Re: Don't blame the doctor-- (also known as"Don't Shoot the Messenger.")

Bagelhole1@aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 5/12/99 12:04:03 PM, jgunning@squ.edu.om writes:
> 
> << grand master plan of capitalist expansion that, in your view, leads
> to crisis and war. Disputes over property and other rights, theft, and
> robbery are inevitable in a property system. And, absent a world
> government with teeth, these actions are likely on occasion to be
> carried out by governments and to lead to war. But this does not mean
> that capitalism is the cause of the war in any useful sense.>>
> 
> Capitalism inevitably leads to war. It is based on a paradigm that is
> inhumane, on the animal reality of survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, man
> against man. Cheating is a part of the picture, all you have to do, is get
> away with it. It allows for exploitation of one individual over others. It
> has profit as the focal point of the prism which is the ultimate reference
> point from which all action is based to the detriment of all other values.
> Thus the degradation of all life on the planet. You know, pollution, sweat
> shops, logging, extinction of species, nuclear bombs, etc.
> 
> C'mon, this is 1999, and we are all grown up. What I am stating is obvious to
> a high school kid. Capitalism is a paradigm that is inhumane and leads to
> war, not only just because of the expansianism that is essential to
> capitalism, but even just to sell arms.

This is the problem. It is obvious to a high school kid. But when one
reaches a higher level of education on this matter -- in other words,
when she learns how the free market economy operates -- she reconsiders
her view. This typically happens, if it happens at all, later in life,
perhaps in an economics class.

It is not the profit motive that is the enemy, Tom, it is the dictators
and power mongers. If people want bread, capitalists and entrepreneurs
will supply it; if people want drugs, capitalists and entrepreneurs will
supply them; if people want guns, capitalists and entrepreneurs will
supply them. And they will try to supply all of these things as
efficiently as they can in order to earn a profit so that they can best
satisfy their own wants. It is not inhumane to be involved in the
efficient satisfaction of wants, whatever they are.

True if we could conceive of a good way to stop the supply, we could
stop the harm. But intervention in bread markets leads to starvation and
revolt; intervention in drug markets leads to organized crime, gangland
violence, and criminalization of activities that might otherwise be
harmless to anyone but the consumers; and intervention in gun markets
leads to lost wars.

-- 
Pat Gunning, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
Web pages on Subjectivism, Democracy, Taiwan, Ludwig von Mises,
Austrian Economics, and my University Classes
http://www2.cybercities.com/g/gunning/welcome.htm
http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/barclay/212/welcome.htm