From: steveh@thor.isc-br.com (Steve Hendricks)
Subject: Re: Limiting Govt (Was Re: Employment (was Re: Why not concentrate...)
Summary: But how do restrain unpleasant impulses?
Organization: Free the Barbers, Inc.
Lines: 46
Nntp-Posting-Host: thor.isc-br.com

In article <SLAGLE.93Apr15000157@sgi417.msd.lmsc.lockheed.com> slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com writes:
>In article <1993Apr13.215245.2916@isc-br.isc-br.com>, steveh@thor.isc-br.com (Steve Hendricks) writes:
>
>> In article <1993Apr13.083449.1058@cbnewse.cb.att.com> doctor1@cbnewse.cb.att.com (patrick.b.hailey) writes:
>
>>>... the point is that this law protects no one but the
>>>established car dealers or people with enough money to start a
>>>fairly big operation all at once.  Protecting these folks from
>>>competition protects the rest of us from low prices and high
>>>quality.
>
>> An excellent point.  But you seem to be missing a more subtle
>> point.  It is not "the government" that should be the recipient
>> of your displeasure, but the established business interests
>> that influence and direct government action in this case.
>
>It is the government that is preventing entry to the market.  The
>desire of those running established businesses to prevent or
>restrict the entry of competitors is an understandable, though
>generally unpleasant, human failing.  But without a means to act
>on this desire, without a government with sufficient power to
>restrict the options of the potential competitor, the
>anti-competitive desire remains just an unpleasant wish.  The
>government is the linchpin, so we seek to disengage it so we
>don't get the shaft.

Once again, Mark, you don't specify the means through which the government
is to be prevented from becoming the tool of business interests.  As a 
left-wing, big government, conventional liberal, I'm just as willing as
you are to vote against anti-competitive regulations that favor auto
dealers.  

But what I hear from libertarians is a desire to limit incumbents' terms,
to weaken government by eliminating its power to enforce antitrust laws,
and a desire to eliminate legislator's pay.  Each strikes me as a 
particularly ineffective way to insure that auto dealers and other special
interests cannot influence public policy.  In fact, they seem clearly
designed to accomplish the opposite.

jsh
>
>=Mark
--
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