weapons sales

>> The lack of government per-se would not mean an end to the
>> market for arms.
>
> I didn't say it would. But I believe the actions of the US
> government have increased the amount and severity of weapons
> in the world 100-fold beyond what was necessary, even without
> any governance change of the kind we are discussing.

this is putting the cart before the horse. You know that if I write to my
congresspeople askign them to curtail arms sales, they'll come back with
the "but people will lose jobs argument"---in other words, they can't turn
their backs on the people that funded their campaigns.

In other words, the government is doing what it's doing largely at the
behest of the corporations.

another example: in "Deterring Democracy", Chomsky relates the tale of
how the gov't tried to curtail cocaine trade by possibly going after
corporations such as the companies that make chemicals for processing the
cocoa plant into the refined drug, and going after the banks that a lot
of drug money was passing through. Well maybe "going after" is too strong
a term, I think it was more like telling them "don't sell to kingpins".
This was, of course, immediately stopped in it's tracks by corporate
leaders.

And of course, penalizing drug users (in the case of cocaine, mostly
rich white people), is highly difficult. Thus the only possible way to
"fight the drug problem" was to throw as many poor blacks in jail as
possible, for as long as possible; people who were understandbly unable
to resist the temptation of taking their only available route towards
making as much as upper-middle-class (or higher) white folk.

Contrasting the acts of the US gov't with the corporations they serve,
for the most part, is misleading.

> >> The lack of government per-se would not mean an end to the
> >> market for arms.
> >
> > I didn't say it would. But I believe the actions of the US
> > government have increased the amount and severity of weapons
> > in the world 100-fold beyond what was necessary, even without
> > any governance change of the kind we are discussing.
>
> this is putting the cart before the horse. You know that if I
> write to my congresspeople askign them to curtail arms sales,
> they'll come back with the "but people will lose jobs argument"

Would they? That argument doesn't hold any water as far as I'm
concerned. A harder-to-debunk argument would be that extreme US
military force is needed to keep the world running smoothly. But
I don't believe that either.

> in other words, they can't turn their backs on the people
> that funded their campaigns.
> In other words, the government is doing what it's doing
> largely at the behest of the corporations.

There's definitely feedback, but the government's desire
for weapons is definitely primary in my view.

However, what if we replaced the word "corporations" in
your statement, with the phrase "the people who work for
defense contractors". And what if we replaced that
phrase with the word "people". What changes?

> another example: in "Deterring Democracy", Chomsky
> relates the tale of how the gov't tried to curtail
> cocaine trade by possibly going after corporations such
> as the companies that make chemicals for processing the
> cocoa plant into the refined drug,

What chemicals are those? I don't know what they use...
hydrochloric acid? Whatever it is, it isn't specialized
to extracting cocaine.

Chomsky is a nitwit. He doesn't give references, and I'm
fairly certain his fact-checking is tabloid-quality.

> and going after the banks that a lot of drug money was
> passing through. Well maybe "going after" is too strong
> a term, I think it was more like telling them "don't sell
> to kingpins". This was, of course, immediately stopped
> in it's tracks by corporate leaders.

In the model Kurt and I are discussing, profits are, or
can be, an indicator of what activities humans should
engage in. In this case, they are indeed better indicators
of that than the whims of the goverment -- cocaine
prohibition is wrong.

> And of course, penalizing drug users (in the case of
> cocaine, mostly rich white people), is highly difficult.

And lots of poor black people, in the case of crack.

> Thus the only possible way to "fight the drug problem" was
> to throw as many poor blacks in jail as possible, for as
> long as possible; people who were understandbly unable
> to resist the temptation of taking their only available route
> towards making as much as upper-middle-class (or higher)
> white folk.

Yes, drug prohibition is wrong.

> Contrasting the acts of the US gov't with the corporations
> they serve, for the most part, is misleading.

Not at all.

-Carl