From: rcollins@ns.encore.com (Roger Collins)
Subject: S&L and other statist myths
Reply-To: rcollins@encore.com
Organization: Encore Computer Corporation
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 14:44:59 GMT

In article <BZS.93Jan8034450@world.std.com>, bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
|> From: hhuang@athena.mit.edu (Han-Young Huang)
|> >>From: pjs269@tijc02.uucp (Paul Schmidt)
|> >>Some guy who made a few million dumping toxic waste or raided people's
|> >>savings etc may not have done his planet any good, but he's living it
|> >>up somewhere on the money and probably thinks it all worked out pretty
|> >>well! No doubt such evility would be a huge fan of libertarianism,
|> >>these guys slip thru the currently regulated environment.
|> >
|> >I seem to have enormous difficulty seeing how someone can make a few
|> >million dumping toxic waste (unless citizens do not sue that person
|> >for ruining theirp property -- hardly likely).
|> 
|> Well, for starters there's the Exxon Valdez...I hear Exxon makes quite
|> a bit of money. But one can quibble that I suppose, so how about the
|> organized crime types who were picking up toxic waste and dumping it
|> off on road sides when no one was looking? I hear they made millions
|> posing as legitimate toxic waste removal services.

What's your point?  Neither of these acts would be lawful under
libertarianism.  These actually *happened* under the system you support,
not libertarianism.  In fact, given the resources that are now used
investigating, prosecuting and punishing victimless crimes,
libertarianism would allow more resources to fight real crimes.

|> >Or how someone can
|> >make a few million raiding people's savings, when a crucial point of
|> >libertarianism is that one's property cannot be taken without one's
|> >consent, whatever the circumstance.
|> 
|> I assume you missed the recent Savings and Loans scandal that's
|> costing the US around $500B?
|> 
|> [ ... ]

I hope you've read enough to know that it was the government deposit
insurance that was bailed out.  Although I'm tired of explaining such a
simple concept, here goes.  Go tell an investor with $100,000 that you
will insure for $100 all his investments against loss for a year no
matter what he invests in.  After checking his contract carefully, the
investor will begin buying extremely high-risk investments.  Now, who was
stupid, the insurer or the investor?  Naturally, government was the
insurer in the analogous S&L crisis, and government was not only stupid,
but stupid with my and your money.

|> You are talking about idealized behavior. Enormous amounts of what you
|> see around you in terms of laws and regulations is because there seems
|> to always be a certain ruthless type of human being who insists on
|> living right at the edge of what is absolutely forbidden and what is
|> questionably legal.

Yes, and some of them are writing the laws and regulations.

|> So you have to firm up that edge lest they prey on
|> people who run their lives based on reasonable common sense. You can't
|> posit a world based on reasonable and honest people, reasonable and
|> honest people rarely go near the edge.

So give a few hundred people the power to vote themselves and all their
friends pay raises, to tell everyone else what do, and give them power
over the military and police to enforce what they want, to pardon, to
tax, to punish, etc.  Just read the news; politicians are below average
on your "reasonable and honest" scale in my opinion.

|> >Perhaps you are assuming that
|> >people are stupid and cannot be counted upon to protect what is
|> >theirs.  It's a rather malevolent notion.
|> 
|> Yes, so stupid as to hand their money over to banks for deposit who
|> then go belly-up after loaning all the deposit money to their
|> brothers-in-law. You must have an amazingly naive notion about
|> punishment and accountability. Even if these scum are caught do you
|> think they ever have the money? Do you think victims get paid back? Do
|> you think punishing them pays people back?

These victims were all careful to put their money in a government
insured bank, and they are not losing a dime (except through taxes).
It was the government insurance that ripped the taxpayers off.

|> >The whole problem with a democratic society is that at any time, 50.1%
|> >of the society can vote to wreck the livelihoods of the remaining
|> >49.9%.  Do you consider this good government?  Does sound quite
|> >dictatorial to me...
|> 
|> You will never escape the will of the mob, about the best anyone has
|> ever figured out to do is herd them into voting booths. That's hardly
|> an opinion.

You will never reach perfect safety in air travel, should we abandon all
attempts at it?  The best that anyone has figured out is N accidents in
100,000 flights.  Should we not try for something less than N?

|> In the end that's the pathos, it's impossible to understand who
|> libertarians are appealing (complaining) to? Is your point that people
|> should democratically vote what you assert they will not? Or are you
|> going to force them into libertarianism at gunpoint, or what? (And
|> don't repeat the catechism about coercion to me, what are your plans?)

At this point we can mostly educate.  That includes refuting a lot of
statist bull shit as I have done in this post.

|> I suppose that is why they are so pugnacious, anyone who doubts them
|> is at least something to push against. It must be frustrating shouting
|> at the air most of the time.

Ignorance is the most frustrating thing at which to shout.  Thanks for
you concern. :)
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