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From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: separation of economy and state
Message-ID: <455@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Feb-86 17:24:52 EST
Article-I.D.: ubvax.455
Posted: Fri Feb 21 17:24:52 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Feb-86 08:40:58 EST
References: <428@ubvax.UUCP> <666@frog.UUCP>
Reply-To: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, Ca.
Lines: 40

In article <666@frog.UUCP> tdh@frog.UUCP (T. Dave Hudson) writes:
>> Where economic matters are concerned, the relationships between crucial
>> economic institutions -- the federal executive, the Federal Reserve, major
>> corporations -- seem to me incredibly bureaucratic and insulated by
>> law and convention from any popular recall or revision.  The supposed
>> need for a separation of economic management from politics has always
>> seemed to me an excuse to keep voters uninformed and infantile where
>> US national economic issues are concerned.
>
>You object to the separation of economy and state, and yet
>your objection is expressed with an example in which economy
>has most disastrously not been separated from state.  What
>makes you think that anything other than the abolition of
>the Federal Reserve, etc., would help?  Surely you don't
>claim that things would improve if people chose to keep the
>Federal Reserve but run it from the polls.
>
>				David Hudson

I don't object to the separation of economy and state bureaucracy.  I
object to the separation of economy from democratic politics.  There's
no reason democratic politics should equal state bureaucracy at all.

If you read what I wrote, I was criticizing the power of bureaucracy
in these economic decisions, not praising it.  There's not only the
options of state control or private control.  There's also democratic
control, for instance by referendum.

I'm not suggesting that people should have a line item veto of specific
Federal Reserve rulings or anything like that.  I'm just suggesting that
the administration of the Federal Reserve should be recallable and
accountable in general, not just when terms of board members expire.

When people exercise their vote in meaningful ways, they don't go nuts;
they're often much more conservative and pragmatic than the media thinks
they are.  And if they're not, then the state and nation have learned
something important which will keep the state responsive to people.

Tony Wuersch
{amdcad!cae780, amd}!ubvax!tonyw