KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (11/03/86)
From: campbell%maynard.UUCP@harvisr.HARVARD.EDU > If you still insist that money is coercive power, please give an >example of its coercive use. Simple. I am a wealthy and unscrupulous person. I want you to do some action X which you don't want to do. I say "Keith, do it or I will make your life very unpleasant." I then start using my money to: None of this is really coercive, and all of it is extremely expensive. Most of it is legal today. Am I the only one to receive such treatment? It seems to me that if just one percent of the population were to be treated in this way, the wealthy people would very quickly go bankrupt. And do none of the wealthy people oppose these plans? They could equally well do the opposite. And they would have just as much motivation to do so as to do what you suggest. Suppose government prevents this, with various laws against almost any use of wealth which could conceivably annoy anyone. Wouldn't such a government be a far greater tyrant? They could treat 100% of the population this way, not just 1%. And they could keep it up indefinitely. They would never go bankrupt since they just take all the money they need from the people. And they wouldn't have to use such wealth intensive methods of harrasment. This isn't just a guess. Thousands of years of history prove my point. 1) Buy all the land abutting your house and installing garbage dumps (remember, no zoning laws in Libertaria). Government can simply confiscate your house and turn IT into a garbage dump. This is called "condemnation" and "eminent domain". 2) Buy your company and get you fired. Government can dissolve your company, or bankrupt it by supporting million dollar lawsuits by people claiming your company discriminated against them. Via taxes and inflation and overregulation of companies you invested in they can take away the money you saved in case you were ever fired. They can enslave you via a draft, or imprison you for an ill-defined "crime" ("restraint of trade" or "insider trading" for instance) or for a victimless "crime" (using drugs, gambling, etc). 3) Buy your bank and make them foreclose on your mortgage (easy enough to do, just wait until you're ONE DAY late and it's legal). Government can close down the bank, like Roosevelt did. Or can condemn your house because they want to put a road through it. They can make it impossible for people to get mortgages for a reasonable price due to uncertainty about the future value of the dollar and the future regulatory climate. They can borrow so much money that credit for mortgages is unavailable or overpriced. They can do this even if you are NOT a day late, and no matter how airtight the language of the mortgage contract. 4) Buy all the local stores and instruct the help to refuse to serve you (remember, no anti-discrimination laws in Libertaria). Government can close the local stores on any pretext. They can make it illegal to own gold, and require that their dollars are "legal tender for all debts..." meaning that stores and customers cannot voluntarily agree on an alternative currency, but are required to trade using a currency which is backed only by the "faith" of the federal government, and which has lost more than half its value in the past decade, and more than 90% of its value since the 1950s. They can impose a tax of any size on any transaction for any reason. (The sales tax here in Virginia was just raised from 4% to 5% for no very good reason). They can make it illegal for the stores to sell many products (various drugs, etc) and can cow them into not stocking others (the three stores within a fifteen minute walk of my apartment all recently stopped selling Playboy and other adult magazines). 5) Pay your eighteen year old daughter big bucks and free cocaine to become a prostitute (no drug or prostitution laws in Libertaria). Government can offer your daughter money to join the military. Or they can simply draft her and pay her whatever they choose. They can commit her to a mental institution where she is likely to be raped and FORCE her to take drugs such as haldol and thorazine, which are also addictive and mind-altering and deadly. 6) Do the same thing to your friends and relatives... So can government. Not just to a few people (as wealthy people could afford to), but to millions. Not just for a few years until they go broke or die of old age, but for centuries. PLEASE NOTE I have only named things which the US government has done, and which are still legal for it to do. I have refrained from describing the tyranny of the Nazis and the Communists. YOU, however have NOT described the actual actions of any billionaires, but have only hypothesized certain relatively MINOR (compared to what a nominally FREE government does every day) incoveniences that a phenomenally rich person could conceivably impose on you if he chose to devote all of his wealth to harrassing you and if nobody in the world chose to oppose him by serving you rather than taking his bribes. Also note that in the ABSOLUTE WORST CASE where you were being harassed by a large cabal of long lived multi-billionaires who could think of literally nothing better to do with their fortunes than to make life unpleasant for you, and in which nobody on earth, not even your own daughter, was willing to lift a finger to oppose their plans, even where their plans obviously (as in the case of your daughter) result in the degredation and possible death of the cooperating person, you could still escape all further persecution simply by changing your name and moving elsewhere. Yes, it would be an inconvenience. But think of the "inconvenience" suffered by the Jews under the Nazis. They couldn't just shrug it off or move elsewhere. Look at the Berlin wall. Would anything like that, where people trying to escape their present circumstances and move to a new region would be shot and killed, be possible to your imagined capitalist ogre? Would he be able to draft anyone? To herd people into gas ovens? To steal anything? ...Keith -------