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From: js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Libertarians and economic democracy
Message-ID: <563@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Feb-85 14:20:02 EST
Article-I.D.: mhuxt.563
Posted: Mon Feb  4 14:20:02 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 6-Feb-85 01:25:28 EST
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> This is not the first request for a libertarian to explain
> the apparant blindness towards economic concentration of
> power as an integral part of the state.
>
> If we're going to do away with big government I'd rather
> not have IBM fill the vacuum, though we could do worse.

This isn't the first person I've noticed who seems to think that if
we can get big government off of our backs, IBM (or ANY huge corporation)
will just be able to 'step in' and fill the power vacuum.  Sort of
like Baron Greenback: "... and in the resulting chaos, *I* will step in
and take over the world!"  I've often wondered just how he was going
to go about that.  No problem!  Nature abhors a vacuum, right?  Wrong,
obviously, since 99.9999...% of the volume of the universe is full of
vacuum.
    So I ask: Which of the functions of government which would be 
discarded by libertarians would a huge multinational corporation be
able to take over?  (With profit, and without losing dozens of class
action lawsuits?)  Or is this 'IBM filling the vacuum' stuff just
empty rhetoric?
-- 
Jeff Sonntag
ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j
     "And I don't want to die.  
      I'd rather ride on my motorcy-
                           cle."         Arlo Guthrie