From: Alejandro Dubrovsky (s335984@student.uq.edu.au)
Date: Fri Apr 03 1998 - 12:39:40 MST
On Thu, 2 Apr 1998, John K Clark wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
> On Fri, 3 Apr 1998 Alejandro Dubrovsky <s335984@student.uq.edu.au> Wrote:
>
> >[Bill Gates killing a ten million people] depending on how much bill
> >wants to see those 10000000 people dead. Again, on the whim of a
> >dictator...
>
>
> Look, if Bill Gates ever develops an insane homicidal hatred of me then I'd
> be in a very uncomfortable situation in my system, yours, or any other.
not really, take away private property and Bill Gates's magical powers
dissolve into thin air.
> I think you're trying to hold advocates of Anarchy to an impossibly high
> standard, you want us to prove that evil acts would be impossible in such a
> world. Well I can't do that, but I think I can show that there would be more
> freedom, far fewer victimless crimes, and no murders committed on an
> industrial scale that we're all too familiar with.. Instead of dreaming up
> bizarre and unlikely scenarios involving murderous billionaires ask yourself
> how the holocaust or the inquisition could have possibly occurred in the
> world I describe.
>
I'm not trying to hold anarchists to anything. I consider myself
an anarchist, in the more traditional use of the word
(anarcho-socialists). I was just pointing out the, what i think are,
extensive simmilarities between the current system and PPA based
anarcho-capitalism as you described it, and the big power that one man
could wield over a large part of the population in this supposedly
decentralised system. The holocaust or the inquisition could just as well
happen as with the current nation-states, the main difference being that
the new megalomaniac's great quality would be having heaps of property. I
don't see the case i described of bill gates or some other billionaire of
trying to wipe a part of the population as any more far-fetched than that
of some german thinking that jews are evil and trying to wipe off that
portionof the population. Great wealth is not a certificate of sanity.
> By the way, last time I checked there were close to a billion Indians not
> 10 million
>
huh? what's that got to do with the price of fish? I wasn't trying to
say that bill gates wanted to wipe India off the planet, just that some
person with wealth y would want to do something disagreeable to x people
with income z, where x is very large but y > x*z, and him/her being able
to do this rather easily under the proposed system.
>
> >i don't see any PPA supporting the poor people since they have
> >nothing to gain from this, apart from forced labor and slavery.
>
>
> If this sort of thing bothers you then pick a PPA that does a lot of charity
> work. Of course if nobody wants to help these people then they're in deep
> trouble, but no worse than today. If you won't voluntarily help the poor why
> would you vote for a politician who makes you?
>
i am not going to support a democratic system in this argument since i
have very little sympathy for such a system.
>
> >Doing business with a PPA is voluntary as long as that PPA lets it
> >be a voluntary thing.
>
>
> A nation has a geographical area, so changing nations is nothing you can do
> lightly as it will change every aspect of your life. A PPA on the other hand
> has no geographical area, changing a PPA would be like changing your car
> insurance, you just pick up a telephone. A PPA that tried to prevent people
> from changing would have to go to war with all the other PPA's, for reasons I
> explained earlier it's unlikely it would win.
>
And for reasons i explained earlier it is very likely it WOULD win, or
more likely, that no war would occur,
or that if there was a war and it didn't then you wouldn't come out any
better. i've already stated it twice. check my response to Dan Fabulich's
posts.
> >>people who enjoy making money. Those kind of people are much safer
> >>to have in positions of power.
>
> >i would say that is exactly the kind of people that are in a
> >position of power right now. How many dictators are poor after their
> >time in government?
>
>
> It's meaningless to ask how much money Stalin had, his face was on the
> currency for goodness sake, he could have anything and everything that it was
> possible for the USSR to produce. Making money is a good and noble activity
> and the idea that Bill Gates had more power over peoples lives than Stalin
> is crazy.
>
i didn't claim that. Stalin is not exactly the average guy in a position
of power right now. That Bill Gates under PPA anarcho-capitalism (PPAAC?)
would have more influence than John Howard (Australia's PM, just in case)
has right now, i would say most definitely.
chau
Alejandro Dubrovsky
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