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From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: starvation and freedom
Message-ID: <1800@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Nov-84 01:26:13 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.1800
Posted: Fri Nov  9 01:26:13 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Nov-84 06:14:08 EST
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Nf-ID: #R:wucs:-46300:inmet:7800169:000:3238
Nf-From: inmet!nrh    Nov  8 00:09:00 1984

>***** inmet:net.politics / wucs!esk /  8:46 am  Nov  6, 1984
>[]
>From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
>>>and seems to make very problematical the situation where a human must 
>>>give the fruits of his labor to another to avoid starving. --ward@hao
>>
>>This is, in a nutshell, the problem lots of people have when they first
>>hear libertarian ideas.  Socialists in particular argue that a starving
>>man is not free, and therefore only through whatever measures are 
>>necessary to prevent starvation can man be freed.
>>This is an emotionally satisfying sort of argument, until one realizes
>>that there are no measures that are absolutely guaranteed to prevent
>>starvation, that by attempting to take such measures, one will give up
>>more and more freedom, and that people will still starve.  
>
>But there ARE measures to guarantee that nobody who cares enough about
>himself to seek govt. aid when work is unavailable will starve.  

Is this true in poor countries?  Even in poor socialist countries?  No?
Why not?

>And
>they would not cripple anyone's freedom (does paying taxes of a small
>part of your income cripple your freedom?).

Yes indeed!  How "small" do you mean?  I'm not wealthy enough to be in
the 50% bracket, but 50% doesn't strike me as "small".  Regardless of
the amount, it's clear that governments believe that the amount is more
than people would willingly pay (otherwise, no need for enforcement of
laws about tax evasion).

>>I have, of course, exaggerated here to make a point: it is difficult,
>>probably impossible, to measure the "net gain" or "net loss" of freedom.
>
>Then it is also impossible to say that such govt. activity would lower
>freedom.  

NO!  Read it over -- NET loss is not measurable.  POINT loss (it's
illegal for you to do that, buddy) is quite obvious (and although
there are no scientific units of "freedom", it's clear that certain
government actions lower freedom at certain points.  I argued that
the idea that there's an overall gain of freedom from these actions
is not testable, (because such  a gain is not obvious and not measurable)
but the individual losses are VERY OBVIOUS.  

>It IS possible however to say that if one had an equal chance
>of occupying any position in society one would have better expected
>prospects with such govt. activity.  

I suppose it is possible to say it, but can you back it up?  What
units are you measuring in?  If you're measuring in expected income, then you
seem to be arguing that an intervening government produces higher
economic output than a "night watchman" government, which is a most intriguing
argument.  I'd like to see some backing -- my understanding is that 
as government intervention goes down,  economic throughput goes up.
For backing, check out "Economics in One Lesson", by Hazlitt.

I like the idea of the random-reoccupation as a measure of how "good"
a society is.  It has the obvious limit-case problem (your "expected"
prospects would be (total_wealth/total_population) which means that 
this measure would make no distinction between a society where ONE
person controlled all wealth, and one where wealth was distributed evenly)
which perhaps rises out of the difficulty of measuring the value of
wealth to an individual.