To the editor:

Larry Day suggests that we give subsidies to arms manufacturers for NOT making and selling arms to Latin American nations (letter to the editor, Sept. 16). That won’t work. It won’t work for the same reason that U.S. farm subsidy programs failed: greed.

Farm subsidies led to corporate farming. Corporations bought and plowed up great swatches of land and put them into production. Then they took the land out of production to obtain subsidies.

Giving subsidies to arms manufacturers would yield the same result for the same reason: greed. Arms manufacturers would proliferate. They’d be paid NOT to manufacture and sell excess weapons to Third World countries.

I could become an arms manufacturer. So could Larry Day. And what happens if you are both farmer and arms manufacturer? Would the U.S. government allow double dipping?

Meantime, lobbyists would insert loopholes in the wording of the arms subsidy programs. The loopholes would guarantee that arms manufacturers would get their subsidies and that the Third World countries would get the arms. It’s a lose-lose plan.

Try again, Mr. Day.