From: kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: government still at large (was Re: FDA still at large)
Summary: sci.med,talk.politics.drugs removed from X-post
Date: 25 Jul 92 19:15:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: eskimo.1992Jul25.191500.4115
Organization: >>> Eskimo North (206)-FOR-EVER <<<

In article <1992Jul24.121817.14027@linus.mitre.org> lewis@aera8700.mitre.org (Keith Lewis) writes:
>In article <1992Jul23.185038.3415@eskimo.celestial.com>, kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum) writes:
>>Can you say...private army? warlord? feudalism?  I don't want to trade
>>publicly supported thugs for private thugs, who, if they don't beat me
>>to death, can bill me to death.
>
>Agreed.  We'd have to keep the public-supported police/army in place until
>we came up with a plan to avoid feudalism.  

One's no better than the other.  Any ideas along those lines?

[...]
>The free market rewards those who work hard, make responsible decisions, and
>get lucky.

Act of faith.
Actually the free market rewards those first in it, who then act to destroy
said free market by "sewing it up".  For example, if somebody already "owns"
the things I depend on to stay alive (like food, or land for growing same),
so that things I *used* to do freely (like just pick what I need, without let
or hindrance) become a form of trespass, then *my* freedom is decreased.
What, in LP theory, prevents this?  Or maybe this is OK in LP theory...

What *is* freedom, anyway?  Can it be sold or traded away?

>            Nobody can control their luck, so the really greedy people will
>be stuck working their asses off and making responsible decisions.

???
They will be stuck clipping coupons and by control of resources everybody
else needs to stay alive, getting others to work their asses off for them.
Some of those working their asses for them will get to boss others working
*their* asses off.

>                                                                    Assuming
>the government does its job in preventing force and fraud, this idea doesn't
>frighten me a bit!  Let them get wealth; they will mostly just re-invest
>that wealth in bigger and better enterprises.  What's the problem?

More leap of faith.

>>Somehow structures would have to evolve that function as checks and balances
>>on race conditions ("race condition" is control theory jargon for "inherently
>>unstable state".  It has nothing to do with blacks, etc.).  For example,
>>perhaps giving currency a half-life property that would preclude the
>>usefulness of unlimited accumulation.  Interest is another thing that could
>>bear close scrutiny.  I have always had problems with the self-replication of
>>money under certain conditions (but not others) (really, the *opposite* of
>>the half-life property) where no toil or energy is expended.
>
>"Currency with a half-life" is equivalent to a constant rate of inflation.
>(I can derive formulas for converting one to the other if anybody's
>interested.)
>
>Inflation is currently controlled by the Federal Reserve Board and the free
>market.  I don't know what the LP position on the Fed is.  Personally, I'd
>keep it.

Here I must admit to being on tenuous ground, because I don't know all that
much of the "dismal science", except that it's conclusions uniformly seem to
be pretty dismal to those who don't have wealth.  They seem pretty dismal
to me, at any rate.

[...]

>I'm currently reading _Atlas Shrugged_.  After the first 100 pages, it gets
>exiting.

Can we skip those?

>          BTW, does anybody else see parallels between Rearden metal and
>Hemp, as described in _The Emperor Wears no Clothes_?

Please explain.  I don't know what you are talking about.  I have read
the Emperor book, and know about the DuPont nylon-vs-hemp conspiracy.

>>Another thing I've never liked is the concept and apparent necessity of having
>>to sell one's toil/time or the best part of one's life to others in order to
>>stay alive (or the other leg of the so-called "free choice": starve), an
>>inherently irreversible transaction.  In other words, "work sucks".
>
>Work is what keeps us all alive.

Look.  There's lots of evidence coming to light that hunter-gatherers
(who seem to have been the original libertarians AFAIK) seem to have a
pretty easy life of it, before they come into contact with
non-hunter-gatherers.  The downhill slide seems to have started with
the invention of agriculture, and the invention of scarcity,
division-of-labor, culminating in all the wonderful things we have now.

>                                  If *nobody* worked, *everybody* would
>starve.

Everybody toiling away for most of their lives results in an accumulation
of wealth, that, thru indirect effects, guarantees an unlimited supply
(thru increased life expectancy and other "improvements", etc.) of toilers.
But they all spend a third of their waking hours doing stupid things that
nobody not driven to it would do, in places that nobody would *want* to be
in (workplaces).  The situation seems to be self-replicating.

[...]

>>I would have no problem if I could simply, whenever the need arose, quickly,
>>and with a minimum of hassle, make a mutually agreeable win/win deal with
>>somebody else to satisfy a need of theirs for their satisfying a need of mine.
>
>That would be your absolute right.

What keeps the wealthy people in your system from manipulating the system
in such a way that *my* choices become limited to what *they* offer?

>>How this could be done without a "system" springing up, I have no idea.
>>One thing is for certain -- I don't trust "systems".
>
>You've already got one.  Libertarians want to change it in a way that will
>make it more trustworthy and less powerful.  I'd think you'd agree with
>that.

The idea sounds attractive.  I would like to see one of these Randish
wealthy types set up an enclave of some sort where the LP vision could
be tried and observed.

>Keith Lewis             klewis@mitre.org          "Mr. Cheap"
>I don't dance to music; music dances to me.  Email me for my corrected PGP key.
[...]

I have been advised that there is a problem with mailing PGP keys to people
who ask for it.  The problem is that your public key can be spoofed by somebody
else.  Currently the (stopgap, and imperfect) solution seems to be tacking
it on as a .sig, which is a bandwidth sucker.  The solution is imperfect, since
it depends on there being enough copies of your .sig out there that a spoofer
would have a hard time getting them all.  I guess that for a prolific poster,
that would be no problem :) ...  Of course, there's no way to keep a spoofed
public key from being detected.  Needed: a *trustworthy* public key server,
or serving protocol.
-- 
kurt@grogatch.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
Newsgroups: pnw.general