From: Holger Wagner (Holger.Wagner@lrz-muenchen.de)
Date: Mon Jan 12 1998 - 11:54:27 MST
Erik Moeller wrote:
[...]
>
> In Germany, a politician from the Social Democratic Party recently suggested
> to raise a minimum tax for
> millionaires. Of course this half-hearted proposal will never be realized. But
> it showed that millionaires and
> the big industry which bores them do not have to pay a single D-Mark if their
> tax advisors are good enough.
> Even the thousands of students who protest against the low funds flowing into
> education now use the
> slogan "Tax millionaires". Futile, of course.
SOME students. Talking of Munich, those students belong to a political
group called "Linksruck" who are the worst communists I have ever
encountered. Unfortunately, those people are a lot better organized than
individuals like me, which has the effect that their voice is heard
louder than those of many other students who don't particularly agree
with what those people say ("Tax millionaires" is just the "top of the
iceberg"...)
I thought those "protests" were an interesting example of Spontanuous
Order and Intelligent Technology (at least if you look at them from the
right perspective):
Spontanuous Order: there were a lot of different things that had to be
done - organization (great challenge), public relations (the press was
really really bad at the beginning, it got better after 2 weeks), events
and so on. For these tasks, groups from different institutes gathered
and some did a really good job (we even had a daily "newspaper")
Intelligent Technology: well, unfortunately, people just are not really
connected to the internet. Still, we managed to pull some of the
coordination and information onto the internet, providing mailing-lists
and a website (updated hourly). This did have quite a positive effect
(many interested people managed to get in contact with others, many
unclear points could be discussed etc). Another thing that helped a lot
were cellular phones (in that situation, you hardly ever are reachable
via phone if you don't have that) - again, the problem was that too few
people have that.
Oh, I almost forgot Dynamic Optimism: without it, you wouldn't even care
to start anything like that ;-)
However much it may have changed the world - I took great personal
profit by the learning experience (which leads us to Self
Transformation, right?)
Have fun!
later,
Holger
-- o---------------------------------------------------------------o | "That's the funny thing about memories, isn't it? We are not | | what we remember of ourselves, we are what people say we are. | | They project upon us their convictions - we are nothing but | | blank screens." +$+ Trevor Goodchild in "Aeon Flux" | \_______________________o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| "Best do it so" -?- \ mailto:Holger.Wagner@lrz-muenchen.de | ! http://www.extropy.org ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^% PGP-Fingerprint: BD 78 AE 5A AD 20 91 AC E6 77 A8 B4 12 D1 9C 39
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