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From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: Libertarians in Space
Message-ID: <28200034@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Jul-85 13:22:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.28200034
Posted: Tue Jul  9 13:22:00 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 22:51:08 EDT
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Nf-From: inmet!nrh    Jul  9 13:22:00 1985


>/**** inmet:net.politics.t / dciem!mmt /  1:22 pm  Jul  6, 1985 ****/
>
>>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?

Unless the poster above was one of those who argued that there had
never been free markets, he is NOT trying to have it both ways,
and you should probably either find a reference or apologize.

>But there have been millions of people starve under non-socialist regimes.

Non-socialist does not imply "free markets".  

>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.

On what basis do you set them aside?  Are we expected to buy Stalin's
rhetoric (whatever it may have been) about the justice of such a move?
Are we expected to allow that "starvation doesn't count when it's
the result of centralized intent on the part of the nominal government"?
Such situations do not occur where no force is initiated -- where people
are free.  They seem suspiciously common among socialist regimes where
"hoarding" (that is, saving food in case of famine) is ofttimes a crime
against the state.

Some time ago, I posted a list of nations that had been split into
socialist and non-socialist parts.  The list included Viet-Nam (before
the war ended) China, Korea, and Germany.  In each case, the non-socialist
side had the higher per-person GNP.  If you have reliable malnutrition
data for these countries, I'd love to see it.