mcgeer%sirius.Berkeley.EDU@UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU (10/30/86)
Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU> >There have to be some laws; there have >to be roads for businesses to use. You have to have shoes to walk on, too. It doesn't follow that the government must therefore make shoes. > There have to be workweek limits, if you want to avoid slave > conditions for labor. "There must be limits on prices, if you want to avoid excessive corporate gouging of consumers"; both statements appear flawed to me. There is no *evidence* that there would be slave conditions for labour if there were no restrictions on workweek. Indeed, for salaried positions there is *no* fixed workweek. Overtime labour without guaranteed monetary compensation comes with the turf in many salaried positions (eg, most engineering positions). And I have yet to hear of a single instance of an enslaved engineer. A little evidence for this statement, Mr. Cowan? > There has to be > transit, given the way in which factories are concentrated into > densely populated cities. In the first place, did the factories precede the transit lines, or the transit lines precede the factories? In the second place, the very best system of rapid transit in the world is decentralized, and privately owned and operated. It sits in your garage and mine, and it's a damned sight better way to get from A to B than any transit system I've ever ridden on; including London's Tube, the IRT, the T, the TTC, Montreal Metro, Vancouver's ALRT, and BART. Your automobile may not be a politically correct way to get around, but it's the thing people prefer when given any sort of choice. Finally, suppose I concede a "need" for mass transit, even in the face of the clear superiority of the private automobile. See the comment on shoes above. Even the best of the State-run transit systems compares very unfavorably to every private transit system I've ever ridden on. When did you last see a Greyhound bus or *any* airplane with *any* graffiti? When did you last hear of a shootout on a Greyhound bus? When did you last hear of anyone refusing to ride Greyhound because they thought that there lives were in danger? It's only on state transit lines where there's any sort of a problem with litter, graffiti and crime. Does anyone doubt that if the IRT were in private hands tomorrow, that riding the NY subways would be a safe, clean, pleasant experience? Frankly, I would think that the statists would hide their heads in shame at the experience of state-owned and state-operated mass transit. > Even if there is no governmental body >organized by the State, someone has to set some guidelines somehow, >or you have chaos. Evidence? -- Rick -------
mcgeer%sirius.Berkeley.EDU@UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU (11/03/86)
>Dani Zweig asks what libertarians' reaction would be if we knew that >a world based on the non-coercion principle would be fraught with >poverty, misery, and danger. I can only speak for myself, but if >this were the case I would beat a hasty retreat. > >--Barry Of course, coercive states around the world are places where poverty, misery, and danger are unknown. Me, I can hardly wait to leave the relative freedom, poverty, misery, and danger of the USA for the servitude, wealth, comfort and safety of Ethiopia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Red China, Cuba, Russia, Afghanistan, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, or any of the world's other shining examples of the munificence of Marxism. Somehow, Barry, I don't think you'll have to beat a hasty retreat. -- Rick -------