From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: "New Right" Libertarians?
Reply-To: Hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 00:02:27 GMT

In article <90220@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM>, mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM
(Mark Wilson) writes:

|>In <1993Jan11.194552.5897@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
|>
|>|In article <90191@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM> mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM
|>(Mark Wilson) writes:
|>|>In <1993Jan11.065529.27080@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
|>|>
|>|>[A couple of silly examples deleted]
|>|>
|>|: 	These examples can readily be multiplied; I have to question
|>|: the seriousness of anyone who claims it's simple to start a business,
|>|: especially a big one.
|>|>
|>|>If you think that the only possible employers are big companies, I think I
|>|>understand why you don't like libertarianism.
|>|>
|>|>Try these examples on for size.
|>|>
|>|>Put a sign in your front yard saying that you will take care of kids during
|>|>the day, or night if that is your preference.
|>|>
|>|>Buy a few skeins of wool and knit some sweaters.
|>|>
|>|>Buy a paint brush and paint houses.
|>|>
|>|>I could go on, ... and on.
|>
|>|	These are only _small_ businesses.
|>
|>|	What about big ones? Some businesses *have* to be big. Try
|>|running an airline all by yourself.
|>
|>Agreed, some companies have to be big, but so what.
|>The original poster said that if you don't like working for some one else
|>go to work for yourself.
|>You implied that this was impossible, I have given examples that show that
|>it isn't.  The only requirement is that you have to earn enough to take
|>care of yourself and maybe a family if you have one.  You don't have to
|>start a big company to do this.
|>
|>Again I ask, why do you have this fascination with big companies.

But if you allow individuals to monopolize the labor market that deprives others
of rights.

For instance I have trained as a computer systems engineer. The sort of work I
do is big, less than 10 Terrabyte a second input rate and I'm not interested.
This sort of work costs a great deal of money, ZEUS cost $200 million, the next
project I am looking at will cost over $10 billion.

Are you suggesting that a free market in the design of online data aquisition
and trigger systems for large particle accelerators is going to occur?

Are you suggesting that if all the people who need my expertise got together in
a cartel and decided to offer peanuts then that is their right? Is it a
Libertarian society when one person is able to give another the choice of
offering employment from him or doing manual work?

Note the arrogance of "The only requirement is that you have to earn enough to
take care of yourself and maybe a family if you have one." If the free marketers
were arguing for communism then fair enough. But they are not, they are arguing
that everybody deserves as much as they can grab. 


The Utilitarianism that underlies the Libertarian point of view argues for the
greatest good of the greatest number. Yet based upon this criteria the ultra
free marketeers are unable to get past the greatest good of those that have
power.


The free trade arguments of the New Right are entirely different from those of
the Nineteenth century liberals many of them like to see themselves as. I am
talking here of the likes of Tinney and the Libertarian faction of the British
Tory party. The free marketeers objected to the corn laws because they were
exploitation of the poor (who had to pay more for food) by the rich (who saw
themselves as having to bear special burdens due to their place in society). The
ecconomic arguments were always secondary to a social imperative.

When Peel repealed the corn laws he did so primarily because he was feed up with
the Tory party and could not be bothered with it and its narrow predjudice any
longer. Although the Irish famine was given as an excuse it could never have
been the true motivation because the repeal was phased in over three years.



--

Phill Hallam-Baker