Anthony Evans on Why We Need Liberalization Not Regulation

| Peter Boettke |

Anthony Evans has a new piece in The Guardian.  Anthony has been outstanding in his commentary (on his blog and in the mainstream media) on the financial crisis since the first days a year ago.  This piece hits the nail on the head -- don't regulate banking, liberalize banking.

Comments

[Daniil Gorbatenko]

Evans is great but if you look at the comments to the article it gets really scary. There is not a single person to support Evans's position.

It seems that England has gone too far on the road to statism.

[Current]

Anthony Evans is writing in the most socialist mainstream newspaper in Britain. It's the newspaper that contains all the civil service jobs.

The comments section of the Guardian is no barometer of UK public opinion. Jokes are often made by the mainstream about Grauniad reader being sandal wearing hippies. (You write it "Grauniad" by the way, in honour of the terrible standards of grammar and spelling it upholds).

See this one from Britain version of "The Onion"

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-%26-entertainment/guardian-readers-prepare-for-dan-brown-sneerathon-200909162065/

[Daniil Gorbatenko]

That sounds better. How on earth did he get to be writing there?

Anyway, it's great that some statists have cultural shock at least once a week.

[Current]

I have no idea how come Anthony Evans writes for the Grauniad. He blogs at http://thefilter.blogs.com/ so you can ask him.

Curiously there is another interesting article in the Guardian too recently. Deborah Orr a hardline socialist describes how socialism and social liberalism are incompatible. She explains that social liberalism and economic neoliberalism are compatible. Socialism requires less personal freedom. In other words she admits what we have all been saying for years.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/17/collapse-of-the-left

"Maybe, like the neo-cons, the liberal left has become too accustomed to its freedom, and has forgotten that like all precious things, it must be cherished and cossetted, brought out for use only on the special occasions when it can be appreciated for the glittering, dangerous, volatile treasure that it is."

[Richard]

Fortunately the Guardian's self-righteous leftism ensures that it's the lowest selling of Britain's "quality" papers (except maybe the similarly left-wing Independent).

[Current]

The only reason the Guardian is still published is because the same organization, the Scott trust, also owns the biggest selling car trading magazine in Britain "Auto Trader".

What's most amazing is that the Scott Trust was set up in order to avoid taxation. John Scott, the owner of the Guardian in the early 20th century wanted to pass it to his descendents without death duty.