LP and liberal socialism

A number of my friends in facebook are fans and supporters of Sen. Noynoy Aquino for President in the May 2010 elections. Me too, am a supporter of the man. One posting today by a friend is the “acceptance speech” yesterday of Sen. Mar Roxas as the running mate for Vice President of Sen. Noynoy. Sen. Mar said the “Noynoy-Mar team up” will

“…Ito ang magbibigay ng trabaho sa taumbayan, dahil hindi na kokotangan ang mga mamumuhunan. Ito ang magpapaabot-kaya sa presyo ng gamot, dahil hindi na makikipagsabwatan sa mga abusadong pharmaceutical companies.”

(This will create jobs because there will be no more extortion of entrepreneurs. This will bring down medicine prices because there will be no more connivance with abusive pharmaceutical companies.)

As usual, I always ask, “where is the liberal philosophy here? I still have to hear the classic liberal agenda like less government and less corruption, less taxes and less bureaucracies, more enterprise competition and more personal responsibility.”

I see a contradiction between Sen. Mar’s 1st and 2nd sentences. The first wants to encourage entrepreneurship and free market capitalism. The second discourages some entrepreneurs by accusing the pharma industry of abuse, and the subsequent moves by Sen. Mar to force drug price control.

Price control is a favorite advocacy by the socialists and socialist-leaning groups and individuals. They believe that competitive capitalism is not working and should not be allowed as much as possible because this will later result in the emergence of monopolies and oligopolies. But monopolies are almost always created by governments – through executive or legislative franchising, so that other potential players are shut out.

Sen. Noynoy is closer to liberal philosophy than Sen. Mar. The former has few interventionist legislative proposals, while the latter lately sounded like a liberal-socialist.

So for now, my vote will go to Sen. Noynoy for President, and will still think of the VP candidate.