From: Miriam English (miriam@werple.net.au)
Date: Sun Aug 19 2001 - 20:25:39 MDT
Wow, Lee you just totally miss the point.
At 11:25 AM 19/08/2001 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
>Olga wrote
>
> > I wish the store managers who stayed up nights thinking about how they
> could
> > improve their supermarkets in order to beat the Safeway down the street
> > would also come up with some ideas about how best to treat farmworkers.
> >
> > I wish the "immense concentration of knowledge [taking] place in the minds
> > of a few people who have an enormous incentive to improve the quality
> of the
> > stores" would also develop some incentive to improve the quality of
> people's
> > lives - people who provide the basic foodstuff and products for their
> > stores.
>
>Well, as we say, "wishes don't make horses". What possible incentive
>would anyone have to lie awake at night thinking of the best way to
>treat farmworkers?
Ummm... try compassion? good sense? a desire to give a whole underclass a
chance to get in the race? to avoid future problems? to build goodwill
instead of hate and envy?
Did you even read the piece Olga posted? Cheryl and Ralph Broetje seem to
have found incentive... and many others undoubtedly would like to help but
are constrained by the financial system that you speak so highly of -- the
very one that you say airily will solve these problems. Olga points out so
nicely that it doesn't.
>I think that what is happening, Olga, is that you divine *your own*
>motivations, and find them quite pure. I agree. I am certain that
>you really do have the best interests of the farm workers in mind.
>But you don't lie awake thinking of it at night. Instead, just like
>the rest of us, you lie awake thinking of your own problems, and it
>is a horrible mistake to think that a great leader will do any
>differently.
I am sure you don't lie awake at night worrying about these sorts of things
Lee, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume that is true of all others. I,
for one, *do* lie awake at nights worrying about exactly these sorts of
things. How the hell are we going to get anywhere if we can't give fellow
humans a hand up out of the places they are stuck in? If we have an
enormous underclass when the spike arrives then they will hate us with a
fury. How will we be secure in immortality when there are people who can't
be certain of eating tomorrow? They would have nothing to lose in taking
everything from us. And in a strange way I almost feel they would be right
to do so.
I just know that many will rush to the defense here saying that the spike
will make technologies so accessible that poverty will be eliminated, but
poverty is only part of the problem, and the spike alone won't eliminate it
anyway. We have had the ability to distribute all human knowledge for free
to all the priveleged members of society for many years now, but powerful
financial pressures have prevented that from happening.
>So all of his wonderful speeches about "benefitting
>the people" are mainly power ploys to defeat his adversaries, gain
>power from the (ignorant) crowds, and ultimately work towards his
>own best interests.
What shit is this Lee?
Straw man. Very big straw man.
> > While supermarket customers' "body language, their shopping patterns, and
> > most of all, their buying habits" may indeed be worthy of a specialized
> > field of study, I'm afraid farmworkers' problems are all pretty much the
> > same:
> >
> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134331325_migrantkids19m.htm
>
>Yes, their problems *are* just the same. And your problems remain yours,
>and my problems remain mine.
Do you have children Lee? Of course kids don't need to be helped. They
should be abaondoned at birth. Their problems are theirs and yours are
yours. Heaven forbid that anybody help anybody else.
> > Nowhere is the need for children's programs more pressing than in this tiny
> > town, population 2,609, where 96 percent of children live in poverty.
>
>Here is the fatal urge. You read about some unfortunate situation such as
>this, and you want to DO SOMETHING. (Of course, it's really none of your
>business; you actually spend most of your time worrying about your own
>*local* problems.)
Oh, how terrible that anybody would consider helping anybody.
>Hence even if it means for a great leader, or the government, to TAKE
>IMMEDIATE ACTION BY SEIZING ALL ASSETS OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO HAVE MORE THAN
>THEY NEED, you have an immediate sympathy for something, so long as it
>solves the problem.
What is it that you have with this demon Lee??? This terrible, nasty straw
man that wants to come and seize all your assets. He has no place in this
discussion.
>Look at the words in that paragraph I snipped: the "need for children's
>programs", "96 percent of the children live in poverty".
>
>Well, all sorts of people everywhere in the world and all throughout
>history have **needs**. We must not focus on the so-called causes of
>poverty, but rather focus on how *anyone* ever escaped poverty. To find
>out how wealth is created in the first place, one must start with Adam
>Smith, or any thinker who really tries to get at root causes. Wealth was
>*never* created by taxing one sort of people and benevolently bestowing it
>on those who have *needs* by means of "programs".
Adam Smith never solved that problem. It remains in spite of many attempts
to put his beliefs into practice. He defined a narrow set of rules that
might work fine if we were motivated by money alone... but nobody has been
able to find that out because we aren't. Until we can formulate ways to
manage the *real* world we have to deal with a whole mess of practical
patches to fix a multitude of problems.
It is not clean and doesn't have the crystalline beauty of a simple rule,
but little by little humanity *is* rising to a level of intelligence and
tolerance through an incredibly complex set of checks and balances that
will make the spike possible. Selfishness alone won't do it.
Cheers,
- Miriam
---------=---------=---------=---------=---------=---------=------
Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape?
A. They are both purple... except for the elephant.
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Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au
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