[MD] Sin Part 1

[Case]

[Platt]
When a politician proposes a law "in the public interest," run for your 
life. All tyrannies torture, murder and enslave in the name of the 
"public interest." 

[Case]
We should also be wary of slick talking sloganeers. In Ronald Reagan's 1st
inaugural speech he echoed his strongest campaign theme. These words fueled
a revolution in American politics. 

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem;
government is the problem."

I used to despair at the obscenity of these words. I was more horrified that
they stuck. The U.S. Government is government of the people, by the people
and for the people. With a smile on his face the most influential politician
of the last half of the 20th century said the "We the people" could not
solve our problems and that "We the people" were the problem.

This stuck as a general idea but what Reagan said was actually not a general
condemnation of "We the people". We was talking about a specific problem
that "We the people" were incompetent to solve. That problem was inflation.
Earlier in his speech he had said:

"You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but
for only a limited period of time. Why then should we think that
collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?"

By the end of his two terms of office he ran up more federal debt than ALL
of his predecessors combined. There has been no abatement of hypocrisy in
his wake or in his shadow.

As you pointed out earlier there is not much starvation in America neither
has there all that much tyranny torture, murder and enslavement in the name
of the "public interest." The rare exceptions have been over the past six
year in U.S. detention centers operated on foreign soil.

> [Case]
> In our society is it the job of the legislature to establish public
> priorities and to set the rules of the game. This is explained at
> considerable length in the Constitution.

[Platt]
To be overruled by the Supreme Court when found to violate individual 
rights.

[Case]
This is how our system is supposed to work. The role of the court is to
weigh the work of the legislature in light of the principles laid out in the
constitution. That conservatives have led the public smearing of this
institution is instructive.

You are in favor of the legislature seeking to limit the rights of the
individual? You condemn the court for upholding them? How does that square
with all of your Randian ravings?

[Platt]
Be permission of a commissar. In the U.S. private property is a right, 
not a grant from government.

[Case]
If as you say the Constitution grants and secures individual property rights
then indeed they are granted by the government. The documents also spell out
how individual rights can be limited and what rights are the domain of the
states. It is a document granting rights and establishing how values will be
determined.

> [Case]
> ...granting personhood to a social institution is scary. I am not
> alone. As I said before, Jefferson and Adam Smith were both fearful of
> the unrestrained accumulation of economic power this represents.

[Platt}
History has proved both wrong.

[Case]
Enron, junk bonds, corporate raiders? Try and sell that to the airline
employees who billions of dollar of pension funds vanished into the air as
if dumped in mid-flight from a corporate jumbo jet.

[Platt]
Examples of research done at public expense? The space program perhaps? I'm
sure you are are aware that many companies have research departments,
especially drug companies who have saved countless lives not to mention the
suffering they've relieved.

[Case]
Yes the space program. We are still coasting on that one. But
pharmaceuticals are a better example. The development of new drugs depends
on research in medicine, biology, biochemistry and a host of other fields.
It depends on the furtherance of PURE research. That is research done for
purely theoretical or other reasons. It is thrives in academic freedom where
the best minds can pursuer knowledge for its own sake. It allows for
serendipity where surprising and revolutionary ideas develop for unexpected
sources.

Once the theoretical heavy lifting is done at public expense it is
distributed freely to the public. Private companies are equipped then to
take these results at no expense and develop them into marketable products.
Drug companies primary do research in the form of testing of specific
compounds and manufacturing technique to make the products theory tells them
should work. What pure research they invest it is mainly targeted at
hastening development of knowledge where the trails have already been
blazed. You call them fine examples of the capitalist system at work. I call
them carpetbaggers.