mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) (02/16/85)
Mr Torek requests empirical evidence to back up my claim that the
existing 'concentrations of economic power are maintained by exercising
political power', and 'could not persist in a Free Economy' 'Because of
diseconomies of scale -- especially informational diseconomies.' Empirical
evidence can be found in the fact that all such concentrations were
obtained with political priviledge, that such concentrations have generally
become more stable as government meddling in the economy has grown, and
that X-inefficiencies eventually eat-up the profits of most licensed
monopolies.
Torek claims that my claim that 'Socialist economics were completely
blown out of the water several decades ago by Ludwig Edler von Mises' is
'based on a blatantly false definition of "Socialist" as implying the
absence of markets.' Actually, von Mises blew Market Socialism out of the
water as well (Torek needs to do more research on the Calculation Debate).
Torek claims that taxation policies can internalize externalities.
This is only true in a very limited number of cases (such arguments for
taxation assume an ideal world where the relevant economic good is not an
economic bad for anyone -- for example, taxation to pay for military
spending in a society without Pacifists). In such cases, Libertarians
would obviously rather sacrifice economic performance to negative liberty
(most ideologies will sacrifice economic performance to something in some
cases). Incidently, Torek needs to brush-up on this area of economics; his
inclusion of education as a source of externalities is wrong.
Mr Torek asks for rational reasons 'to value presnt consumption over
future consumption'. One such reason is that deferring consumption carries
the risk of losing such consumption to death &c.
Back later,
Mc Kiernan