From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Tue Aug 12 2003 - 15:22:56 MDT
Mitch wrote:
> Rafal seems devoted to the nth degree in favor of free market
> economics. Though, I wonder what Milton Freedman (sp?) looking at
> what is happening to Americans would concur with Rafal's zeal?
>
### Actually, I am not devoted to the free market. As you wrote somewhere
else (I think), if the market does it, good. If it takes a government,
that's OK as long as it works.
I wrote on this list about control of land ownership, production of
information, enforcement of liability insurance, subsidizing the poor (the
"poorhouse" threads), subsidized health care, production of meta-laws, and
some other functions which under some special circumstances could IMO be
productively discharged by a non-market mechanism.
The reason why I oppose protectionism is not ideology, while you don't, is
my different time scale. I know that in the long run (and every long run
starts today, so you can't put off taking it into account) protectionism
will hurt me personally (in addition to all the brown, yellow and white
people out there), so I am vociferously fighting it. For my own good, mainly
(although hurting brown people rubs me the wrong way, too).
If you take seriously the idea that you might be around in 100 years, join
me.
Rafal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Aug 12 2003 - 12:31:03 MDT