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From: josh@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Newsflash! [Subsidized Education]
Message-ID: <3632@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Thu, 12-Sep-85 14:41:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3632
Posted: Thu Sep 12 14:41:18 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Sep-85 09:33:38 EDT
References: <3594@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <1778@psuvax1.UUCP>
Reply-To: josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall)
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 48

In article <1778@psuvax1.UUCP> berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman) writes:
>...whatever ideology happen to be professed, people enact (or ask for)
>policies which they perceive as doing them some good. 

Hey wait a minute, that's MY point!  Who's been saying all this time
that "people will always act in their own self interest"?  It sure
wasn't the statists, who have been saying "people will act selflessly
in the greater interests of society as a whole, if they win a popularity/
tall tales contest."  Miraculous how an Evil Capitalist can be turned 
into a Saintly Statesman by being given oodles and heaps of coercive
power (case in point: NJ's junior senator).

But there is something more subtle going on.  An ideology is not
that which act for INSTEAD of your self interest; it is, to a great
degree, that which you use to interpret events and actions to 
determine what IS in your self interest.  If one of your interests 
is the betterment of society, it will color your ideas of what IS
better for society.  

>A previous posting claim the behaviour of FED to cause the crash
>of 1929.  They allegedly made a very bold move: decreased money
>supply by one third.  Afterwards, there was New Deal, and things
>improved, but only by a little.  Libertarians claim that a bold
>lesser-faire policy would be a better cure for the Depression.

This is a marvelous example for the point above.  Libertarians 
claim that the expenditures of the New Deal made the Depression 
WORSE--indeed they are what made it the Great Depression, there 
having been lots of little ones before.

>Keynessians claim that only truly massive public expenditures
>could help, as they did indeed during WWII.  

...and note carefully:  the question of whether this is in their
self interest does not apply here, in historical speculation.  The 
varying ideologies are being used purely as theories about how
the world works.

>An interesting information.  Also, an interesting problem: what caused
>the demise of free market ideology in Scandinavia?  

A study of intellectual history will show you that it was around 
1900 that socialist ideas began having their greatest impact 
on leading political thinkers, though it took time for them to 
"trickle down" to the mass of second-hand idea dealers such as
politicians and the press.

--JoSH