|
Alternative solutions such as?... Anyway, I understand if you wish to refocus attention for awhile, and perhaps there will be opportunity for further discussion later. I am not certain what you find so messy about prohibiting a free and open market in certain drugs, nor can I say that the limitation of regular heroin users to about half a million is so bad, considering the alternative. The question is not has government eliminated all problems, but has it made some things better than they would have been otherwise, in all probability. This is difficult to assess, but it is by no means clear that the government has done no good, or only harm, or insufficient good to justify its exercise of power. Maybe private education would have risen to the challenge of educating a rapidly growing nation, especially the children of immigrants, but maybe not, and in any case it is remarkable how successfully the schools achieved the goal of making literacy widespread, and of assimilating the children of diverse cultures into the American mainstream. Maybe the transportation system would have grown rapidly and consolidated commerce on a continental scale, thus insuring the prosperity of the nation, without governmental subsidies such as land grants to the railroads, but maybe not. Maybe the stock market would have developed its own policing procedures to guarantee the stability of equities, and other financial institutions would have developed methods to ensure that the system would not be undermined by distrust, but perhaps the SEC, the FDIC, and the Federal Reserve have served a useful function.Judging by the results, however, all that we really achieved was to extend government power. I think that government can be more efficient and effective, and that it is often too obtrusive, but I don't see how one can make such a blanket statement with a straight- face... |
