-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Lorrey <retroman@together.net>
>
>Samael wrote:
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Terry Donaghe <tdonaghe@yahoo.com>
>> To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
>> Date: 10 December 1998 14:40
>> Subject: Re: The Education Function
>>
>> >
>> >I'm working on a more comprehensive rebuttal, but first, I want to say
>> >that the entire premise of socialism is based on violence directed at
>> >the individual. When a government steals money earned by a worker, it
>> >is practicing a form of violence.
>>
>> I dispute that the money is yours in the first place.
>>
>> There are three quotes that I find very useful:
>>
>> 1) Property is freedom.
>> Capitalist view - Having property means you can support yourself.
>>
>> 2) Property is theft.
>> Communist view - owning anything means you are stealing from everyone -
as
>> in a natural state nothing is owned by anyone.
>>
>> 3) Property is impossible.
>> Scientific view: 'Property' is just a term applied to objects that you do
>> not wish anyone else to take away from you. It doesn't have an intinsic
>> meaning.
>>
>
>Hardly. Property is a means of storing work.
Amongst other things yes. If it was a perfect method of storing work, diamonds would be worth almost nothing, you wouldn't be able to steal it and some people wouldn't be mind-numbingly rich just because they accidentally settled above an oil field.
If you find it morally wrong to
>enslave me, then you must recognise that my work belongs to me (as a
socialist
>you must recognise that labor should control the means of production).
I don't beleive that at all. As I have pointed out numerous times, I believe in a 10% socialist 90% capitalist model of society. If people believed slightly less in extremes and realised that any model of society breaks down at extremes, we might just get onb a little better.
>I can
>exchange my labor for resources. Those resources now belong to me, they are
my
>property.
Unless of course they were stolen resources that you exchanged your work for. In which case they still belong to the original owner, yes?
>Property exists and has meaning.
Please state why, using scientific terms.
Samael