Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP Path: utzoo!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!think!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: (micromotives & macrobehavior) Message-ID: <745@cybvax0.UUCP> Date: Wed, 11-Sep-85 17:40:06 EDT Article-I.D.: cybvax0.745 Posted: Wed Sep 11 17:40:06 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 13-Sep-85 00:27:34 EDT References: <3552@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Distribution: na Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA Lines: 114 In article <3552@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes: > 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. I made the analogy into a more accurate and complete explanation of my thinking. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it shoddy. Feel free to provide counter examples, or your own analogies. > >> >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. Exactly. A free market organization attempting to make the market less free to maximize its own benefit. This is exactly the reason why the free market is unstable, and libertaria will quickly degenerate into feudalism. > > 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... Because there are laws specifically designed to prevent monopolies. Quite a number of mergers and takeovers never move out of the consideration stage because of antitrust law. > >> >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. I deny that: you can provide examples. In any case, you're not excused because anyone else does it. > > 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. So what makes you think libertaria would be economically bigger than any other country? In another note, you were talking about multiple governments within libertaria, that you could switch like you switch supermarkets. Why can't they be conquored one by one by a smaller power until either all of libertaria is conquored or the governments consolidate into one political organism? [This is worth a new note in itself: please answer it separately.] > >> >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. Ho ho. Now how about an answer? > >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. > > 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. Believe it or not, even in a severe socialism people are provided with some approximation of their needs almost as if they were paid for their labors. If there is any provision over the bare necessities, then individuals have surplus to redistribute themselves. But once again, you are mixing political and economic systems to confuse the issue. Western Europe provides numerous counterexamples. And market forces will select for opportunism and cutthroat attitudes in libertaria just as surely as they do in the real world. -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh