From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!houxm!houxa!houxi!hou5d!hou5a!hou5e!mat Newsgroups: net.politics Title: Re: hey - (nf) Article-I.D.: hou5e.229 Posted: Sun Feb 20 00:50:41 1983 Received: Mon Feb 21 02:13:49 1983 References: brunix.1610 In defense of socialism over capitalism, Graeme Hirst says ``How can an economy based on the `profit motive' possibly be considered ethical''. Let me ask this: How can an economy in which you are called upon with force of law to labor without having the right to own or take value from your lobors be considered ethical. If we say that the means of production are owned by the state, what happens to patents, etc. How can a person better his state if he feels it needs to be bettered when his work will be used to support someone whom the state feels needs to be bettered? Usually the someone turns out to be either those who refuse (within the loopholes in the system) to work or those who don't need anything more in the first place, that is the managers running the state. When an activity becomes unprofitable, private business gets out. Or private business finds a better way. In a socialist state, dverybody pays to keep the unprofitable activity alive. Look at the shipbuilding industries in the UK. Socialist gevernments usually end up being run by Labor organizations. A few days age, Richard Trumka of the United Mine Workers told a Congressional Committee that ''min workers don't want to be retrained. They want to work in the mines``. So mine workers jobs are subsidized, other jobs that society and the economy need aren't done, and we all suffer. Except, curiously, for Richard Trumka, who retains his power base, and the income form (oops, from) the union dues being paid by the UMA members, and being taken, by Federal law, out of workers paycheck's by their employers for direct payment to Trumka's organization. The moral: Be very suspicious of Utopia. Someone probably will be collecting admission, and someone else will be collecting taxes once you get There. hou5e!mat Mark Terribile