From: Abraham Moses Genen (futurist@frontiernet.net)
Date: Wed Jun 25 1997 - 20:41:41 MDT
----------
From: John Blanco-Losada <jbl@clark.net>
To: Extropians <extropians@extropy.org>
Subject: Re: Anarcho Capitalism
Date: Wednesday, June 25, 1997 2:41 PM
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.
>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.
John Blanco-Losada commented:
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.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear John and other fellow Extropians,
There is a substantial doubt in my mind as to whether our tax system is a
legitimate form of coercion and whether it follows that all forms of
governmental action are therefore based on coercion.
The concept as stated seems far to simplistic to dignify except through
sophistry, and ignores the numerous -- and real -- contingency factors that
exist in the formulating policy and applying these contingencies to the
legislative process.
The contingency factors I refer to are the inputs involved in formulating
policy from the various interest groups. In many instances these interest
groups have legitimate needs.
Obviously, some interest groups are wholly self serving and have no
interests beyond their own selfish needs. In these instances a
counteractive filtering process takes place to take as many non-considered
factors under advisement in order to provide greater equity in the
formulation of a policy. Indeed, this does not always work the way we would
like.
No system is perfect. The object is to keep as open a mind as is possible
and encourage the development of an ever greater paradigm that can be
applied to the betterment of the human condition. Within such a framework
all things can be considered and integrated to the extent that they have a
constructive effect on an increasingly literate and slowly evolving
society.
A.M. Genen
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