Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!BORAX.LCS.MIT.EDU!dab From: dab@BORAX.LCS.MIT.EDU Newsgroups: mod.politics Subject: Property rights Message-ID: <12228204855.23.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Mon, 4-Aug-86 17:35:28 EDT Article-I.D.: RED.12228204855.23.MCGREW Posted: Mon Aug 4 17:35:28 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 5-Aug-86 23:23:53 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: dab@borax.lcs.mit.edu Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 89 Approved: poli-sci@red.rutgers.edu Date: Sat, 26 Jul 86 16:36:37 EDT From: "Keith F. Lynch" Suppose it was possible to destroy Manhattan real estate. Would anyone have done so? Or would they have preserved it, knowing it was worth more to the next investor that way? But it was destroyed. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The value of something in a capitalistic system is only that value which can be gotten from it in the market place. The life that used to live there had no free market value and so was swept aside to make room for that which did. You keep viewing capitalism through red colored glasses, and you see it as a distorted version of socialism, with a handful of evil capitalists in charge, all wearing top hats and smoking cigars as they decide how to exploit the masses. Nothing could be further from reality. Nothing could be further from reality. I view capitalism as people fighting it out in the market place (competitively not physically) with their only goal being to succeed in the system. There is no explicit desire to exploit the masses or to destroy the environment, but neither is there any reason not to. It is simply that that is an effective way to win given the system and its definition of winning. Unfortunately I do not have a better economic system to propose. If I did you can be sure that I would have let you know about it by now. So I am not proposing abandoning capitalism just yet; I don't have anything to replace it with. I'm just pointing out the problems with this system as I see them. Do you really believe that capitalism is the ultimate economic system? There can be no better? I'm not being sarcastic. I have a friend who has said just that to me before, and meant it. It seems much more likely that the point where humans can no longer survive on this planet will happn before the point where all of nature collapses. Could you explain just how something like this could happen? It seems to me that our standard of living is getting better, not worse. Do you disagree? Or do you agree but think that it will turn around? Please tell me the details. I honestly don't see how we could wipe ourselves out unless there is a nuclear war. I agree (mostly) but I think it will turn around. Actually, I think that nuclear war is one of the less likely ways in which we'll lose in a global sense. While it would be hideously destructive, I think humans would end up surviving, as a species not as individuals, with a very high probability. Much more likely is that we pollute the earth so bad that it can no longer support us. Lack of potable water is already a serious problem in many places and the water table is dropping steadily in others. Relying on a very few highly hybridized strains of food crops has a high potential for lossage due to epidemic, although I can't see this one thing doing us all in. But apparently the same problem exists in some animals and right now there is such a disease hitting many of the chickens on the east coast. In truth, I don't see the whole human race being eradicated by any of these. I do see the population being drastically and forceably reduced. When it happens, it will not be a pleasant time and people's standard of living will certainly get worse. This may sound very strange to someone who thinks in old movie cliches, but I firmly believe that people now are living in closer harmony with nature than ever before. Name calling? Sigh. You're right though, it does sound strange. Milk comes from a cardboard carton, meat is just food you buy at the store not the flesh of a once living animal (and most people can make no sense at all of the suggestion that plants are the same way), the call of the loon is considered haunting, and the whistling of a snipe's tail feathers is described as eerie. Land ownership is not only not strange, it is inevitable. If no person or private organization is allowed to own land, it is not NOT owned, rather it is owned by the government. If NOBODY owned a piece of land, presumably it would be ok for anyone to do anything with it. This is clearly NOT what you want. In order for land to be preserved, it must be in someone's interest to do so. You don't come out and say it, but you obviously think that someone should be the government. I don't. ...Keith That is obvious only to you my friend. I don't come out and say it because I don't believe it. I don't trust the government to do *anything* right. Dave -------