ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (11/22/84)
Here is an issue that I have not seen mentioned in the Libertarian platform, or discussed on the net: Should a properly limited government in a free society include organizations equivalent to today's National Bureau of Standards? The arguments against it are obvious: it does nothing that cannot, in principle, be done by private industry. However, this organization occupies a unique niche: it DEFINES terms that affect the meaning of many laws and contracts: seconds, meters, volts, and so on. The difficulty with leaving the definition of weights and measures to private industry is that here is one place where I do not want multiple competing definitions. If there were multiple standards organizations, then every time I signed a contract to buy N pounds of something, I would have to specify, at least in principle, the standard that defined 'pound' in that contract. But what if that standards company goes out of business? What if they decide to change their standard? It seems to me that since the decisions of a standards organization effectively have force of law, these organizations cannot be left uncontrolled. Therefore they should be part of the government, since this is preferable to having a government- controlled organization that is otherwise private. This, anyway, is my current opinion. Anyone care to try to talk me out of it?