> At 09:16 AM 3/8/98 -0500, Thomas Lunde wrote:
> Jay Hanson:
> >>Hardin showed that, in principle, communism could never
> >>work. Marx failed to see this and millions died because
> >>of his mistake.
> >
> >Well, I've never read "Hardin" but one author does not a binding refutation
> >make. There are always other perspectives.
>
> Herschel Hardin wrote about 'the tragedy of the commons' -- a theme which
> hyper-libertarian, free market zealots use to ground their claim that the
> only way forward for the environment was to privatize the water and air. He
> was perhaps best known for his (in)famous contribution to debates of
> distributive ethics known as 'lifeboat ethics', i.e.you can only fit so many
> people on Lifeboat Earth. Thus, any attempt to ameliorate the conditions of
> those facing famine and death by starvation by redistribution would lead
> only to a prolonged a much worse crisis the next time.
>
A few days ago the secretary general of the UN, Kofy Annan, was
interviewed on radio. He said that he had been walking in the
mountains here in Norway, and that we had something in Norway that
did not exist in America, and that people in America would refuse to
believe could exist in any country.
That is lots of open houses in the mountains, where there are lots of
food and firewood and beds etc. everything a person need, and there
are no guards, nobody to sell tickets/collect money, and the doors
are always open. Everybody can go in there, eat and sleep, and they
pay what they think it is the right amount of money to pay. And this
has been going on for a very long time, many decades, may more than a
century, it is among the things that have always been.
People are expected to pay, but since there is nobody watching them
they are free to pay what they want to pay, and that might be
nothing, but people are paying so much that more and more houses like
these are being built. It is a successful common that is free to all!
These houses are owned by voluntary organizations. The largest is I
think "Norsk Turistforening".
Another "common" is blood for the hospitals. Hospitals need blood,
and in Norway people give blood without being paid. They get in
return what the bus tickets/fares cost. And so many people give blood
that all hospitals except in Oslo have plenty of blood. In Oslo
things are different, people there have no sense of community, and
the newspapers are filled with "The hospital at Ullevaall is lacking
blood" - that is the largest hospital in Oslo -.
But, from what I have heard, Norway and Finland are the only
rich countries in the World that are supplying themselves with blood.
The rest I guess have to buy from poor countries.
Tor Forde
