From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Date: Thu Sep 11 1997 - 01:27:36 MDT
> > So today's poor are richer than yesterday's poor. That's the point.
>
> That is still quite contradictory. The proper way to view this may be stated
> as: the standard of living has been raised. No one can convince me that the
> "poor" ( which in common semantics means a life without proper shelter,
> medical care and adequate food) give a damn if we chose to think...
I never said that /they/ give a damn. Self-perception is not reality.
What's "proper"? "adequate"? Why is a recent invention like medical
care considered a necessity rather than a nifty new product that lots
of people like? Name a single person in the US who does not have more
than suficient food available to him at no cost. If you keep redefining
"poor" whenever everyone's life gets better, then there will always be
poor by definition--and 100 years from now poor people will have to
live in old unsafe wooden houses and drive along the ground in antique
cars and will have to have cheap plastic glasses instead of corneal
implants, and have to suffer all kinds of indignities by the standards
of that day. And they will live like the kings of today, just as
today's poor have benefits today that the rich of 1897 didn't.
> [to deny their] experience of starving to death is denial of the
> worst sort, and IMO downright mean.
No one is denying suffering. What we are denying is what some
claim (without evidence) to be its cause. Motives don't count;
results count. No rational man gives a damn how much anyone
cares; what matters is what can be accomplished; how can real
problems be solved and real people helped--in real, measurable
terms, not only in their self-perceived delusions. The obvious,
measurable, demonstrated fact so clear to most of us here that
we rarely bother to argue it, is that the free market throughout
history has helped more people, solved more problems, and made
more of a difference in people's lives than any feel-good
rhetoric or popular politician ever has. Capitalism feeds people;
socialism kiils them. That's the plain facts, and it is those
who deny /that/ who will be the cause of the next generations
suffering, no matter how loudly they proclaim their empathy.
Fuck empathy. If you want to help humanity, get a job.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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