From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Subject: Re: [misc.activism.progressive] Clinton Office Requests Comments
Organization: The World
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 02:54:41 GMT


From: pjs269@tijc02.uucp (Paul Schmidt)
>I want private corporations and the individuals within them to be
>answerable when they use fraud or steal from other people.

And only for those two acts? And who makes them answerable?

>Here is an
>experiment that anyone can do to see who is more answerable.  The next
>time you are in a line at the grocery store or post office compare the
>experience.  How are you treated if you complain?  Do this at any
>governmental agency and any private company.  Who is more responsive?

This is one theme that (honestly) bugs me about libertarianism, the
retail theory of life (aka "the shopping mall theory".) That is (to
paraphrase): If small shopkeepers who depend on direct service
relationships with the public can be so wonderfully obsequious why
can't we make the whole world like that? I feel so personally powerful
in that situation!

Well, the whole world, no matter how you structure it, will not be in
the position of "obsequious shopkeepers". Many will have a much more
powerful position. For example, taken from today's society, landlords
(some landlords, but not a tiny number, and not all either.)

Landlords, particularly in situations where tenants are not awfully
wealthy or otherwise have strong motivations to stay put (e.g. college
towns) can be horribly abusive, I certainly have witnessed this and
even fought with a few in my day.

They don't bow and stoop to their customers, in these cases it's a
seller's market and once they have a tenant, besides the fact that
it's a real pain to move and one will often put up with a lot of crap
before going to the trouble and expense of doing that, they are often
locked into a lease of some length and many of the "offenses" by the
landlord are hard to quite pin back to something which can terminate
the lease (not to mention deposits etc.)

And that's nearly retail, if you've never run into a landlord who gets
away with this sort of crap don't guess, and don't throw facile things
around like "just move", it's not that simple, for starters you can
end up paying for both places. As to "what type of crap?", things like
bathrooms ceasing to work and dragging one's feet on fixing it.

Oh, technically that might break a lease, but in practice any judge
allows 10 or even 30 days to fix a problem, how would you like to go
30 days w/o a working bathroom? How about if it's something that looks
like it could be fixed in a couple of hours IF SOMEONE WOULD JUST
SPEND A COUPLA HUNDRED BUCKS ON A PLUMBER, like one small busted pipe
so he shut it off at the main. But no, wait until Mr Handyman finds
some free time...And invariably if you ever get into court with the
guy he'll lie or half-lie, like list every time he came to tell you
that he couldn't fix it "this week" and sort of looked around as a
"sincere attempt to fix it but hey", it turned out to be a bit more
complicated, SORRY, but "I'M" (the landlord) out 6 mos rent cuz this
crazy tenant just took off on a perfectly legal lease blah blah blah.

Ya know what, a lot of the time in a situation like that you lose the
case unless you have damn good documentation etc. Or you end up
chasing the guy around for hundreds or even thousands in security
deposits, etc.

In a libertarian society there would be much less recourse in a
situation like that, since even the concept of reasonable hygienic
conditions would be unregulated. Everyone would just have to sue
everyone else I guess, constantly. Or write 1,000 page leases covering
every exigency or something, and even that assumes that it's a buyer's
market.

And there are a zillion services etc that you depend on even more
indirectly that you will have even less choice/input/leverage on as an
individual.

The answers I get from libertarians on issues like that are so
idealized and facile as to be impossible to take seriously, they
completely discount the human condition and spout things like "so
move", "so don't rent from the guy", "guys like that will go out of
business", etc.

Well, wake up and smell the coffee, by and large for situations where
you generally can do those things that's exactly what is used as
controls in this society and no one usually sees any reason to do much
more (e.g. regulate.)

But ya know after (how many years ya want? 50?  100? 500? 1000?)  the
patterns emerge of relationships for which that kind of reasoning just
doesn't work. And to suggest it will is naive at best (no doubt it
would please your average slumlord.)

The whole world is not a small retail store. And the whole world is
not a buyer's market.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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