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Path: utzoo!utcsri!clarke
From: clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Nationalization/Crown Corps.
Message-ID: <1229@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Jul-85 10:08:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsri.1229
Posted: Fri Jul  5 10:08:53 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Jul-85 12:43:07 EDT
References: <1121@ubc-cs.UUCP> <1110@mnetor.UUCP>
Reply-To: clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
Distribution: can
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 44
Summary: 

In article <1135@ubc-cs.UUCP> robinson@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jim Robinson) writes:
>>This outlook is was seen as simplistic in the nineteenth century.  "Survival
>>of the fittest" is a phrase Darwin and his pals considered muddle-headed
>>when applied to biology.  Apply it to society and economics and you get
>>"social darwinism" (poor Darwin), one of the underpinnings of our recent
>>history of racism and fascism.
>
>I don't see any problems in applying "survival of the fittest" to 
>corporations.

The problem is that "survival of the fittest" doesn't mean anything, as
Bishop Wilberforce pointed out some time ago.

>                                           As for linking racism and
>fascism to free enterprise - give me a break. 

I didn't.  I linked them to the hoary old "survival of the fittest" catch
phrase.

>
>>Surely you don't believe that supply and demand is going to take care of
>>your aged mother, or keep the rivers and the air clean -- unless there's
>>some nasty socialist interference?
>
>No I don't....
>              ... there is nothing that you  can achieve by government
>ownership that you can't achieve otherwise with the right combination
>of carrots and sticks.

What you said (paraphrased) was that free enterprise handled all considerations
naturally, and I took that to mean that no interference was necessary.
You now advocate interference of one sort -- carrots and sticks -- as
against another -- crown corporations.  I expect you could get a pretty
heated argument about that even in a business school.  Here, at least
you should not sound as if crown corporations only are an invention of
the devil.  (Now we know what colour the devil is:  pink like me.)

>                                    Since private companies are generally
>more efficient than Crown corporations, does it not make more sense to
>do it this way? 
>
This follows as a logical conclusion only if efficiency is the overriding
consideration.  In setting up crown corporations, obviously it is only one
among many considerations.