Raise the Hammer

A Smith:

I know you agree with me that the proposed (failed?) bailout of Wall Street. What I'm suggesting is that your emphasis is skewed. Have you even read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith? It's a polemic against mercantalism, not soc'lism (spam filter). Soc'lism didn't exist yet.

Did you know Smith was against corporations? Huge, centralized, bureaucratic institutions with the rights of individuals? Come on! People who are in favour of untramelled corporate power have no right to call themselves "libertarians" (a term which originated as a synonym for social anarchism until Ayn Rand et. al hijacked it.)

What do you think Smith would think of our Chamber of Commerce, which is organized collectively and politically to lobby for the interests of the "business community"?

Most of the content of this website revolves around the very real problem of sprawl and mass motoring, which are already highly subsidized. In the 50's this living arrangement was planned, top down, federally - from the huge mortgage subsidies doled out by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation to the monumental taxation that underwrit the development of the freeway system.

The developers who run this town (and by extesion, the tycoons who run the world) don't believe in laissez faire. They believe in big government megaprojects that benefit them. It's the same behaviour that Smith was arguing against when the British Navy was sailing around the earth, using state violence to reorient the world's labour markets in the interests of merchants.

I ask you: where would the "free choices" of suburbanites be without the persistent, violent presence of the U.S. military-industrial complex (with its multi-trillion dollar debt) in the Persian Gulf?

Most people who use this site believe that some form of social planning is needed to solve the problem of sprawl. Your 19th-century liberal viewpoint is a welcome contribution to the topic. All I'm suggesting is that you fashion your polemic consistently. In the authentic tradition of Adam Smith, you should be railing against the manipulations of the Chamber of Commerce and the developers, who have used City Hall and other public institutions for their own private gain.