laissez-faire

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“
The laissez-faire position held that owners of private property -- including lumber and mining companies, should be allowed to do anything they wished for their property.

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Definitions (2)

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  1. Same as laisser-faire. Nowadays, however, the worst punishment to be looked for by one who questions its [governmental authority's] omnipotence, is that he will be reviled as a reactionary who talks laissez-faire. H. Spencer, Man vs. State, p. 55.

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Examples (50)

  • And neoliberalism is only the latest manifestation of laissez-faire, rich-people-know-best, blind, greedy and polluting industrialism and parasitic financialism that have been messing up the world and people's lives for more than a century. —  On Line Opinion - Latest Articles
  • But the folks from Media Matters make an excellent point -- the GOP's own 19 page budget "blueprint" proposal (what there is of one) has a banking plan that can hardly be called a small-government laissez-faire approach to the problem. —  AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed
  • It is sad to see people who have no income at all, but it is perhaps sadder to see young people grabbing at "high tech" jobs, thinking that in that way they can protect themselves from the storm of laissez-faire capitalism. —  Latest entries from edstrong.blog-city.com
  • "Today, laissez-faire economic policy leaves Iceland, which is severely wounded after years of it running the government," Sigfusson said. —  Kentucky.com: Homepage
  • However, in a stunning mea culpa (Oct. 24) before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he admitted shortcomings in his personal beliefs in laissez-faire policies.
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Etymologies (1)

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  1. French: laissez, 2d person plural imperative of laisser, let; faire, do: see laisserfaire.
 

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