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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!water!abgamble
From: abgamble@water.UUCP (abgamble)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: Newsflash! [JoSH on Socialists]
Message-ID: <876@water.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Oct-85 13:24:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: water.876
Posted: Fri Oct  4 13:24:48 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Oct-85 03:18:50 EDT
References: <14@drutx.UUCP> <28200134@inmet.UUCP> <1381@teddy.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 44

> 
> Your conception of wealth (value, money) does not make any sense.
> If I produce something of value, but get paid for it, does that mean I didn't
> create any wealth, since I merely transferred the salary I got paid into
> the product I made?  Of course not. Similarly, if the govt. gets paid (thru
> taxes) for the products it creates (thru organizing people into large projects
> for instance), it is still creating wealth.  [Larry Kolodney]
> 

NO. These are *not* similar. In the first case the purchaser values the
product or service more than the money paid, while the seller values the
the money more, otherwise the transaction would not have been made. Thus
*both* parties profit and wealth is created. In the latter case the govt.
extorts money from the taxpayers and then spends it as it sees fit. 
Mr. Kolodney calls this payment for the products "created" by government
which ignores the fact that a taxpayer may receive little or nothing in 
return for his "payments". This is wealth creation?

> 
> POINT:  No economic system has ever existed in a vacuum.  It is always the
> result of certain power relations within a society.
> 
> There has never in history been anything like your mythical free market.
> To create one, using the power of the state, would be just as arbitrary and 
> coercive and creating any other system.  The relations of power in society
> today have an historical basis in govt. interference.  To withdraw the role of
> the govt. now would simply institutionalize certain arbitrary inequalities that
> exist today.
> 

Let me try to understand this. If we were to create a state which enforced
property rights and voluntary contracts, and stayed out of our lives 
otherwise, that this would be just as coercive as creating any other
system? The logic is lost on me.

> 
> Sport Death,
> Larry Kolodney
> (USENET) ...decvax!genrad!teddy!lkk
> (INTERNET) lkk@mit-mc.arpa
> 
-- 

                           Bruce Gamble  -  abgamble@water.UUCP