Edwarda, as a card carrying liberal I am compelled to disagree. You asked Should we take the money of people who have fought for a education and a hard-earned income, as Donna Summer sang in a song devoted to another end, people earned money, and let the state play with it as it pleases.
And you know that the answer is of course no. But that does not mean that the only alternative is to get rid of the state. It means that the state has to become more efficient in serving the public good. Anarchy is the quickest way to perpetuation of a class-based society, but what is not so easily appreciated is that it also hurts the privileged. The emergence of vibrant economies depends on a large middle class which depends in its turn depends on a shift of wealth to allow the poor to enter the middle class. The public health initiatives funded by public dollars cannot be substituted by private enterprise. The cost is too high and the economic profit is either absent or elusive in publicly funded basic research But the basic research can and does result in technological breakthroughs. The basic research that resulted in the vaccine for polio (a "rich man's disease"), the structure of the genetic material, and myriad other scientific and technological advances depended on government funding. Basic research is expensive.
There are other problems as well. Corporations do not deal with externalities. Governments do. You need look no further than smokestacks which would be spewing tons of poisons into the air, were it not for government mandated pollution control. Wouldn't Asarco still throwing tons of arsenic into the air were there not a public instrumentality to put an end to its poisoning of populations?
Or perhaps a system where roads and turnpikes were private, as in 19th century England appeals to you. Or one where people who live in rural areas are unable to receive mail because it is not economic for private mail carriers to deliver?
Much of China was in anarchy up until the Communists took over. But it was far from a Utopian society. Poverty, illiteracy, disease, famine, these were the constant companion of millions of Chinese as they struggled under a feudal system dominated by war lords.
Edwarda, I could go on and on with the very real and insoluble problems inherent in anarchy. This is not to say that government is perfect, but I argue that perhaps our efforts would be better directed towards perfecting government, which ought to be, afterall, an instrumentality of the public will. Such a government need not be authoritarian and confiscatory. But it must nurture the poor and educate its children; it will provide the environment for all citizens to flourish-- not just the privileged.
There was a wonderful piece written by Garrett Hardin in Science in 1970 as I recall, entitled Tragedy of the Commons. This is a seminal refutation of laissez-faire economics in a very easy to understand parable (unusual for Science which is the journal of American Association for the Advancement of Science.
TTFN,
CTC |
