LogFAQs > #905127174

EffectAndCause posted...

So do they have ANY respectable viewpoints?

I mean that's a loaded question because it's not that their ideology is inherently flawed. Just like Democrats, the ideals all sound good on paper but in execution come with a set of side effects.

The republican notions of personal responsibility and economic equality are great. It's that neither of those are 100% directly causal to one's circumstance. So when the response in practice is blaming poor people for not "bootstrapping" it enough, they are ignoring some real factors outside of one's control. This is irrespective of the generalization that those in lower socioeconomic status could benefit from a higher dose of personal responsibility since those factors outside of their control usually aren't 100% attributable either.

Same with free market economics. A free market implies competition is not prohibitively prevented from entering the game. Any contender can compete based on the merit of their product or idea alone, and this will lead to a net drive of decreased costs and increased quality.

In practice, republicans treat free market as unregulated market. This leads to industries with so much monopolic power, they wrestle out any competitors. ISPs are a perfect example. The big ones don't overlap where they provide service and the smaller ones cannot obtain enough infrastructure to compete. They end up leasing from the big providers anyway, so there is a limit to how much the price can drive down, or how much pressure the company has to upgrading infrastructure.

Regulation can help in some circumstances, but too much regulation ends up crippling some industries. Health care is so regulated that you can't go in any direction without running into some regulatory policy. Since these policies are developed independently, they often aren't considered in the system as a whole and there can be some weird interactions. These interactions can effectively cripple any competition as well. The other ugly side is regulatory capture. ISPs controlling the FCC, for instance. They can then neuter any attempt at eliminating their monopoly.

So a real free market is neither fully regulated, nor completely unregulated, and I don't consider the republican conception of a free market to be a true free market, except in an ideal. Striking that perfect balance is extremely difficult.

So it's unfair to say they don't have respectable viewpoints, but at the same time, I can't in good faith say their viewpoints in practice are respectable either.
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