Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site kontron.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!mtuxo!mtunh!mtung!mtunf!ariel!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!pesnta!pertec!kontron!cramer
From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Libertarians in Space
Message-ID: <352@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Jul-85 20:11:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.352
Posted: Mon Jul  8 20:11:27 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 11:20:16 EDT
References: <446@qantel.UUCP> <454@qantel.UUCP> <293@kontron.UUCP> <377@spar.UUCP>  <1620@dciem.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
Lines: 85

> 
> >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.
> 
1. We have had, at least in the United States, a *relatively* free market
for most of the time since the Revolution.  (This does not mean that
there have been no subsidies, and no regulation.)

2. A lot non-socialist countries have had famine, but they have been 
countries where the free market wasn't even a goal, much less an 
imperfectly attained reality.

3. Setting aside deliberate genocide is incorrect, because one of the
strengths of a free market is that is impossible to create this sort
of madness (genocide) if the government doesn't regulate food sales.
(Hungry people will mortgage their future, and their kid's future,
if necessary, to eat.  Where the government controls food, this option
can be made unavailable in a way that cannot happen in a free market.)
 
4. I invite statistics on famines throughout history.  There has never
been one in *this* country, and I don't believe there has ever been one
in Canada.  The Soviet Union is not intrinsically worse off in its
steppes than North Americans are in the Great Plains.  (In fact, the
similarities in weather and geography are startling.)

> >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.
> 
If I understand you correctly, "enterprise" is only important if there
are separate state-owned companies.  I disagree strongly --- if all
companies are owned by the state, there is no difference from all
economic organization being one state-owned company.

> 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

By "unethical means" might you mean socialism?  :-)

I would agree that bigness has great potential for problems, regardless
of the economic organization, but bigness is an intrinsic characteristic
of centralized socialist systems, and decentralized socialist systems
suffer from economy of scale problems (not to mention the political
advantages of centralized control).  Free enterprise is likely to produce
a mix of large (and therefore less efficient) and small companies.  The
mix is dependent on the relative value of economies of scale and 
individual initiative for a particular industry and market.  However,
economy of scale stops at a certain point (below most current 
big corporations), and individual initiative becomes very important.
In a *totally* free market, it is most unlikely that many companies would
be as large as the current giants, many of whom owe their size to
regulatory advantage or their ability to lobby for government contracts.
(Example: part of IBM's bigness stems from its ability to get government
contracts during the Great Depression, when the government's desire
(not need) for tabulating equipment increased because of the regulatory
activities.)