From: Dick.Gray@bull.com
Date: Mon Dec 14 1998 - 09:02:44 MST
"Joe E. Dees" <jdees0@students.uwf.edu> writes:
> [Manu wrote:]
>> So, I go for a government that would primarily have two
>> responsibilities: defense and diplomacy. Or do you think enterprises
>> could manage that too???
>What about as an instrument for preserving our environment (which
>the private sector has shamelessly trashed), a global problem not
>amenable to individual or corporate solutions, and guaranteeing
>basic human righrs for its citizens (which other citizens, and
>corporations, are, sadly, only too willing to abrogate, violate and/or
>ignore)?
You couldn't possibly be more wrong if you tried, Joe. If you'll bother to
check some facts, you'll find that the biggest polluters are invariably
*governments*. Visit Eastern Europe or Moscow or any tyrannical third-world
country and you'll find the worst environmental disasters, including
barely-breathable air and fetid watercourses. Here in the USA - just for
one example - the federal gov't is responsible for wholesale denudation of
forest land which it claims, while the loggers plant more trees on their
own lands than they harvest. The myth that government protects our
environment against the "greedy businessmen" is one of the worst outright,
baldfaced lies I've seen, another of the many attempts by the politicos to
shift the blame for their own depredations. Here, as usual, government is
the *problem*, not the solution.
As for government protecting our rights, har har har har har. Businesses
can't "abrogate" anyone's rights because, unlike the territorial gangsters
we call "government", they don't operate by armed force against the
populace.
Dick
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