Re: capitalist religion (was: NANO: _Forbes_ cover story)

From: Randy Smith (randysmith101@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jul 18 2001 - 12:11:10 MDT



>From: Mike Lorrey
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
>To: extropians@extropy.org
>Subject: Re: capitalist religion (was: NANO: _Forbes_ cover story)
>Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:22:14 -0400
>
>Miriam English wrote:
> >
> > At 11:39 AM 17/07/2001 -0400, Mitchell, Jerry (3337) wrote:
> > >I don't care what your situation is. I don't care if your suffering from a
> > >mutant strain of cancer X and your about to melt into a pile of goo unless
> > >someone buys you a 10 cent aspirin. You DO NOT have the right to take other
> > >peoples property (or have the government take it for you). You must rely on
> > >voluntary contributions and charity if you want to be moral.
> >
> > OK... I would have said this a little differently, but let's take your
> > example. It reduces to: A person's right to life is dwarfed by another
> > person's right to wealth. Huh?!?
> >
> > You can see how silly this line gets. This will happen anytime you try to
> > talk about morality in terms of absolutes. This is exactly what religions do.
>
>Miriam, it is quite simple: what IS wealth? What IS money? It is a
>symbol of value added by labor. Every dollar in the world represents
>time from someone's life spent sweating their butt when they could have
>been smelling the roses. Some people's ideas, decisions, and leadership
>skills are immensely valuable, so some people make more money than
>others.
>
>So the question is: in a society that abhors slavery, what is the
>rationale for confiscating the labor of free individuals? I have yet to
>hear anyone come up with an explaination why enslaving 100% of the
>population 10% of the time is any less morally abhorrent than enslaving
>10% of the people 100% of the time. If you can come up with a morally
>and logically consistent answer to this, I am all ears. Nobody else has
>to date.

I prefer to see govt as management running a jointly owned place of business --  the USA (england etc).  People vote for the management much as stockholders vote for management.

What is the rationale for the the management of this place of business throwing-out/fining  some owner who refuses to pay his share of  maintenance fees? Same thing, etc....

You may well argue that the fees are misspent; no doubt there is such in any large corporation; but if you don't like the situation, you can leave (or try to change it).

Slaves can't leave; they are chained. Taxpayers who don't like the maintenance fees, can leave....no chains!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

>

>In a socialist society of any degree (social democracy or communist
>totalitarian), the most productive individuals pay the largest
>percentage of their labor to be given in services to the least
>productive members, who contribute little or nothing to the services of
>the whole. This may work fine in a family, which is an entirely
>voluntary proposition for the productive members to engage in, but this
>family economy cannot be extrapolated to society as a whole without
>immense coersion by the force of the state, and therefore, is engaging
>in slavery.
>
>I hear this 'it's for the children' excuse all the time, and I see
>parents whining all the time irrationally "I didn't ask to be a parent"
>(totally ignoring, of course, of the causal factors involved), and
>expecting that I pay through income, property, sales, and other taxes,
>for the cost of their stupidity. Guess what? I CAN say 'I didn't ask to
>be a parent', because I'm not in the biological sense, but in the
>economic sense, I sure am expected to be. Any attempt I make at avoiding
>paying 'my fair share' is looked on with scorn, jealousy, and hate,
>despite the fact that it should be I who has those feelings, and justly.
>Just HOW do you justify my enslavement?

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