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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