From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: Market or gov failures
Article-I.D.: mksol.1993Apr6.133130.8998
Distribution: sci
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Lines: 52

In <C4tCL8.7xI.1@cs.cmu.edu> 18084TM@msu.edu (Tom) writes:


>[Fred saying that gov coercive poser is necessary for any space program]

>I reply;
>>>BTW, Fred, you've really crossed the border, since you admit that the ideas
>>>you support can only be carried out with coercive power.  Now that's really
>>>f***in' intolerant, so get off yer high horse about tolerance.

>Fred replies;
>>No, Tommy, I "admit" that there are such things as 'market failures'
>>which necessitate intervention by other than capitalist forces to
>>correct.

>I guess your understanding of this 'market failure' should be classified
>under Phil's 'economics on the level of 19th century medicine', since you
>apparently completely ignored that this 'market failure' can as easily,
>or even much more easily, be attributed to "government intervention
>failure".  So, in addition to a strong moral argument against what you
>propose, there is also a strong utilitarian argument, namely that gov's
>destruction of wealth through confiscastory taxation and redistribution
>on a major scale has made significant private capital investments harder
>to make.

I note that you make no such case as you claim can be 'even more
easily made'.  Yes, the argument can (and has) been made that current
government policy creates even larger market barriers than there were
in the first place, but there is no such term as 'government failure',
since the government can change policies whenever it pleases.  The
market doesn't do that and is governed by (relatively) well-understood
forces.  This libertopican bilge about 'moral arguments' about
taxation, etc., is, at bottom, so much simplistic economic thinking.
It can only be 'justified' by cliche derision of anyone who knows more
about economics than the libertopian -- which is what invariably
happens.  Tripe a la Tommy, the new libertopian dish.

>>Get a clue, little boy, and go salve your wounded pride in my not
>>considering you infallible in some other fashion.  I'm not interested
>>in your ego games.

>Puh-leese, Fred.  This, besides being simply an attempt to be insulting,
>really belongs on private mail.  If 'ego-games' are so unimportatnt to
>you, why the insults and this strange negative attatchment for me?

Wherever do you get this inflated idea of your own importance?

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