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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (7078)	8/13/2001 7:23:45 PM
From: LLCF	Respond to of 74559

<The Mississippi River floods in the spring. What's the free market solution? > Bad example... this SHOULD be left to the free market... ie. let it flood. :) Get your point though. dAK

To: Ilaine who wrote (7078)	8/13/2001 8:42:10 PM
From: westpacific	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

PCBs - most Superfund sites are government. River Flooding - if government did not bail out folks then they would not rebuild in a flood zone. Street - free market can take care of the as well, you pay a toll everyday - it is called taxes. Any more. West

To: Ilaine who wrote (7078)	8/14/2001 12:15:55 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

People -poor and rich, everybody- will move away from the malaria infested swamp. The price of properties drops down dramatically since no one will be interested on them. Until someone has a good idea: Drain the swap -Texas did that- get rid of the mosquitoes. And prices go up since people will start buying the property. Prices go up. People start moving in again. Now if government interferes it will "work" like that. They hire guys to count the mosquitoes. Divided into classes: Pacifarum plasmodium and Palcifarum Vivax. Then they say they research is not conclusive (a typical trick of researches) and they have to measure the fat in the guts of the mosquitoes. They will write it in Scientific American make conferences and do a Discovery Channel program. They also get PhD's on this stuff and after go work for a drug company. Then the malaria program is extended since these guys need the cushy government jobs. Going like that an agency is created. A politician gets elected 'defending' the rights of the poor people in the area. His campaign is financed by: 1) property owners that fear people moving away will depress property prices. Manufacturer of mosquito nets, repelents and other mosquito related gear. 2) drug companies that sell Fansidar and Resochine to treat malaria. Pretty soon this malaria guetto is responding for 1% of the country's GDP and we can no longer get rid of it. Foot note: Only elmat can go there and live without a problems. The malaria bug would have to enter my blood stream throwing hand granades and spraying my anti-bodies with machine gun fire to infect me with malaria. I lived in of West Africa for eight and a half years.

To: Ilaine who wrote (7078)	8/14/2001 5:46:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

<Should all roads, highways and bridges be privatized?> Since the government already owns them, they might as well continue owning them. <Do we pay tolls to each homeowner when we pass in front of their house, or what?> No, tolls would be paid to the owner. In the above case, the government owning the roads. <If the swamps get full of mosquitos, and everyone is coming down with malaria, but the rich guy who owns the land around the swamp doesn't want to kill the larvae, and all the people who are getting sick and dying are poor, is there a free market solution?> Yes, you sue the person for damages under normal laws. It's illegal in a free market to attack or create attacking beasties, or other dangers such as landslides onto neighbours. People aren't allowed to create a public nuisance or damage in free markets. If there were always mosquitoes coming from the swamp, then the owner has existing use rights and newly-arriving neighbours couldn't reasonably moan. <What if GE decides to dump PCBs into the Hudson River? What's the free market solution?> Gaol the people from the company who did it. Sue the company for the cost of the damage plus a whole lot more as a punishment. <The Mississippi River floods in the spring. What's the free market solution? > Somebody buys the land, builds a long dam, sells the now safe land for a huge profit. Those are not difficult puzzles! There are more tricky ones in the nature of probablistic risk. You can get some ideas here: libertarianz.org.nz Governments cause financial panics by forcing monopolies on the public, by reacting stupidly when things happen [California and New Zealand need energy at higher prices] and all sorts of means, such as war. Left to free markets, speculators would smooth fluctuations. People would be so rich that small glitches wouldn't matter anyway. There would not even be discussion of a financial collapse in 2001. Which there won't be. Mqurice