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From: mms1646@acf4.UUCP (Michael M. Sykora)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Libertarians in Space
Message-ID: <2380092@acf4.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Jul-85 02:52:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: acf4.2380092
Posted: Tue Jul  9 02:52:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 15:59:32 EDT
References: <293@kontron.UUCP>
Organization: New York University
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>/* mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) /  1:22 pm  Jul  6, 1985 */

>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?

I don't believe anyone has suggested this.  I suspect what you are
referring to is the response to those who claim that since country X was
non-socialistic and many people starved there, we can conclude that
in a free-market society, typically,  many people will starve.

>But there have been millions of people starve under non-socialist regimes.
>This goes for both industrialized and non-industrialized countries.

Of course, but this alone says nothing about free-market societies.

>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.

Why do you guess that?  Also, why are you setting aside these examples?
Are they atypical?

>Some
>real statistics might be more useful than appeals to mental models of
>idealized history, whether they be mine or anyone else's.

I don't have the statistics, but here's one example:  the current
crisis in Ethiopea.  As I understand it, the actions of the statist
government there exacerbated the problem.

>Martin Taylor

						Mike Sykora