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From: COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Anti-Authoritarianism Defended, Part I
Message-ID: <12245540059.68.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Thu, 9-Oct-86 20:40:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: RED.12245540059.68.MCGREW
Posted: Thu Oct  9 20:40:35 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Oct-86 22:18:05 EDT
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>   [cowan@xx] Take toothpaste.  (I admit, a rather unusual
>   example.)  A dependency on toothpaste in a pump is being created
>   (by subsidy at first) so that consumers will ultimately pay for 
>   the added cost of the pump, and in order to better regulate (and 
>   speed up) their toothpaste use.  When toothpaste in a tube is 
>   removed from the market because most consumers have been 
>   indoctrinated (progress!) to buy it in a pump, what happens to 
>   my "free choice" to buy toothpaste in a tube?  The free market, 
>   using the technical apparatus of the media, has infringed on 
>   my freedom.

>Gimmie a break!  You raise a picture of a secret cabal of two dozen
>men deciding to squeeze out [:-)] the tube.  If n-1 companies do get
>rid of the tube, and consumers still want it, don't you think Company
>N will clean up?
>-dick

You are right.  I didn't fully explain the point.  The point is that
the free market makes choices for us.  But I admit, that's not so
"bad" -- the consequences are slow and subtle, and would we be better
off otherwise?  What's wrong with spending our resources on marketing,
packaging, and advertising?  I was talking to an Indian friend, and
back in India a fairly well-off family only generates one bag of
garbage per week.  We, on the other hand, are practically a "throwaway
society."  But perhaps this is the price (and certainly not a high
price) of affluence?

What I should have said: The real waste is not the packaging of
toothpaste.  It is the waste of the work that goes into it.  I say why
not go to a 30-hour week.  Ten hours more free time to be creative
beats the advantages of the wasteful products that work would create
any day.  Perhaps this is going out to the wrong audience, because we
are members of a privileged elite that is allowed to be creative.  But
consider the vast majority of the population that is not.
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