Letters (April 1973)

Maybe we’re bad, but consider the alternative

I’m not quite sold on Outlook yet. There’s something about it that makes me want to keep it at arm’s length. Maybe I just have to get used to the rhetoric you employ. Neither did I enjoy reading reviews of records released 8 months ago. Nor the John Holt interview; in one breath Holt says, “It is not the business of the state to tell us what we should know or learn,” which is fine, but in the preceding column he favored income redistribution which means that he thinks it’s all right for the state to tell us how much of our productivity we can keep. I quickly lost interest in Mr. Holt.

The Katz article was excellent and the fact that you didn’t give away a subscription to the resident of Chino State Prison was a high point.

F. Paul Wilson Normandy Beach, N.J.

Big house blues

I read your February 1973 issue and was very impressed by the group of pieces on prisons and prison reform. It has long been my feeling that the way in which we approach the problem of crime in this country within the next ten years or so will powerfully affect our entire future development as a nation.

Americans need to know more about what goes on in their prisons, and about the lives and needs of convicts and ex-convicts. All too often, the typical middle-class American assumes that the prison population is composed overwhelmingly of frenzied homicidal maniacs and professional juvenile delinquents and not much else. This makes it easier for him to think of prisoners as alien beings menacing his family and property. This, of course, is a dangerous attitude, especially since I happen to agree with the editors that, with the present trends, the prison population is likely to increase.

I hope to see more articles on prisons, prison reform and prison life, and also on such related topics as victimless crimes, the bail system, parole, and the delays in bringing accused persons to trial. I would also be interested in knowing more about what determines who gets placed in a maximum security facility.

Anyhow, as a concerned citizen, I must thank the editors, Lewis Oliver, Paul Streitz and above all Jimmy Barnes for a job well done.

Howard Davis New York City

In the interview with Lewis Oliver in our February issue, it was reported that the Green Haven Prisoners’ Union had petitioned the N.Y. State Public Employment Relations Board for recognition as a bargaining agent. Since then, the PERB has declined to grant such recognition, stating that “an an employment relation requires a working commitment freely given, not one performed out of legal or moral compulsion.” The inmates, who earn 35 cents a day manufacturing linens and United States flags are preparing an appeal of the PERB decision.—Editor

Capitalist hustle

Mr. William Anders, writing in the February Outlook, argues that the continuation of heroin prohibition is institutionalizing the life of the hustle. I think Mr. Anders must have hustled you into printing his column.

When any substance or practice is made illegal, people are naturally going to have to hustle to get away with possessing, selling or practicing it. Heroin is hardly unique in this regard. By the same token, when needed or strongly-desired items are made inaccessible—as many necessities of life are made inaccessible to a large portion of our population by the capitalist system—hustling is required to obtain them. In short, Mr. Anders is taking his own particular circumstances as being of uniquely earth-shattering significance, when in fact they are not.

True, heroin prohibition is a problem. But there are much greater problems to which people like you should be addressing yourselves. For a starter, how about the abolition of the capitalist system?

E. Goldberg Forest Hills, N.Y.

Go scratch your belly button

In reference to Mr. Tuccille’s “insipid piece of nonsense,” and “great popular myth popular with libertarians and others,” the Protestant work ethic, a few observations: a) I know of no man that is “forced to work eight hours a day. . .to clothe, feed and house his family.” If Mr. Tuccille does, he should contact his friendly local government agent immediately, and have the perpetrator incarcerated. Every man is free to grow his own food; to grow his own trees and use the lumber to build his own house; and to slaughter animals to use their skin for clothing and flesh for dinner. When a free man realizes that there is another way, he can make voluntary arrangements to trade his work and services with another for a tradeable commodity (i.e., money), which can in turn (of his own free will) be traded to a specialist of his choosing who can build his house, produce his clothing, etc. b) How does Mr. Tuccille plan to “liberate the human species from all involuntary activity?” Does he mean that if one wants a house, food or clothing and can’t or doesn’t wish to build, grow or make it himself, that he should force others to do it for him, because he does not voluntarily want to work in order to produce or create a tradeable commodity or service? Or should we all return to the caveman era, so that he might be able to “ski the slopes” when he wants to? c) How will his utopia of “unlimited leisure” allow for the man “lying in the sun scratching his belly button” to obtain the things that others create? How would he obtain a subscription to your magazine? By favor? By pressure? By force? Or by trade? I didn’t know that there was a market at Outlook for Mr. Tuccille’s belly-button lint! Does he suggest that if I want something that I do not or cannot make myself, that I steal it? Or that I force someone to make it for my benefit at their expense? Or demand that they make it so that I can have something to do while “idling my life away in blissful hedonism?”

It is difficult to believe that this image of an egalitarian socialism, where goods will be created (how? why? for whom?), came from the pen of the same man who wrote Radical Libertarianism. Go scratch your belly button, Mr. Tuccille.

Bob Klar Brooklyn, N.Y.

Who’s over-cautious?

Paul Streitz makes some good points in his attack on the FDA (Outlook, March 1973), but I have some lingering doubts about his contention that over-caution with respect to new drug introductions is confined to government bureaucracies. Executives and researchers in the employ of private pharmaceutical companies may well be under just as much pressure as bureaucrats. While, as Streitz points out, the bureaucrats have little or nothing to gain from the successful introduction of a drug, they do have the special job security that goes with civil service status. Employees of drug firms do not have such security, and hence may be even more cautious than bureaucrats when it comes to introducing new drugs.

Why then, do Mr. Streitz’ figures show that drug introductions in the United States are lagging? One possible reason may well be the evolution of absolute product liability in the US as a recognized principle of tort law, which could well have the effect of instilling greater caution in all manufacturers of consumer products—but probably pharmaceutical firms in particular. I don’t know this to be the case, but I think Mr. Streitz should have considered the issue, rather than rush to take the easy way out of blaming the bureaucrats for everything. His article would have been much more convincing had he done so.

C. Sprizzo Detroit, Michigan