trc@houti.UUCP (06/17/83)
Response to JD Myers: I agree with you that subsidies for fallow land are wrong - but not for the same reason. I just think any government interference is wrong. However, you seem to imply that such land should be farmed, and the excess grain given away on the basis of need to other countries. I disagree. Who pays for the grain? Will you make the farmer take the burden of your brand of morality? Or will you choose to spread the pain over all taxpayers? Does the fact that the government would steal less from many rather than much from few make it any better? And it would be theft - just because a government does it, does not change its nature. If people really want their money to go for such purposes, they will give it directly. Do you think that need is the correct basis for distribution of "consumer goods"? Who is to determine what is needed for whom? Who is to determine who is to pay? Who determines what to do about those who refuse to work? Who do you feel is qualified to give away other people's money? You? The UN? What if I disagree - should I be forced to go along, and pay "my share"? Why am I not qualified make the determination for my own money? Tom Craver houti!trc
mjk@tty3b.UUCP (06/17/83)
Response to Tom Craver: "I just think any government interference is wrong ... What if I disagree [with government spending priorities] - should I be forced to go along ... ?" All advanced societies have established governments which make policies in what they see as the best interest of the general population. Some of these governments are less able to judge that than others. For example, I happen to believe that democracy is a very good way to judge the common good. People will elect representatives who reflect their views and throw out those who don't. The more closed an electoral system (and I don't believe the U.S. electoral system to be the most open in the world, but that's another discussion), the less the results reflect a general concensus. I know you want direct participatory democracy, but the burden is on you to develop realistic governmental systems, not theoretical pipedreams. I've worked in groups which use concensus decision-making and you can't run an organization of twenty people that way, let alone a nation of 230 million. That's the theory, Mr. Craver. Now the trouble is that you totally reject the notion of a common good. You totally reject the notion of a social contract between people to work for that common good. If I don't unfairly attach a label, you are a Libertarian. The trouble with Libertarians, at least in my experience, is that all their policies inevitably boil down to just this: supporting the "right" of powerful people to impose their will on the non-powerful. Do you really believe that a totally laissez-faire government could result in anything other than a de facto government of economically powerful corporations making policy without any popular input at all? If you don't think that will happen, tell me what will stop it? Don't forget, the entire history of government regulation in the U.S. is one of powerful interests so subjecting the public good to their own private interests as to require an essentially unwilling government to interfere. (Of course, the efficacy of regulation in the U.S. is highly questionable, but that again is another discussion.) The real question which always stops Libertarians dead in their tracks is, How do you prevent monopolies from developing and becoming a de facto (unelected, unrepresentative, unresponsive, self-interested) government? Mike Kelly @ Teletype ...!ihnp4!otuxa!tty3b!mjk ...!mhtsa!tty3b!mjk
myers@uwvax.UUCP (06/20/83)
Tom Craver's remarks: >Do you think that need is the correct basis for distribution of "consumer >goods"? Who is to determine what is needed for whom? Who is to determine >who is to pay? Who determines what to do about those who refuse to work? >Who do you feel is qualified to give away other people's money? You? The >UN? What if I disagree - should I be forced to go along, and pay "my share"? >Why am I not qualified make the determination for my own money? I do believe that I detect a hint of libertarian/anarchist here! I seem to recall that you have been rather heavily involved with a certain discussion on law. Who is to decide what laws are the correct and just ones? You? The Hague? The answer is that "the people" should be making all of these decisions thru a process that is as democratic and participatory as possible. I feel that governments are necessary to prevent the "war of all against all". However, they have a tenacious habit of losing real contact with those they are supposed to be representing. I'm afraid I don't have any simple answers (like a devout belief in laissez-faire capitalism), Tom. However, we must at all turns try to work towards a system which politicizes decision making as much as possible. A system which tells us that "political involvement" consists of voting twice a year breeds indifference, ignorance, and bureaucracy, whether one is speaking of a "democratic" government or labour union. A second point is that I've been detecting a decided "money fetish", to use Georg Simmel's term (which reminds me, I must check out Ayn Rand), in this newsgroup lately. It's important to keep in mind that money is nothing more than a piece of green toilet paper which has been societally defined to be useful as a medium of exchange. The important stuff is the hard tangible products which have use-value: a toothbrush, a lathe, a computer, etc. Take a moment and think how much effort our society puts into shuffling bits of paper or electrons which have "value" around. Banks, life-insurance companies, investment firms, ad nauseum. To be sure, some kind of coordination of distribution is absolutely necessary, but the contortions monopoly capitalism goes thru! (I can here the skirmishers advancing...) Jeff Myers ...seismo!uwvax!myers
larry@grkermit.UUCP (Larry Kolodney) (06/22/83)
No, no, no. The questions which stops libertarians (and objectivists) dead in their tracks is: How do you define private property other than 'What the government says it is'? -- Larry Kolodney (USENET) decvax!genrad!grkermit!larry allegra!linus!genrad!grkermit!larry harpo!eagle!mit-vax!grkermit!larry (ARPA) rms.g.lkk@mit-ai
swatt@ittvax.UUCP (06/23/83)
Regarding Mike Kelly's question about how do you prevent large private monopolies from trampling on the "common good": Well, it's a rather difficult matter of balance, like a lot of things. Mainly, you don't let them have armies, or in other ways use "force, or credible threat of force". Obviously, this requires some agency which CAN use force to prevent others from doing so. ShaZamm! you've just invented government. Now the problem is turned around to "Who watches the watchman?" (the old Latin phrase). You can't have individual rights without government, but it is all too easy to lose them again to that same government. You have to draw a line, and make exceptions, and adjust the line, and ... Exactly where to draw that line and what exceptions to make is a matter of enormous disagreement, on this net and elsewhere. Libertarianism makes an admirable attempt to provide a single consistent principle for deciding where to draw the line. As a political theory it is very closely tied to lazzez-faire capitalism (In fact, Milton Freedman often says his support for an unregulated private market is not because he believes it will increase the general wealth, although he does, but because he believes it is the only way to preserve individual liberty). It is clear that this type of society will lead to a lot of abuses, but every type of society which ever existed had abuses. Human beings are neither as simple nor as perfect as their political theories. I will make some general observations: 1) Once a power or authority is ceded to government, it is practically impossible to get it back short of a revolution. It overstates the case, but a good question to ask when you consider granting some new authority to government is "If it turns out to be a mistake, am I willing to fight a revolution to take it back?". 2) Decisions reached by the political process, regardless of how democratic they are, are necessarily compromises with which some people will be unhappy. Talleyrand once defined the aim of diplomacy as "an equality of dissatisfaction"; a description which applies to political decision-making in general. 3) Political decisions are also made by some central authority, not the individuals affected, who are merely "represented". The higher up in the government chain you go (town, county, state, federal), the more distant the decision is from those to whom it will apply. The effects of the compromise are thus greater. 4) The vote as a means to participate in political decisions is too limited in scope (i.e. candidate "A" or candidate "B"), and too infrequent in any case. Every claim I've ever seen about the abuses and distortions of commercial advertising applies even more so to political campaigns. The typical voter is so ill-served by the various news media that the only way to make a truly informed decision is to make his own investigation of primary sources, an activity generally incompatible with earning a living. 5) Policies and programs put into effect to accomplish some desirable goal can acquire a life of their own and an agency interested more in continuing those policies that in determining whether there is any correlation between their actual effects and the original goals. In some cases the bad effects of one policy lead directly to newer policies to correct an alleged failure in the private market, or curb some alleged abuse. The examples of this are many and often frightening. 6) In our current society, there is essentially no control over government spending. The special interests, instead of fighting against each other for resources, all gang up together against the general taxpayer. You also have to realize that the enormous sums spent to comply with various regulations are really government spending, even though they don't appear on the budget. A system of government with essentially unlimited power to expend resources is getting a long way from the concept of "enumerated powers". Yes I believe that if you didn't have government, you'd just end up under the control of the strongest gang in the area. I also believe you need the MOST protection from the biggest bully. Government today violates the rights of far more people and to a much greater extent than private corporations do. How it has managed at the same time to acquire a reputation for "protecting the little people" is one of the wonders of our age. The activity of propaganda and myth-making is one in which government has been vastly more effective than private industries; in this one area at least, government is very efficient. In general, I believe the proper level for most decisions is the individual. Where that isn't possible, or where too many abuses result, I prefer to keep it at the closest, smallest, government level possible. In particular, I believe if we don't soon get some control over how, and how much, the federal and state governments spend, license, regulate, control, oversee, require, and prohibit, we may wake up and find the opportunity is gone. People become so used to being controlled and regulated they can no longer imagine it might work any other way. I don't think pure libertarianism would work, because I don't think pure ANYTHING will work. One thing you absolutely can't do with any political system is set it up and expect it to operate "on its own" according to the theory, like planetary bodies in Newtonian physics. However, I do think that libertarianism as a statement of direction in which we should move is much better than what we have now, and infinitely better than what we will have if we continue our present course. - Alan S. Watt