From: David Musick (David_Musick@msn.com)
Date: Mon Oct 14 1996 - 21:16:32 MDT
Greg Burch brought up the question of how we go from our current situation to
one that is more like the libertarian / anarcho-capitalist world that most of
us here would prefer. I agree that it will have to be an incremental
approach, where each step has clear benefits over the previous stages, where
liberty pays better than tyranny.
I am the State Secretary for the Libertarian Party of Utah, and I recently
wrote an article for our current monthly newsletter, The Utah Liberator, which
presents one solution which I think is likely to happen. Here is the article
I wrote:
MOMM is Better than Uncle Sam
As Libertarians, we want our government to be limited to only those functions
authorized in the Constitution. Our biggest problem is the huge numbers of
people who want government to do everything for them, to provide education,
health-care, to make sure the drugs and other products they buy are all tested
and proven safe and so forth. There are a huge number of people who want to
be taken care of, who want someone to look out for them. This, in itself, is
okay. We only have a problem with it when the government tries to do that
job, because that means that those who don't want or need those services have
to pay for them anyway, and most of the money is wasted along the way by the
horrible inefficiency of government programs.
So, something that would go a long way towards getting government out of our
lives and our wallets would be the formation of some companies which provided
for people all of the services which government tries to provide, but does it
cheaper and better than the government does. Libertarians have been talking
about privatizing for years now, and there already exist private companies
which perform basically the same services that government attempts to do.
There are private schools, private drug testing companies, Consumer Reports
and so forth. But people still want the government to provide these services.
Why?
Most of the reason is probably because people are simply used to the
government doing that job and don't want to change, but I think that another
important reason is because all of these private companies are separate
companies, each doing only their specialty. What we need is several companies
which could each provide ALL the services the government provides, and perhaps
much more. Now, these wouldn't have to be huge, monolithic companies because
they could simply contract out to various smaller companies which specialize
in one particular area. They would simply provide a way of bringing these
companies together in various ways to serve the wishes of their clients. If
their client wants education or job training, the company would help them get
into a good school. If they need medical services, the company will register
them with a hospital which they have used another company to evaluate, and
they will only be administered drugs which have been independently evaluated
by a reputable drug testing company and are deemed safe enough to meet the
client's desired level of safety.
The companies basically would manage the affairs of their client's life, to
whatever degree their client wanted them to. They would basically be a
middle-man between the client and a huge number of other companies which
provide the services which their clients desire. I like to call these types
of companies MOMM (Management and Organization for the Mindless Masses). And
a MOMM would take good care of its clients.
But what about poor people and people on welfare? How can they afford the
services of a MOMM company? Most poor people are poor because they lack the
education and skills necessary to do highly productive work. An agent from a
MOMM company could approach a poor person and offer to provide them with good,
marketable skills, housing for them and their family, food, security,
health-care and so forth, if the poor person contracted with the MOMM company
to pay the MOMM company a certain percentage of their future income. MOMM is
simply making an investment in a human being, and then it will proceed to
train that human to be highly productive, because the more the person earns,
the more the MOMM company gets. Thus MOMM has a big interest in the welfare
of its clients, and MOMM will take good care of them. They will be trained
well, and MOMM will see to it that they get a good job, and if they ever
deserve a raise, MOMM will see to it that they get it, because then MOMM will
get a raise too.
If several MOMM companies are formed, and if they are successful, I predict
that the demand for government to provide all the services it tries to will
decrease. People simply won't need Uncle Sam to take care of them, because
they'll have MOMM. And the best thing is that no one will force you to be a
client of a MOMM company or subscribe to any services you don't want. That's
something we don't get with Uncle Sam.
- David Musick
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