Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ficc!jeffd
From: jeffd@ficc.uu.net (jeff daiell)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Big Brother
Summary: Reply
Message-ID: <2470@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 16 Dec 88 19:21:46 GMT
References: <2089@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Organization: Ferranti International Controls
Lines: 82

In article <2089@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>, nick@cs.hw.ac.uk (Nick Taylor) writes:
> 
> I shall watch your wretched, poor and hungry with
> great interest as you 'laissez-faire'.

  Your job will grow less burdensome with each passing month!  The number
  of wretched, poor, and hungry tend to drop dramatically the closer a
  society gets to Liberty.  Of course, there are inequalities ... but
  what is considered lower-income here in the U. S., which is closest
  to a fully free society, is considered affluent in more coercive
  lands.

  Just think of all the poor people who could improve their standard
of living, 

IF it were not against the law in most cities for them to use their
   personal vehicles to provide transportation to others for profit.

IF they were not barred from professions they're qualified for because
   of license fees.

IF they were not forbidden to work in their own homes because of zoning
   laws, and cannot afford a second location for business purposes.

IF they did not have to send so much of what little income they have to
   Washington, London, Praetoria, Moscow, etc.

The examples could go on and on, but the reality is: Government is bad
for the poor, and great for the privileged.
  
> Doug equates this laissez-faire approach with feudalism. 

  The irony is, every step away from a free market brings feudalism
closer.  The bigger the government gets, the greater the concentration
of wealth in the hands of the wealthiest 2%, or 1%, or 0.5%.  That's
why Big Business backs the two tax-subsidized parties here in the
USA, and not the Libertarians --- they know that a free market would
end their gravy train.  Big Business *wants* Big Brother.

> Even in a feudal system the powerful individuals will recognise
> that they have responsibilities that extend beyond their own selfish desires
> and freedoms.

  The coercive imposition of these "responsibilities" is the hallmark
  of totalitarianism.  The final line of the National Socialist
  platform was "The common good before the individual good."

> The large corporations which would be the equivalent of the
> feudal lords would have no such sense of responsibility. 

  *What* large corporations?  The corporate form, at least with
  limited liability (which is its biggest source of potential
  for eventual oligopoly or monopoly), is a creature of 
  (tah-dah!) ... The State.
  
  And, as noted before, firms get to *be* giants with
  Governmental help.  For instance, here in these United
  States, anti-trust laws are more often invoked against
  smaller firms on behalf of bigger ones than vice-versa.
  Regulations tend to benefit the bigger firms, which can
  afford the extra costs they impose.  Tax laws are written
  to benefit the megafirms, not Mom-and-Pop companies.

> the 'libertarian' argument boils down to the law of the jungle.

  Wrong.  Actually, anything else boils down to 'survival of the
politically astute, the biggest contributor, the closest to the
most powerful politician or bureaucrat' -- what one writer called
"the aristocracy of pull".  Also, the more affluent a society
gets, the more able are its members to help the less fortunate.
Compare what's given to charity in the various United States to
what's given in undeveloped lands.



Jeff Daiell
(opinions my own until confiscated by the IRS)



-- 
                   Fiat Justitia, Ruat Caelum