dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)

[Jim Choate]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:13:57 -0500
> From: Petro <petro at playboy.com>
> Subject: Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone
>  (fwd)

> 	Prove it. Prove that in a competitive market certain goods and
> services will be MORE expensive than in a Government-as-Supplier.

Ok. Let's use the example of fire stations and insurance companies that came
up earlier.

What do you suppose the impact on the bottem line will be by increasing the
amount of non-income-producing-services that such a situation would require?
Each insurance company would be responsible for many, many stations
scattered all over the country. This means some sort of centralized
mechanism to create policies and other procedures and their requisite costs.
Now, consider what that means to the payment each policy holder is going to
have to deal with. It's going to be large because it's going to have to take
up for parts of the company that don't bring in policy income but still
require service coverage.

Now by distributing this system out and assigning it to governments and
providing equitable service to all, no questions asked they're there we, we
get a system that is reasonable in cost and provides good responce.

And we don't have to pay the insurance company a bunch of money to do a job
they don't want to do (otherwise they'd be in the fire fighting business and
not the insurance business).

> 	How many Corporations you know buy $300 hammers, or $1000 toilet
> seats?

Lot's of them throw good money after bad. All businesses do. It's human
nature. I know of one company that got so carried away with spending for
little dribbles and drips that they ended up having to stop hiring new
employees that the company desperately needs. I used to work for one,
Compu-Add, that led to its final demise.

> >capitalist shouldn't begrudge a tidy profit anyone under any situation.
> 
> 	I don't begrudge a profit where it's due. Bill Clinton isn't due.
> Neither is Newt Gingrinch, or any other Feeding at the government trough
> pig.

Agreed. But the solution is term limits on Congress-critters and a
re-vamping of some critical laws.

> 	No, the problem is the police. To quote (IIRC) Lydia Lunch:
> 
> 	"Neo Nazis with night stick dicks, no brains but banging into yours
> in the middle of the night looking for whatever don't fit in with their
> ideologically unsound version of reality".

Well I happen to come from that sub-culture so I can speak from experience.
The majority of times I or my friends were hassled we were asking for it.

Knowing Lydia's reputation I'd suspect she'd agree.

> 	The cops in the larger cities are so fucken dirty that a "citizens
> oversight commision" will either be a politically packed joke, or wind up
> changing members every couple months from attrition.

If anything interesting happens here in Austin with the new over-sight group
I'll send a pointer.

> >That process *is* most certainly an ideal place to inject consideration and
> >respect for civil liberties and the purvue of government institutions.
> 
> 	Oh, and that has been working OH SO WELL thus far.

No, and that's my point.

> 	No I don't. but check the numbers, there is a $6000 LESS collected
> in road taxes (average) PER CAR for each car in america. That $6k comes out
> of my pockets as well,

How the hell do you figure that one? It may come out of YOUR state taxes but
it certainly doesn't come out of mine (I don't have state taxes). The funds
for road and such is collected solely through gasoline and auto related
sales taxes in Texas.

Perhaps you should fix your state government...

Now if you're talking about the federal taxes for roads, that has NOTHING to
do with your or my driving vehicles on those roads. It has to do with a
program implimented in the early 20th century to create a good road net in
the US for military use. The taxes are justified in principle, if not in
amount, through commen defense.

> 	If that is the interpretation, then the document is morally flawed.

Interpeted?

  
We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, 
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common 
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to 
ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the 
United States of America. 
 
> 	How many millions have died in the last 100 years IN wars started
> by and for the advantage of the state?

Most of the wars of this century were started either by people acting in
concert willingly (eg Nazi Germany) or pure accident (eg Prince Ferdinand
has already lived through one assissination attempt, a reasonable man would
have gone home).

> 	How many died at the hands of Stalin, Hitler. and other dictators?

A lot more than at the hand of honest people, which is my point as well.
These were people, not governments. The citizens willingness to participate
aided and abetted each and every one of them and weakens your use of them in
your defence.

> 	The state, whether here in the US, or in other countries tends to
> treat the humans that comprise it with little concern for their health or
> livelyhood,

Yep, I see lots of that every day. In one hand you complain about welfare
and then in the other claim that the state is uncaring. Can you please make
up your mind?

> 	If you have citizens that are honest, principled, and willing to
> assist those around them, you have no need for a "state".

Yeah, and if frogs has wings they wouldn't bump their butt when they jumped.

If your process relies on this it's doomed from the get go. This ain't
Vulcan.

> 	Without honesty and principles you have Slick Willy.

And Bubba next door as well as that face that stares out at you every
morning.

> 	There are 1.7 million people struck by lightning every year?

There aren't 1.7M poeple killed in the US by the LEA's. That would be about
1-in-150. There are several hundred people killed by lightening each year in
the US. The number of people killed in activity complicent with LEA's is
probably not a great deal (at most an order of magnitude) over that.

> it's subjects are my neighbors. No, we don't kill as many, but name one
> country that has jailed more of it's subjects, and the truth is, we are
> getting worse.

Agreed, one of the reasons I support this mailing list and my local
activities.


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