From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Tue Jan 15 2002 - 10:10:32 MST
> Are you denying that people today, even quite a few right here
> in the US of A, have insufficient clothing, housing and
> nutrition to even be healthy, much less participate fully?
> What you say may be true but it does not automatically work out
> that everyone gets what they need or the means to earn what they
> need either. That is my point. What do you think should be
> done in such cases? Are our theories of how it should work out
> to be clung to even while people, some of them children in our
> own country, are in this shape?
Certainly, there are poor. It is also an undeniable fact that
the freest economies in the world have the fewest poor and the
richest poor. There is so much surplus food here that the poor
in America are more likely to suffer from obesity than starvation;
housing and health care are the biggest problems. It's no
accident that food is almost a free market but housing and
health care are heavily regulated.
> I see the arguments for the
> goodness of the theory and I see the suffering ones at the same
> time. I do not know if I have the best answer but I think I
> have a very valid question that cannot be easily swept aside by
> mere theory.
Dammit, I'm not the one offering empty theories, you are.
I'm talking about the actual evidence available to anyone
who will just open their eyes: look at the conditions
of /everyone/ on the planet and reason from that evidence.
Sure, there is suffering; but a rational human being has to
compare what suffering exists under our present system to that
under other systems, draw inferences about what makes them
different, and then extrapolate to what we can improve. The
facts--not theory, facts--are that free markets feed people,
and to the extent that we still have failures, there are
clearly regulatory obstacles to real solutions.
Crying "something must be done" doesn't even rise to the
level of coherent theory--it's just an emotional reaction.
There's nothing wrong with compassion, but compassion feeds
the same number of people as "theory"--i.e., none. But at
least the theory has a historical record leading to more
people being fed than at anytime in history. I don't
support the free market because it's a pretty theory. I
support it because it is /proven/ to work in /reality/.
> Go look at the homeless and then claim this. Go look at the
> projects a bit more closely. Look into the some of the
> one-parent homes that now do not qualify for welfare and can
> find no work or source of income equal to what they once had.
> Are you ignoring them or claiming they don't exist or that they
> are not relevant?
You're not listening: what I'm claiming is that the best way
to help them is to remove the /cause/ oftheir poverty by making
the economy more free, and to trust in compassionate humans
like youand me to fill the gaps where needed. Voluntary
compassion works, I only oppose compassion at gunpoint, like
welfare programs and housing projects and other proven failures.
> Sorry. The real world does not work like your ideals. Not even
> here. Certainly not in less developed countries. So what
> happens to these people while we wait for your theory to work?
> What happens if your theory is wrong?
The "real world" has /proven/ to work more by my "ideals" than
by what I'm assuming are yours--and I'm assuming because you
haven't actually offered any solutions yourself. Certainly now,
and in the period during which we create a more free economy,
compassionate people will have to help those in need--I've never
said anything different. But it is a moral imperative to fight
the /cause/ of poverty, and to improve the condition of the
future, and I am doing that--by fighting government regulation
and restrictions on free trade--because my conscience demands
it. To do anything less would be an empty, false pretense of
compassion, not the real thing.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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