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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Perspective who wrote (270516)	12/12/2003 12:50:34 PM
From: NOW	Respond to of 436258

thank you for that piece of sanity BC! thank you!

To: Perspective who wrote (270516)	12/12/2003 6:10:29 PM
From: Oblomov	Respond to of 436258

Where to start?... I'm fine with the private sector producing whatever it wants. My choices are based on my values only, and I don't consider myself an worthy arbiter of taste for anyone but myself. I watch maybe an hour of TV a week, and prefer not to shop at megastores... but these are only my preferences, and I'm glad that TV and megastores exist for those who want them. Our freedoms are contingent on the pleasure of the state unless we have near-absolute property rights. Of course there must be recourse for environmental damage and other public injury since pollution (for example) harms the property of others. I'm not sure what you mean by waste in the private sector. There's waste everywhere, but the profit motive is the means by which waste is minimized. It gets minimized by the set of choices made by consumers. Government fiat to minimize "waste" can only be done by coercion, violation of property rights, and as a result, violation of every other personal right. Government subsidies, whether to farmers, corporations, or artists, only restricts choice and creates inefficiency by preferencing one interest over another, and almost always it's the WRONG interest. That's why we must keep government as small as possible. It can't possibly operate in a fair manner. There will always be an interest served and an interest punished. But there's no moral justification for this action. I totally disagree that "real standards of living stopped improving long ago". We have managed to absorb 25 MM immigrants (mostly from Latin America, and poor) over the last 10 years, and the ones that I meet are still poor, but enthusiastically building wealth. What a refreshing contrast to many native-born Americans (especially those with top-tier MBA in hand who have a great sense of entitlement)! If their children don't attend Harvard or Yale, their grandchildren will. Good for them. There are winners and losers in our economy, and this is not a bad thing. My standard of living has improved greatly over the past decade; surely I'm "lucky" in a sense, but it also has to do with hard work, development of ideas, and a desire to keep learning. I believe I will succeed in spite of our petty rulers, Dubya, Dr. Doom, or whomever. The less I have to do with them, the better.