From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon May 27 2002 - 00:11:34 MDT
>Olga Bourlin (fauxever@sprynet.com) wrote on Fri May
24 2002 - 10:54:31 MDT:
Maybe a child of one of those breeders will one day
find a cure for - cancer? aging? senility? - so you
may yet benefit. In all likelihood you're already
benefiting. If you think about the innovations and
inventions of which you are the beneficiary - all
produced by other people's children - it may help you
to appreciate how we're all in this together.
At least children are real. What gets me is the tax
break given to religious institutions - good money
going to fantastical supercreatures and good real
estate going to the storytellers perpetuating the
"invisible friend(s)" myths. Where are the mental
health professionals? (Sadly, some of them frequent
the House of the Invisible themselves.) Where's the
outrage? >
Olga, Olga, Olga - you seem like such an intelligent
person. Please read some economics - Bastiat is a
good start, but Rothbard, or even David Friedmann.
There is this thing called in econ101 "the broken
window fallacy." The idea is that if you break a
window, it does wonders for the economy when you look
at the jobs for the glaziers, window installers,
janitors, etc. This fallacy shows up in all kinds of
permutations, such as the myth that wars are good for
the economy. What this ignores is that these people
would be doing OTHER things if they weren't replacing
the window. The actual net net is one broken window -
or a whole lot of dead people, and demolished
productive capacity and wasted labor used in producing
weapons and feeding soldiers or paying their medical
bills for the rest of a century in the case of a war.
Your argument for children is just another permutation
on this. There are OTHER things to put resources into
besides more children. In a rational economy,
children would be produced to match the rate of
marginal return, assuming good information is
available to the producers and they act rationally in
general.
As for the idea that somehow having more children is
so important that we have to subsidize it; it's like
saying that because shoes prevent our feet from
freezing and without shoes just think what a terrible
life we would have, so by God! we have to have the
government make the shoes! We make enough shoes that
the marginal rate on return for making shoes is the
same as for other similar investments. That's how the
market works. If people feel like they really need
more shoes, they will temporarilly bid up prices and
that will raise the rate of return on making shoes
relative to other possible investments and money will
flow into the shoe industry until the demand drops off
and the return falls back to the current average.
The problem is that having children is part of the the
memetic complex I have referred to previously. I
don't know if you are familiar with neurotic needs.
When real needs are blocked, one "solution" that
people often adopt is to substitute a symbolic need
with symbolic means of satisfaction. The only problem
is that no amount of symbolic satisfaction ever really
satisfies. When you see something that is being
systematically over-valued in society - or by an
individual - it is reasonable to ask if they are
pursueing a real need or a symbolic one. For real
needs, there is a level which satisfies. For symbolic
needs there is no such level, and since achieving the
symbolic satisfaction never really satisfies, the
persons trapped in this situation usually try to find
someone or something to blaim for that failure.
Remember, this is a neurosis; they are not acting
rationally, and have a mental block against
recognizing the irrationality. Usually they get angry
if you try to point this out...
Your point on religion is well taken, and a case in
point of neurosis. Religion, by teaching people that
the real world is unimportant except as a test or a
means of achieving something in some higher realm,
prevents them from achieving a proper valuation of
things in this real world. Religion is like a
systematic means of packaging symbolic satisfactions
for neurotic people - "opiate of the masses" comes to
mind (one of the few things Marx got right) - while
digging their hole deeper and wider.
If someone said to you "there is an alien creature who
knows your very thoughts and constantly monitors you,
and if you don't believe in him then he will punish
you forever with the nastiest immaginable tortures
after you die - and, by the way, he is also the
essence of goodness and light," you would know that
they were very disturbed and look around for a safe
place to flee. When you ask them how they know this
and why should you believe and they answer that they
have no evidence and never will and this is the reason
why you should believe, you are really concerned.
Substituting X, Y, or "Faith" for "I don't have any
evidence and that's why you should believe (or else)"
does not make it any better.
Yet of course this is exactly what many religions
explicitly do claim, and billions of people in our
modern world actually believe. I note now that the
majority of financial and social support for religion,
especially in the U.S., comes from women, usually
older women. These women, I assert, are already in a
neurotic hell, scrabbling for symbolic satisfactions,
blaming men for everything, and flying into a rage
when someone tries to point out that something is
wrong, trying to stave off awareness of approaching
death, or the emptiness of their lives..
Men, of course, have their own problems. Men in this
culture are systematically deprived of emotionally
nourishing interactions in childhood, taught that "to
be a man" is to keep control over emotions and not let
them be seen, etc. Then they are sold on the idea
that a relationship with the right woman will solve
this underlying ache they have had for their entire
lives. Meanwhile the women are taught to pretend,
make the man feel good even if you have to lie, fake
orgasms, etc. While there are certainly good
relationships occasionally between men and women, and
I firmly believe in the value of a real romantic
relationship personally, it is pretty clear that most
of these relationships eventually fall apart when the
symbolic satisfactions start wearing thin.
It really makes one nostalgic for harder times,
frontier days, etc., when everyone had to work to
survive and relationships were based on real objective
value and didn't have much room for fantasy or
tolerance for deception. I think this is one of the
draws of many action movies - the characters are put
in a situation where their real character is outed. I
sometimes fear for where this problem could go if not
solved before we start seriously uploading. What
would it mean to live forever in a lie?
BTW, have you seen the movie version of "For Whom the
Bell Tolls," with Gary Cooper. I just recently saw it
for the first time. Perfect example of this.
Outstanding movie.
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