From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri May 10 2002 - 14:31:34 MDT
Randy Smith wrote:
>
> On Thu, 09 May 2002 21:06:31 -0400, you wrote:
>
> >Well, NH is offering grants to displaced IT professionals to get
> >retrained in needed specialties, so I'm planning on applying for one
> >($6250) to go to an IT boot camp, ..
>
> And BTW, aren't all of you extropians supposed to be anti-govt
> libertarians? This is a state funded program you are trying to get
> into for free, right? Any comments from the peanut gallery?
My reply to a similarly worded private query from another list member:
My moral reasoning is that A) While in the US Air Force, I paid in $1200
under the GI Bill to get $11,800 in college aid back. B) after being
discharged, the US gov't defrauded me of these benefits, therefore C)
any monies I recoup from the government are monies owed me under this
prior contract, until such monies equal the defrauded amount plus
interest. Ten years interest on nearly $12k brings the total owed to
over $24,000, so a mere $6250 is simply a down payment. When the amount
of money received meets the $24k figure (plus further compounded
interest), I will consider the debt discharged.
Furthermore, as an IT professional, these retraining monies are from
taxes
previously paid to the state by myself, which were previously used under
the state H-1B immigration training program to train immigrants to
compete with me and drive me out of business. If these monies were
previously used to train people to drive me out of a job, who never paid
any taxes here, I figure that I have a better claim to the money since I
actually paid into it with my taxes.
While I do hold libertarian principles, I do not live in a libertarian
world. I have learned rather harshly that trying to live free in an
unfree world, without using the system for my own betterment (the name
of the game, after all, is self interest) only results in a net minus on
my personal balance sheet with the world. Even here in New Hampshire,
which was just ranked as having the second lowest per capita tax burden
in the US (only Alaska was better), we still pay taxes to the state, and
so long as I pay taxes, I will take advantage of the programs my taxes
pay for which I am qualified to use. That is, after all, what they are
for. The state is, really, merely a monopoly law and insurance provider
in a number of markets, and it is truly un-libertarian to pay for
services but refuse to use them.
Furthermore, the businessmen who had earlier lobbied for these training
programs for H-1B immigrants were doing their best to reduce my ability
to charge all the market can bear for the services they purchased from
me and other citizens. It is only appropriate for me to use those
monies, now that they have been redirected to displaced workers who are
citizens, that I use them as much as I can to fight back against these
scabbers, making myself more competetive in the market by having better
skills.
end rant...
Now, can anybody construct any reason why a libertarian should not
accept services they have previously paid for?
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