From: Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt)
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: An Observation
Keywords: Ethical Problems,Marginal Problems
Date: 21 Jan 93 15:27:46 GMT
Organization: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU

sulkom@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Mark Sulkowski) writes:
>In article <C10oz7.19G@newcastle.ac.uk>, Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes...

>>Oh for heaven's sake.  I was going to leave this alone, but:
>>     There is a clear implication that there would be less unemployment
>>     less squalor, and less crime under a more laissez-faire government.
>>     There is no evidence to support this; it is derived from theories
>>     of politics and economics that are unproven, and embraced because
>>     they are simple and give believers a warm fuzzy feeling that they
>>     understand complex systems of relationships.

>	Nonsense.  There is plenty of evidence out there if you will
>look at it.

There's evidence for almost any position you care to name; it just
depends on which correlations you assume to be causations, and which
kinds of evidence you drop as being due to experimental error.

> Take Hong Kong, for example.  No minimum wage laws, and
>no unemployment problem.  The lowest rung is always there to allow
>people to develop marketable skills to get further up the ladder.

So is there a causal relationship?  What happens when the wage
offered for a job is less than that needed to live on (and the
person can't get two jobs)?  The trouble is that people's needs
tend to be a step function at the lower end (too little and they
sicken and die).

>	Consider that there is a historical connection between
>Wars On Drugs and crime rates.  Consider the difference in quality
>between government and private schools.  Consider the failure of
>Welfare.

Consider that crime rose during the time that there wasn't a War
on Drugs as well; consider the connection between crime and
poverty.  Consider the difference in education quality between
those countries with public education and those without.  Consider
the failure of countries without welfare to maintain the peace.

>	There is plenty of evidence.

On all sides.

> And now Michael Rothschild's
>_Bionomics_ provides one hell of a convincing analogy between economies
>and ecosystems.  Michael Rothschild was a biologist who had never
>heard of Austrian free-market economics, but ending up supporting it
>nevertheless.  Be ecologically sensitive to the economy!  Don't
>intervene!

There are all kinds of analogies; sometimes those between economies
and ecosystems work.  Sometimes analogies fail; sometimes species
become extinct through no lack of suitability or adaptability for
their environment, but because of a fluke.  You can go the whole
hog, back to social Darwinism or sociobiology; or you can accept
analogies *as* analogies, useful but of limited applicability.
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 Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk      Computing Lab, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
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  Distributed object-oriented causal transition systems burble glug glug...
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism