From: Petro <petro@playboy.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 01:49:32 +0800
To: Jim Choate <cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone(fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199811100403.WAA15755@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <v04011715b26e0dd7a1d3@[206.189.103.230]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 11:03 PM -0500 11/9/98, Jim Choate wrote:
>Forwarded message:
>> 	Prove it. Prove that in a competitive market certain goods and
>> services will be MORE expensive than in a Government-as-Supplier.
>
>Ok. Let's use the example of fire stations and insurance companies that came
>up earlier.
>
>What do you suppose the impact on the bottem line will be by increasing the
>amount of non-income-producing-services that such a situation would require?
>Each insurance company would be responsible for many, many stations

	Really, you are saying they couldn't possibly recognize the
benefits of teaming up and co-locating fire stations, or that they wouldn't
sub-contract to a company that handled fires?

>scattered all over the country. This means some sort of centralized
>mechanism to create policies and other procedures and their requisite costs.
>Now, consider what that means to the payment each policy holder is going to
>have to deal with. It's going to be large because it's going to have to take
>up for parts of the company that don't bring in policy income but still
>require service coverage.

	This could still be more effcient than government.

>Now by distributing this system out and assigning it to governments and
>providing equitable service to all, no questions asked they're there we, we
>get a system that is reasonable in cost and provides good responce.

	"reasonable" in cost? There is a LOT if inefficiency in the system
that competition could eliminate.

>> 	How many Corporations you know buy $300 hammers, or $1000 toilet
>> seats?
>
>Lot's of them throw good money after bad. All businesses do. It's human
>nature. I know of one company that got so carried away with spending for
>little dribbles and drips that they ended up having to stop hiring new
>employees that the company desperately needs. I used to work for one,
>Compu-Add, that led to its final demise.

	Read that last bit. They got so carried away, that they spent
themselves out of existence.

	Governments just raise taxes, there is no penalty for ineffcientcy,
or lousy spelling.

>> >capitalist shouldn't begrudge a tidy profit anyone under any situation.
>> 	I don't begrudge a profit where it's due. Bill Clinton isn't due.
>> Neither is Newt Gingrinch, or any other Feeding at the government trough
>> pig.
>Agreed. But the solution is term limits on Congress-critters and a
>re-vamping of some critical laws.

	Ok, so you limit the senators and congressmen, then the unelected
beaureacrats have the power since they know the system and run the system.

>> 	No, the problem is the police. To quote (IIRC) Lydia Lunch:
>>
>> 	"Neo Nazis with night stick dicks, no brains but banging into yours
>> in the middle of the night looking for whatever don't fit in with their
>> ideologically unsound version of reality".
>
>Well I happen to come from that sub-culture so I can speak from experience.
>The majority of times I or my friends were hassled we were asking for it.

	Well, coming from that subculture, and living in areas that allowed
me to observer others, I'd say bullshit.

	Wearing a painted leather jacket & ripped up blue jeans is NOT a
reason to get hauled off the street, searched and questioned.

	Looking different is not illegal.

	Thinking different is not illegal.

>> >That process *is* most certainly an ideal place to inject consideration and
>> >respect for civil liberties and the purvue of government institutions.
>> 	Oh, and that has been working OH SO WELL thus far.
>No, and that's my point.

>> 	No I don't. but check the numbers, there is a $6000 LESS collected
>> in road taxes (average) PER CAR for each car in america. That $6k comes out
>> of my pockets as well,
>
>How the hell do you figure that one? It may come out of YOUR state taxes but
>it certainly doesn't come out of mine (I don't have state taxes). The funds
>for road and such is collected solely through gasoline and auto related
>sales taxes in Texas.

	With a bunch thrown in at the federal level. Federal Matching Funds
& etc.

>Perhaps you should fix your state government...

	Federal, State, County, and City.

>Now if you're talking about the federal taxes for roads, that has NOTHING to
>do with your or my driving vehicles on those roads. It has to do with a
>program implimented in the early 20th century to create a good road net in
>the US for military use. The taxes are justified in principle, if not in
>amount, through commen defense.

	Then why do they keep building them?

>> 	If that is the interpretation, then the document is morally flawed.
>Interpeted?
>We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union,
>establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
>defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
>ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
>United States of America.

	Promote != provide.

	Promote does not mean "give away", it means "promote", do things
which incourage.


>> 	How many died at the hands of Stalin, Hitler. and other dictators?
>
>A lot more than at the hand of honest people, which is my point as well.
>These were people, not governments. The citizens willingness to participate
>aided and abetted each and every one of them and weakens your use of them in
>your defence.

	They were the heads of the governments. The skills and abilities it
takes to get to that level insure that the people who get there have no
concern for those underneath them.

>> 	The state, whether here in the US, or in other countries tends to
>> treat the humans that comprise it with little concern for their health or
>> livelyhood,

>Yep, I see lots of that every day. In one hand you complain about welfare
>and then in the other claim that the state is uncaring. Can you please make
>up your mind?

	There is no making up my mind. I never claimed the a government
could or should, rather I am claiming that it can't and won't, and to
expect it to be able to, much less willing to is foolish.

>> 	If you have citizens that are honest, principled, and willing to
>> assist those around them, you have no need for a "state".
>If your process relies on this it's doomed from the get go. This ain't
>Vulcan.

	So we agree that any government is doomed from the start, since
w/out people of honesty and integrity no system will work properly.

>> 	Without honesty and principles you have Slick Willy.

>And Bubba next door as well as that face that stares out at you every
>morning.

	No, that face that stares back from the mirror makes every effort
to be as honest and forthright as it can. It causes grief sometimes, but
it's the principle.

>> 	There are 1.7 million people struck by lightning every year?
>There aren't 1.7M poeple killed in the US by the LEA's. That would be about
>1-in-150. There are several hundred people killed by lightening each year in
>the US. The number of people killed in activity complicent with LEA's is
>probably not a great deal (at most an order of magnitude) over that.

	That 1.7 million is the estimated people who have been killed this
century (170 million) in wars and murdered by governments divided by the
number of years in a century (100) which would give 1.7 million, or is my
math getting that bad?

	I don't see why I should limit my comments on the nature of
government to what I see in this country as there is a wealth of other
experience outside our borders.



--
"To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a
jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a
gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather nave, and certainly
unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust"
http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html

Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com