Thus said Stuart Jansen on Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:22:55 MDT: > Government is also useful to make hidden costs apparent. Laissez-faire > capitalism alone does nothing to account for the cost of pollution > because it unfairly offloads to cost to third parties that have not > chosen to "willingly particpate in it".
Actually, this is wrong. Government does not make hidden costs apparent, and indeed actually hides costs. There are ample examples of cases in which the government didn't recognize property rights and ruled in favor of socializing pollution. If it had instead recognized the rights of those who were being polluted there would actually be less pollution because then companies would know they cannot get away with harming someone's life. Instead, they are subsidized and the costs socialized where the costs truly become hidden. > It is the roll of government to institute taxes and make companies > consider the societal costs of their decisions. This already happens in a free market; it self-regulates. Companies who serve their customers best thrive. Those who ignore or don't provide what their customers want fail. In the cases where customers (or in other words society) are harmed, those companies go out of business pretty quick without any help from the government. Failed companies get liquidated and their assets divided among other businesses who will better meet the needs of people and society. The market place can be a much quicker punisher of foul play than any government. I don't know of any company that wants to harm their customers. > Along a similar line, laissez-faire does nothing to unlock the > full benefits of high quality communication and transportation > infrastructure. Hogwash. It wasn't until communication was turned over to entrepreneurs that it became high quality and useful. > The Internet is following the same course. Were they created by "the > market"? No. They were both created by the government as part of our > defense infrastructure. It took government to create them, and "the > market" to take full advantage of them. You can't separate one from > the other. So, you truly believe that communication mechanisms like the ``Internet'' would have never come about without the omniscient, omnipotent government? Imagine how much innovation and discovery could be made by people, people with incentive to meet the needs of others, had we not wasted billions, if not trillions of dollars on countless governmental programs, military spending, empire building, etc... Its not surprising that government comes up with things, they drain people of the very thing that allows entrepreneurs and businessmen to innovate: savings and money. I'm sure if I had billions extorted from the people I could do many good things with it too. Andy -- [-----------[system uptime]--------------------------------------------] 10:47pm up 1:48, 1 user, load average: 1.02, 1.06, 1.09 /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
