KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (12/16/86)
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
... It is true that eliminating property taxes, ... increase
"freedom." (Especially for the person who person who owns
land... )
If property taxes were lower, more people could afford to own land.
But it is not only government that limits our free choice.
True. But government is the prime offender.
We live in a political world dominated by economic arrangements
among powerful institutions. Eliminating many government powers
might give us certain new freedoms, but would have no effect, or
the wrong effect, on the limits on free choice imposed upon us by
institutions.
I am not sure what you are objecting to. }i}iIt is true that you do
not have the choice of buying green trousers at a store that only
sells blue trousers. Any hypothetical right to buy green trousers
would infringe on the right of the owner of the store to sell only
blue trousers.
Liberals often seem to be objecting to natural laws rather than to
political choices. They find it unfair that certain behaviors have
certain costs associated with them (for instance that certain
lifestyles lead to deadly disease, or that refusing to work leads to
hunger, or that taking a year off work to have a baby makes one less
valuable to one's employer, etc). It is not clear to me whether they
feel that these costs are in fact imposed by people, or whether they
feel that even though these costs are imposed by nature, that people
should pay for them. In either case, the question is who pays, and by
what justification?
The deregulation of the phone company may give the consumer "free
choice" between phone companies, but the imperative of competition
means that consumers have no choice but to shoulder the cost of
intensive advertising wars in the short run ...
Advertising can be quite productive. If advertising sells enough
extra products, the unit cost will go down due to economy of scale
w3more than it will go up due to the cost of the advertising.
Look at the cost of long distance phone service. It is lower now
than before the deregulation, even though much less was spent on
advertising then.
... This advertising boom, in conjunction with financial
speculation, produces "economic growth," not by creating anything
productive, but by enlarging the percentage of our economy devoted
to waste.
Please tell me how one distinguishes productive work from wasteful
work. I don't think{_ the distinction is as simple as you seem to
}ithink.
One might argue that only production of actual goods is productive.
That processing information is pure waste and overhead. Probably few
people would make this claim today, though it was fairly popular not
that long ago. Note that if this claim is true, then our nation must
be in sorry shape, since the majority of workers now produce
information rather than goods and non-information services.
One often hears that lawyers, bankers, advertisers, and investors
are parasites since they don't actually produce anything. Actually,
law, banking, advertising, and investing are all very important
information industries. Information can be more valuable than goods.
Surely you can't argue with any of this, since your example was long
distance phone companies. All these companies do is move information
from place to place. But you seem to think that their doing so is
productive, while advertising, which also consists entirely of moving
information from place to place, is non-productive.
So who decides what is productive and what isn't? In a free market
system, we all do, by the choices we make every day. If some use of
money is believed to be non-productive by everyone, then nobody will
use money in that way.
... unlike small-scale capitalism in which the fittest survive
because of the superior quality of goods and services produced by
one's own hard work and initiative, large scale capitalism largely
thrives on the indoctrination of consumers to make the "right
choice,"
I think you underestimate consumers. Anyway, what is your
alternative? If you start by assuming that the consumer is a sucker,
that he can't be trusted to know his own best interest, government
control of the economy becomes the obvious alternative. There is, of
course, the question of where the bureaucrats come from. They can't
be drawn from the general population, since the general population is
(you claim) idiots. Some sort of elite is needed. A closely knit
cadre of benevolent (?) overseers. Is this what you advocate? It has
been tried, you know. It doesn't work.
the access to markets (examples: GE's distribution network, IBM's
monopoly in data processing),
Access is not conserved. New channels of access are created when
supply seeks demand. Look at the illegal drug trade for an example of
seemingly unstoppable access. Can you name any product that failed
due to lack of access to markets?
and the coercion of workers to work harder while being paid less.
Coercion? Nobody is compelled to continue working for the same
employer. You might as well complain of the coercion of employers BY
the workers to accept less work for more pay. THIS actually occurs,
thanks to the pro-union laws and rules against firing people.
Workers have little "choice" to improve their position if the
company that pays them the most money is least likely to survive.
I am eager to hear of the economy in which this would NOT be the
case!
Employers have little "choice" to improve their position if the
workers that are paid the least money are most likely to resign.
When competition ultimately runs its course, the consumer's choice
may be limited by monopoly.
Examples please? (Don't bother to list government mandated
monopolies.)
If a monopoly does form, either it sells products for a fair price,
or else other companies will start competing with it.
Companies frequently bring in innovations designed to induce
"economic growth" by making the consumer dependent on various
modern conveniences.
With the exception of actually addictive substances such as tobacco,
I completely disagree. Nobody is compelled to buy any new product
just because it is new. If most people do buy things which they
didn't buy 50 years ago, it is because they find the new things to
make life more pleasant, not because they were duped by clever and
evil tycoons.
... A dependency on toothpaste in a pump is being created (by
subsidy; at first) so that consumers will ultimately pay for the
added cost of the pump, and in order to better regulate (and speed
up) their toothpaste use.
It is logically impossible for anyone to prove the absence of a
conspiracy. Read Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus Trilogy for
further illumination.
What force do you see preventing any company from selling toothpaste
in tubes if consumers continue to be willing to pay for it?
As Herbert Marcuse said, "... Free election of masters does not
abolish the masters or the slaves.
This is just what I have been saying all along.
Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not
signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social
controls over a life of toil and fear -- that is, if they sustain
alienation."
I guess it's a matter of perspective. If you view all available
products as tools of manipulation devised by an evil conspiracy of
oligarchs, I am sorry, I can't help you. All I can say is that I
don't see it that way, nor do I see how such a conspiracy is possible
unless hundreds of millions of people are in on it worldwide. Nor do
I see why these conspirators would not quickly go broke if even one
percent as many people chose to compete with them and produce what
people really want. Given that what people buy is NOT what people
really want, but that they are all brainwashed -- the heck with it, it
doesn't make any sense either way. Hundreds of millions of people are
the innocent brainwashed victims of the same hundreds of millions of
people, who are guilty of conspiring to sustain alienation among
themselves? Sorry, but I find Marcuse's point incomprehensible.
...Keith
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