[MD] Unreality of Equality

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

[SA]
Are we all agreeing on this one?  From reading what I wrote in the last two
Barbarian Attacks, the last (Nude) Barbarians & Hippies, and even March's
Unreality of Equality even Platt is in agreement with what khaled pointed out
as the "pay to play" action of this culture.

[Arlo]
That the U.S. government has become an oligarchy, I would agree with. That there
are restrictions on the market that should be abolished, yes, I agree with that
as well. However, I think one thing has proven to be a "devastating fiction",
and that is a completely unregulated market would be best for everyone. One
needs only to look back to the 1890s to see what life was like for most people
before some government protection was instigated.

I remember listening to my grandfather (born 1900) tell of his parents and
growing up in a mining community. When miners were killed, the "company" would
drop the body off at the house, and that was that. Pay was barely enough to
exist. Injuries meant you didn't work, and that meant no pay, and so your
family went hungry. While this may be "jungle law", I think a civilized society
can do better.

Look now at the areas of the world receiving our labor exporting, working for
two cents a day, no hope for improvement, no hope for savings, at best they
earn enough to continue to exist so they can continue to work. Sure, it is
better than abject poverty, but is it the way things should be?

If the "invisible hand" was more than myth, I'd buy it. But historically, the
less regulation, the more the market favored the rich and condemned the poor to
slave labor for all their days. So, while I agree that there are some
unnecessary restrictions on the market, there are some that, like the laws of
the street, must be in place to protect the little guy. Else, we are right back
to 1890. Pick up a history book and see if that's really where you'd like to
be.... I mean, if you worked FOR Pullman, and weren't Pullman himself.

What's sad, though, is that this HAS to be external regulation. I wish people
were decent enough creatures that they'd say, hey, a little less profit for me
and I could help all my employees save and get out of poverty. But that is
never the case. If we depended on business to cut profits to, say help pay for
work related injuries, we'd be out of luck. It never happened until the
government said "you have to". And look how they cry.

Consider the street. We could just as easily do away with the police, and go
with the assumption that the strong and crafty will survive and the weak and
scrawny will not. But we don't. Why? Because people need protection from those
who would use advantage to do them harm. And there are a lot of those. So, if
there were no criminals, we could do away with the police. In the market, as
well as on the street.

Let me ask you (since I know Platt's answer). Should we abolish minimum wage
laws? Worker's compensation? Workplace safety regulations? Anti-monopoly laws?
Product safety laws? I won't argue that some of these as they exist couldn't
use rethinking, but should they all be tossed out the window in favor of the
invisible hand? When has it historically done anything but further the power of
the rich over the poor? Can you give me any historical example?

And, this harkens back to my inheritence example. The invisible hand is social
Darwinism. The successful rise, the unsuccessful fall. But with things such as
inheritence, which isn't going away, social Darwinism is skewed. It is not the
successful that rise, nor the unsuccessful who fall, but the rich who
consolidate wealth, and the poor who become no better off than 1890. The
totally unregulated market would go right back to locking in a rich class, and
locking out a poor class.


Arlo