Quote:
Originally Posted by wdmso
LOL One researcher, a Tulsa geologist, is now suggesting something else may be at work -- the weather and aquifers.
amazing nothing like keeping your head buried in the sand
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I am not the one here who has his head buried in only one possibility. And I don't have an ideological investment in any of the possibilities. The cause of earthquakes in Oklahoma is not about the free market.
A free market is not free of government regulation. What it should be free of is regulation which restricts or denies freedom. In order to understand the reason for that in a social compact founded on individual freedom, you have to understand what social and political freedom essentially is. It is not license. It demands that those who wish to be free do not trample on the freedom of others. Interactions must be voluntary and honest. Coercing someone or cheating her is not voluntary interaction. Being cheated is not voluntary, agreed to, interaction. When you coerce or cheat, you are not free because you depend on someone else's involuntary submission to you. In effect, you become a slave to slavery. The slave owner cannot survive without slaves. He is not socially free in his interactions with those he cheats or coerces. His cheating and coercion destroys the intrinsic nature of freedom. Social freedom, in contrast, ensures that everyone is free to depend on his ability to do rather than depending on the submission of others to do for him. It requires the responsibility to assure that all in society are free. It requires the virtue to reign in personal desire to coerce and cheat. And that is the foundation for a truly free market.
License, on the other hand, comes in two forms. Breaking of the social contract by personally coercing or cheating others. Or complicity with government which gives you a license to have legal advantages over others.
So, given that society can impose regulations, what should be the nature of those regulations vis a vis a free market? Such regulations should be of the kind that assures the market is free. Such regulations should, on the one hand, penalize those who distort the market, those who coerce or cheat others. On the other hand, it should not grant license to some giving them advantages over others, and certainly should not give some the legal power or advantage that essentially eliminates competition from others who want to freely engage in the market.
If the people of Oklahoma want to impose regulations for well founded, correct reasons equally on all who want to drill for oil on their territory, they can do so. It can penalize those who violate the regulations. And it must not grant advantages to some at the disadvantage of others.
The health care system has been massively distorted by government regulations. At this point, the regulations have squeezed out competition. They have limited or denied the ability of individuals to freely trade with providers and insurers. They have made the costs for medical devices outrageously expensive. They have made, in general, health care so expensive that individuals cannot afford it. they have driven the system incrementally, and steadily, toward single payer government health care.
None of that is free market. When you blame the free market for those conditions, you have your head buried in the sand that Progressive government constantly throws in your eyes.