From: ARCHER@utkvm1.utk.edu (T. Archer)
Subject: Re: = Opportunity etc.
Organization: University of Tennessee 
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 16:10:12 GMT

In article <1idhvuINNesq@agate.berkeley.edu> mvij@ocf.berkeley.edu (Manish Vij) writes:
>> Doesn't the cycle of poverty argument go something like this:
>> Poor nghbrhd => Poor schools => Poor education => Poor jobs => Poor nghbrhd
>> drugs/crime etc. ?
>
>The cycle I mean is poverty -> poor education -> poor jobs -> poverty,
>usually used to justify affirmative action with respect to education.

affirmitive action = favoring the current minority in vogue at the expense 
of the majority?  

>
>> Today he is senior plant manager for the site. Another guy is working at
>> Merck (MPMD, Philly) - started as janitor!! Educated himself on the job.
>> Today he is in the top management ranks - with many MIT trained grads working
>> for him, as he put it to me in the summer of 1991. And he is not a political
>> manipulator king of guy. He is one of the finest scientific minds I have met.
>> He deserves his success.
>
>Exceptional individuals, all of them.  Remarkable.  What about the rest?
>Not all the unsuccessful poor are sitting on their collective rump.

Whose responsibility is thier success?  The state's, or thier own?

>
>> Something very similar happens in these socioeconomic policies. The govt
>> or the altruists define their own sense of freedom. And in the name of
>> extending freedom they, mistakenly, cripple the "hoped to be beneficiary."
>
>I am not arguing about specific implementations.  Yes, means tests are faulty.
>Yes, welfare currently provides the wrong incentives.  But to reject the war
>on poverty because of faulty methodology is akin to banning the Salvation
>Army because it has excess overhead.

Unrelated:  participation in the Salvation Army is voluntary.  Participation 
in a state-mandated "war on poverty" is manadory, coercive, and immoral.

>
>Do you or do you not support the PRINCIPLE of helping the poor?  With cash,
>with job training, with food and blankets?

Sure.  By choice, not legislation.

>
>> Because, I think freedom means - freedom to experience joy AND pain of life.
>> Frustrations, failures, suffering, struggle is as much a part of
>> healthy/happy life for an individual as is tranquility, success,
>> excellence, exaltation.
>
>So do you really believe in leaving Somalis to their starvation because
>it subtly accentuates the small successes they do achieve?  Come now.
>There is a difference between taking the training wheels off and abandoning
>the child altogether.

No, I believe in leaving Somalis to solve thier own problems because we can 
do nothing practical to provide a lasting solution to their physical 
problems until they resolve thier political problems, which we cannot solve 
for them.

>
>> Furthermore, all these so called anti-poverty measures have an expense.
>> It is unfair to tax an individual's income to fund an arbitrary definition
>> of anti-poverty measure. If some think their definition to be right - they
>> have the freedom to practice charity, don't they????
>> The govt protection of rights can be funded with sales/consumption tax.
>
>In nations with no social leveling, social justice, socialist-type programs --
>and Social Security, progressive income taxes, and Medicare are just a few --
>there are huge disparities in wealth concentration between the rich and
>the poor.  In Nicaragua before the revolution, the richest 1% owned over
>80% of the land -- and this in an agricultural nation.  What happens then?
>A stable, just society?  I think not.

As I recall, the revolution there took property from those who legally owned 
it without compensating them, and gave it to those who did not.  That is 
theft.

>
>The rich get richer and the poor get poorer without some sort of management
>or intervention.  Why have a product safety commission which reviews children's
>toys?  Why does Japan have a powerful ministry of international trade?  Why
>isn't Adam Smith's "invisible hand" as benevolent as it is enrichening?

No one has claimed that the invisible hand is benevolent, only omnipotent.  
Anytime you try to dink with the laws of supply and demand, you cause more 
problems than you solve.

>
>We can strike a balance between suffocating overregulation and the cruelty of
>the free market.
>

Not really.

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