trc@houca.UUCP (11/11/83)
"I-don't-want-to-brush-trauma"????? First, let me point out that I was *not* opposing the idea of government. Thus, I am not in favor of turning control of force over to anyone that might happen to want it (IE businesses). (I am in favor of governments being run more like businesses - with force only applied in defense of their client's *real* rights, and the clients paying only for such protection.) Whether we got into space 10 years ago, or 50 years from now, or even *never*, (highly unlikely) is irrelevant to the moral issue involved. Paying for space, or whatever, should be voluntary. The opposite of "voluntary" is "forced" - which is ultimately grounded in physical force. What governments *have* done is equally irrelevant. If I took the same view that you are taking, I would say that it would have been OK for the Egyptians to have provide slave labor to the Phonecians, to row their boats, in order to open up new territories. Assuming that the average taxpayer earns somewhere around $10 an hour, you are arguing that it is ok for the government to enslave someone for 3 hours, in effect. (Using the arbitrary $10 per person figure, and figuring that the taxpayer has a family to pay for also. Actually it is probably less than that, but that is beside the point.) I am not at all surprised that governments should be more likely to engage in unprofitable ventures. After all, the people doing the spending dont have to earn the money they spend, they just take it. Their lives and welfare do not depend upon being especially thrifty - they can take a lot of money from a lot of people before people balk. I could do a lot of interesting, though unprofitable stuff too - if I could convince you to support it. The difference between me and a government is that I cannot throw you in jail if you dont support my adventures. Tom Craver hou5a!trc - note the change in address!