Per aspera ~ Dear Free Market, please send me a pony and a plastic rocket

Dear Free Market, please send me a pony and a plastic rocket

Published 7:34PM, Tuesday, 06/20/2006 in Uncategorized

And Ezra Klein looked up from the field of debate, where the fate of the minimum wage was to be contested, andÂ behold! theÂ Libertarians had entered the fray,Â their standardÂ bearing aÂ Laffer curveÂ volant on a field of white, above the motto “You’re not the boss of me!”Â Matt Singer comments thus:

Meanwhile, Ezraâ€™s debating partner is also scoffing at minimum wage impositions since they teach you in Economics 101 that price floors produce surpluses. Right. In Econ 111, they also told me that they were oversimplifying the system. In Econ 311, I found out that the problem with the econ 101 models is that they assume perfect competition (which, in a labor market, would require that Bill Gates and I are nearly identical workers). And in Econ 313, we actually started studying labor markets.

Hereâ€™s a hint folks: If Econ 101 answered all the questions we ever ask about economics, they wouldnâ€™t still be giving out a Nobel Prize for the discipline.

Still, itâ€™s one more reminder of that old adage. Libertarianism: Political Philosophy for 13-Year-Olds.

IÂ differ stylistically, as I like to callÂ Libertarianism “adolescence as a political philosophy,” but, y’know, potayto/potahto.

Similarly, here’s a clip of John Stossel acutally using the “Well, then, why don’t you raise the minimum wage to forty dollars an hour, then?” argument.Â I gotta say, I have yet to be convinced that Stossel isn’t just a mendacious jackass.Â His whining about how the liberal media stifles his vital reporting doesn’t help.

Larry Kudlow seems to want to have ten thousand ofÂ Stossel’s babies, though, so he’s got that going for him.

8 Responses to “Dear Free Market, please send me a pony and a plastic rocket”

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1 Ananth Jun 20th, 2006 at 8:38 pm

if Libertarianism is â€œadolescence as a political philosophy” what is liberalism? College hippie as political philosophy? Does it bother you guys to always know you are always the smartest people in the room, or does it bother you that other people don’t realize it :)
2 Steve Jun 20th, 2006 at 8:46 pm

Does it bother you guys to always know you are always the smartest people in the room

I’m not always the smartest person in the room, just usually.
3 Ananth Jun 20th, 2006 at 9:56 pm

That;s cause you haven’t been in a room with me for like 3 years:)
4 Steve Jun 21st, 2006 at 12:16 am

That’s ’cause if you were in a room with me, the sheer force of my wit, charisma, and dashing good looks would have you voting Democrat within four beers.
5 Ananth Jun 21st, 2006 at 12:24 am

I’d vote for Joe Leiberman, but somehow I don’t think that’s what you meant. I could even vote for Obama against Alan Keyes. I voted for Ed Rendall once too. See I am a swing voter.
6 Steve Jun 21st, 2006 at 12:34 am

Player, I’d vote for a wolverine with third-stage syphillis against Alan Keyes. We’re talking about a man who had a show on cable called “Alan Keyes is Making Sense” because, obviously, they felt that viewers needed to be reassured on that point.

And no discussion of Alan Keyes may pass without a link to the classic post on Kung Fu Monkey about the Crazification Factor.
7 Tom Jun 21st, 2006 at 11:18 am

I like Libertarianism, and the notion that, if I wish hard enough, all the poor and sick will be saved by rainbow-shitting unicorns.

Ananth, have you once peopled this god-awful wasteland of mouth-breathing, slack-jawed Eagles fans that I must now, sadly, call home? Rendall is sort of my boss.

In other Philly news, I’m summoning up a gang of banditos to inform that racist tool that, “wiz wit” is a motherfucking dangling preposition, and, on behalf of the proper-English speaking Latinos of Philadelphia, we object vehemently to his butchering of the Queen’s English.

Bistec con Queso.
8 Ananth Jun 21st, 2006 at 1:13 pm

Tom, I lived in Philly for 3 years after graduating from College. Lived in the Manayunk before moving to DC. Forget Geno’s and Pat’s. It’s all about chubbies and Dellasandro’s.

For the record, though, his sign does ask people nicely to order in English.