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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: (micromotives & macrobehavior)
Message-ID: <727@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Sep-85 15:08:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.727
Posted: Thu Sep  5 15:08:55 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Sep-85 00:54:43 EDT
References: <535@brl-tgr.ARPA> <987@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 72
Summary: 

In article <3520@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes:
> 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.

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.

> >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: market forces make growth desirable, and
sometimes politics is the cheaper way to acquire.  It would happen without
the politics: look at all the mergers and aquisitions forming megalithic
companies in the past two or three decades.

> >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.  But I suppose
in the free market of debating tricks, you choose the cheapest.

> >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?  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?

> I would absolutely agree that a market
> would never start a war of agression, but then I think this a good thing.

A market as a whole, no.  Individual members or cartels, yes.  For example,
if the United Fruit Company hadn't been able to control Central American
nations with the US armed forces and CIA, they would simply have hired
some other mercenaries.

> >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.  America was, in the words of Will Rogers (during the Depression),
> "the first nation to go to the poorhouse in an automobile."

Yea, look at all those starving Scandinavian children in those socialist
welfare states there.  Pathetic.  (Sarcasm.)

The fact is that the wealth of a nation does not feed the poor.  It is the
distribution of the wealth that does.  Some political systems produce bad
distributions of wealth: no debate there.  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