🚀 go-pugleaf

    From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>

    ... However, my examples still illustrate the effect of market
    forces serving the needs of institutions.  To show why this is
    "bad," I must give some examples of how institutions can affect
    BASIC human needs.
    How about:

    -The freedom to breath: Before federal emissions standards,
    automobile companies like General Motors (with oil companies) were
    perfectly content to produce inefficient cars that guzzled leaded
    gas and polluted the air.  Lots of health hazards from this have
    been greatly reduced by regulation.

  Why do you contrast these regulations with the free market?
Government has only one role in a free society - protecting individual
rights.  Anti-pollution laws are a legitimate exercise of this
authority.

    -The freedom to drink clean water: There are unsolved serious
    problems with public water supplies all over the country -- hence
    the growth in popularity of bottled water.  The amount of
    inorganic garbage our society generates, and ultimately dumps in
    landfills, contributes directly to this problem.

  It is not "society" which pollutes the water, but individuals and
various organizations composed of individuals.  They should not be
allowed to pollute any water they don't own, since doing so would
infringe the property rights of the owner of the water.  And if they
do own it, they are free to pollute it, but if they do so they are not
then allowed to sell it as drinking water, for that would be fraud.

    -Survival: My right to live is being threatened by a nuclear
    balance of terror,

  This is the doing of states, not of individuals or voluntary
organizations of individuals.

    perpetuated and intensified by the economic interests of military
    contractors who exaggerate the vulnerability of the US deterrent.

  The military }icontractors don't run the arms race, the Soviet and
US governments do.

    I could go on, but I think that these examples aptly illustrate
    that we can't trust "free enterprise" to take care of all our
    concerns.

  You have made a telling case against total anarchy, and against
statism.  You have made no case against a free society.

    .. Obviously, there are structural constraints -- a limited supply
    of clean water -- that mean that if everyone in the 5% could rise
    up from the bottom, another group of people will be in the bottom
    five percent, and would bear the burden.

  I think there is enough water for everyone.  If there wasn'}i~rt,
adopting a totalitarian system could hardly change the fact, except
for the worse.
  Unless everyone is given equal resources (at whose expense?) there
will always be a bottom 5%.  Nothing will change that.  But those
in the bottom 5% can be wealthier and happier than the TOP 5% are
today.

    ...  Executives who make decisions that affect the water supply
    are isolated from the very people that their policies will affect.

  Not in a free market system, they aren't.

    ...  I mention a few man-made needs:

    -The right to education.  (threatened by cutting funds for public
    schools, which sends people to private schools, further decreasing
    public school support)

  There is no right to an education, if by that you mean the right to
force someone to give you an education.

    -The right to a job that can pay for affordable housing,
    transportation, and food.

  There is no right to a job, if by that you mean the right to force
someone to give you a job.  There is only the right to freely interact
with others, trading or giving value for value.

    Again, the size of the institutions involved means that corporate
    heads who influence government policy are isolated from the people
    whom their actions affect.

  Which is one of the reasons for a strict seperation between
economics and state.

    (Executives oppose full-employment legislation and tolerate high
    structural unemployment because it creates a favorable market for
 }i   hiring people.)

  Any rational person who has given thought to the issues opposes
"full-employment legislation", since it violates individual rights.
I am not sure what it means to "tolerate" high unemployment.

    It even affects the general public: in Boston, or in Palo Alto, I
    am certainly isolated from the people on the bottom of the
    economic ladder.  ...

  Who is isolating you?  You are free to associate with these people.

    ... I now believe that capitalism in the U.S. and starvation are
    completely compatible, because we have adopted ideological
    barriers and psychological defenses that allow us to ignore the
    starvation.

  Starvation is a hundred times more rampant in nations that adopt
your left wing ideology.  How do you explain that?
  You are free to feed the hungry, and to talk others into doing so.
You are NOT free to take money from others against their will with
which to feed the hungry, even if you have convinced 99% of the
population that doing so would be a good idea.
  The best way to help the poor is to not be poor.

    WHAT IS NEEDED is greater distribution of wealth,

  The distribution of wealth is up to the creators of that wealth.
You are free to distribute your own wealth, but by what right do you
claim the right to steal wealth that other people have created or
traded, wealth that would never have existed but for their efforts,
wealth which they would probably not have bothered to create if they
knew it was to be stolen from them?

    and a drastic reduction in the power of institutions.

  The only institution with any political power is the government.

    The question of how these changes can be effected is a separate
    issue which we can discuss later.

  What's to discuss?  There is only one way to do what you suggest,
namely to steal the property of individuals and to imprison, torture,
or kill any property owner who objects.

  Tell me, in a free society, what prevents any subset of the
population who advocate views similar to yours from voluntarily
banding together, at their own expense, and for their own benefit?
All I can think of that prevents this is that this system can only
work by stealing from people who do NOT consent to it, and never
will.
                                                              ...Keith

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