The view point you have stated would come from the Austrian School correct: Mises, Hayek, Rand; et al? Heres the problem with what they state: like Marx’s Communism, Rands Libertarianism predicates humans acting in a very peculiar manner for which we have not evolved. Any system that postulates a change in human nature is bound to fail.

I’d say we have to find a dynamic balance between liberty and order,

I would argue that this is a false choice, especially in the area of economics.

We have had, for the last 95 years, a Federal Reserve bank which has been increasingly active in trying to control — that is, impose “order” on — the free market. At the same time we have had huge economic interventions into the economy to achieve social goals. These interventions have also been attempts to impose “order” on the marketplace. You can see the result of this striving for “order” all around you: economic chaos.

The problem is that there is a natural order to economics, which is almost impossible to overcome. The market can be manipulated by brute force. Illusary prosperity can be created by the introduction of fiat money. Illusary poverty can be created by the sudden reduction of the fiat money supply. Success can be simulated with handouts, failure can be simulated by taxation. Supply can be simulated by maximum prices, demand can be simulated by minimum wages. But these are the methods of the illusionist: their effects are brief, and their consequences severe.

The consequences can be hidden, for a time, through more illusion. The bust which follows an artificial inflationary boom can be hidden with a second, larger, dose of inflation. This is the effect of our current bailouts. But each time this occurs brings us closer to a second constraint: eventually, the population comes to understand that inflation will be ongoing and there is a “flight to real values”. Money becomes a hot potato, to be disposed of as quickly as possible, before prices rise again. For an example, refer to Zimbabwe now, or Germany in the 1920’s. This is called a “crack up boom”. It is similar, in action, to a “run” on a bank, but it is a “run” on a currency. It means that the people know you to be insolvient, and they want to get what little they can salvage before you collapse. When the people are disillusioned in this way, the end is near. And there is a rising chorous of people in America who are coming to understand what is going on.

Economics is not finance. It is not about “money management”. It is about unscrewing the inscrutable, and solving the insoluable. The calculations involved in achiving an economy which provides, as the Utilitarians advocated, “the greatest good to the greatest number” are so mind-numbingly complex that they cannot be solved by any small group of planners. Only the whole population, ordered by the market, can perform these calculations in any meaningful way. Any attempt to impose an arbitrary “order” on this process leads to anarchy.

I wear my tin foil hat with pride!

http://www.chuckypita.com/tin-foil-hat/