Now is not the time for austerity, which is what sweeping cuts to government would be. I do not believe in the Austrian prescription of “the beatings (economic pain) will continue until morale (the economy) improves.
Austrian economics has little empirical evidence behind it. Worse, Austrians explicitly privilege reasoning from first principles over empiricism. I think that’s wrong. As an example of the consequences of that sort of thing, Paul has been predicting hyperinflation for *a long time*, yet I see no willingness to change his mind or learn from his mistakes.
It seems to me does not support individual liberty so much as he supports States’ Rights. States’ Rights allows State authoritarianism. As someone who follows Radley Balko, you surely understand that small governmental units can be just as oppressive as larger ones. (Historically, I suspect they have a worse record.) It is not the *size* of the institution, it’s the *nature* of it.
Given his positions on immigration, abortion, and separation of church and state, I suspect his libertarianism is focused on people like him, not on the people as a whole.
He’s said global climate change is a hoax. Even leaving aside that that’s another example of his apparent tendency to find conspiracies by *them* everywhere (the UN is coming to take your guns!), I think that must lead to bad policy decisions. I suspect he is the sort of “free-market environmentalist” who completely ignores the reality of externalities.
This “no bills but what’s explicitly called out in the constitution” is silly. There are problems that a bunch of bright guys 200+ years ago didn’t anticipate, and the constitutional amendment process is too slow, especially in an era where the informal institutions of government have broken down. (I wouldn’t mind folding the constitutionally-unjustified Air Force back into the Army, though.)
His conviction that the Market would enforce civil rights is ahistorical and flies in the face of what we know of Homo sap as a social animal different from H. economicus.
I think it’s fairly clear that health care isn’t a normal market. A free market in health care won’t produce the optimal result that a market in wheat does. And I think it’s wrong to let people die because they’re poor.
