From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Sun Aug 25 2002 - 12:59:41 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Wiik <mwiik@messagenet.com>
To: extropians <extropians@tick.javien.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2002 6:47 AM
Subject: Re: American Education
> spike66 wrote:
>
> > Political history
> > teaches students to hate other groups because of historical conflicts:
This depends on who wrote the text and what their motives were.
> Much of it was military history from WWII.
Like how FDR arranged to have Pearl Harbor attacked? Churchill's firebombing of refugees in Dresden? Operation Keelhaul? These are
usually MIA in US government-approved textbooks. All American schools receiving federal funding have to use them.
> But I don't remember ever
> hating the Germans. They invaded and occupied my homeland, they did
> terrible things throughout Europe, they killed millions of people.
So did the Allies.
>... And in any case the Germans were hardly the first or the last in
> (for example) killing Jews.
No, not at all. The Soviets (e.g.) and their ancestors did similar, though not on the same scale. At any rate, the Nazis would not
have attempted this with out the tacit approval and continuing coverup provided by the Roosevelt Administration. FDR's turning away
the ship *St. Louis* (~800 Jewish refugees trying to land in America) was the signal to Hitler to let the Holocaust begin- a
documented fact that only recently came to light. In my view, FDR was the equal of Hitler, though a tad more devious.
> Forrest Bishop wrote:
> > Thank you for the Gatto reference, it appears to be fairly accurate. The above is a continuation of this most destructive crime
> > against civilization.
>
> Hmmm you're welcome but just to confirm the Anti-Social Studies article
> isn't by Gatto.
Sorry, the syntax wasn't clear. I was refering to your post of a week or so ago in the first sentence, and the quoted article about
the NCSS in the second sentence.
> I agree, the tough part is that it *worked*, as Gatto says, it did bring
> about a prosperous society in which most folks have food to eat, feel
> safe, have television, etc. Would a nation of libertarian craftsmen and
> tinkerers have produced heavy industry?
Yes, they did, in 19th Century America. Every industry (airplane, telephone, lightbulb, cotton 'gin, electric power, harvester,
television, radio, computer) begins with an idea(s) in the mind(s) of a single natural person(s). The consolidation and
centralization is muchly the result of non-market forces, specifically statist cumpulsion and coersion.
> Would they have built the
> railroads? I think we may have seen advancements in computers and such
> happening quicker (like steampunk fiction). Gatto says (it seems to me)
> that the thinking was that such a nation would be chaotic, with an
> overheated economy, building too many useful things for people to buy.
An overheated economy is not possible in a hard-money free market. Overproduction is yet another memetic myth promulgated by
Marxists and Keynesians. Prices of any good *fall* to the market-clearing rate in an environment free from state-sponsored violence
and coersion. If the good in question falls below its cost of production, the enterpreneur goes out of business or finds something
else to do. In a credit-money regime some sectors can become overinvested in, say telecom, internet, semiconductors. The cost of
production is masked for a while by artifically low interest rates (below the originary rate).
cf for example *Human Action* pp272
www.mises.org
Forrest
-- Forrest Bishop Chairman, Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering www.iase.cc
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