The two remaining investment banks in the United States have been, for all intents and purposes, nationalized. I could go into the reasons for why this happened, but others have already done so in a far better manner. But to sum up: the government caused several major problems through over-regulation that it then attempted to “solve” with far more government regulation. So now the Fed has more power over American private finance than ever before, and this will to America going completely bankrupt all the quicker. It happened the same way in Germany, Russia, etc. And once that line was crossed, those countries skipped ahead from a slow descent into implosion to a nose dive.
Others in the Objectivist community are saying that this is an event the country can survive, that the effects can be reversed, that the country just might not cave in on itself…
Really? History and reason begs to differ. Governments do not give up power. It just doesn’t happen. Even in the few cases where it seems like a government is giving up power (such as China’s recent institution of some freer policies), it is only doing so to keep itself afloat (men who starve to death can’t pay taxes).
Countries only have a chance to become freer when the current government is completely decimated (and even then it isn’t a sure thing, of course). Germany and Japan became freer after they were destroyed in WWII, Russia became freer after Communism ran out of flesh to feed on. And America will only have a chance to become free again when the current Socialist government dies.
Why then are the pursuers of a philosophy whose greatest artistic achievement - Atlas Shrugged - supports helping to speed along the death of a violent, immoral government interested at all in attempting to save ours? Must we wait until every hospital and airport has been socialized? Are we not yet convinced that enough lines have been crossed? Are we not yet convinced that there is no going back? Don’t just tell me that it is, show me that it is. Explain to me the realistic steps that could take place that would move our government back to a freedom-supporting entity.
I would much rather sit back, stock up on silver (it’s too late to buy gold…) and wait for the fall. And when that happens, we can be ready to help people understand why it happened, and what should be done now.
Even if the government reverses some of what it has done once things get too bad, what does that prove to anyone? Certainly not that our government should be replaced. Business will get blamed for what went wrong, and the government will get credit for setting it right, just like the Great Depression. No one, except for the few that already do so now, will question the validity of the state we live in until it fails. And it will fail very soon, and I look forward to it.
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