[IP] more on Congressional bill to stop federal financing ofoffshoring
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Warren <jwarren@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2004 13:18:09
To:dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc:Einar Stefferud <Stef@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Congressional bill to stop federal financing of
offshoring
>From: Einar Stefferud <Stef@xxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: [IP] Congressional bill to stop federal financing of offshoring
>
>Centrally controlled economies have really poor track records!
Oh? Perhaps that writer deludes himself thinking he would prefer to
live in the monumentally traumatic boom-and-bust times before the US
economy was "controlled" by a central bank, federal monetary policy,
before there were any "controls" on the equity markets, etc.
It's a nice little libertarian day-dream -- conveniently void of ever
having lived in a nation of bread lines, massive home and farm
foreclosures (the family farm bankruptcies of the Reagan era were bad
enough), and so on.
>I well remember how we had to buy margarine by mail order and hand mix
>in the yellow coloring because it was against to law there to sell it
>any other way.
I too, am old enough to remember that idiocy. I find it similarly
irritating that I can't pump my own gasoline in Oregon (although,
somehow, their gas prices are lower than most in California, where
the refineries and oil is located -- and it IS rather nice to see
that there are fewer low-skilled adults on the public dole there).
However, to compare coloring fake cholesterol with is about as
simplistic as comparing a Model-T engine to today's hood-filling
power plants. (Engines that, thanks ONLY to "controls" produce FAR
less pollution and emissions per h.p., than did those quaint -- and
smokey -- Model-T's.)
That there are excesses and stupidies imposed by government as
rewards to the special interests who buy the votes, is certainly true.
But to use those excesses as the basis for declaring ALL "centrally
controls" on unfettered economies, is to IGNORE the realities -- and
massive harm -- that derives from the chaos of a completely "free
market" alternative.
Been there; done that -- NOT a pretty picture.
The essence of government IS "control"! Granted that government is
often unfair and universally infuriating. But -- to paraphase
Heinlein -- we can no more escape the necessity of government, than
we can escape bondage to our bowels. So the only remaining
alternative is to diligently impose citizen control over government's
strong tendency to wild EXCESSES ... even though that could be viewed
as just another form of "central control". ;-)
--jim
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