Laissez-faire refers to pro-market policies (though in practice, they help big business and the rich). It is not the same as laisser faire, which means a feckless and unconsidered attitude in the application of any policy. Somehow the George W. Bush administration combined both laissez faire and laisser faire.
Jim
8 comments:
"The trouble with the French is that they lack a word for entrepreneur." Yes, that's an actual quote from W. hisself. 'Nuff said.
Econoclast,
Oh, I went over this on the HET list some time ago. "Laissez-faire" is the original French form and correct. It is the imperative form, "let them do it." "Laisser faire" appeared later and is not correct, being two infinitives: "to let to do," basically absurd.
Both are used to mean the same thing, minimum government intervention in the economy. It is basically a path dependent historical accident which form is used where. The ludicrous "laisser fair" tends to be used in Britain, and hence one sees it used all the time in The Economist magazine. They use it to mean exactly what anyone using the more correct "laissez-faire" means. I even once wrote a letter to them about it, and got an answer back that basically amounted to "we use it because that is what we have always used." As I said, path dependence.
The Economist spells it "laisser faire," not "laisser fair," needless to say.
I know this is pedantic, but laissez-faire is not "minimum government intervention in the economy." That definition presumes that "the economy" is organized using markets and privately-owned profit-seeking businesses. (If I understand it correctly, the Physiocrats invented the phrase to tell the king to leave business (and markets) alone.) It doesn't have to be that way.
Jim
Oh, econoclast, I am talking about its intepretation, and "let the business people do it," addresse to the French king in mid-18th century by the physiocrat, Mirabeua (full phrase, "Laissez-faire! Laissez passer!") certainly did suggest reductions in the levels of Colbertiste government regulation of the economy, which in France at that time did include some pretty silly and extreme stuff.
Barkley,
That's perfect. In the modern era of laissez-faire policies we now have "some pretty silly and etreme stuff" in the support of an extreme interpretation of free-market theory. One wonders if the King had intended his silly and extreme rules to benefit the people or himself. We know how it works now.
Not clear that one can attribute any clear answer one way or another to the regs and taxes of the French economy of that era. Some of them were local and had grown up gradually over a long time. Thus, for example, there were tolls all over the landscape for moving goods anywhere. One can argue that these were necessary for funding local governments, or whatever, but they were so widespread and high that they made it extremely difficult to establish national markets in anything. They may have served useful purposes locally, but the net effect at the national level was very counterproductive. It is possible to have too many regulations and taxes that are too high and complicated, even if we have a bunch of whiney business people who say that is the case now in the US when it is pretty clearly not.
All taxation is excessive and necessary. The taxes that I am required to pay seem the most regressive to me. The taxes due from any and all other sources are undoubtedly essential to the continued health and prosperity of the nation. The difficulty that I face is that ours is a government faced with the contradiction of having to accept financial gratitude from the hands of those who can most afford to pay their taxes, but would rather not. That difficulty is compounded by the inability of most voters to recognize when they are being snookered. I'd be very happy if everyone would vote on the basis of their own selfish economic best interest rather than their stupid fears and bigotries.
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