From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Oct 23 2002 - 02:03:26 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
>
>> Charles,
>> As an intelligent and educated person you have probably heard of
>> the saying that if you hear the thunder of pounding hooves and it is
>> North America then you should expect horses not zebra.
>> Now if we are talking about the deaths of American Indians and
>> we say "you" killed them most folks know we are talking about people
>> of European descent not the Asians nor the Africans. As we are not
>> trying to demand reparations nor asking any one person to feel guilt a
>> general term is all that is demanded.
>
>
> There is no problem with levels of abstraction if the levels are
> reasonable well-defined and grounded. Perfect definition and grounding
> is not practical in many cases though and over-insistence on such leaves
> too many important areas undiscussable. There is a balance.
>
>> But I had a tactical reason for suggesting that we stay at lower
>> levels of abstraction. The socialists have been past masters at
>> sounding wonderful when taken at the highly abstract level -- it is
>> the concrete level where they get into trouble. On the other hand I
>> believe that capitalism has proven just the opposite.
>
>
> Many things are barely understandable at all, or at least not very
> effectively understood if restricted to the concrete and perhap one
> level up.
>
>> At the abstract level they are humanitarians that love all
>> mankind and wish to create a "Heaven on Earth."
>
>
> Count me among them! I plan to do it in real time.
>
>> At the concrete level they all too often have difficulty conducting a
>> two car funeral and ruin the lives of the people that are trapped in
>> the societies they run. In fact they have a tendency to let a thug to
>> get in charge and to stuff the Gulags with prisoners to the point they
>> have to conduct executions just to clear out space for the newcomers.
>
>
> That is worth about as much as most over-generalizations.
>
>> I am well aware there are possibly hundreds of rabbit paths in
>> this briar patch of a discussion we are having but my chief concern is
>> any contention that socialism is a respectable political theory. Two
>> hundred years of history has shown over and over that socialism is not
>> respectable.
>> Ron h.
>
>
> Personally I have a problem with still arguing capitalism vs. socialism
> as if those were particular valid categories or all that exclusive or
> that the two exhaust the possibilities.
>
> More will happen in terms of human capabilities and degrees of freedom
> in the next 10-20 years than in the last 200 years. Don't you think it
> might be a little limiting to reason as if the last 200 years are a
> valid guide to a radically different time and set of capabilities and
> possibilities? Rehashing the same old debates strikes me as less than
> useful.
>
Well, while I think there is some truth in what I just said I
also think some of it is darn foolish. The "debate" was never
properly aired in the first place. Large measures of socialist
agenda have become accepted norm to the detriment of all of us.
Many of "our" government offices treat their clients not much
better than a Soviet ration line used to treat citizens.
Literally trillions of dollars of our money, yours and mine, are
mishandled and/or unauditable in the jungles of government
bureaucracy. Hundreds of billions in cash and goods simply
disappear into unexplained "budget adjustments". What we have
today sure as heck ain't capitalism or a free country.
- samantha
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