From: eo@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Emma Osman)
Newsgroups: uk.misc
Subject: Re: Libertarian philosophy (was Re: Transport...)
Date: 15 Dec 92 21:08:33 GMT
Reply-To: eo@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Emma Osman)
Distribution: uk
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U

In article <sV8RVB6w165w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes:
>eo@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Emma Osman) writes (to FoFP):
>> Firstly, road tolls. Your solution to the problem of congestion seems 
>> to be to allow certain sections of the community - probably "big 
>> business" as they are the ones with the money to spend - the licence 
>> to improve roads as they see fit, (to improve congestion problems) 
>> and then charge users to recoup the costs of these improvements. But 
>> suppose the users don't *want* these "improvements" - after all, in 
>> order to be a "success" the scheme only has to benefit the organisers 
>> of it. They are then in a position where a resource which used to be 
>> free has been effectively taken away from them and given into the 
>> control of someone else to use for their own profit.
>
>This is only really a problem when there is no competition.  But of course,
>it's often inappropriate to build multiple competing roads in locations where
>(a) there isn't the space and (b) there isn't the demand.  This is why I
>think there's still a place for government to spend money on transport
>infrastructure.

I'm glad to see that we seem to be in broad agreement here. But I
would like to point out that you have rather understated the case -
in a lot of cases (the vast majority IMO) it's not just inappropriate
to build multiple roads but *completely impossible* without bulldozing
someone's house. This is why I assumed in my posting that any road
improvements would have to be by taking over existing roads.

>> it (say a few dozen) who I do trust. I don't trust directors of large 
>> companies AT ALL - why should I? It' in their interest simply to screw
>> as much money out of me and everyone else as they can in whatever ways
>> are currently legal. If you think this is a bit of a biased picture, 
>> just look what happens where there aren't proper controls on business 
>> - Nestle flogging baby milk in the Third World for example.
>
>If people were less accustomed to thinking that the Third World was the
>Government's problem, they might actually consider what they should do
>themselves to help the Third World.  Like not banking at Lloyds or buying
>Nestle products, for example.

You have mistaken my point. The point is that IN THE THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES
THEMSELVES there aren't proper controls on "bandit" companies like Nestle.
Why there are no such controls (personally I'd kick them out of the
ccountry) is a subject for discussion all by itself. Thee fact that there
aren't is what allows Nestle to continue to perpetuate its con trick
(BTW if anyone doesn't know, the "con trick" in question is to supply
free baby milk to new mothers in hospitals. After a few days of this
their own milk dries up; at around the same time they are discharged
from hospital and are left with no other option but to continue to
feed their infants Nestle milk , which they now have to pay for of course , 
mixing the stuff with unsterilised water)

>
>>                                                    And it is 
>> these people who your proposal will give more freedom to, and 
>> therefore more power.
>
>Only indirectly.  The *people* are given the freedom and power.  *If* they
>*choose* to pass that power on to the corporations, *then* the corporations
>will be able to abuse the power.

No, sorry, I can't agree with this at all. The original thread was about
making improvements to roads, remember? The ordinary person just
doesn't have the money to do this - what you'd need is a consortium.
I think it would be very difficult to get enough people together to buy 
the "improvement rights" (or whatever) to the road they were interested in,
and *that's* always assuming that you could get a large enough group
together that were interested in the same road. Much simpler for a
company director, who has direct access to a whole heap of other people's
money and noone to tell him how to spend it (so long as he makes a
profit for his shareholders - and note that this is not necessarily
going to benefit the rest of the world)

>
>Well, I'm quite happy to try democracy for a bit first, to see if it works. 
>I'm just rather pessimistic.
>

Fine, that's all I'm after.


>> tell people what to do (except in the case of criminal actions). I say
>> that to see such a society already in operation we need look no 
>> further than international politics. There we have a whole bunch
>> of "players of the economic game" (in this case countries rather
>> than individuals) doing their thing without any sort of interference
>> from a "government". And what do we find? Do we have an economic
>> paradise? Do we have fairness? Do we even have free trade? Not bloody
>> likely, just a bunch of powerful nations (most noticably America,
>> although the European block seems to be aspiring to the same status)
>> doing as they please, setting their own terms in everything, and 
>> getting yet more wealthy off the interest payments from third world
>> countries while the people in those countries sink further and further
>> into the treadmill of debt.
>
>Of course, the reason for this is that the gullible fools in the Third World
>countries took the advice of these powerful nations.  They believed they were
>getting free helpful caring advice from these "players of the economic game".
>They, like you, thought governments could be compassionate and competant,
>operating for the common good.  They have now found out that governments only
>ever do what's best for themselves.  And your solution is to try even harder
>to make governments into helpful caring unselfish souls?  How long have we
>been trying to do that?  Or have we just not tried hard enough?

Misseds the point again, I'm afraid. Remember, at *national* level 
"government" = "*overseer* of the economic game" , at *international*
level "government" = "*player* of the economic game". Now at international
level we appear to already have what libertarian philosophy is advocating
 - a system with a number of participants operating with no controls
at all. This had not lead to any sort of "fairness" in international
relations. Now you're advocating bringing that system here, to national
level.

Let's try democracy *first* , ok?

Emma

BTW , this time I really *did* direct followups to uk.politics....:-)
-- 
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| Emma Osman      |  Show me a sane man, and I will cure him for you.      |
| eo@dcs.ed.ac.uk |                                           - Carl Jung  |
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