Daniel wrote, quoting Murry Rothbard:
> The private individual, secure in his property and in his capital
> resource, can take the long view, for he wants to maintain the
> capital value of his resource. It is the government official who
> must take and run, who must plunder the property while he is
> still in command.
Hmmmm.... Up until recently, more than half of all Americans were
not wealthy enough (or educated enough) to invest in the stock
market. Taking the "long view" presumably requires that one
balance ones resources between real estate, cash, precious metals
*and* stocks (because stocks over the long run have provided the
greatest return on capital). Without various levels of government
with various resources (armies to police forces) whose job it is
to protect the "private individual" *how* can one feel "secure"
so that one can take the long view? If I'm spending all of my
time trying to evaluate how much to pay for support of a
"private" security force and reading the reports evaluating
whether or not they can effectively protect my property, then
I'm *not* going to have the time to read SEC filings by corporations
so I can reasonably allocate capital resources.
As I pointed out offlist to Alex, it is a question of delegation
and trust. If I have to evaluate and manage my own protection
then I have to pay someone else to manage my capital allocation.
Or I can manage my capital allocation and pay someone else to
evaluate and manage my protection. Why do people implicitly
assume that governments are "plundering" and "running". Yes,
there have been individuals that have done that but it seems
to be the case that more and more they are being brought to
justice for such crimes.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:16 MDT