First of all, Steve graciously forwarded this from a Libertarian website. This is the reason I don't co-habitate with Greens nor did I vote for Nader. REH
I've been pushing for a consumption tax (on non-essentials) for 25 years to replace the melange of loophole filled taxes we now have. The libertarians are agreeing wo=ith the greens here. Nader is for it too. http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/tax-what-we-burn-not-what-we-earn COMMENT: I won't comment on American Libertarians. Largely I think they are idiots (self serving) who no matter how hard they try will never under any circumstances be free. I don't know whether it is the inability to think abstractly beneath their numbers coat or whether they are just lazy but they are so externally motivated that they think living in the woods alone is an ideal. European libertarians like Herbert Read and A.S. Neill were different. They were more like our traditional Cherokee philosophy. Both Read and Neill came up with revolutionary ways of developing inner motivation, great art and group cooperation that gave life more meaning. Freedom was not license but opportunity to accomplish. Ensemble was an extension of that opportunity not a struggle for who was going to get their way. One should never forget that the original idea of Laissez Faire is the old European forestry method and we know what happened to European forests. But enough of that, I've said it elsewhere, it doesn't bear repeating. What I would like to ask these small government/ big private sector folks is when they figure out their system will they be able to answer the following: 1. Why couldn't private industry develop Sematech when American planes were falling out of the sky and killing very expensively trained American pilots not to mention the cost of the machine? Why was the conservative Reagan required to have a "Socialist" solution to keep the American military planes safely in the air? 2. Why wasn't it before the year 2000 that a chip-fab laboratory was developed solely by the Private Sector without government help anywhere in the world? What made it practical for the private sector to recreate but not to research and develop? Could we say the private sector is tied to recreation? 3. Why didn't private industry fund and develop the internet? (No, Universities and the Military don't qualify as private.) 4. Why was the Private Sector allowed to sell NASA a flawed billions of dollars mirror for the Hubbell space telescope? 5. Why, in the Private Sector, is a decent computer technician, with no fancy education but who learned the most recent manuals, paid as much as a lawyer or a doctor for a longer installation? (High-end auto technicians should wish for the salary of the lowly computer mechanic renamed "genius"). 6. Why does the computer industry create situations of standards and control that slow down work rather than facilitating it? (Apple has become a 21st century version of rock and roll band for adolescents while PCs are the latest version of what we used to call a "Hot-rod.") 7. Why is the private industry space program used mainly for fun? Why do they sound so much like hobbyists? 8. Why is private industry not funding and controlling satellites? Or building a transnational space station? Or mining the moon or Mars? Why does the government have to make it safe for its itsy, bitsy baby with their parental speculators? 9. Why does the government guarantee a 300 million dollar cap on Nuclear Power liability and the private sector still won't bite? 10. Why are there no large private water projects (Dams)? 11. Why would all of those dams built after the dust bowl and that have softened the drought in the mid-Western and Southern states been impossible in the private market? 12. Why would private industry have never built Hoover Dam, the TVA or all of those Dams in the Dust Bowl states that have now saved them from the dust bowl type of destruction by drought? 13. Why did the private sector not take the lead in weather control, or weather research into climate change? Why is the American Military and the CIA the prime movers in getting people to pay attention to climate change? 14. Why has the private sector, which lobbied to take over medical research from the Government, been more expensive and a bust at medical advances? 15. Why isn't the private sector running the New York Transit authority more cheaply, efficiently and safely than the government? How about Washington, D.C. or Portland, Oregon? 16. Why doesn't the private sector build highways? 17. Why did airlines flourish, have a better safety record and be of more use to the average citizen under regulation than the fly by night dangerous companies of the present? 18. Why isn't the private sector liable for the pollution related illnesses of their employee's children, that both my wife and I have paid for all of our lives? 19. Why is the American Private Sector allowed to consider the comfort of their shareholders over the primary needs of the nation when they are in conflict? 20. Why are large cultural projects incapable of making a profit in a capital market economy? 21. Why is a profit motive a poor idea for a school, a hospital or a prison? or 22. Why is a profit motive NOT a poor idea for a school, a hospital or a prison? (think someone being paid for you to be sick, ignorant or returned to prison.) 23. Why is an automobile plant and the movies the most successful private "mega" projects? 24. Why are Coca Cola and McDonald's successful small business projects according to the rules of the system? 25. Why is Coca Cola superior, for the future of America, to the New York Philharmonic? 26. Why is a solar cell a bust at making a profit but the Chinese government can market them worldwide? 27. Why is a wind turbine a bird killer but energy inefficient glass towers are not? 28. Why is a private industry that declares war on another industry, that is necessary for the food production of the nation, not liable? (think pesticides and bees) 29. Why is private industry incapable of taking care of the private bee business that pollinates our food? 30. Why does the private sector not do the R & D to plan for the problem of huge wild life losses as a result of wind turbines and glass skyscrapers? 31. Why are guns and war machines the most productive private industry mega products second only to the movies? 32. Why is redundancy in private cell phone service an impossibility? 33. Why are quality standards and dependability undesirable at Apple or the other information technology centers? 34. Why is the type of dependability of an automobile an impossibility for the computer industry that controls our information? ad nauseum REH
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