From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Tue Nov 10 1998 - 15:45:58 MST
Bernard Hughes wrote:
> Michael Lorrey wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Nah, we've just gotten a lot more subscribers from Europe, New Zealand and
> > Australia. Consequently, the number of people with socialist leanings has
> > gone up. They seem to have this quirky notion that you can make everything
> > equal for everyone without stealing anything from anybody, or annoying anyone
> >
>
> I say, that's a bit of an exaggeration, what?
Just trying to concatenate the general gist of the socialist ethic.
> To caricature the American view,
> each person magically acquires all that they have by entirely by their own
> efforts, and at some point begin trading in the great market with the goods so
> acquired.
Trading labor to add value to raw resources or rough goods is the basis of trade
under any system. Socialism merely says that the consumer has no voice in the market,
and that the owner of property has no say in the use of that property, if they are
allowed to keep that property.
>
>
> Those with more of a sense of history might think much of what you posses is a
> gift from the Past, (e.g. language, culture, technology), and feel moved to
> continue that trade into the future. I don't see any conflict in this with the
> Extropian Principles as posted by Max.
But who decides? Also, socialism does not care about trading into the future, it
wishes to squander present day resources by taking them away from those who use them
most efficiently and giveing them to those who are least efficient with them. Its a
lateral, not a forward thinking philosophy.
>
>
> Since I believe in maximizing freedom of the individual, I wouldn't want to
> force trading between the past and the future on others. I'm hopeful than
> self-replicating systems and the like will enable total individualists to go
> their own way, and various forms of collective association association to
> flourish. For me, the negative in Socialism is the coercion of those who don't
> desire to redistribute any of their wealth, not the desire to take part in a
> "gift culture" as well as a money market one.
Thats what many Americans like so much about our own system. Did you know that
Americans give a higher percentage ( thats percentage, not dollar amount) of their
per capita income to charitable use than any other country in the world. Yeah, we are
just a buncha greedy bastids. We're so bad, thinking that we might know what to do
with our own money better than some government bureaucrat.
Mike Lorrey
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