kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (08/20/86)
From: <ucsbcsl!uncle@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Keith, the infinite digressions and regressions and unending
recursions which you are making ...
The feeling is mutual.
You agree now that money IS power, but to maintain your previous
distinctions, you insist that money is only power over things, not
people
Exactly. This is an enormous distinction. A rich man has the power
of life and death over his Rolls Royce, his mansion, and his many
electronic toys. He has the power to buy and sell these things for
whatever he and another person can agree is a fair price. He is even
free to destroy his wealth.
A government has similar power, but over PEOPLE. Governments have
tortured, robbed, and killed people all through history.
Unless you assert that people have no more rights than inanimate
objects, you must agree that there is a great difference between these
forms of power.
and you assert that you cannot imagine how wealthy people could
abuse their wealth!!!!
Not exactly. I agree that there are many ways to use wealth to
commit crimes. One can bribe a congressman, hire a killer, keep
slaves, etc, etc. All such ways are ALREADY illegal, and it isn't
the WEALTH that is at fault. One might as well say water should be
illegal since people can be drowned with it.
People on this list have fulminated against folks with the nerve
to accumulate 100 times the per capita US GNP. This is symptomatic
of fuzzy thinking. I guess we are supposed to imagine the wealth of
the world as being a fixed quantity, and when some people take more
that their fair share, that is what causes others to be poor.
Well, that's a bunch of crap. Excepting wealthy people who did get
their money through crime or government handouts, a person with a lot
of wealth has it because he CREATED it, or because he created
something that someone else freely agreed was worth more than what he
got for it.
I see nothing evil in that. I see nothing evil in any noncriminal
use of the wealth. In fact the poor and the middle income people of
the world owe a lot of gratitude to those who have created most of the
wealth of the world. Much of the poverty existing today is a direct
result of these very productive people being penalized and villified
for their productivity. As can be seen by noting the correlation
between individual liberties and standard of living throughout the
whole world. And by noting that the ways in which the socialist
countries are slowly increasing their meager standard of living is by
use of technologies and methods invented by free men.
... we've got to foster the individual AND the community.
The only legitimate community is the interactions of free
individuals. There is no community seperate from that, whose
priorities can be contrasted with those of each individual
within it. I am reminded of the communist countries, where
any degree of opression of individuals can be justified by
the need to serve 'the people'.
... communism is just the latest in a long line of mediterranean
monotheisms ...
Not a monotheism exactly, but it IS a religion. I was wondering if
anyone else noticed this. Communism is not a political position at
all. It has all the characteristics of a religion:
1) Repudiation of all competing religions and their gods.
2) Explanation of history as man's progression toward a paradise.
3) A purpose for life, to which all else must be subservient.
4) One or more infallible holy prophets.
5) An elite priesthood.
6) Evil and threatening infidels.
I wonder if this means the Communist party in the US should be tax
exempt? :-)
...Keith
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