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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Libertarians in Space
Message-ID: <1620@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 6-Jul-85 13:22:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.1620
Posted: Sat Jul  6 13:22:42 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jul-85 18:06:11 EDT
References: <446@qantel.UUCP> <454@qantel.UUCP> <293@kontron.UUCP> <377@spar.UUCP> 
Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 43
Summary: 


>a living.  The example of history demonstrates that while free markets
>don't guarantee that everyone will be well off, few people have starved
>to death in free markets.

You can't have it both ways.  Lots of posters have argued that there
never has been such a thing as a free market, so how can history say
anything about whether people would or would not starve under them?
But there have been millions of people starve under non-socialist regimes.
This goes for both industrialized and non-industrialized countries.
On balance (setting aside deliberate genocide, like Stalin's Ukraine
and Pol Pot's Kampuchea), I would guess that there is less chance of
starving in a Communist country than in an equivalently endowed free-
enterprise one, and far less chance still in a Socialist one.  Some
real statistics might be more useful than appeals to mental models of
idealized history, whether they be mine or anyone else's.

>The non-competitive environment of a socialist system creates tremendous
>opportunities for fraud and corruption, since a state-owned enterprise
>is in no danger of going bankrupt.  Socialists have long assumed that
>under the influence of socialism, man will become less corrupt.  The

Why is the "enterprise" necessarily the appropriate unit for discussion?
The unit of discussion of competition is whatever suits the structure
in which competition is going on.  The "enterprise" is suitable only
where relatively independent enterprises exist.

Individuals may be even more competitive in a Socialist system than in
a free-market system.  They must compete *within* an organization,
with few modes of possible difference from their competition.  In a
free-enterprise economy, an individual can prosper because the company
prospers, without necessarily damaging any *identifiable* other person.
In a large organization, individuals can prosper only at the expense of
their colleagues, and only by finding ways in which they can outperform
their colleagues.  Not everyone can be the best at a particular job,
and those that are not best are tempted to win by unethical means.  It
isn't a phenomenon restricted to socialism, but a function of large
organizations that resist change.
-- 

Martin Taylor
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