Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.RUTGERS.EDU
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!josh
From: josh@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: (micromotives & macrobehavior)
Message-ID: <3552@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Fri, 6-Sep-85 01:55:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3552
Posted: Fri Sep  6 01:55:44 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Sep-85 06:14:02 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: 97

In article <727@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
>By this analogy, you'd have to remove yourself pretty far from the rest of
>us atoms to maintain your vacuum.  Feel welcome to.  :-)  The fact is, when
>the atoms get close together, there is an emergent phenominon: [political]
>pressure.

Originally, the analogy was vacuum = lack of political system.  You've
changed it to vacuum = lack of people, and then just assumed your
conclusion, that presence of people implies a political system.
Pretty shoddy thinking.

>
>> >The market also has its positive feedback growth of economic powers.
>> 
>> Right, like the ones that formed AT&T...
>
>Oh, did AT&T valiantly struggle to keep from being made a monopoly by those
>malicious legislators?

No, AT&T valiantly struggled TO be made a monopoly by those SELF-
INTERESTED legislators.

>  It would happen without
>the politics: look at all the mergers and aquisitions forming megalithic
>companies in the past two or three decades.

--Which haven't formed any monopolies...

>> >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".
>
>I'd say quotation out of context is a pretty heinous crime.  

Funny, you do it all the time.

>> >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. 
>
>Like Vietnam?

Exactly like Vietnam.  When the US (rich, relative to N.V. and the USSR)
pulled out of the war, there were no Communist troops left in the South.
As soon as it was clear we weren't coming back, N.V. and Russia (rich 
compared to S.V.) rolled through with a perfectly conventional army
as big as the D-Day assault force and wiped out S.V.

>  In any event, you are comparing struggles between political
>systems, rather than a struggle between a political and an apolitical system.
>I repeat: how would the market provide defense against a competing political
>power?
>

Just to show you how stupid that sounds, I'll repeat, too:
>> 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. 
>

>> >How would the market make preventing starvation or disease in the poor
>> >economic?
>> 
>> Look again, it is the totalitarian dictatorships that are starving their
>> people.  
>
>The fact is that the wealth of a nation does not feed the poor.  It is the
>distribution of the wealth that does.

Q: There are two men in a desert and they have two identical glasses, one
empty and one full of water.  How are they to divide the water exactly
equally between them?

A: They use the Socialist solution:  throw the water away and each has
exactly none.

>  But you have yet to produce
>any evidence that the free market will provide a distribution of wealth that
>will prevent starvation and disease among the poor.
>Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh


In a market the destitute (poor is a misnomer, it means someone who
can eat but can't afford much more than that) must rely on the sympathy
of others.  But anyone can help them.  In a socialism the destitute
must rely on sympathy as well, but the only ones who can help them
are the ruling clique, since the others have no say over the products
of their labors.  But the ruling clique are not picked for their 
sympathy; they are picked for their political opportunism and 
cutthroat ambition.  Go peddle your ideology to dead Kulaks.

--JoSH