[extropy-chat] Re: Futures Politics

[Dirk Bruere]

On 11/3/05, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Futures Politics
> >
> > ...   When will it end?  How can we get off our duffs and go
> > be beyond our self-satisfied dreamy assurances in order to end it?
> >
> > - samantha
>
>
> It will end as soon as we get enough politicians
> to recognize that market forces overpower legal
> pressures.
>
> We might be making progress in that direction,
> but it is hard to tell.  I expect there will be
> growing market pressure to get most of the dopers
> out of prison: we need their labor and taxes, as
> well as the cell they occupy.

There are two types of market forces here.
The diffuse kind, to which you refer.
And the kind that is concentrated in the businesses making money out
of the existing system. The latter exerts far more power on the
legislative process even though it is far less quantitatively than the
former.

It's not just straight economics, but the concentration of economic
power within narrow special interests that matters.

Dirk