radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) (11/30/85)
> >So do any "socialists" out there want to defend shoe quotas against the > >libertarians (me included)? If not, perhaps you'd like to give a list of > >what current state interventions you oppose also. Then we'd have something > >to agree on... > > I can conceive of a situation where shoe quotas might be desirable. > Suppose one country plans to flood the shoe market in the other > country with cheaper shoes until all shoe producers in the other > country are driven out of business. If they continue selling cheap shoes after all the domestic producers go out of business then I'm all for it. -:) Presumably, you think they'll hike up the price once they have a monopoly. For this to work, it must be the case that establishing a shoe industry takes a long time, or costs a lot more than just maintaining one, otherwise as soon as the price goes up, the domestic industry will reappear. Lets say this is a potential problem. How about this solution: The domestic shoe producers, seeing the foreigner's plans, recruit investors to pump in money to maintain their business at a level allowing them to quickly expand once the foreigner's try to up the price. I haven't done a detailed analysis (and probably am not competent to anyway :-), but I suspect that there is no way for the foreign producers to come out ahead against intelligent defense of this sort, or for the domestic consumers to lose overall. The flaw with this plan at present is that the government would probably slap a "windfall profit tax" on any domestic producer who had the forsight to mothball his factory and then cash in on exorbitant shoe prices. Radford Neal
nrh@inmet.UUCP (12/08/85)
>/* Written 7:33 pm Nov 30, 1985 by carnes@gargoyle in inmet:net.politics.t */ >... >["Brain Damage" Libertarians are] those who have >heard tell that the free market is the most efficient economic system >but do not ask what "efficient" means and do not notice that the >system which has been shown to be efficient is a highly abstract >model which no economist claims is an accurate representation of the >real world; who advocate a society in which coercion is "minimized" >without asking what that could possibly mean; who forbid the >"initiation of coercion" on basic principle and in the next breath >say they have a right to initiate coercion against someone who >trespasses on their property or tries to steal it; who assume without >question that individuals have a moral right to own privately the >means of production, apparently on the grounds that they have been >owned privately in the past; who claim to be defenders of "liberty" >but in fact defend only the liberty of private property-owners to do >as they wish with their own property; who declare that "taxation is >theft" as if this were self-evident; and who, in short, do not >understand what it is to think philosophically (which means >*rigorously*) about political and social questions. Say! Are you the same Richard Carnes who postulated a bunch of libertarians who would simply sit in the middle of an island without attempting to establish property rights to paths to the ocean and thus be trapped within during a rescue attempt? I suspect that *THAT* Richard Carnes would have to be pretty careful about what he claimed "rigorous thinking" meant.
janw@inmet.UUCP (12/10/85)
[Gabor Fencsik {ihnp4,dual,lll-crg,hplabs,intelca}!qantel!gabor]
>In <28200323@inmet.UUCP> Jan Wasilewski writes:
>> The following is Gabor's criticism of libertarians and Marxists,
>> respectively.
>>
>> >The democratic process will not do [for libertarians] as a source
>> >of legitimacy for the state: this is the translation of the slo-
>> >gan 'Taxation is Theft'.
>>
>> >Marx's ... assertion that 'human essence is the totality of so-
>> >cial relations' is, as far as I can see, incompatible with any
>> >notion of inalienable rights.
>>
>> There seems to be an implicit contradiction here. Can the demo-
>> cratic process, in your view, legitimize alienation of all
>> rights, or only of some rights; and if so, which ?
>
>The democratic process legitimizes the making of public policy.
>Taxation is an adjunct and precondition of public policy. Saying
>'Taxation is Theft' is an attack on the legitimacy of political power
>whether or not such legitimacy flows from the democratic process.
>This is the line of thought implicit in the first paragraph you quoted.
>Nothing was said about rights there, unless 'freedom from taxation' is
>regarded as a fundamental right or, alternatively, legitimacy is understood
>to mean 'a licence to abrogate rights'. But of course it means nothing of the
>sort. The striking thing about the democratic process is its ability to create
>new rights at an alarming rate. For example, the right of disabled children
>to 'mainstream' education, the right of schizophrenics to be released from
>mental hospitals and the rights flowing from affirmative action laws or the
>Freedom of Information Act have all been codified within the last ten years
>or so. It seems that the logic of the democratic process gravitates toward
>inventing more rights rather than abolishing existing ones (whatever one may
>think of the recent crop). So I cannot make sense of your ques-
>tion without some pointers to the implicit contradiction you are
>hinting at.
My fault entirely.
Your point about democratic process creating rights is, I believe,
central to the general discussion; I would like to store it and
return to it. But it is peripheral to the particular question I raised.
You will, I expect, agree that the democratic process can abrogate rights as
well as create them. In some cases the abrogated rights can be
quite fundamental. 3 examples will suffice: (1) military draft;
(2) in post-WWII Britain people in basic industries were attached to
their jobs with no right to leave them; (3) "black codes" in
post-Civil war South deprived blacks of freedom of movement and
the right to own land.
Someone who believes in "inalienable rights" must, I believe, set
a boundary beyond which the democratic process cannot legitimate-
ly go. Adherents of the "taxation is theft" principle believe
that here is the boundary. Others do not go that far but assert
that at least individual income tax as it exists in USA violates
fundamental rights. It certainly abrogated *a* right; and it was
at least fundamental enough to call for a constitutional amend-
ment; and it was one of the few amendments restricting individual
rights.
If one believes in democratic process as the sole source of legi-
timacy for rights or right restriction, one has no logical prob-
lem; if one believes *all* rights can be deduced from inalienable
rights, ditto. But recognizing *two* sources of legitimacy raises
the question of a demarcation line. In your response you seem to
hint that what is *necessary* ("adjunct and precondition") to
public policy (and you think taxes are) should certainly fall on
the side of alienable rights. *Now* there apparently are
*three* sources of legitimacy: will of the people (democratic
process); practical necessity; and inalienable rights. All this
is not unreasonable; and there may be no contradiction here, if
the three spheres don't overlap. If they do, there is.
My question is: how do *you* demarcate rights so that no
contradiction arises ?
Jan Wasilewsky