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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: Health Care, Wonderful Market fo
Message-ID: <129@l5.uucp>
Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 18:32:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5.129
Posted: Thu Sep 19 18:32:13 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Sep-85 11:45:22 EDT
References: <1764@psuvax1.UUCP> <10300@ucbvax.ARPA> <1774@psuvax1.UUCP> <10355@ucbvax.ARPA> <1231@ihlpg.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco
Lines: 70

In article <1231@ihlpg.UUCP> tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum) writes:
>	Now, about "social needs".  How about starting with adequate food,
>clothing and shelter for all?  Almost every non-libertarian would agree with
>these.

	Wrong-o. William F. Buckley Jr., for instance, who takes great pains to
make sure that he is identified as conservative, and not one of those 
libertarians would not buy this one. Neither will a good many people
involved in work in the third world because they believe that the population
will always expand so that ehre will always be a level of ``poor'' who are
malnourished and unhoused. If you dump more money into the problem, then
people who are currently dying of starvation (and therefore do not need
housing) will survive and form a new level of poor to be a problem. If you
feed and house them another layer will be found, so unless you implement
strict birth control you will never be able to fix this one.

Note that I am not saying that this view is necessarily correct -- what I am
saying is that it is wrong to assume that all non-libertarians think that food
and shelter should be provided for all.  The other thing that is wrong with this
view is that the libertarian objection is not with the ``providing food and
shelter'' but with the TAXING of people in order to provide food and shelter.

>	 Conservatives might stop there, liberals might add a few more, while
>social democrats would add a lot more.  Who decides?  Why, the electorate,
>through its elected representatives, of course.   Since social needs
>are not defined in Libertarian economics, they clearly don't exist.
>Right, Rick?

social needs are not defined by any economic system, except in that certain
systems are likely to produce a certain type of problem whereas others will
avoid this one. Feudalism gave every lord the obligation to provide shelter
for his vassals and serfs, so there was no particular need for shelter that
was not being met. However, there was a 70+% infant mortality rate and a lot
of malnutrition. The industrial revolution made farming a lot easier and
made it easier to stay alive -- teh infant mortality rate dropped to about 30%
in industrialised countries. Now, of course, the population grew at an
unprecedented rate and bingo -- there is a housing problem. If you simply
killed 40% of children outright, you could stop the housing problem, but this
is not how people want to solve it.

Libertarians do not claim that social needs do not exist -- just that the
state should not be trying to solve social problems and that the people who
are paying to have social ills remedied should get to choose which ills they
are interested in fixing and by which means, and when are they going to be
considered fixed.


>	Market demand may very well be an adequate reflection of the demands
>of the society.  But my demand for food won't give me a supply in
>Libertaria if I have no money and no job.  Guess I will have to hit you
>over the head and steal yours.  Such is Libertaria.
>-- 
>Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL  ihnp4!ihlpg!tan


If you have no money anbd no job right now you may be reduced to this. Or you
may have set aside a fund with fellow-workers in order to provide with this
contingency. Or you may have friends or relatives who can lend you money. Or
you may go to charitable organisations. Incidentally, if most people really
do want people to be fed and clothed an sheltered then the YMCA and Goodwill
and such should have a heap of funds in libertaria since people will be donating
like crazy.

What makes you think that the state can do a better job then the Salvation
Army?

-- 
Laura Creighton		(note new address!)
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa