"None of those three were illegal, so law enforcement does not apply. All three are now prohibited by regulations that were enacted BECAUSE business was abusing the labor market. And as for financial shenanigans the most famous is, of course, "buying on margin" - something that depends on the market always rising - much like the financial shenanigans that caused the current economic wasteland."
I agree with regulation involving human rights; as an advocate of Austrian economics, the individual is the highest priority in the law enforcement system. Buying on margin was only possible because, again, of the government involvement in the financial market: the Fed backing investments with the very currency that establishes their worth, inflationary money bringing interest rates down and warping the market, all inviting bad investment by good people in a market with no return; and all of this because the Fed got in the business of bank bolstering. Again, gov't involved market warping and not entirely free-market induced mistakes due to deregulation.
"And this has something to do with the hard line on individual taxes? The idea that investment income isn't really income and should be taxed at a lower rate because taxing at the rate of 'income' is 'raising taxes' and will somehow destroy the job market more than deregulation already has?"
The hard line should definitely be lowered, yes, but corporations are caught in the treacherous triple tax that must be addressed as well. The money we spend in sales tax (based on product pricing), in turn inflated by the corporations to sustain corporate tax costs, would lower immensely, driving down the cost of living and the burden on the common man while maintaining - and perhaps even raising - average salaries once employers don't have to spend as much on taxes on their employee's incomes.
To do this, spending must be cut, and in areas that are hurting markets already.
"So don't tax 'em to raise tax revenue. You are skirting the Laffer curve with this - and we are already AT the most efficient, maximized point in that curve. Tax less and the infrastructure and quality of the labor market suffers - and that will NOT attract business to our shores. Now, giving the non-investment class worker third world wages and benefits might, but while that might make for a richer investment class, the rank and file will suffer."
Not quite: heavily cutting spending will lower the other half of the curve, and arguably create a new balance. Our labor market is suffering as it is due to outsourcing: those government loans going to Finland, for example. And where do higher taxes benefit the labor market (genuine question here)?
"No. Not unless you anticipate transportation of foodstuffs to become impractical, or that capital no longer works to purchase them. In which case cities will starve."
Ad hoc example, but my point was that the immense amount of bureaucracy involved in that venture would be completely disproportionate to the law enforcement aspect that would be involved in a free market solution.
"This is a non-sequitur. It 'does not follow', and is a matter of faith. Only by making the labor market a commodity, and treating only the investment class as people, does this work. And to do that, participation in the election process must be limited, otherwise, the invisible hand that is the vox populi WILL adjust - just not in the ways Lib dogma predicts."
I meant that the people would have more money due to lower cost of products, investments would inspire entrepreneurial ventures due to margins widening again and growth would occur. Examples being the humongous tax cuts at the end of WWII, when all the economy needed was a boost (already having most of the manufacturing infrastructure from the war). We've been in a tenuous boom for ages, but our government has grown with us. And only now, when the boom has ended through government intervention in the financial markets and subsequent collapse, we are finding what a weight the monster is to uphold in our economy.
"Not that I've seen. Ever. I have yet to see a free marketeer cheer ANY trust-busting activity."
This is because true monopolies haven't existed for ages - today they mostly exist in the form of faux monopolies and near-monopolies that are actually maintained by law:
Another example is the way the FCC controls and maintains telecommunications monopolies - along with their manufacturing entities - on a local level. Prices are overinflated as the government enforces regulation on markets that have huge margins for competition and huge barriers stopping new business from challenging them.
"Really. So no kids in mills, no rioting workers, no strike-busting with mercenaries. No financial shenanigans ruining the market, no huge inequities between the 'captains of industry' (defacto oligarchy) and the bulk of the people. No snake-oil salesmen selling deadly 'cures' on a national level. No extremely long hours in order to work at all. Common medical benefits - or medicine inexpensive enough - so that workers could pay for injury and sickness (besides the rare Oddfellow lodges). No starvation, no homeless veterans. A paradisical time in our nation's history. When was this again?"
Your first three examples are places in the social environment where law enforcement and the courts should take care of the citizens through property rights, personal liberties, and free speech enforcement. This is the place of government: to uphold the law. I think you'd need to provide specific examples of financial shenanigans in order to uphold that next claim.
The "inequities" you speak of were only possible because of the greatness of these men and women, not greed or corruption. Dollars came from the people voluntarily, and leaders of great corporations deserve their just reward. Snake oil salesmen violate personal rights through undervalued standards and deliberate deception - another place where the courts and law enforcement can intervene on behalf of the citizen. Those types of business would never get their feet off of the ground - UNLESS they were financed and approved by our monstrous government, as in the case of hydrofracking corporations that violate private property rights in order to provide for America's energy dependency, for example.
The poverty you cited occurred mostly because of a lack of entrepreneurialism in the South, in addition to the struggle to fill the hole the freed slaves had left behind. These challenges have been greatly overcome by this point.
"Again, (and again and again) this ONLY works with non-necessities. Luxuries. With strict regulation, business would be able to make money on necessary commodities as well - but in order to have a healthy market, there must be a baseline of necessities guaranteed. Otherwise, misery swells to terrible proportions. It doesn't have to be comfortable, but it does have to exist. Your folk are against any such baseline, and also against restrictions that prevent companies from causing long-term problems for the sake of short term profits."
You're talking about replacing "the ugly corporation" with big government in a market that can be widely and even locally diversified. Take the foods market for example: requiring a baseline would mean forcing farmers to have customers in their local area, forcing consumers to choose specified suppliers, and forcing bureaucracy in between to intermediate for hundreds of millions of people. This bureaucratic necessity would be a huge tax burden on farmers AND customers, inflating prices and depriving the people of more than is necessary in wasteful and arbitrary expenditure. Giving customers a "baseline" through the free market would only require that standards were upheld in a law enforcement fashion: by indirect involvement. This may be a straw man argument, but bear with me as I really cannot see where you're coming from or what you're suggesting.
"Outside of trust-busting? That's ANATHEMA to libs. And - that was the invisible hand of the market (the voters) taking action due to market abuses."
Trust busting is anathema to libs when it means destroying a productive company - when it means increasing competition by diversifying a frozen market and allowing prices to reach market levels, then it is welcome. And right now many of the government's services are either completely useless and involuntarily paid for by citizens, or infringing on free market arenas, forcing a strengthened position in the market through taxation and destroying any reasonable competition that can occur (i.e. the health insurance market, the education market, the housing market, the investment banks, etc.). By eliminating the places of government that hurt the market and aren't worth taxpayer money to begin with, you open up market space for businesses to come in, giving the citizen a choice of where to put their money - the money that suddenly isn't being taken from them in taxes and artificially inflated market prices.
"Unfettered markets kill people and leave most miserable for the sake of a defacto oligarchy. It is NOT for "the average citizen". THAT is what you want. Be honest. Now, do I think Ron Paul is a monster? No, just an idealogue."
Have you studied the era I described? The era involving steady economic growth, huge innovation and industrial expansion, and general welfare for the citizenry? The Roaring Twenties came up because of this, and if we had had more policies to enact when the obvious deflation occurred, we may have escaped the Great Depression. But people started forgetting what money really was, and people learned the hard way. All of this prosperity occurred when there were very few government programs, no income tax, very light taxes throughout other sectors, and markets - outside of anti trust laws - regulated themselves through competition. You're saying that most of the most productive years of America's past - the years when we've expanded and prospered the most, and years which arguably defined us as a superpower - were years in which the unfettered market "killed people"? And leave most miserable? De facto corporation oligarchies only occur when true competition is restricted or impossible. A corporation would rather lower its prices and gain more customers than raise them and garner hatred - that's what a free market is about, the recognition that the customer is the ultimate arbiter of liberty and freedom of choice. When choices are deprived, everything is skewed.
"So - competition doesn't occur? Competitive bids never happen? And - citizens couldn't keep up BEFORE the banks got govt funding from this crisis, so it's deregulation - a libertarian principle - that CAUSED this, and not some vague 'them' (government) not connected to the market (citizens). I am frankly tired of Libertarians making up an artificial divide in order to fool people."
Competition exists in a deformed way - again, I can cite our economic expansion in earlier, more profitable eras as counterexample to our current "competitive market". If government weren't so involved in the markets it has taken over over the past thirty years, if it hadn't expanded to its current size, creating an inefficient monster that isn't held accountable to the higher structural standards normal market competition would require of it, if it weren't paid for involuntarily by citizens but instead voluntarily and diversely amongst several competitors, then perhaps the market wouldn't look this way.
And when did deregulation occur? You cite that it's deregulation - libertarian principle - that caused this. You probably mean the GLB Act of '99. And you'd be right - deregulation of the FINANCIAL market (one backed by the Federal Reserve, our currency controller). I'm not advocating this. I'm advocating deregulation of markets that actually could prosper and provide new jobs - and the only way to do it is to cut government spending. We can no longer depend on deficit spending - the
In the same book the term TANSTAAFL is coined, Heinlein writes a character very hesitant to form generalized, overarching, preconceived viewpoints. He does not subscribe to mainstream, fringe, or even radical viewpoints; instead, he says: "Ask me a question on political policy, or my policy concerning an individual case and I will judge its rightness or wrongness for myself." (REALLY paraphrasing, but you get the idea). Do you have a specific argument against any of the definitions of the role of government I stated? Yes, some of them are old - some of them are quite a bit older than our own Founding Fathers. However, I don't believe that our current circumstances equate to the circumstances our Founding Fathers established them for. And in the circumstances that sound similar or parallel, I believe there is a possibility for generic, semi-axiomatic principles about human liberty to be formed.
Except in the era between 1865 and the Great Depression when zero income tax, little government intervention in the free market (outside of trust-busting), and a very minor influence from the central banking system gave us the Roaring Twenties and outrageously huge expansion, wealth, and production. And then the Federal Reserve got scared when deflation occurred - because of over-production without representation in the currency - people mistook deflation for market crashing, so the stock market crashed, the Fed held back bonds and suddenly imports were halted because of tariffs rising. All of which can be attributed to a) government intervention (tariffs) or b) misunderstanding due to bad reactions in the financial market (which were also due to government intervention, when the Fed held back federal reserve notes). And that's why we suffered.
Now, the government is so restrictive as to become a honey-tongued albatross on America's market. Our central banking system prints money into the financial institutions that cause false security in the markets it affects - i.e. economic bubbles which burst on unsuspecting investors (the little people) (see DOT COM bubble, housing market bubble, and this is an example of the education bubble, which affects all markets) - and Ron Paul is the only voice of reason advocating the REAL supporters of this country: the average citizen.
The solution is to cut out the unnecessary and harmful areas of government taking the place that productive citizens paid voluntarily could take - the place currently occupied by citizens paid by tax-payers. And then competition for resources can occur, where banks aren't artificially backed with inflationary funds so that economic bubbles occur when the citizens can't keep up with the production their loans require to counteract them.
American democracy only exists in its function to serve the American republic. It is not the people that rule, but law that rules; thus we are a democratic republic. The function of government in a democratic republic is not to serve as a monstrosity that vies with the people for control of money and resources, but in its function to service the people through sustenance of the law. And in this country - at the federal level - the law is represented by our constitution. Other forms of law, including those governing larger markets as well as individuals, are policed by smaller forms of government in order to allow more freedom to those individuals within the system. "Redistribution of wealth" occurs where the people need third-party intervention and objective influence - i.e. when law must be translated and enforced and when policing is in order, NOT when advantage is to be distributed arbitrarily using the resources taken from the people involuntarily. This is not the function of government.
Liberty arises from a system where power and control are divided by the public-fearing few who are allowed to govern. This goes for overpowerful corporations as well; a truly free market requires competition and an equal arena without third-party intervention or weighted outcomes (as in the case of government subsidization of all begging students). I enjoy Heinlein's translation of what it means to be taxed: TANSTAAFL; there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If they're going to give it to you, you've got to pay for it. And by that same reasoning, if they're going to give it somewhere then I'VE got to pay for it. And where I put my money should be my business, and my business alone.
In a truly free market, the government involvement is limited in terms of subsidy supply - i.e. educational funding - as well as the taxation providing the ability for that subsidy. In the counterexample you described, the government would be relieving the people of a subsidy without allowing them to recover - if they are allowed to - from the subsequent change in market that would occur (theoretically, it would mean the government would require less tax, freeing up funds for consumers to use in education or what have you). If the government even does relieve some of the burden of taxation, the common people have no time to save or invest in educational futures - which they should have been doing all along had this been the case - but instead are required to take out loans paid by the government at varying interest rates for educations that used to be prepaid through taxation, and then required to pay back those loans with interest to a government that just gained a huge profit.
This is not free market ideology. This is highway robbery. By comparison, the American economy of subsidization of student education is a bit less criminal (although, arguably, just as destructive).
Follow the money: Taxes are taken, governments give portions of tax money in the form of loans (combined with new printed money, creating actual inflation and perceived market value and stability), students take loans at a higher rate due to low standards and interest rates, colleges are flooded with new government money-bearing students; demand for education rises. Due to supply shortages - too little education and a skepticism as to the actual stability of the market - education institutions do not reinvest in more teaching, but instead raise prices in order to curb demand and relieve their own economic burdens. Students get educations, students get degrees, and students wander out into the workforce while owing enormous amounts to the government. But that's ok! Because they have shiny new certificates saying that they're qualified to make good money! But what is this? The market is flooded with similar students across the board! Jobs are looking for master's degrees instead of bachelor's degrees, job experience and doctorates, or years of experience!
Suddenly, this poor student must be satisfied with a lower-end job just to survive, and struggles to keep from defaulting on government loans that haven't resulted in more productivity - the entire idea behind deficit spending and inflationary money-printing practices. Thus, the government forces money into a market that would have been more naturally supportive of its consumers without its intervention.
The government exists to provide regulation as it pertains to anti-trust action, not market involvement in the form of open expenditure and false representation of market stability. Right now, the government deprives the market of some of its vitality through compulsory taxation and support of partially broken, partially useless, and partially damaging systems. Some programs are useful and valuable, but when it comes to artificial market involvement warping market values and providing false stability, the government is extremely harmful.
Example: the housing market. When financial institutions are backed by freely flowing currency from the Federal Reserve, banking institutions lower interest rates, more people borrow against the artificially stable financial market, the bubble rises and bursts, leaving the common people to pick up the slack. Mistakes were made on many sides, but the artificial bolstering of these markets is what ultimately is the first cause. In an economy that depends on natural selection, natural results must come of its causal parts. The government - through compulsory taxation and then readministration of these funds in the market rather than public services - pollutes the cycle and rechannels forces in disproportional directions.
When it comes to the education market, the affects are all the more criminal despite the governments' best intentions: when freely distributed loans are made available with low interest rates, the common people take advantage and subsequently flood the education market with far more force than it can bear - thus, with limited supply and higher demand, the market prices rise and rise, providing the students with more cost to bear. After the jobs market is flooded with overqualified individuals, students must be satisfied with jobs that do not pay according to their level of expertise, thus forcing them to default on their government loans as the economic bubble bursts. All ultimately caused because of government involvement in a natural market.
The NATURAL progression you refer to only occurs when the market lacks enough diversification to deprive the consumer with CHOICE - think of dollars as ballot tickets, and an entirely different economic system is envisioned. Truly free markets require competition and diversification of a market, requiring companies to drive their prices down to undercut one another and vie for consumer recognition. The government's involvement should only occur on a level that involves bringing unfair, dishonest, or anticompetitive business practices to bear and keep the market free. Otherwise, too much involvement restricts the market arena and skews it until it is unrecognizable and unclear for the consumer.
Slashdot Mirror
"None of those three were illegal, so law enforcement does not apply. All three are now prohibited by regulations that were enacted BECAUSE business was abusing the labor market. And as for financial shenanigans the most famous is, of course, "buying on margin" - something that depends on the market always rising - much like the financial shenanigans that caused the current economic wasteland."
I agree with regulation involving human rights; as an advocate of Austrian economics, the individual is the highest priority in the law enforcement system. Buying on margin was only possible because, again, of the government involvement in the financial market: the Fed backing investments with the very currency that establishes their worth, inflationary money bringing interest rates down and warping the market, all inviting bad investment by good people in a market with no return; and all of this because the Fed got in the business of bank bolstering. Again, gov't involved market warping and not entirely free-market induced mistakes due to deregulation.
"And this has something to do with the hard line on individual taxes? The idea that investment income isn't really income and should be taxed at a lower rate because taxing at the rate of 'income' is 'raising taxes' and will somehow destroy the job market more than deregulation already has?"
The hard line should definitely be lowered, yes, but corporations are caught in the treacherous triple tax that must be addressed as well. The money we spend in sales tax (based on product pricing), in turn inflated by the corporations to sustain corporate tax costs, would lower immensely, driving down the cost of living and the burden on the common man while maintaining - and perhaps even raising - average salaries once employers don't have to spend as much on taxes on their employee's incomes.
To do this, spending must be cut, and in areas that are hurting markets already.
"So don't tax 'em to raise tax revenue. You are skirting the Laffer curve with this - and we are already AT the most efficient, maximized point in that curve. Tax less and the infrastructure and quality of the labor market suffers - and that will NOT attract business to our shores. Now, giving the non-investment class worker third world wages and benefits might, but while that might make for a richer investment class, the rank and file will suffer."
Not quite: heavily cutting spending will lower the other half of the curve, and arguably create a new balance. Our labor market is suffering as it is due to outsourcing: those government loans going to Finland, for example. And where do higher taxes benefit the labor market (genuine question here)?
"No. Not unless you anticipate transportation of foodstuffs to become impractical, or that capital no longer works to purchase them. In which case cities will starve."
Ad hoc example, but my point was that the immense amount of bureaucracy involved in that venture would be completely disproportionate to the law enforcement aspect that would be involved in a free market solution.
"This is a non-sequitur. It 'does not follow', and is a matter of faith. Only by making the labor market a commodity, and treating only the investment class as people, does this work. And to do that, participation in the election process must be limited, otherwise, the invisible hand that is the vox populi WILL adjust - just not in the ways Lib dogma predicts."
I meant that the people would have more money due to lower cost of products, investments would inspire entrepreneurial ventures due to margins widening again and growth would occur. Examples being the humongous tax cuts at the end of WWII, when all the economy needed was a boost (already having most of the manufacturing infrastructure from the war). We've been in a tenuous boom for ages, but our government has grown with us. And only now, when the boom has ended through government intervention in the financial markets and subsequent collapse, we are finding what a weight the monster is to uphold in our economy.
"Not that I've seen. Ever. I have yet to see a free marketeer cheer ANY trust-busting activity."
This is because true monopolies haven't existed for ages - today they mostly exist in the form of faux monopolies and near-monopolies that are actually maintained by law:
http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/microsoft_monopoly.html
Another example is the way the FCC controls and maintains telecommunications monopolies - along with their manufacturing entities - on a local level. Prices are overinflated as the government enforces regulation on markets that have huge margins for competition and huge barriers stopping new business from challenging them.
"Really. So no kids in mills, no rioting workers, no strike-busting with mercenaries. No financial shenanigans ruining the market, no huge inequities between the 'captains of industry' (defacto oligarchy) and the bulk of the people. No snake-oil salesmen selling deadly 'cures' on a national level. No extremely long hours in order to work at all. Common medical benefits - or medicine inexpensive enough - so that workers could pay for injury and sickness (besides the rare Oddfellow lodges). No starvation, no homeless veterans. A paradisical time in our nation's history. When was this again?"
Your first three examples are places in the social environment where law enforcement and the courts should take care of the citizens through property rights, personal liberties, and free speech enforcement. This is the place of government: to uphold the law. I think you'd need to provide specific examples of financial shenanigans in order to uphold that next claim.
The "inequities" you speak of were only possible because of the greatness of these men and women, not greed or corruption. Dollars came from the people voluntarily, and leaders of great corporations deserve their just reward. Snake oil salesmen violate personal rights through undervalued standards and deliberate deception - another place where the courts and law enforcement can intervene on behalf of the citizen. Those types of business would never get their feet off of the ground - UNLESS they were financed and approved by our monstrous government, as in the case of hydrofracking corporations that violate private property rights in order to provide for America's energy dependency, for example.
The poverty you cited occurred mostly because of a lack of entrepreneurialism in the South, in addition to the struggle to fill the hole the freed slaves had left behind. These challenges have been greatly overcome by this point.
"Again, (and again and again) this ONLY works with non-necessities. Luxuries. With strict regulation, business would be able to make money on necessary commodities as well - but in order to have a healthy market, there must be a baseline of necessities guaranteed. Otherwise, misery swells to terrible proportions. It doesn't have to be comfortable, but it does have to exist. Your folk are against any such baseline, and also against restrictions that prevent companies from causing long-term problems for the sake of short term profits."
You're talking about replacing "the ugly corporation" with big government in a market that can be widely and even locally diversified. Take the foods market for example: requiring a baseline would mean forcing farmers to have customers in their local area, forcing consumers to choose specified suppliers, and forcing bureaucracy in between to intermediate for hundreds of millions of people. This bureaucratic necessity would be a huge tax burden on farmers AND customers, inflating prices and depriving the people of more than is necessary in wasteful and arbitrary expenditure. Giving customers a "baseline" through the free market would only require that standards were upheld in a law enforcement fashion: by indirect involvement. This may be a straw man argument, but bear with me as I really cannot see where you're coming from or what you're suggesting.
When you say "non
"Outside of trust-busting? That's ANATHEMA to libs. And - that was the invisible hand of the market (the voters) taking action due to market abuses."
Trust busting is anathema to libs when it means destroying a productive company - when it means increasing competition by diversifying a frozen market and allowing prices to reach market levels, then it is welcome. And right now many of the government's services are either completely useless and involuntarily paid for by citizens, or infringing on free market arenas, forcing a strengthened position in the market through taxation and destroying any reasonable competition that can occur (i.e. the health insurance market, the education market, the housing market, the investment banks, etc.). By eliminating the places of government that hurt the market and aren't worth taxpayer money to begin with, you open up market space for businesses to come in, giving the citizen a choice of where to put their money - the money that suddenly isn't being taken from them in taxes and artificially inflated market prices.
"Unfettered markets kill people and leave most miserable for the sake of a defacto oligarchy. It is NOT for "the average citizen". THAT is what you want. Be honest. Now, do I think Ron Paul is a monster? No, just an idealogue."
Have you studied the era I described? The era involving steady economic growth, huge innovation and industrial expansion, and general welfare for the citizenry? The Roaring Twenties came up because of this, and if we had had more policies to enact when the obvious deflation occurred, we may have escaped the Great Depression. But people started forgetting what money really was, and people learned the hard way. All of this prosperity occurred when there were very few government programs, no income tax, very light taxes throughout other sectors, and markets - outside of anti trust laws - regulated themselves through competition. You're saying that most of the most productive years of America's past - the years when we've expanded and prospered the most, and years which arguably defined us as a superpower - were years in which the unfettered market "killed people"? And leave most miserable? De facto corporation oligarchies only occur when true competition is restricted or impossible. A corporation would rather lower its prices and gain more customers than raise them and garner hatred - that's what a free market is about, the recognition that the customer is the ultimate arbiter of liberty and freedom of choice. When choices are deprived, everything is skewed.
"So - competition doesn't occur? Competitive bids never happen? And - citizens couldn't keep up BEFORE the banks got govt funding from this crisis, so it's deregulation - a libertarian principle - that CAUSED this, and not some vague 'them' (government) not connected to the market (citizens). I am frankly tired of Libertarians making up an artificial divide in order to fool people."
Competition exists in a deformed way - again, I can cite our economic expansion in earlier, more profitable eras as counterexample to our current "competitive market". If government weren't so involved in the markets it has taken over over the past thirty years, if it hadn't expanded to its current size, creating an inefficient monster that isn't held accountable to the higher structural standards normal market competition would require of it, if it weren't paid for involuntarily by citizens but instead voluntarily and diversely amongst several competitors, then perhaps the market wouldn't look this way.
And when did deregulation occur? You cite that it's deregulation - libertarian principle - that caused this. You probably mean the GLB Act of '99. And you'd be right - deregulation of the FINANCIAL market (one backed by the Federal Reserve, our currency controller). I'm not advocating this. I'm advocating deregulation of markets that actually could prosper and provide new jobs - and the only way to do it is to cut government spending. We can no longer depend on deficit spending - the
In the same book the term TANSTAAFL is coined, Heinlein writes a character very hesitant to form generalized, overarching, preconceived viewpoints. He does not subscribe to mainstream, fringe, or even radical viewpoints; instead, he says: "Ask me a question on political policy, or my policy concerning an individual case and I will judge its rightness or wrongness for myself." (REALLY paraphrasing, but you get the idea). Do you have a specific argument against any of the definitions of the role of government I stated? Yes, some of them are old - some of them are quite a bit older than our own Founding Fathers. However, I don't believe that our current circumstances equate to the circumstances our Founding Fathers established them for. And in the circumstances that sound similar or parallel, I believe there is a possibility for generic, semi-axiomatic principles about human liberty to be formed.
Except in the era between 1865 and the Great Depression when zero income tax, little government intervention in the free market (outside of trust-busting), and a very minor influence from the central banking system gave us the Roaring Twenties and outrageously huge expansion, wealth, and production. And then the Federal Reserve got scared when deflation occurred - because of over-production without representation in the currency - people mistook deflation for market crashing, so the stock market crashed, the Fed held back bonds and suddenly imports were halted because of tariffs rising. All of which can be attributed to a) government intervention (tariffs) or b) misunderstanding due to bad reactions in the financial market (which were also due to government intervention, when the Fed held back federal reserve notes). And that's why we suffered.
Now, the government is so restrictive as to become a honey-tongued albatross on America's market. Our central banking system prints money into the financial institutions that cause false security in the markets it affects - i.e. economic bubbles which burst on unsuspecting investors (the little people) (see DOT COM bubble, housing market bubble, and this is an example of the education bubble, which affects all markets) - and Ron Paul is the only voice of reason advocating the REAL supporters of this country: the average citizen.
The solution is to cut out the unnecessary and harmful areas of government taking the place that productive citizens paid voluntarily could take - the place currently occupied by citizens paid by tax-payers. And then competition for resources can occur, where banks aren't artificially backed with inflationary funds so that economic bubbles occur when the citizens can't keep up with the production their loans require to counteract them.
American democracy only exists in its function to serve the American republic. It is not the people that rule, but law that rules; thus we are a democratic republic. The function of government in a democratic republic is not to serve as a monstrosity that vies with the people for control of money and resources, but in its function to service the people through sustenance of the law. And in this country - at the federal level - the law is represented by our constitution. Other forms of law, including those governing larger markets as well as individuals, are policed by smaller forms of government in order to allow more freedom to those individuals within the system. "Redistribution of wealth" occurs where the people need third-party intervention and objective influence - i.e. when law must be translated and enforced and when policing is in order, NOT when advantage is to be distributed arbitrarily using the resources taken from the people involuntarily. This is not the function of government.
Liberty arises from a system where power and control are divided by the public-fearing few who are allowed to govern. This goes for overpowerful corporations as well; a truly free market requires competition and an equal arena without third-party intervention or weighted outcomes (as in the case of government subsidization of all begging students). I enjoy Heinlein's translation of what it means to be taxed: TANSTAAFL; there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If they're going to give it to you, you've got to pay for it. And by that same reasoning, if they're going to give it somewhere then I'VE got to pay for it. And where I put my money should be my business, and my business alone.
In a truly free market, the government involvement is limited in terms of subsidy supply - i.e. educational funding - as well as the taxation providing the ability for that subsidy. In the counterexample you described, the government would be relieving the people of a subsidy without allowing them to recover - if they are allowed to - from the subsequent change in market that would occur (theoretically, it would mean the government would require less tax, freeing up funds for consumers to use in education or what have you). If the government even does relieve some of the burden of taxation, the common people have no time to save or invest in educational futures - which they should have been doing all along had this been the case - but instead are required to take out loans paid by the government at varying interest rates for educations that used to be prepaid through taxation, and then required to pay back those loans with interest to a government that just gained a huge profit.
This is not free market ideology. This is highway robbery. By comparison, the American economy of subsidization of student education is a bit less criminal (although, arguably, just as destructive).
Follow the money: Taxes are taken, governments give portions of tax money in the form of loans (combined with new printed money, creating actual inflation and perceived market value and stability), students take loans at a higher rate due to low standards and interest rates, colleges are flooded with new government money-bearing students; demand for education rises. Due to supply shortages - too little education and a skepticism as to the actual stability of the market - education institutions do not reinvest in more teaching, but instead raise prices in order to curb demand and relieve their own economic burdens. Students get educations, students get degrees, and students wander out into the workforce while owing enormous amounts to the government. But that's ok! Because they have shiny new certificates saying that they're qualified to make good money! But what is this? The market is flooded with similar students across the board! Jobs are looking for master's degrees instead of bachelor's degrees, job experience and doctorates, or years of experience!
Suddenly, this poor student must be satisfied with a lower-end job just to survive, and struggles to keep from defaulting on government loans that haven't resulted in more productivity - the entire idea behind deficit spending and inflationary money-printing practices. Thus, the government forces money into a market that would have been more naturally supportive of its consumers without its intervention.
The government exists to provide regulation as it pertains to anti-trust action, not market involvement in the form of open expenditure and false representation of market stability. Right now, the government deprives the market of some of its vitality through compulsory taxation and support of partially broken, partially useless, and partially damaging systems. Some programs are useful and valuable, but when it comes to artificial market involvement warping market values and providing false stability, the government is extremely harmful. Example: the housing market. When financial institutions are backed by freely flowing currency from the Federal Reserve, banking institutions lower interest rates, more people borrow against the artificially stable financial market, the bubble rises and bursts, leaving the common people to pick up the slack. Mistakes were made on many sides, but the artificial bolstering of these markets is what ultimately is the first cause. In an economy that depends on natural selection, natural results must come of its causal parts. The government - through compulsory taxation and then readministration of these funds in the market rather than public services - pollutes the cycle and rechannels forces in disproportional directions. When it comes to the education market, the affects are all the more criminal despite the governments' best intentions: when freely distributed loans are made available with low interest rates, the common people take advantage and subsequently flood the education market with far more force than it can bear - thus, with limited supply and higher demand, the market prices rise and rise, providing the students with more cost to bear. After the jobs market is flooded with overqualified individuals, students must be satisfied with jobs that do not pay according to their level of expertise, thus forcing them to default on their government loans as the economic bubble bursts. All ultimately caused because of government involvement in a natural market. The NATURAL progression you refer to only occurs when the market lacks enough diversification to deprive the consumer with CHOICE - think of dollars as ballot tickets, and an entirely different economic system is envisioned. Truly free markets require competition and diversification of a market, requiring companies to drive their prices down to undercut one another and vie for consumer recognition. The government's involvement should only occur on a level that involves bringing unfair, dishonest, or anticompetitive business practices to bear and keep the market free. Otherwise, too much involvement restricts the market arena and skews it until it is unrecognizable and unclear for the consumer.