From: Alexander Sheppard (alexandersheppard@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Nov 22 2002 - 11:56:46 MST
>Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 21:31:55 +0100
>From: Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se>
>Subject: Re: Coercion
>A system were people were not rewarded according to how valued
>their work was would be far more unjust, and also act as a disincentive
>of doing good stuff since you would be just as rewarded as the one who
>didn't.
Well, I think this viewpoint is actually very anti-libertarian, because it
presupposes that other people have the right to determine for a person who
is "good stuff" by imposing a system of material rewards and punishments. I
have no idea why anyone else should be given this right, and in the worst
case, where you have one person imposing a very brutal system of rewards and
punishments, that's just dictatorship. I think that there ought be a free
flow of resources in a society, so that people can decide for themselves
what is "good stuff".
>I think it is important to be careful with the word 'coercion'. The
>original marxist definition was so wide that it said that anything done
>due to external threats, rewards or punishments was coerced.
Well, I don't see this as anything which should be ascribed exclusively to
Marx, as far as I can see, this is the definition of coercion. I mean, if
you're getting threatened with starvation if you don't do something, that's
clearly coercion or homelessness if you don't obey someone, that's clearly
coercion. Those are pretty universal human values, and beyond them I think
to an increasing extent, how much something is coercion depends on the
values of the individual considered. Personally, I don't really care about
things like that all that much--I'd settle for any place, pretty much, as
long as I could store my stuff in it, and that will become increasingly easy
as paper and books become totally online.
If you can brainwash people into believing valuing totally inane things,
though, you can use that to exert power over them if you control thier
access. Thus, "commercialism"...
_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:19 MST