he also never said he favors going back to the gold standard. he says he favors competing currencies.
Gold never stopped being an asset, but "competing currencies" on the whole is a ridiculous idea. In any case the U.S. would never give up the strength of their "safe haven" reserve currency throughout the world. Even if he doesn't favor a "hard" gold standard, gold as legal tender in business transactions can be problematic. As late as the Nixon years, the US ran out of gold holding up their promise of $35 to an ounce for global trade. I don't have the impression that an existing criminalization is getting in the way of people trading items without currency. It's not a solution to anything, as far as I'm concerned.
so basically if you reduce the power of corporations to lobby and control government, you remove corporate tyranny.
Deregulation does the opposite. It fortifies corporate control, and decimates public influence over practices, such as those with external costs. As far as I can tell Ron Paul supports lobbying from any group; more finance will mean more influence, always. It's naive to suppose corporations would have less power with LESS restriction. It's no mystery why the financial sector of the U.S. was an integral component of the recession, compared to the way Canada's banking system fared under Mark Carney.
My opinion is that Ron Paul is a proponent of naive libertarianism: he believes in liberty because of a principle, not because of the consequences. He believes corporations should have the liberty to lobby the government, even though, effectively, corporate lobbying erodes the liberties of individual Americans. He believes in free-market health care, even though in practice it's been disastrous for America. Of course, you can't really make "lobbying" itself illegal, just limit financial transactions associate with it, which I suppose is what RP is purporting. But, the problem isn't the lobbying itself, it's an imbalance of lobbying resources that favors a limited range of interest groups. NOT going to change under RP.
Some liberties violate others. When the government protects your rights-even if they are only your "natural rights," or only "negative rights"-it is restricting someone else's freedom. There are libertarians concerned about the freedoms of individuals more than the freedoms of corporations, and whose actions/beliefs are governed by
consequences, not by blind principles. Ron Paul is not that kind of libertarian.
He is a man with high-minded principles which sound nice, but are a formula for disaster; because
A. There are market failures and externalities.
B. Eliminating the Federal Reserve is a bad idea. It is needed to control inflation and implement a monetary policy to stimulate the economy. Although, I admit more transparency is desirable for the Federal Reserve.
C. Non-interventionism will open a power vacuum that political actors will exploit, a result likely to disrupt international commerce at our expense.
In my opinion, Political Realists are the only ones who should be allowed to run the executive branch of a country. I am very firm on this point because I have seen idealists fuck things up one too many times. On this issue, there can just be no compromise.
Also, he wants to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency and thinks global warming is a hoax. Oh yes, and gun control.. minimal gun control has been so damn good for the country, hasn't it?
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