Monday, June 29, 2020

For Libertarians, Sustainability Matters for Economic Freedom

Is it possible for libertarians to find political support which isn't diluted by excessive identification with conservatives or progressives? While alignments such as these are understandable, they still tend to result in lost freedoms. And all too often, if economic freedoms are lost, it's only a short step further to lost political and social freedoms as well.

Too many ideological arguments turn around personal preferences for either government or business dominance. As it turns out, this reasoning is too simplistic for the economic complexities of our time, especially since many aspects of private and public enterprise are quite integrated. While this integration has often created positive outcomes, in other instances it results in negative complexities which make life more difficult for everyone.

The main issue at hand, however, is how both public and private endeavour are losing their ability to maintain real economy activity at consistent growth levels. What can we do, to ensure the extensive progress of recent centuries is not put at risk? I continue to hope that libertarians will assume new roles in promoting more sustainable forms of wealth creation. In many instances, doing so would include taking part in local economic experiments which promote both the well being of lower income groups and small communities.

Especially paramount is our need for sustainable local economies. Since much of our healthcare is stymied by centralized organizational patterns, the U.S. particularly struggles with today's pandemic circumstance. Part of our inability to productively respond, is due to the built in structural limitations of today's high skill service generation. Locally provided skilled services - where they are in fact possible - are caught in the political struggles of centralized revenue flows and their macroeconomic patterns. Indeed, these service patterns became more prominent with the added wealth of globalization. Hence it's not helpful, that losses in globalization could also lead to a partial demise of these centralized form of skills arbitrage.

We need a new approach to high skill applied knowledge, and libertarians have the opportunity to take part at a time in history when it especially matters. Even though it is difficult to establish additional high skill services through fiat monetary systems, time arbitrage could provide much needed new sources of wealth and economic stabilization. All who believe in the continued viability of free markets, could benefit by making time based services more amenable to free market approaches such as this.

By allowing time value to function as a valid economic unit, we could encourage stronger coordination patterns between individuals - patterns which ultimately lead to more sustainable outcomes. Only recall as well, how immediate reciprocity in services could help alleviate long term budgetary problems. When it comes to non tradable sector production reform, goals such as these are worth pursuing. Let's build more reliable social patterns for economic sustainability, while there is still ample time to do so.

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