From: pjs269@tijc02.uucp (Paul Schmidt)
Subject: Re: taxes, theft, police, etc.
Organization: Advocates for Self-Government - Davy Crockett Chapter
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 13:53:19 GMT

mjones@bk-kgnaix11.aix.kingston.ibm.com (Mike Jones) writes:
: 
: You say this, of course, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the
: contrary. What does hyper-inflation have to do with the great depression?
: There was no hyper-inflation before it. Besides, in the vast majority of
: cases, where governments are operating reasonably normally, government does
: in fact give legitimacy to money. 

I want a currency that I can trust.  The only tool government has to use
is force.  This force, in controlling the supply, gives the fiat money
an accepted value.

: Were it not so, the entire modern economy
: as we know it would be impossible. Certainly there are pathological cases,
: but holding up, say Germany c. 1944, to prove that governments can cause
: hyperinflation is the purest sort of strawman.
: I claimed that one reason governments were established was to give
: legitimacy to money.

In the United States, government did not control the monetary system
until 1913.  Our biggest years of prosperity were in the late 1800s.  A
depression followed the creation of the Federal Reserve.  Many countries
have had hyperinflation, not just Germany.  (Hungary after WWII.)

Another way to look at the money producing business is like a monopoly.
Monopolies are accepted as innefficient and prone to corruption.
Competition is seen as a better alternative.  But with competition you
have failures of business and corruption also.  The benefits of
competition, reducing the corruption, and giving people a choice of
alternatives, is readily accepted as producing a healthier economy.  Why
does the monetary system have to be a government controlled monopoly?
This service could be handled by private companies and banks just as
efficiently.  There would still be fraud and bank failures, but the
competition from competing private banks would reduce the corruption and
increase the performance, yeilding a healthier monetary system(s).
: 
: Hey, I think this is great. Unfortunately, this is the first time I've heard
: of it. How many elected officials do the Libertarians have in, say, the NH
: state legislature? 
Two.
: What parts of their platform have they implemented? What
: are the results, so far? I'm really interested in knowing this, and I hope
: to hear more about it as an update after the November elections. Note that
: I'm not interested - I really don't care - about the numbers or strength of
: the Libertarian Party, or whether people are starting to believe. I want to
: know whether the Libertarians are putting people in office, and what they're
: doing once they get there.

The libertarian movement is only in the educational phase.  This means
that people are still questioning the concepts.  People have lots of
questions and will challenge the ideas.  This is normal in the spreading
of any new idea.  Before this idea can become popular, it must be
accepted by a percentage of the opinion leaders in society.  This number,
we could say is around 5%.  At that point critical mass is reached and
many people will believe in the idea.  Only at this point will the
Libertarian Party be able to put people in office and do something once
they get there.  The whole libertarian movement will need to grow at
least ten fold before this could come about.  When this actually happens
is hard to guess.  The fall of the Berlin Wall suprised many people.  It
could be just around the corner, or it could be 20-25 years from now.
If you want to know if the Libertarian Party will win elections or have
an influence in our government, the answer is NO -- not this year.  The
whole libertarian platform maybe usurped by one of the parties, just as
the Socialist Party platform was adopted by the Democrats.
: 
:    Mike Jones  |  AIX/ESA Development  |  mjones@donald.aix.kingston.ibm.com
: 
: In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be
: sure. Today, they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's
: programs, bugs included.
: 	- Edsger Dijkstra, "Selected Writings on Computing"
-- 
Paul Schmidt: Advocates for Self-Government, Davy Crockett Chapter President
706 Judith Drive, Johnson City, TN 37604, (615)283-0084, uunet!tijc02!pjs269
"Freedom seems to have unleashed the  creative energies of the people -- and
leads to ever higher levels of income and social progress."  --  U.N. report