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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GerPol who wrote (224)	11/8/2000 11:24:35 PM
From: canuck-l-head	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37055

GerPol: Hey, no-one is asking you to stay. Am I dreaming, or are these threads for everyone? Please be sure to turn the TV off when you leave. Thanks ever so. Be sure the cat doesn't get out when you go. Leave the key under the mat. Say "Hi" to everyone for me. Ships passing in the night, we are all brothers, blah, blah, blah... canuck-l-head

To: GerPol who wrote (224)	11/9/2000 12:23:38 AM
From: Gulo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37055

>I suggest you find a "friend" who has lived behind the old Iron Curtain, ask about the "Black Market" and if it resembles the unfettered society you claim you want! My best friend is such a person. He escaped from Czechoslovakia well before the Velvet Revolution. I have also spent some time in Poland, and was exposed to some parts of the black market. The typical east block black markets was not a free market. It was just the opposite - it was a market where no one's rights* were protected, not a market where everyone's rights were protected. Still, it did tend to reflect supply and demand, even if it was seriously distorted by its the underground nature. Because it did help address market imbalances created by centrally planning, it was essential to the economy. You seem to be making the common assumption among socialists that a free market is a completely unregulated market. In fact, the only aspects that must be unregulated in a free market are the issues of who may sell, who may buy, and what price may they agree on. Regulations governing product advertising, labeling, etc. can still exist, but they must be written to avoid impacting the actual trade aspects. It is regulations that discriminate between two groups that are the most unfair. For example, a friend of mine insists that Albertans should not be forced to pay market price for natural gas, while I argue that price controls are fundamentally unethical. It isn't yet obvious to him that price controls exact a price on society that is borne by some groups more than others, and certainly not in proportion to any individual benefits. I guess I haven't spent enough time with him to convince him that it is unethical for people who use little energy to be forced to subsidize those who use lots. Note: I'm using the word 'rights' in the classical liberal sense (ala Jefferson, etc.), and not in the neo-socialist sense. For example, a person may have a right to choose a vocation, but not a right to demand that someone give him a job. In this context, a person may have a right to trade private property, but not a right to exclude others from trading. >But the real losses come from corporate welfare, corporate damage to the environment and numerous other sins that are hid in the corporate boardrooms of North America.* We already agreed on corporate welfare, but damage to the environment is not a 'corporate' issue. It is a societal issue. Do you think state-owned production would be less damaging to the environment? Or production of goods in cottage industries? The track record points to the opposite. Can you imagine how much MORE waste would be produced if corporations didn't make the things we use, but individuals did? The real problem is the lack of accountability in environmental matters. Tradable emissions permits are an example of how the market can be used to improve environmental performance where the government can not. I don't see how you can believe that the other sins of the corporate boardroom create real losses that are larger than those created by government. Even if they did, it's the shareholders that suffer. There is something fundamentally more disturbing about having our tax money spent on grants to the PM's supporters than there is about a case of insider trading. -g