Good news for Libertarians!

John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Wed, 26 Feb 1997 08:44:54 -0800 (PST)


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On Tue, 25 Feb 1997 Erik Moeller <flagg@oberberg-online.de> Wrote:

>2 million British children suffer from the effects of malnutrition.
>A British study ("The Hunger within") shows that this is mainly a
>consequence of the cancellation of state subvention. [...] To those
>of you who haven't already noticed: Yeah, I'm a cynic.

Unlike you I am not a cynic, but I am a skeptic, and I know that in the USA
those on welfare are more likely to be grossly obese than malnourished.
I am even more skeptical that your mysterious "study" has have the source of
this phenomena, but for the sake of argument let's assume it's 100% correct.

Can we conclude from this that it's a terrible situation to have 2 million
hungry children?
Yes! Very definitely.

Can we conclude from this that government is good?
Obviously not, we have government and 2 million hungry children too.

Why aren't these hungry children being helped?
Because nobody really wants to help them.

Will ANYTHING, government, the church, the market, men from Mars, give
charity to these children if nobody wants to help them?
No.

>Next step: Children should get the right to freely decide whether
>they want to quit school and to work in the heavy industry! Best
>starting age is probably at the age of 9 or 10

I know you're trying to be sarcastic, but I thing that would be a very good
idea, provided that two questionable ideas you imply in your post are true.
1) 2 million children in Briton are near death due to starvation.
2) Nobody will give them charity.

Child labor is not evil, grinding poverty that makes it necessary is what's
evil.

John K Clark johnkc@well.com

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