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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (8498)	3/14/2001 6:06:01 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Steve, if the property was originally stolen then returning it to the original owner by force could be justified. The feudal societies that you talked about basically allocated control of the land and other resources to the privileged few by the force of government. They never really had established property rights except for the privileged few so it would be hard to determine who the "original owner" was. Americans often assume that because minimalist government is an admirable objective in the US it is equally admirable elsewhere, and use our economic power to bludgeon smaller countries into adopting such policies hose policies often have unintended results. In the neo-feudal systems that prevail in many third world countries, economic life is under the complete control of a small number of individuals, many of whom are effectively exempt from prosecution and have their own private coercive capability. In these cases the state is the only entity which can control the feudal barons, and the role of the state in the economy must often be upgraded, rather than downgraded; the key challenge in these countries is not getting the government out of the economy, but getting the government out of the hands of the feudal lords and using it as a tool for balancing the power equation. It is a desirable objective elsewhere but it may take some time to achieve it. Greater government government involvement is often what caused the concentrations in resources in to the hands of the few because they either effectively where the government or they where favored by it. The first thing that needs to be established is a rule of law with everyone equal under the law (rather then a rule of whatever the feudal lords want, or a law that treats these lords better then everyone else). The government under this law would have to rein in the "private coercive capacity" of these lords or privileged elite and the rights to whatever property the non privileged do have or can obtain would have to be recognized. If you just nationalize all the property then the feudal lords are exchanged for the communist lords and not much is achieved. Tim