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From: josh@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory,net.legal
Subject: Re: (micromotives & macrobehavior)
Message-ID: <3520@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 01:03:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3520
Posted: Wed Sep  4 01:03:20 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 02:57:40 EDT
References: <535@brl-tgr.ARPA> <987@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Reply-To: josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall)
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 42
Xref: watmath net.politics.theory:1025 net.legal:2259

In article <715@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
>In article <3476@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes:
>> .... What I want in the absence of a political system is, simply,
>> the absence of any political system.
>
>You may also wish for perfect vacuums.  The best you could approach is to
>make political systems as little intrusive as possible.

Most of the universe is a pretty good vacuum.  Just because you grew up
in slavery doesen't make it the necessary fate of everyone for all time.
A political system can be distinguished from both (a) those limitations
to ones choices that are due to the existence of other people with 
similar rights, and from (b) economic mechanisms to optimize the 
level of supply of goods with significant externalities.

>The market also has its positive feedback growth of economic powers.

Right, like the ones that formed AT&T...

>Fair?  Only by redefinition of the word to meet libertarian standards.

Oh, forgive me, of course in common usage a voluntary exchange is
considered a heinous crime whereas extortion at gunpoint is ... "fair".

>Effective?  Only in a few of the large range of social needs.  How would
>the market provide defense against a competing political power, for example?

Why do you assume it wouldn't?  Military struggles are generally decided
on the relative size and economic productivity of the countries involved,
not on the ideologies thereof.  I would absolutely agree that a market
would never start a war of agression, but then I think this a good thing.

>How would the market make preventing starvation or disease in the poor
>economic?

>Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh

Look again, it is the totalitarian dictatorships that are starving their
people.  America was, in the words of Will Rogers (during the Depression),
"the first nation to go to the poorhouse in an automobile."

--JoSH