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From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <1848@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Dec-84 00:55:43 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.1848
Posted: Fri Dec  7 00:55:43 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Dec-84 03:42:38 EST
Lines: 43
Nf-ID: #R:dciem:-122300:inmet:7800200:000:2454
Nf-From: inmet!nrh    Nov 28 20:53:00 1984

>***** inmet:net.politics / dciem!mmt /  4:49 am  Nov 28, 1984
>Consider:  All wealth consists of re-structuring of materials, most
>of which cannot be done by any one individual.  Without teaching, each
>individual has to be an inventor of every process used.  Taeching proceeds
>by example, by language, and is the passing on of the combined
>discoveries of society.  It is not the transmission of one person's
>knowledge to another, but the funnelling of many inventions through
>many teachers.  Suppose that our learner now has learned all the arts
>and crafts.  How then does he produce an automobile? Does he build
>steam-shovels to dig the ore?  Not at all.  Teams of other people provide
>the ore to other teams who turn it into steel ....  No wealth can be
>created in the absence of society, whatever the means used to persuade
>people to give you what you personally want to have.
>

Even if society is the source of SOME wealth (which I'm happy to concede)
it doesn't follow that you must then "pay" society.  In particular, most
people learn things from parents, and from schools paid for by parents.
Parents in turn do not (ordinarily) demand that you devote your life to 
paying them back -- the learning and the schooling were GIFTS from them,
they do not EXPECT payment.  

My point was that it is wrong to think that, because you find yourself
with schooling, education, and a place to live as you grew up, it means
that you must tally up these costs, and then pay someone back for them.
It is also wrong to think that all wealth you may create is owed to some
agent of society because "society" conferred such immense benefits on you.

Society did so freely, mostly without stating any future price for your
schooling, housing, etc.  That "society" may hope to collect benefits
from your accomplishments given these tools does not make GOVERNMENT
correct in demanding money "as the agent of society".

Remember, you can't just go to some building
somewhere and find the central source of "society", you must consider
the actions of individuals here.  When I say that "society" fed you,
I'm really talking (ordinarily) about one's parents, one's friends,
the teacher who gave a little extra time. These people did what they
did freely -- "society" is an abstraction meant to avoid the
complexities of dealing with the myriad individual choices, but breaks
down when one talks about "the motives" of society, or debts owed to
"society".