From: fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Currency Problems
Date: 9 Oct 92 13:25:35 GMT
Distribution: soc
Organization: Edinburgh University

mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:

-From: fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes)
[...Matthew talks of unemployed barbarians ramapging down the High Streets..]

--The police are there to solve that sort of problem. Libertarianism does
--not equal anarchy.

-Well, the problem is that you are left with a society which is
-largely governed by fear. Fear of starvation leads people into
-crime, fear of crime leads to the growth of police and private
-armies. I think most people don't want to live with that level
-of fear, that is why they accept the state.

Not everyone who is hungry or starving will willingly enter crime. Some
will take, or create, low paid jobs rather than do this. Without
excessive state regulation (like minimum wages) that becomes more
possible as an option. I know some people who do private childminding to
make their money. They'd object strongly to the assertion that they are
more likely to become criminals.

-As to the argument that people would not voluntarily give to
-the "Unemployed Yobboes Charity", as I pointed out, fear would
-eventually get them to realise why their forefathers set up the
-welfare state. The point is, is it really necessary to go
-through this?

Yes, because your assumption is that when they reach this point they'd
say "Och, this is terrible, we can't have all these unemployed louts
messing up the High Street. I know, why don't we give more than half our
earnings to the government and I'm sure they'll sort it out..."

The point being that the government is far from the *only* possible form
of collective participation. If these folks calculate that giving a bit
more to the charity "Help The Unemployed Louts", is cheaper than paying
more tax for a larger Police force, then they'd probably do it.
Especially if they figured it was cheaper than getting the government to
run exactly the dsame charity service.

-In fact, of course, people in effect did accept
-the argument for the welfare state and the necessary
-contributions they would have to make when they voted the 1945
-government in. If your protest is simply that the electoral
-system does not give a wide enough range of choices, and that
-the option of showing support for a party which would do away
-with the welfare state at a faster rate than the Tories is not
-available, I would agree.

Thank you. Note however that I wasn't advocating getting rid of the
entire welfare state. What I suggested was that if we're going to tax
folks into oblivion to run a huge charity service, then the least we
could do is make some attempt to ensure that the folks receiving the
charity are actually poorer than the folks we're forcing to contribute.
As in the examples I've given, this is manifestly not the case in our
current welfare state. That's one reason why the economy is in a huge mess.

----someone unemployed, might offer to pay the employer a retainer to keep
----someone employed until a recruiting agency, hired by the insurer, had
----found alternative employment. It'd depend on the insurer's own
----calculation of minimum cost, which would pretty much match the equation
----you are alluding to above.
--
---Well, I've heard of selling yourself into slavery, but paying
---an insurance company for the privilege of being sent to the
---slave market, that's a new one.
--
--A recruiting agency is hardly a "slave market".

-In your scenario, the recruiting agency is hired by the
-insurers, not by the (un)employee. Furthermore, you tell us
-that as soon as the recruiting agency has found this person a
-job, the insurers will cut off benefit. So the recruiting
-agency can, in effect, put the person up for auction, and as
-soon as it finds someone who will make the person work, that's
-it, he must do it. In fact the "recruiting agency" could own
-its own businesses, and force people to work in them.

You are still thinking in terms of "one of everything". If an insurer
were to behave in this way, it'd soon find that its customers were off
to the insurer down the road. That's how competition works.

-Matthew Huntbach

FoFP