From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Thu Jan 22 1998 - 09:52:55 MST
Charlie wrote:
>That's interesting: I don't remember writing any of that. In fact,
>looking back at my earlier poster, I said: "I seem to recall a recent
>statement by the RAC (here in the UK) that diabetic hypoglycaemia is a
>not-too-uncommon cause of auto accidents." That's a fair way -- in
>quantitative terms -- from saying "untreated diabetes caused lots of
>road accidents."
Maybe I'm just dense, but I honestly don't see the difference between
the two statements:
>"diabetic hypoglycaemia is a..."
"Untreated diabetes..."
>"...not-too-uncommon cause of auto accidents"
"...causes lots of road accidents"
I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, just rephrasing what you
said. What precisely is the difference here?
>You seem to be locked into a fairly narrow way of understanding
>human relationships, then.
On the contrary, I often help out friends who need money. But I strongly
resent the government stealing half my income to give to their bureaucrats
and people I don't know and will probably never meet, and that kind of
conflict will always exist when people take money by force.
>I dunno. The free market _may_ be the optimal mediational method, for
>all I know; but what I see here isn't people trying to _prove_ it,
>or, alternatively, trying to invent something better: what I see
>is people taking it as a forgone conclusion.
This whole century has been a series of grand experiments in finding
better ways to organise a society than a free market, and they've all
proven far worse. Noone has ever done any better, but as I've said
many times before, the great advantage of a free society is that those
who wish to try alternate ways of living can go off and set up their
own voluntary communities to test them out. If one of them turns out
to be better than a free market then you can be sure that most people
will soon join them.
Mark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:48:30 MST