From: rcollins@ns.encore.com (Roger Collins)
Subject: Re: Limiting Govt (Was Re: Employment (was Re: Why not concentrate...)
Reply-To: rcollins@encore.com
Organization: Encore Computer Corporation
Nntp-Posting-Host: sysgem1.encore.com
Lines: 46

In article <1993Apr15.164605.8439@isc-br.isc-br.com>, steveh@thor.isc-br.com (Steve Hendricks) writes:
|> In article <SLAGLE.93Apr15000157@sgi417.msd.lmsc.lockheed.com> slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com writes:
|> >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.

This is similar to my saying that Clinton's timber summit does little to
fix the health care problem.  Look at the whole picture, not just
randomly picked libertarian positions.  If government is not allowed to
use "non-initiated force" to achieve its goals, than no special interest
can influence the government to use non-initiated force on their behalf.

The means to reaching such a restricted government is another topic
which I'll address briefly.  It certainly won't happen until
libertarianism is the dominate philosophy.  What means do we have to
make libertarianism the dominate philosophy?  Statists run the education
monopoly, so we have to be creative.  The Advocates for Self-Government
reports 85% of their Seminar 1 participants "embrace" libertarianism.
That's the best means I've seen yet.  We should lobby for compulsory
Seminar 1 attendance. :) [in jest!]

Roger Collins

It's amazing to me that governments around the world will try every
aspect of government control before, as a final last resort after
everything else fails, they will try individual liberty.
	-- Andre Marrou, Libertarian candidate for President '92
