefits, because they can give a little more money to their employees via benefits than without benefits. So now everyone with a job can go to the doctor willy nilly for simple things like colds and stuff. And since everyone loses their insurance when they lose their job, preexisting conditions are a big deal. If there wasn't this incentive to tie insurance to a person's job, and if insurance companies were free to compete across state lines, it would be much easier for a person to just get personal insurance and keep it between jobs. And preexisting conditions wouldn't be such a big deal. And premiums would probably be cheaper because people wouldn't be using health insurance to pay for everything under the sun, like going in for a cold or sniffles or whatever. In a free market, medical care would be more affordable, and medical insurance would probably be more like car insurance. You'd just go visit the doctor on your own dime, but if something huge happened to you like a giant tumor, then insurance would be used.
Caring about the welfare of others is called benevolence. Benevolence doesn't include forcing people to pay for other peoples' needs. If you care so much, you should go help them yourself. Donate to a charity. Volunteer. Etc.
I don't really know much about most of those people. But I find it interesting that you bring up Ayn Rand. I'm an Objectivist. I've been studying Ayn Rand's philosophy on and off for the past several years.
It doesn't shock me that an anti-capitalist such as yourself brings up William Hickman. I see it all the time. You narrow your vision to what looks like a gotcha and you ignore the rest of the context. Ayn Rand did not condone Hickman's crime. She was a writer. She merely admired certain character traits, like how calmly and pridefully he stood against the whole world when the world was against him. She abstracted away the positive traits as potential character traits to put in her characters. She condemned the rest. Your effort to make out Rand as someone who supports child murderers is just another attempt at misdirection. Either that or you just listen to what other people tell you, and you didn't know they were being dishonest with you.
I'm surprised you didn't throw in Alan Greenspan while you were at it. He's a popular one for anti-Capitalists to drag around, because he used to be an Objectivist and used to be part of Ayn Rand's inner circle. He even wrote essays in Ayn Rand's book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, which makes the moral case for Capitalism. However, when he became chairman of the fed, he abandoned Objectivism because he didn't think it worked. So it was an abandonment of Objectivism rather than embracing it that influenced his destructive monetary policies. (And the fact that the federal reserve is just a destructive institution anyway. There's no right way to run it other than to destroy it, stop printing money, and let banks set their own interest rates.)
'Progressive' is a term hijacked by the left as a name for their statist policies. Nothing more. It's an accepted term because nobody ever challenged it.
My views ARE extreme! Nothing less will do. To quote an obscure comic book artist who I admire, "Can't bring gray to a black and white fight."