From: John Blanco-Losada (jbl@clark.net)
Date: Wed Jun 25 1997 - 12:41:58 MDT
On 6/24/97 8:13 PM, Abraham Moses Genen wrote:
>At the unfortunate risk of being disagreable I have to state that in the
>real world coercion has very little to do with drafting and enacting
>legislation.
>Legislation is, in the first instance, not usually written by politicians.
(snip)
>Where
>on occasion coercion does take place, it is usually at the bureaucratic
>level in attemping to induce compliance from those whose job it is to
>enforce the statutes or regulations that they had no part in creating and
>were usually not consulted about.
Sorry, but I can't let you off so easily.
1) Legislators and their staffs are paid from funds which are coerced by
the taxpayers. So the very act of legislating, as it is currently
practiced in most locations, has everything to do with coercion and would
be impossible _without_ coercion. (Obviously this does does not include
legislators who work for free, or who are funded [legally] from other
non-coercive sources, but I'm not aware that such people exist.)
2) In the United States, the Executive branch is prohibited by the
Constitution from making laws. Therefore, if legislators didn't write
laws, bureaucrats wouldn't have regulations to enforce. So again,
legislators play a crucial role in the coercive cycle of politics.
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John Blanco-Losada "You must be the change
jbl@clark.net you wish to see
http://www.clark.net/pub/jbl/jbl.html in the world." - M. Gandhi
Member, Extropy Institute "Spearhead of the Transhumanist Movement"
http://www.extropy.org
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