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From: lkk@teddy.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: free market and famine
Message-ID: <1022@teddy.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Jul-85 12:08:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: teddy.1022
Posted: Fri Jul 26 12:08:33 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jul-85 03:28:49 EDT
References: <1671@psuvax1.UUCP> <2921@topaz.ARPA>
Reply-To: lkk@teddy.UUCP (Larry K. Kolodney)
Distribution: net
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
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In article <2921@topaz.ARPA> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes:
>In article <1671@psuvax1.UUCP> berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman) writes:

>There seems to be a basic misconception here about what the free market
>really is.  It is not a bunch of industrialists, nor is it a government
>agency.  It is a condition: namely the absence of coercive force
>restricting the voluntary exchange of goods and services, in this case
>between "uneducated, poor peasants".  No external intervention is necessary
>for the free market to occur;  and no external intervention is sufficient.


Is such a condition possible, except in an ideal world of rational
individuals?  What do you mean by coercive force?  A government?
A private army?  Peer pressure?  Custom?  

A libertarian system only eliminates the first of those forces
(governmental force), allowing the others to run rampant.


Anyone who beleives that a power vacuum in a society is a stable 
configuration is simply naive.

-- 

Sport Death,
Larry Kolodney
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