tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7893272060787897238.post8717960921634706308..comments2024-03-09T03:19:57.797-05:00Comments on The Delaware Libertarian: A thought for the evening directed at my friends who believe in the virtues of the StateSteven H. Newtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09097470960863103473noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7893272060787897238.post-31279356678558934932009-04-01T06:47:00.000-04:002009-04-01T06:47:00.000-04:00Interventionists often pillory businessmen as gunn...Interventionists often pillory businessmen as gunning for the bottom. That's because they blank out (Rand's phrase) the fact that labor is a commodity, for which employers compete. The employer with the worse working conditions, i.e., in his particular market, will lose his most experienced and most productive employees to the employer with the higher pay and better working conditions. In a free market, the economic incentive is to be AHEAD of the market.ChrisNChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03489742185898644983noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7893272060787897238.post-52366503836464633192009-04-01T00:36:00.000-04:002009-04-01T00:36:00.000-04:00Steve, after citing a few nameless anecdotes, you ...Steve, after citing a few nameless anecdotes, you wrote:<BR/><BR/>"The problem: government is far less accountable for its abuses."<BR/><BR/>This is blatantly not true. I could match you case by case of horrible abuses in the private sector in which no one was held accountable. One easy example is the financial services industry - how are the perps that caused the current mess being held accountable? Or corporate polluters that skirt or break the law and poison millions? Does the private sector hold them accountable? Who holds supervisors and employees accountable for unethical, immoral, dishonest, or unfair treatment of other employees? <BR/><BR/>You wrote:<BR/><BR/>"Nothing I have seen in thirty years of working around the military, the government, or other public institutions gives me any damn confidence at all in the superior morals or supervisory ability of bureaucrats".<BR/><BR/>"Superior" to what? Or who? It certainly is not the private sector. Because the private sector and public sector are populated from people from the same pool of human beings, you're going to get the same behaviors in both, on average. <BR/><BR/>Your rail against "the military, the government, or other public institutions" is really just a lament about the current un-ideal state of human ethics, culture, education, and competency.<BR/><BR/>We can all try to do better, but that is just the way it is in 2009.<BR/><BR/>anononeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com