More Words, Deeper Hole

... there never really is Laissez Faire.

For example, critics of Laissez Faire will often point to the "deregulation" of energy in California in the 1990s and thereabouts, which led to miscellaneous brownouts and bankruptcies, with lot's of hurtin' all around -- moral, say the fans of "regulation", being that we shouldn't ever "deregulate" -- except that the deregulation of California power companies, in the minutiae and guts of its "deregulation", forbad those companies from passing on any cost increases to certain classes of consumers, with the result they couldn't pay for their own costs, and that's what led to the bankruptcies.

So, if you go hunt among the bull-rushes at the swamp's edge for a Murray Rothbard or a Peikoff (or the like), they will argue, not without merit, on the basis of that and other examples, that "the" problem is that we've never genuinely deregulated.

It's sort of the way that Marxists will explain away the implosion of the USSR, etc., on the grounds that it couldn't have been "real" Communism -- given the USSR had a (relatively) very wealthy governing class (the Nomenklatura with their Crimean Dachas, etc.), their plaint, too, is not without merit.

So: you go and press the local Ayn Rand groupies to tell you how much "deregulation" is "enough" to meet their litmus test for sufficiency.

And they'll tell you, that they still want Governments around to do stuff like define and enforce property rights, uphold contracts, and so on.

Which, unless I'm not understanding the plain meaning of English words, would be, um, regulation, right?

So, does "deregulation" even exist? Does the concept have any meaning whatsoever? At this stage in my progress toward senility and decrepitude, I've come to the conclusion that, no, it doesn't.

It's sort of the way Religious types (the kind who prattle on, on Sunday morning radio, or put on tall hats to make declarations about Morality from the immediate vicinity of Vatican City, etc.) always gas on about how we mustn't succumb to "materialist" beliefs.

So, what's a "materialist"?

Someone (who ?, where?), who apparently believes that "the world is made only of matter". Which, on the plain meaning of the actual words used, would mean a person who obviously doesn't "believe" in time, energy or information. I am unaware that any such person ever existed.

I think a lot of "debates" would just go away, if the participants were forbidden to ever use basically meaningless words (like "deregulation" or "materialist").