Posted on 05/13/2003 6:02:52 AM PDT by A. Pole
I wouldn't call Mellon Foundation industry.
Yeah, and for thousands of years it was done by the governments. No entrepreneurs there.
You know, in Hong Kong they quarantined all sick ones, not merely those who "tried". And they prevented their families from visiting them too. Plenty coercion, little free market there.
Then maybe you're unclear as to what private industry is.
Andrew W. Mellon was an entrepreneur and a private investor who made excellent business ventures into banking, oil, steel, carborundum, etc.
When he died in 1937, he left the money he had privately earned in the private sector and created a Foundation to fund worthwhile projects - just as he had privately funded worthwhile projects (like the coke industry) while he was alive.
His executors distributed some of this private wealth to Jonas Salk's research laboratory. Just because Andrew Mellon died doesn't mean that his money automatically became public funds - to the contrary.
You seem to be somewhat confused.
First of all, Hong Kong is ruled by a Communist regime, so the terms of the quarantine there may be more onerous than those acceptable to a free society. Your assumption that because I support the idea of a quarantine I must therefore support any kind of quarantine imposed by anyone is a bit of a stretch and an exercise in straw man building.
But a quarantine is certainly appropriate in a free society. If one has a disease communicable by routine social contact, the people one encounters can be exposed to it by the infected person's coercive insistence on exposing them.
It is a violation of a person's liberty to expose them to a disease without their free consent.
If the infected person's family wanted to join them in quarantine, that would certainly be permitted to in a free society.
Then maybe you're unclear as to what private industry is.
Perhaps I should become patronizing too, and suggest that your reading comprehension skills are lacking. First of all, I wrote industry not private industry. Secondly, a philantropic institution is not industry. That is the name we give to ones like Pfizer, Merck, Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKline etc.
The only "vagueness" here is your lack of clarity in defining concepts - e.g. your inability to distinguish between human action and animal instinct.
Let's see. The Mellon Foundation's money consisted at the time of the Salk grant of various ownership interests in banking, mining, oil exploration, toolmaking, etc.
So the Salk grant consisted of money transferred from an industrialist's ownership of various industrial companies.
In what sense was the Mellon Foundation's money not the money of American industry freely given by an American industrialist?
By giving money in this way, Andrew Mellon found a creative means to reduce the taxes on his estate by distributing industrial profits to worthy undertakings rather than the political slushfund known as the US Treasury.
What does this have to do with free markets and free trade? Malthus was wrong.
No - it speaks of a response to nature commonly defined as such.
My post in 25, by speaking of a response to nature clearly depends upon a distinction being drawn between nature and natural law.
At no point have I invoked nature as a source of morality in place of natural law.
If you are operating with a definition of nature different from the common acceptation, maybe you should proffer it.
You seem to be somewhat confused.
Still in the patronizing mode, huh?
First of all, Hong Kong is ruled by a Communist regime, so the terms of the quarantine there may be more onerous than those acceptable to a free society. Your assumption that because I support the idea of a quarantine I must therefore support any kind of quarantine imposed by anyone is a bit of a stretch and an exercise in straw man building.
Again, your reading comprehension skills seem to be lacking. In my original text, I am not assuming anything about what you support. What I am pointing out is that until the free market produces a SARS vaccine (which may take years,) quarantine is the only thing we can do, and it's done by governments.
Yet at the same time he advocated social programs to eliminate excess numbers of poor people, as Zack Nguyen has cited.
Which is it?
Note that Malthus only opposed birth control for the poor. He sez nothing about birth control for the powerful.
In point of fact, he never mentions birth control for anyone in any context.
Why?
Because as a educated Christian of the XVIIIth century he was taught that birth control of any kind was immoral.
What we have in the case of Malthus is someone trying to square the circle:
He wants to be a Christian and acknowledge that artificial birth control is immoral, but at the same time he buys into the unscientific idea that economies are closed systems and zero sum games and that the mythical state known as "overpopulation" is possible.
Therefore he offers the "solution" of neglect as a Christian compromise. It isn't really Christian however - he has avoided one unChristian evil only to embrace another.
Some governments are governments authorized by and acting on behalf of free peoples, and some governments aren't.
Quarantines are eminently compatible with the proper governance of a free society.
Which of course he wasn't.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.