From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: The end of the Reagan Era
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 04:13:13 GMT

In <1992Nov10.005500.16333@watson.ibm.com> johniac@austin.ibm.com (John Iacoletti/100000) writes:

>fred j mccall 575-3539 (mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com) wrote:
>: Sorry to inject a little reality into your tirade, but I simply don't
>: care to type in several chapters of a book to try to explain it to
>: you,

>I don't see why not.  You type the equivalent of several chapters of a book
>every day here anyway.

You must read books with damned short chapters, and in any case, why
would I want to spend all my time lecturing to ONE person?  If you
want an education, send me a check.  :-)

>: when you don't want to believe it in the first place (see the
>: past discussion on the definition of 'flat tax').

>Believe or not, I don't ask you to explain things so that I can argue with them.
>I have learned a few things from you.  One thing I learned is that "flat tax"
>has been defined by convention, and its common definition is what you said it
>is.  Until you explained this, I didn't realize the word "flat" applied to
>a percentage rate being flat.  I'm sorry if I didn't publicly thank you
>for that experience.

Hmmm.  I must've missed something there, because the last note I saw
was you quibbling about how the words didn't say what they seemed to
say. 

>: Yes, but you can't make every street a toll street, with collection on
>: every block at slightly different rates.  This is the problem with
>: user fees.

>How nice of you to a priori decide what's impractical.  Maybe we don't really
>need the entire country blanketed with asphalt.

Fine, John.  Describe a workable system for me that lets everybody get
to work.  Keep in mind that roads have to be built for PEAK traffic
loads, so that they will be empty or underutilized most of the day.
'Private' roads are workable for peak travel paths because they are
competing with effectively 'free' roads (and hence people have some
option if they don't want to trade price for convenience).  Describe a
method that will pave YOUR STREET -- keeping the costs in mind.

>: Thank you for the demonstration that despite having looked at it and
>: having read it, you still don't understand the idea behind full
>: costing and what it is supposed to fix (or behind such simple concepts
>: as economic efficiency and pareto optimality).

>Thank you for falling back into your pattern of buzz words and pomposity 
>when asked straightforward questions.  I'm sure glad you don't teach for a 
>living.

So am I, John.  So am I.  But the underlying 'problem' with the
libertarian faith in 'free market forces' is that they ASSUME perfect
markets with no externalities of any kind.  Violate those assumptions
and 'free markets' simply don't behave the way libertarians say they
will.  ONE of the many things necessary for free markets to behave the
way libertarians say that they do is for there to be no beneficial
externalities that can go uncharged and no adverse externalities that
can go unpaid by the users.  In other words, we must have a situation
where there are no 'free riders' and where goods are 'full costed'.
Neither of those conditions are true in unregulated markets for quite
a large number of goods.

>: The problem is that,
>: given the ability to effectively shove off the external costs on
>: someone else, there is no 'better luck next time' because there are no
>: market forces to change the situation (unless the guy who is having to
>: breath the shmutz from your factory takes a gun and blows your brains
>: out). 

>If people didn't want to breathe the "schmutz", there would be no factory
>workers, and ergo the factory would shut down.  More government is not the 
>solution to everything.

Given a choice between breathing the shmutz and having a job and not
breathing the shmutz and not having a job (and hence starving to death
in libertopia), most people would elect to breath the shmutz.  But
what about the person who DOESN'T work at the factory?  What about the
guy who doesn't consume any of the product of that factory and would
just as soon the factory didn't exist, but has to breath the shmutz
anyway so that those who DO consume the product of the factory get a
cheaper price (because they don't have to pay the costs of the impact
of shmutz on the environment)?

>: Too cumbersome.  Please describe a toll system for ALL ROADS that
>: doesn't require stopping to pay the tolls, that prevents use if you
>: don't pay, that doesn't get in the way, etc.

>We already did this.  A few different mechanisms were described to you the
>last time this came up.  Also, it's doubtful that all roads require the same
>level of maintenance.  If nobody uses a road, why waste money maintaining it?

But what if there isn't sufficient traffic to justify the initial
capital investment in the road (in a free market).  Please describe
for me a mechanism where a city (say Dallas) would have roads in the
residential areas so that people could get to work.  Also describe
what the resident on the typical block would have to pay.

>: Note that you ALREADY
>: are stopped in order to pay for the gasoline.

>Yes, and how convenient the government gets a tax collector free of charge.

Yes, it is.  However, this is irrelevant to the main point.

>: Hey, John.  Teach me everything there is to know about computers HERE
>: ON THE NET, RIGHT NOW.  I don't want to have to get or read any books.

>I ask you very specific questions.  Your standard "type in a thousand pages"
>evasion is wearing thin.  If you don't want to answer, just say so.

Yes, and your 'specific questions' would require volumes to answer
adequately, since if you need to ask those questions you must also
obviously be missing a lot of the foundation that an answer would have
to rest upon.  It's like asking a specific question of 'how does a
transister work?'.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Xref: sparky alt.politics.elections:23352 alt.politics.clinton:16707