From: secsu@ariel.lerc.nasa.gov (Ralph O. Clark)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.amateur-comp,soc.culture.usa,alt.activism
Subject: Re: [misc.activism.progressive] Clinton Office Requests Comments
Date: 5 Jan 93 21:48:00 GMT
Distribution: inet
Organization: NASA Lewis Research Center
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <1ic9pvINNt8@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes...
>In article <4JAN199322424251@venus.tamu.edu> gmw0622@venus.tamu.edu (Mr. Grinch) writes:

[discussion of merits of redistribution deleted]

>>You are trying to make more champaign by pouring it
>>onto the rug and sucking it up rather than drinking it straight from the 
>>bottle.
> 
>Please spare us your "reasoning" in metaphors.  They are easily turned:
>better everybody gets a swig than one person is drunk.
> 

As long as we're on the Metaphor Thing:
	If it's MY champagne, you only get a swig if I invite you to the
	party.

[Huben argues that a large middle class inherently depends on goverment
 subsidies for its existence.]

>Yes, but that large middle class was a product of pre-industrial government
>subsidy: ever hear of the Homestead Act?  And its long list of predecessors?
>And state agricultural research?  That large middle class consisted primarily
>of farmers until the major migrations to the cities that engendered massive
>public education.  Giving small allotments of farmland away for free is a
>subsidy that has seldom been replicated.

1) The Homestead Act was just a formalization of the process by which this
country was settled: arrive, stake out claim, clear land, build house and
defensive structures if necessary, farm land.

2) It was not generally "farmland" that was given away, but undeveloped
wilderness, in whatever state that wilderness tended to be---wooded,
prairie, whatever. Preparing the land to be farmed was a tremendous amount
of work. The farmland was not free.

3) If you're interested in replicating this subsidy, free up the ocean floor,
Antartica, and outer space for homesteading.

> 
>>What I'd like you to find is instances of the head of a government agency
>>declaring his agency to be superfluous and harmful and that it should be 
>>eliminated.  Who knows,  maybe you'll actually find some and convince me that 
>>governments can be trusted to regulate their own growth.
> 
>You set a standard for government that private industry won't meet either.
>Let's ask a tobacco company to declare itself to be "superfluous and harmful
>and that it should be eliminated."  Isn't it funny: both know they have
>constituencies.
> 

Tobacco companies don't force you to buy cigarettes. Well, there is
that dirty little farm subsidy, but that just keeps down the price that
the companies pay the farmers. I don't doubt that the tobacco companies
would make about the same amount of money if the subsidy were withdrawn.
Smokers will smoke. And people who think they need to smoke to be cool
will smoke. 

>I don't think you'd have to look to far to find departments of government that
>have been abolished or diminished.  Reorganizations are common.

Does their budget allocation decrease (including what gets moved to some
other department---anyone can play musical chairs)?

> 
>Mike Huben
> 
>"Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under
>a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the
>kind of life he led there before joining the family circle."   Samuel Beckett

Ralph Clark

"Mff ndnn bmmmmf sgddd!"
 -- Grover, with his mouth stuck shut with peanut butter
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian