Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!MC.LCS.MIT.EDU!kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu From: kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU Newsgroups: mod.politics Subject: Property rights Message-ID: <12228453720.51.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Tue, 5-Aug-86 16:22:31 EDT Article-I.D.: RED.12228453720.51.MCGREW Posted: Tue Aug 5 16:22:31 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 6-Aug-86 02:33:26 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@mc.lcs.mit.edu Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 203 Approved: poli-sci@red.rutgers.edu From: dab@BORAX.LCS.MIT.EDU (David A. Bridgham) The value of something in a capitalistic system is only that value which can be gotten from it in the market place. Not true. In a capitalist system, the value of something is whatever the owner decides it is. If the owner of a piece of land decides that the deer that live on the land are worth more than what developers are willing to pay for the land, then they cannot compel him to sell it. The life that used to live [on Manhattan] had no free market value and so was swept aside to make room for that which did. What do you perceive the value of wildlife as being? Manhattan is just one small island. Do you really think the world would be a better place if it had been left wilderness? A few extra square miles of wilderness rather than a wealthy city? Is development EVER justified, or should all land remain in a state of wilderness? If development is never justified, does this mean people shouldn't build houses, but should huddle in caves or perhaps in trees (if they are careful not to damage the trees)? If development is sometimes justified, how does one decide when? In a free system, the owner of the land decides when it is justified. In a socialist system, the government does. In a fascist system, industries and/or individuals favored by the government get to decide. Which of these do you advocate? 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. People have many different goals. Capitalism is the only system that allows people to pursue any goal they please (except the goal of harming others). Most of us do not wish to become millionaires. At least, we don't wish for it to such an extent that we are willing to sacrifice to the extent necessary. I value free time and friendship more than money. If I had less money, I might value money more. If I had more, I might value it less. But in no case would I value money to such an extent that I was willing to give up everything else to gain more of it. Consider people who win millions in lotteries. Most of them do not change their habits very much. Most of them do not even quit their jobs, however little those jobs pay. There is no explicit desire ... to destroy the environment, but neither is there any reason not to. There are as many reasons not to as there are people who choose not to. It is up to each individual how important the wilderness is. The wilderness has no chance of being preserved unless some people value it. Obviously, many people do. Including you and I. Does it really make any sense to say that people as a group oppose destruction of wilderness but people as individuals do not? Why should it be up to government at all? Government didn't create wilderness, government (usually) doesn't destroy wilderness. What does government have to do with it at all? 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? Well, it depends on what is meant by better. Two obvious definitions: 1) Providing the greatest happiness and fullfilment for the greatest number of people. 2) Providing the greatest liberty to the greatest number of people. I don't think capitalism has any competition under either definition. I can conceive of a possible future competitor under category 1. I can imagine that someday a supercomputer will be built that is completely benevolent and has such intelligence and mental capacity that it is as familiar with each person as the person's closest friends. In fact, the system would BE many people's closest friend. This system would then be able to figure out what the optimal distribution of resources would be. It would tell you that someone would come by to take away your new stereo, but you wouldn't object, because you would know that you will soon be told to take something of even greater value (to you) from someone else. The computer would tell you where to work and what to do there. If such a thing could ever be built and programmed, and if it could somehow be guaranteed to always be benevolent, never break down, be sabotage-proof, be cracker-proof, etc, etc, then I might believe that it could result in a higher degree of total personal happiness in the world. Assuming that people of the future do not mind being treated like children. Nevertheless, even if such a thing were to be possible someday, I would still oppose it. The value of personal liberty is inestimable. While it might succeed at criterion 1, it would certainly fail at criterion 2. And it would prevent any possibility of future innovation, unless we assume that it is smarter in every way and more creative in every way than every person alive put together and every person ever to be born EVER, put together. I don't know how we could possibly know that, even if it was true. And if it WAS true, I would find it a source of sorrow, not joy. There would be no possible purpose in life. One might as well have a circuit wired to one's pleasure center and spend one's final hours in total ecstacy plugged into the wall socket, not noticing that one is dying for lack of food and water. In socialism, the government takes the place of my hypothetical supercomputer. Needless to say, it does a pretty poor job of it. If a government could somehow be more intelligent in every way and more knowledgable in every way than all of the citizens put together, and if it is also benevolent (unlike every socialist state I have heard of) then maybe you could have a socialist system that is as good as a capitalist system. Except that that most important element - freedom - would be missing. People who argue against capitalism often say something like "FOO should be done, and capitalism won't do it". This is pointless unless they also explain why no free person or voluntary organization would ever do FOO (even though FOO is essential!), and why a government would NECESSARILY do FOO, even if none of the people the government consists of or represents would ever do FOO. 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 ... The rarer clean water gets, the more valuable it is, and the more incentive people have to not pollute it. Same with every other threatened resource. I haven't noticed any lack of clean water, despite being in the middle of a rare drought. I know that there are water shortages out west, where large government water programs provide farmers with enormous amounts of water for less than market value. Is it any wonder that consumption goes up and supply goes down? Relying on a very few highly hybridized strains of food crops has a high potential for lossage due to epidemic, ... Right. For instance the Irish Potato famine in the 1840s. This lesson has been learned, and I don't think this sort of thing is a major problem anymore. 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. I haven't noticed any increase in chicken prices lately. 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. By increased chicken prices? By more expensive water in the west? The only real pollution disaster in the past ten years was the accident in India. I don't want to make light of the death of 2500, but do you really think one such accident a decade, or even one such accident a week, could wipe out or even seriously reduce the world population? 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 Yes, this is in closer harmony with nature. Nature does not consist merely of trees and cobwebs and quicksand and mosquitos. Pasteurizing milk is the best way to come to terms with the natural bacteria found naturally in natural milk. Air conditioning is based on the same natural laws that cooling by sweating is based on. Having meat pre- packaged and sometimes even pre-cooked is a natural division of natural human labor, allowing more people to have more time to do other things than butchering. When people are happy and comfortable, we are living in harmony with nature. When people are starving and miserable and dying of disease and opression, we are not living in harmony with nature. It makes no difference either way whether it is done in a tent or in a skyscraper. It's the same nature either way, and one ignores the laws of nature at one's own extreme peril. (and most people can make no sense at all of the suggestion that plants are the same way), ... Surely you aren't saying it is unnatural to eat plants and animals. Animals do it, so it must be natural. What would you suggest people eat instead? 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. 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. Then who should do it? You say that wilderness must be preserved, and you claim that freely acting indivuduals and voluntary organizations (i.e. capitalism) will not preserve it. Who else will do the preserving but government? Who are you saying should do it? ...Keith -------