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From: walker@oberon.UUCP (Mike Walker)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Health Care, Wonderful Market for
Message-ID: <149@oberon.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Oct-85 02:21:50 EST
Article-I.D.: oberon.149
Posted: Mon Oct 28 02:21:50 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 19:13:12 EST
References: <204@gargoyle.UUCP> <10516@ucbvax.ARPA> <787@psivax.UUCP> <10659@ucbvax.ARPA>
Reply-To: walker@oberon.UUCP (Mike Walker)
Organization: U. of So. Calif., Los Angeles
Lines: 28
Summary: 


A socialist economy must be a command economy.  Saying the community owns
something solves nothing.  Everything is scarce.  Things must be
allocated.  There must be a decision making process.  The market uses
individual ownership and decision making.  A socialist economy uses
collective ownership and collective decision making.  The decision making
power must be vested in a few if the population involved is of any size.
Once they have this power (the power of ownership) then they turn around
and pursue their own ends.  Why should they care about the ends of the
weak?  With individual ownership and decision making the little guy has a
chance of his own ends being persued since he has some decision making
power that comes with ownership (or for the poor, the hope of gaining such
power).  Even if we assume that the power elite care about the ends of the
people (ignoring all of history, a vast testament of man's callousness
toward his fellow man) they could not know or pursue them as well the
individual himself.  Imagine a small group of men trying to make *ALL* of
the economic decisions of daily life for a population of just thousands
(let alone billions).  How are they to know if I want to snack on jelly
beans, run off to this or that movie, or buy some jeans.  Even if you 
break the population down into small groups so that the decision makers
are closer to the people, you are only approaching the ideal of giving
each individual this power for himself (an ideal that requires private
property).
-- 
Michael D. Walker (Mike)
Arpa: walker@oberon.ARPA
Uucp: {the (mostly unknown) world}!ihnp4!sdcrdcf!oberon!walker
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