Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!ittvax!swatt From: swatt@ittvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: subsidies and morality Message-ID: <802@ittvax.UUCP> Date: Wed, 22-Jun-83 17:00:24 EDT Article-I.D.: ittvax.802 Posted: Wed Jun 22 17:00:24 1983 Date-Received: Wed, 22-Jun-83 23:23:45 EDT Lines: 114 Regarding Mike Kelly's question about how do you prevent large private monopolies from trampling on the "common good": Well, it's a rather difficult matter of balance, like a lot of things. Mainly, you don't let them have armies, or in other ways use "force, or credible threat of force". Obviously, this requires some agency which CAN use force to prevent others from doing so. ShaZamm! you've just invented government. Now the problem is turned around to "Who watches the watchman?" (the old Latin phrase). You can't have individual rights without government, but it is all too easy to lose them again to that same government. You have to draw a line, and make exceptions, and adjust the line, and ... Exactly where to draw that line and what exceptions to make is a matter of enormous disagreement, on this net and elsewhere. Libertarianism makes an admirable attempt to provide a single consistent principle for deciding where to draw the line. As a political theory it is very closely tied to lazzez-faire capitalism (In fact, Milton Freedman often says his support for an unregulated private market is not because he believes it will increase the general wealth, although he does, but because he believes it is the only way to preserve individual liberty). It is clear that this type of society will lead to a lot of abuses, but every type of society which ever existed had abuses. Human beings are neither as simple nor as perfect as their political theories. I will make some general observations: 1) Once a power or authority is ceded to government, it is practically impossible to get it back short of a revolution. It overstates the case, but a good question to ask when you consider granting some new authority to government is "If it turns out to be a mistake, am I willing to fight a revolution to take it back?". 2) Decisions reached by the political process, regardless of how democratic they are, are necessarily compromises with which some people will be unhappy. Talleyrand once defined the aim of diplomacy as "an equality of dissatisfaction"; a description which applies to political decision-making in general. 3) Political decisions are also made by some central authority, not the individuals affected, who are merely "represented". The higher up in the government chain you go (town, county, state, federal), the more distant the decision is from those to whom it will apply. The effects of the compromise are thus greater. 4) The vote as a means to participate in political decisions is too limited in scope (i.e. candidate "A" or candidate "B"), and too infrequent in any case. Every claim I've ever seen about the abuses and distortions of commercial advertising applies even more so to political campaigns. The typical voter is so ill-served by the various news media that the only way to make a truly informed decision is to make his own investigation of primary sources, an activity generally incompatible with earning a living. 5) Policies and programs put into effect to accomplish some desirable goal can acquire a life of their own and an agency interested more in continuing those policies that in determining whether there is any correlation between their actual effects and the original goals. In some cases the bad effects of one policy lead directly to newer policies to correct an alleged failure in the private market, or curb some alleged abuse. The examples of this are many and often frightening. 6) In our current society, there is essentially no control over government spending. The special interests, instead of fighting against each other for resources, all gang up together against the general taxpayer. You also have to realize that the enormous sums spent to comply with various regulations are really government spending, even though they don't appear on the budget. A system of government with essentially unlimited power to expend resources is getting a long way from the concept of "enumerated powers". Yes I believe that if you didn't have government, you'd just end up under the control of the strongest gang in the area. I also believe you need the MOST protection from the biggest bully. Government today violates the rights of far more people and to a much greater extent than private corporations do. How it has managed at the same time to acquire a reputation for "protecting the little people" is one of the wonders of our age. The activity of propaganda and myth-making is one in which government has been vastly more effective than private industries; in this one area at least, government is very efficient. In general, I believe the proper level for most decisions is the individual. Where that isn't possible, or where too many abuses result, I prefer to keep it at the closest, smallest, government level possible. In particular, I believe if we don't soon get some control over how, and how much, the federal and state governments spend, license, regulate, control, oversee, require, and prohibit, we may wake up and find the opportunity is gone. People become so used to being controlled and regulated they can no longer imagine it might work any other way. I don't think pure libertarianism would work, because I don't think pure ANYTHING will work. One thing you absolutely can't do with any political system is set it up and expect it to operate "on its own" according to the theory, like planetary bodies in Newtonian physics. However, I do think that libertarianism as a statement of direction in which we should move is much better than what we have now, and infinitely better than what we will have if we continue our present course. - Alan S. Watt