----- Original Message ----- From: "Gautam Mukunda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <brin-l@mccmedia.com> Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 4:58 PM Subject: Re: Gas Prices
> --- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > government intervention. A truly conservative > > argument is that, for all of > > its flaws, the market does a much better job of > > allocating gasoline in most > > cases than does the government. > > > > Dan M. > > To be fair, that's _one_ of the two > libertarian/conservative arguments. The other is that > it's much, much better to make sure that the > government must not have the _power_ to control these > things, because if they do, they will put it to bad > use. If the government can control gasoline > allocations, then only the friends of the people in > power will get gasoline, and this is A Bad Thing. But, the government does have the power, right? Congress has imposed gasoline rationing in the past. I think that, if the government were the most efficient at rationing gasoline, then a good argument would be made for it to take that function. For example, if overseas oil supplies were stopped for, say, a year, then I wouldn't expect to rely on market forces to handle this. If you look at other massive government programs, there's problems with fraud, but I don't think that only buddies of Congressmen get Social Security or Medicare. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
