tim@isrnix.UUCP (06/01/83)
Prudence forgets that in 1929 without government intervention that this
country was plunged into the depths of the Great Depression. And what
pulled this country out of the Depression was the massive government
intervention into the economy of World War II. It is unfortunate that it
took a War and its obscene destruction of resources and lives to justify
getting the government fully involved in getting the economy going again.
This is not to say that I think that big government and bureaucracy are
necessarily good things. But neither are huge monopolistic and oligopolistic
corporations either who had squashed the "free market" by their own incredible
economic power. The paradox is that the free market destroys itself by the
natural play of its own forces when economies of size and disproportionate
corresponding political power lead a few or (in the case of Standard Oil and
some other monopolies at the turn of the century)one big corporation to
totally take over specific product market. At that point the free market is
no longer free. It need have nothing to do with governmental intervention
in the least. However in fact it has been true that huge economic power
also leads to corresponding political power which is also utilized for
big monopolistic firms advantage. Look at the current subsidization of nuclear
power versus the empoverishment of solar power-Reagan and his corporate cronies
would much rather utilize a centralized resource like nuclear power which can
be controlled by big corporations than a dispersed energy source like solar
energy which can only be controlled in terms of products to translate solar
power into heat ,light ,electricity or other energy forms. Besides those
products (special glass,solar cells,etc.)solar energy itself is FREE.
Tim Sevener
decvax!pur-ee!iuvax!isrnix!tim