Re: Free market vs. totalitarianism (John Link)

>>It certainly wasn't protecting the rights of its citizens.
>>
>>Who said it had to do that?
>
>Ayn Rand. See, for example, "Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal".

She didn't say it had to, she said it should. She can hardly claim
propriety on this idea, in fact I can't even think what else government
could be for.

The difficulty arises in defining "rights". Rand's gross
oversimplification of this question leaves her reader with a clear idea of
the problem, and no idea of the solution, although she deserves much credit
for writing stories instead of essays. I personally feel legislative
systems are clearly un-suited to working out what "rights" are, and would
prefer the whole mess done away with in favor of something like the
judicial system (with a little less catering to an evolving system of
precedents).

My point was that government is an emergent behavior- a free spirit.
Nobody sits down and makes one. The framers of the US Constitution found
that out, if not while they were alive (with the unwanted appearance of
political parties), then certainly by now. The whole thing is clearly out
of control, people acting out roles as in a play. If government improves
its longevity at the cost of it's citizen's rights, what's to stop it?
Certainly not any piece of paper.

I'll check out Friedman.

-Carl