From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Jul 10 2005 - 22:40:56 BST
> msh 7-8-05
> > Do you believe a society is morally
> > obligated to limit an individual's accumulation of personal wealth?
>
> platt 7-10-05:
> No.
>
> msh 7-10-05:
> Ok. Thanks for a direct answer. But wouldn't you agree that this
> means governments should not interfere in the development of
> monopolies?
Yes. Anti-trust laws are based on the fallacy that a free market will
inevitably lead to monopolies. But the Austrian school of economics
maintains that government intervention into the economy has been the cause
of the few monopolies that have historically existed, like the salt
monopoly in 18th century France.
> That government should not stop someone from owning,
> say, all the timberland in the country?
Impossible to occur without government interference. Would be like an
individual cornering the market on gold, which if memory serves, was tried
not too long ago, in the 70's perhaps?
> And wouldn't you say that
> such ownership arrangements, in general, are contrary to the ideal of
> freedom expressed in the Metaphysics of Quality, as well as the principles
> of freedom outlined in the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution?
No. I find nothing about monopolies in any of those works. I'm a strict
constructionist. :-) In fact in Lila I find free market capitalism
compared favorably to socialistic government control. More dynamic, you
know.
> platt 7-10-05:
> I find no support in the MOQ for your ideas of limits on personal
> wealth or eliminating the influence of wealth on politicians. The MOQ
> principles for a moral society are based on intellectual values over
> the social order -- democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech,
> freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, of travel, habeas corpus,
> and free markets. The the thrust of the MOQ is toward dynamic
> freedom, not static limits.
>
> msh 7-10-05:
> And my response is that when a society permits the unlimited
> accumulation of personal wealth, it undermines the MOQ principles for a
> moral society -- the ones you mention above-- as well as the freedom valued
> by all of us.
> Wealth provides better representation in jury trials;
True. The government has practically unlimited resources in jury trials to
convict the poor businessman who dares to question a bureaucratic
regulation.
> wealth allows the dominance of the organs of free speech and press;
Not any more. The liberal media has finally met its match in talk radio
and the internet, praise the Lord, sing hallelujah. :-) (Sorry, got
carried away.)
> wealth
> permits the free assembly of its own representatives, but impedes or
> prohibits the free assembly of people who protest those representatives, as
> in the WTO conference in Seattle, 1999.
You call rioters assemblers?
> And, most obviously, as suggested above, the unlimited accumulation
> of personal wealth undermines your much-valued "free market."
Not according to economists of the Austrian school who I dare so know a
thing or two about free markets. Have you read "The Road to Serfdom" by
F.A.Hayek? His book has an honored place on my bookshelf, right next to
Zen, Lila, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
> Anyway, I'll be interested in your response to some of the questions
> I posed above. Answering questions directly and honestly is the most
> difficult part of any discussion, for all of us, including me. Thanks for
> taking the time.
No problem. And thanks for your thanks.
Platt
P.S. Economics has been called the "dismal science," which may be why
Pirsig didn't talk much about it except to say the capitalist system was
better than the socialist system because of its greater dynamism.
P.S.S.
I hope we don't get into a battle of "educated opinion" about economics
since nothing ever seems gets resolved by appeals to authority. :-)
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