TLP Commentor Receives Name In Lights

Well, a letter to the editor, anyway. In response to a sycophantic article regarding government’s– in general, Obama’s in particular– ability to “plan” an economy, regular commenter Jeff Molby penned a letter. The critical points:

In a column Tuesday, deputy editorial page editor Stephen Henderson lauded Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s economic plans as bold investments that would pay off in the long run (“Obama’s economic agenda: Plan hurts now, helps later”). What he neglected to mention is that such attempts at centralized planning are inherently flawed — as Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek so thoroughly demonstrated in his seminal work, “The Road to Serfdom.”
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No one seems to mention that anymore. Instead, we are offered a revolving door of politicians who claim that we can finally solve the problems we face — often the same problems their predecessors promised to solve. All we need to do, they tell us, is to put them in power and implement their plan. Being hopeful and trusting by nature, we keep electing them, hoping that one of these days we’ll elect a group smart enough and honest enough to follow through; we believe them when they tell us that we got where we are despite the individual freedom secured for us by our forefathers.

We don’t need elaborate plans or an all-knowing president. We simply need to let individuals make their own decisions about what to do with their time and money.

That’s not very exciting, though, and it’s hard to win a modern election on such a boring platform.

Sadly, he’s right. Promising a free lunch doesn’t impress economists or thinking individuals, but those constituencies seem to be rarities in today’s voting public.