From: Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Nov 14 1998 - 16:47:38 MST
At 09:27 AM 11/13/98 -0700, Dick.Gray@bull.com wrote:
>> Amazing! You have just reinvented Keynes, which is a step forward over
>> some of the gung-ho I've-got-mine-fuck-you-Jack rhetoric on this list.
>Damien, can you quote an example of such rhetoric? I don't recall any.
I don't even need to search back beyond today's postings. Regard this:
< We should immediatley eliminate any
government spending in education and reduce taxes - possibly selling
off all government education related resources and refunding the money
to tax payers. >
I'm sure the guy who posted that suggestion is a generous and lovable
person with the best intentions, whose proposal is grounded in a theory of
economics rather than a simple distaste for helping provision the
commonweal. So `fuck you, Jack' might sound like a very unfair and
offensive way to sum up what he's written. But in practice, I think that's
what it amounts to.
The technological basis for our wealthy western societies certainly derives
from the basic universal education which the community insists upon
(however clumsily it's implemented) and which we all share in paying for.
So does the minimal open-mindedness and tolerance for diversity that keeps
us all from maiming each other. Any system can be skimmed or abused, but
literally eliminating state schooling would impose the most dire
consequences on the children of the poor and feckless, and then a few years
later on all of us as we grow an ignorant and resentful underclass.
>you can't imagine how anyone could honorably differ with you on the issue
It's true that I lack empathy for the economic doctrines often assumed
here, which appear to wish out of existence the long, brutal and bloody
stand-over history of owners against workers that created the substructure
for present hierarchies of wealth. If anyone finds this hard to believe,
let alone to square with the bizarre mythology of Ayn Rand, I diffidently
suggest a glance at some history books along the lines of THE COMMON
PEOPLE, by G. D. H. Cole and Raymond Postgate.
For every brilliant innovator who multiplied humanity's common wealth, and
maybe got richer doing it, there was at least one ruthless extorter backed
by thugs with sticks or guns who kept in line the people doing the
productive work in farms or factories, quite often with the connivance or
armed support of law and government. (But this sort of discussion is
already in breach of the rules of this list, so I'll retire.)
Damien Broderick
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