Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


PURE LIBERTARIANISM….Should the U.S. government bail out the auto industry? Arnold Kling comments:

This is an example where pure libertarianism gets you quickly to the right answer. Lose the “we,” and instead ask, would I undertake this policy myself? That is, would I lend money to the auto makers? If the answer is that I wouldn’t, then the implication is that “we” shouldn’t.

The same reasoning applies to giving money to financial firms. I wouldn’t, therefore we shouldn’t.

Picture everyone in Congress who voted for TARP standing on a street corner in a Santa suit, ringing a bell, and asking for donations to pay for the rescues of AIG, Citigroup, and so forth. In a libertarian society, that is what they would have to do in order to fund the bailouts.

If that image doesn’t move you in a libertarian direction, then nothing will.

Well, then, I guess nothing will. Because this sure doesn’t do anything to persuade me.

As it happens, I’m not entirely convinced that Detroit ought to be bailed out. At the moment, I’m probably more in the “prepackaged bankruptcy” camp. Still, the whole point of government is that it does things for us collectively that we can’t (or wouldn’t) do individually. After all, if congressmen stood on corners begging for donations to the Pentagon they probably wouldn’t raise enough to fund a single F-22, but that doesn’t mean Congress shouldn’t fund the Pentagon. Ditto for roads, courts, police, Social Security, unemployment insurance, foreign embassies, and national parks. The arch-angelic among us excepted, none of us would contribute much money to these causes unless we knew that everyone else who benefited from them was contributing too.

TARP is no different. We aren’t rescuing banks because we feel sorry for bankers (though I’ll concede that sometimes I kind of wonder about that), we’re rescuing them because we think their failure would bring the economy down around our ears and we’d just as soon avoid that. A bit of collective action on this front will help keep all of us out of a repeat of the 1930s.

Now, that might be wrong. Go ahead and make the case for inaction on its merits if that’s how you feel. But a generic claim that federal intervention is a bad idea because none of us would intervene as individuals just doesn’t hold water for anyone who isn’t already a hardcore libertarian. This is the kind of argument that hurts their cause, not the kind that helps it.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate