prudence@trw-unix.UUCP (06/17/83)
First off, I would like to welcome tbray to this group. We love it, too. Next, I must disagree with his statement: Lassez-faire went by the board with the introduc- tion of laws banning indentured child labour over 100 years ago, and there has been no such animal ANYWHERE for about three generations. Every demo- cratic government in the world closely regulates its private sector. This just is not true. Three nations come immediately to mind: Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore. All three have what comes close to being laissez-faire economies, and all three are far more prosperous than their neighbors. This is astonishing con- sidering what disadvantages they have. They are all very densely populated, they have few natural resources, they can't even feed themselves without huge food imports, yet they have very high standards of living, coupled with political freedoms, personal liberties, and high respect for human rights. Compare the qual- ity of life in Hong Kong with the life in Communist China, the life in Singapore with life in Burma, life in Switzerland with life in Hungary. In fact, poor, barren Switzerland has the second highest per-capita income in the world, second only to oil-slimy Kuwait. I am sorry to make such smug pronouncements, because I know they infuriate my opponents, but I will reiterate my posi- tion. A laissez-faire economy is the only one consistent with prosperity and freedom. Tbray is correct, however, that such an economy has gone nearly by the board. Such economies were much more common in the nineteenth century, an era marked by rapid increases in the quality of life, economically, politically, and even artistically. We are all the poorer for the abandonment of proven economic formu- las. Prudence {ucbvax,decvax}!trw-unix!prudence
myers@uwvax.UUCP (06/19/83)
Prudence (a worker for one of our nation's successful members of the competitive sector), you forget that the countries you mention as being successful examples of laissez-faire economies are intimately intertwined with a WORLD capitalist economy. As you will freely admit, none of the 1st world countries have anything like a laissez-faire economy. If laissez-faire economies are so wonderfully functional for all societies, what happened to the major economic powers? Could it be that LFE's are not so wonderful on a large scale? Jeff Myers