From: utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: net.politics
Title: Re: Re: Reason for a government 
Article-I.D.: utzoo.2882
Posted: Mon Mar 21 17:32:17 1983
Received: Mon Mar 21 17:32:17 1983


  "More generally, do you believe that a modern (technological)
   economy will run effectively without government tuning?"

A better question, Kenneth, is "do you believe a modern economy
will run effectively WITH government tuning?".  Based on recent
evidence, the answer would seem to be NO.  A government that can't
even deliver the mail promptly certainly can't run an entire national
economy.  (This may sound like "trivial complaint --> sweeping over-
generalization", but think about it:  WHY can't the government get
the mail there on time?  The causes are not specific to the Post Awful.)

To my mind, this is the single biggest objection to socialism and
suchlike:  the government cannot run anything well ("crime wouldn't
pay if the government ran it"), so it behooves us not to trust the
government to run anything that can possibly be run by other means.
However stumbling and imperfect those other means are.

					Henry Spencer
					U of Toronto