From: frazier@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Greg Frazier)
Subject: Re: What keeps me from being Lib. (was Re: FW: news release: abolish IRS)
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 92 23:35:14 GMT

rdippold@cancun.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold) writes:

>frazier@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Greg Frazier) writes:

>>I agree with almost everything up above, with a major exception
>>being "vaccination... [is] the responsibility of the parents."
>>We all suffer if people don't vaccinate there kids.  In a "perfect"

>If everyone suffers if these kids aren't vaccinated, it should be no
>problem to get financing for it, eh?  Do ou think a vaccinate the
>children campaign couldn't raise any money?  Let the people decide
>the level of suffering, rather than the government.  I seriously
>believe that there are enough generous people out there who would give
>to such a worthy cause, especially if the government was no longer
>taking as much of their money or acting as such a drag on the economy.

I'll try to respond to some of the other resonses to my posting
tomorrow or the next day (they're good), but this one needs some
immediate slapping around.  Being that we live in a republic,
it *is* the people who've decided that vaccination is "good",
and we *are* the ones who decided that some tax money should
go toward vaccination programs, but that most of the funding
should come from private insurance or the parents.  Just because
you've lost track of your own little voice in the process
doesn't mean it wasn't there.  Depending on "generaous people"
being willing to give to a "worthy cause" is pretty naive.
It's like with public radio - they get all of these people to
pledge donations, and then have to go through hell and high
water to actually get the pledgers to cough up the dough.  If
you want people to pay, you've got to get them to agree that it
is the right thing to do and then have a mechanism to force
them to cough up.  Sad, but there it is.


>>Another example is pollution legislation.  Ron, in the message from
>>which I quoted an extract above, went on to suggest that pollution
>>legislation was useless and currently ignored, and that major corp'ns
>>can bribe there way around it.  Well, I must disagree - the environment
>>has improved in many areas of the country, and I believe it is due
>>to environmental legislation.  Libertarianism seems to revolve around

>I believe it's due to environmental awareness.  People actually care
>about the environment now.  It's profitable to be seen as green, and
>harmful to the bottom line if you're caught polluting, in terms of
>public spending.

WRONG!  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  At lease, IMHO - I have as little data
as you on this point, but people don't have the attention span to
adequately punish a polluting company.  I mean, let's say the
NYT does a piece on a clothing manufacturer that is polluting.  It
might hurt their sales for a week or a month, but that'll be it,
and they'll have lost a lot less money than they would have by
actually fixing the problem.  Now, you and I know that this is
very short-sighted on the part of the company, and that each
individual who works there (including those making the decisions)
has to live in this world and will some day be unhappy that it
is dead from pollution.  But people have a remarkable ability to
rationalize their own decisions away - it would not shock me to
hear said clothing manufactuer's publicity person say "Yes, we
regret it, but we're not financially stable enough to cure our
pollution problems right now.  We'll get to it eventually -
in the meantime, why don't you go boycott that chemical plant
down the river - they're dumping more than we are."  And,
of course, they'd never be financially stable enough to do
the pollution reduction.


>>the notion of individuals taking co's/corp'ns to court and suing if
>>they feel that the co. in question is polluting too much.

>Why sue?  If you can show they're damaging your property, they need to
>pay you restitution or go to jail, just as if they'd taken a crowbar
>to your car or house.

You show that they're damaging your property by going to court.
That's suing.  You go, *prove* that they're damaging your
property and *prove* that you are owed such-and-such damages.
That's how it is now - and it's tough to do, when you (an
individual) are facing a high-powered corporate law team.
Good luck.

>In real life, however, we're working on reducing taxes and government
>spending and defending freedoms as a good starting point.  Rather than
>simply eliminating public education we're working for the voucher
>system.   We can't stop all government waste, but we can certainly
>start with things like the Rural Electrification Administration or the
>Omnibus Farm Bill.

Several people have made comments along these lines - I'll
try to address them tomorrow.  For now, let me say that the
quotes I've heard attributed to Marrou contradict this
pretty hard.  But, then, I surely don't read all of the lib
postings on this group, so I've probably missed all the non-
radical stuff! :-)
-- 


Greg Frazier	frazier@CS.UCLA.EDU	!{ucbvax,rutgers}!ucla-cs!frazier
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