From: Ian Goddard (igoddard@erols.com)
Date: Tue Nov 05 1996 - 02:58:04 MST
At 01:30 AM 11/5/96 -0500, Suresh Naidu wrote:
> People with money do not neccessarily get it from the majority of people.
IAN: Political candidates do not necessarily get votes from
the majority. But, that's not a case against democracy.
> Do you think the majority of people want to pay for sonic toothbrushes?
> Only the rich do.
IAN: That's what they once said about regular toothbrushes. Because
those people didn't stop laissez-faire capitalism then, now even the
"poor" can afford toothbrushes. If we don't stop capitalism now,
the same thing will happen again.
> You have more ballots than most people. If you become rich enough, it
> doesn't matter what other people think, you can impose your will on them.
IAN: If people share your fear, nobody will get that many votes.
They can only "impose their will" once they start to buy up all the
land. Buying off and then growing the govt is the logical course
to take, and the most effective pretext for growth is socialism.
So the logical course is anti-socailism, or laissez faire.
> That's what I think will happen with unrestrained capitalism. You will
> either get an [1] dictatorial oligarchy with more money than everybody
> else, or you willget a traditional [2] Marxist revolution type thing. I
> don't like either ofthose things.
IAN: Your saying that capitalism will lead to either [1] socialism
or [2] socialism so we would be better off with socialism.
The fact is that both varieties of socialism you fear -- both
rule by a central cabal -- are achieved only by means antithetical
to capitalism, so there is a clear path: laissez faire.
> Going back through the posts I think it was you who dropped off the
> argument.
IAN: Your argument that no central planner is needed because people
will "keep tabs on each other" was the last point I saw you make.
It could work only in one small community where each person
could visually inspect the wealth of their neighbors, and
hold them to task for any evidence of more wealth than average.
I explained several other reasons why this is untenable and
am not aware of your counter to those points. Since it
seems you are, you could forward it to me if you like.
> Why is an utopia illogical?
IAN: If its goal -- equalization of wealth -- violate it's
tenants -- liberty -- as in the case of "anarcho-socialism,"
then it's illogical.
> I'm advocating voluntary socialism, pretty much. No I can't
> impose this by force, because that's just not right.
IAN: So you disagree with Chomsky when we says we need the federal govt?
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