Tom, As I've said before, socialists move toward "privatization" as they run into trouble, just as capitalists introduce increasing governmental controls as they run into trouble.
Somewhere in the middle they both finish with a mixed economy not a not different from each other. However, there is no free market when behind the curtain someone is pulling the levers. I've noticed that much of the criticism of the free market is actually criticism of the lack of a free market. There is no magic to the free market. It is merely a situation where people decide what they will produce and exchange, and where people cooperate with each other on an equal basis. Any interference with the free market is an interference with the freedom of people to cooperate. Yet, interference there is from both Right and left.. From the Right, it is government price-fixing, tariffs, quotas, and the rest of the paraphernalia that takes decisions out of the hands of the people. From the Left it is a certain bureaucratic arrogance that presumes to know far better than ordinary people what is good for them - and takes decisions out of their hands. It's probably too late to criticize Sally's post of a piece by someone called Liu. I was away on vacation so have just seen it. But, it was nonsensical. Yet, Sally thought it a must-read. He wrote such things as: "Prior to the coming of capitalistic industrialization, the market played only a minor part in the economic life of societies. Even where market places could be seen to be operating, they were peripheral to the main economic organization and activity of society." This is true except that the principal economic events in pre-industrial societies were the markets, to which everyone came to exchange. And where distance precluded coming together, they would perhaps meet in the town store where the business was trade. People normally and naturally exchange with each other. Trade provides the life-blood of the community. What the heck is Liu's "main economic organization and activity of society"? Yet, this is the way the left views the free activities of people - as something that is subservient to the greater good - which is the bending of the knee to those who know so much better than they how they should behave. Harry ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom wrote: It takes an attentive ear to hear the self-styled conservatives talking like Socialists, but that is exactly where their language comes from. It is sort of like the way the Cheka was modeled on the Tsarist Okhrana. In the case of neo-conservativism, the first generation of ideologues was dominated by "ex" Stalinists. They managed to carry their baggage of intellectual brutalism and mechanical messiahism right across the spectrum from the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to the "magic of the free market". Never mind that in both versions the apparatchiki are behind the curtain pulling the levers, the important thing is the embroidery on the curtain! Ray wrote, They talk like Socialists, listen to Dick Armey both he a Phil Gramm use the language of Pravda laden Socialist Realism, they walk like Socialists except it is now the government of big business and the only ones allowed to vote are stockholders (just like the only one's allowed to vote were Party Members) and they are now cheating the Stockholders just like the Apparatchiks in the old Soviet Union stole from everyone. If it walks like a Duck, it doesn't matter what you call it ultimately although you might get away with calling it an elephant for a while. ****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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