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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: (micromotives & macrobehavior)
Message-ID: <746@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Sep-85 18:18:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.746
Posted: Wed Sep 11 18:18:52 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Sep-85 02:08:14 EDT
References: <3520@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <727@cybvax0.UUCP> <10286@ucbvax.ARPA>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 60

In article <10286@ucbvax.ARPA> mcgeer@ucbvax.UUCP (Rick McGeer) writes:
> In article <727@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
> >In article <3520@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes:
> >> 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.
> 
> No they wouldn't.  War was economic for United Fruit because they didn't pay
> the cost of the war: the US taxpayers and the peoples of Central America did.
> It's almost always cheaper to deal than to fight -- unless, of course, you
> can finagle the political system into coercing someone else to do your
> fighting for you.

It's cheaper to deal than to fight only some times for some parties.  
However, the mere threat of the fight coerces the deal.  Take the mafia for
example.  They specialize in using coercion and the threat of coercion
to sweeten deals.  They only need make a few examples, for which individuals
can "take the fall" to sucessfully coerce large numbers of people for
extended periods of time.  Toppling a government in Central or South
America can be quite cheap, via assassination, bribery, coup, etc.

> This is a point that Huybenz, Berman, and others rarely consider.  It is in a
> statist economy that the powerful actors can run wild-- AT & T, the railroads,
> United Fruit -- because they can use the regulatory powers of the state to
> demolish competition and, on occasion, simply raid the public treasury.  The
> state is *always* corrupted to serve the interests of society's powerful, in
> a method as automatic as gravitation.  The *only* way to restrict this is to
> keep the state small, and weak, and starved.

Powerful actors can also run wild by oppressing the weak.  Of course they can
also try to rob the most powerful actor of all, the state, but they risk
getting burnt.  If the state abdicates, there will be no restraint on the
powerful.
 
> You know, socialism and welfarism is the ultimate Ponzi scam.  Actors are
> persuaded to put up a small amount (in taxes) on the presumption that the
> benefits to them in the various transfers of a modern welfare state will
> outweigh the amount they've contributed to the pot.  So far, this is just any
> ordinary zero-sum scam.

Any basic economics text can explain (via diminishing marginal return)
the benefit of redistribution of income.  Clearly redistributing income is
not a zero-sum game with respect to social benefits.

> But when unwilling actors are forced to play the game
> at gunpoint -- and, further, when the willing players are told that they
> "deserve" the windfall they obtain from the pockets of others -- well, then,
> my friends, you have raised the flimflam to a high art indeed.  Let us be
> candid.  Statism is the incarnation of self-righteous greed.

The self-righteous greed I see is when individuals who have benefitted
from our fertile environment then refuse to contribute towards maintaining
its fertility, preferring instead to allow it to become impoverished.
-- 

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