(no subject)

Today I am basically issuing a "convert me" challenge to libertarians and anarchists on my friends list.

Can you show me how privatization and de-regulation usually results in better services at better prices, despite the many instances about which I have read where these lead to higher prices or declines in service quality?

Can you show me that government regulation makes people worse off than they would be without it? That any benefits to the public over the last 100 years in the areas of food, product, and occupational safety would have been even better without government involvement?

Can you show me that 41 million uninsured Americans are better off -- financially and health-wise -- without insurance than they would be under federal single-payer healthcare?

Can you show me that people with disabilties were better off before the Americans with Disabilities Act, or would be better off without it now? Are they better off with public assistance, or are they better off relying on family wealth and charity?

Can you challenge the "Economics 102" assertion that the free market cannot provide as efficiently as public or publically-monopolized enterprise for public goods such as roads, education, and national defense? Edit: can you also show me that the environment would be better off without pollution controls?

Take note that you do not have to convince me that capitalism is the best economic system; I already believe that. I believe that it is better at creating wealth than any other system. However, I do believe in checks and balances and I am not convinced that the free market has them inherently. I am concerned that without some sort of oversight, that the free market will inherently find its way into a state of oligarchical collectivism -- via the way that immense capital can distort the market (analogous to mass distorting space and time) to shape market actions into a pattern of greed, exploitation, and ultimately oppression.

(no subject)

A week or so ago, I addressed what saw as a flaw with most political and economic systems -- the fact that they presume an "even playing field" for all people. They cannot account for the fact that people have disabilities or social disadvantages of other sorts, that prevent them from having the same level of access to the free market as the "average" person.

It seems to me that without some kind of centralized guidance, there is no way to even attempt to maintain at least a baseline level of fairness for people with disadvantages. Without that baseline level of fairness, the stage is set for unchecked exploitation and oppression.

Here's a real world example, which has affected people close to me.

Although childhood lead exposure has diminished over the past 20 or so years, the problem has by no means been solved. Rather, the demographics have shifted. Some groups, mainly minority and poor children living in the inner city, suffer from high rates of lead poisoning. Over 50 percent (some studies place this figure at around 70 percent) of children living in the inner cities of New Orleans and Philadelphia have blood lead levels above the current guideline of 10 micrograms per deciliter (micrograms per deciliter).

This a perfect example of how one disadvantage piles onto another, because we do not have the level playing field presumed by many political philosophies. Unless the unfairness is addressed in some way, the political system is unethical.

According to the article, children have lead poisoning due to exposure to soil contaminated with lead. Lead currently in the soil of certain inner cities is an externality of automobile usage before leaded gasoline was phased out 20 years ago. Though we have removed the contaminant, the poison remains.

Lead poisoning is a horrible affliction, and the costs of it are borne mostly by the poorest people in society. But no economic cost is truly isolated; the costs of this affliction ripple out and affect everyone in society. Every cost in an economy has mass which warps the economy around it. In short, this is your problem too; even if you're not directly affected, the cost of it reflects in the prices you pay for health care and environmental maintenance.

But how is it going to be fixed? The free market is not going to do anything about this, and wouldn't have done anything to stop the use of leaded gasoline in the first place. There is no one to hold accountable, because virtually all of us participate in the automobile culture. The costs fall to all of us, though, so in the case of public externalities like this, it makes sense to manage the costs centrally and handle them via government intervention.

If you have any better ideas, etc. etc.