Harry Pollard wrote: > The market is just a device for allowing people to exchange their goods and > services. It has no responsibility to anyone nor does anyone have a > responsibility to it.
I thought the market consists of people. Those who participate in a market _do_ have responsibilities -- to other market participants and to future generations. THEY ARE the market, so the market does have responsibilities. > When a market is free, everybody benefits from its use. When everyone uses > the market and benefits from its use, then as they are the community, the > community benefits from the market "as if by an invisible hand". > > And that is all the "invisible hand" means. When every member of the > community is better off, then the community is better off. Does that make > sense? Let's examine the validity (or lack thereof) of this fundamental premise by looking at a practical example (from real life, NOT fictional!): [I mentioned this example before on this list, but Harry never addressed this appropriately.] A Belgian trucking company hires Turkish drivers without a proper licence to save money, and uses badly-maintained trucks to save money (all in the interests of Harry's "free market"). The company makes money by transporting goods that are available everywhere back and forth accross Europe (i.e. basically useless transports with the sole goal of making money by taking advantage of small price/wage differences between various countries). One day, a drunk truck driver of that company causes a head-on crash in the Alps' longest tunnel, by swerving to the left lane, crashing into an oncoming truck. The resulting fire (burning tires and plastics) in the long tunnel causes many deaths and material damages of over $1 billion (for repairs in the tunnel and several months of shutdown, leading to expensive detours and losses in tourism business etc.). The company is not even properly insured to pay the damages. The fire could have been avoided if the oncoming trucker (who survived the crash) had had a fire extinguisher at his disposal, but he didn't because his company too was saving money. So everyone in the tunnel had to run for their lives, but many didn't make it due to the toxic gases. Now the question to Harry is: Where in this practical example is the community and every member of the community better off ? It seems that everyone is far worse off (or even dead) -- a lose-lose scenario. You cannot even say that this accident was due to a lack of market freedom -- on the contrary, all the factors that led to the fire were actually promoted/caused by the "free market" approach, and would be far more prevalent if the "free market" would be given free reign, i.e. in the absence of labor and safety regulations. Waiting for a reply that makes sense, Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
