In a fiery ZeroHedge Debate hosted by George Gammon of the Rebel Capitalist Show, Michael Green of Simplify Asset Management argued that "kicking the can" can buy innovation and growth, while Mises Institute's Patrick Newman countered that endless borrowing is "a moral and economic fraud" destined to collapse under its own weight. Keynesian optimism met Austrian discipline.

Here were the highlights for those who missed it:

But who will build the roads?
The good ol' libertarian road construction debate emerged.

Newman argued that "the private sector can build it—and they have built infrastructure." He warned that government projects may look impressive but hide unseen costs: "We're not looking at what would have been built with those resources… would it have been a better quality road or a road with different types of branch lines?" State spending also distorts efficiency by the nature of how economists compute GDP: "The government's contribution [to GDP] is what it spends. The private sector's contribution is what other people spend on it." 

Newman's conclusion: "I don't think you need taxes to pay for various goods and services that only the government can pay."

Green fired back that "the simple reality is that they [private sector] don't" build such projects where it really matters. Conceding that private efforts are more efficient, he emphasized that "the hurdle cost for the private sector is much higher," meaning fewer roads would ever get built—especially those connecting "a small rural community with a larger city." Green defended the public role as one of necessary subsidy: "Subsidies create more of a good than you would otherwise have. The private sector would benefit from scarcity. That's antithetical to the idea of developing a resource that doesn't accrue the benefits to the private sector naturally."

Newman countered with history, invoking the railroad boom: "Most of railroad infrastructure was privately funded… about 75% of the funds used to build railroads during the Second Industrial Revolution came from the private sector." He cited historian Richard White to claim that "government subsidies caused railroads to be built ahead of demand," leading to bankruptcies and inefficiency—proof, in his view, that the state's heavy hand "built inefficiently" while "private sector lines were built basically around it."