Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site qantel.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!petsd!pesnta!hplabs!qantel!gabor From: gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Newsflash! [JoSH on Socialists] Message-ID: <513@qantel.UUCP> Date: Fri, 23-Aug-85 03:40:29 EDT Article-I.D.: qantel.513 Posted: Fri Aug 23 03:40:29 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 01:55:16 EDT References: <955@umcp-cs.UUCP> <1110@umcp-cs.UUCP> Reply-To: gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642) Distribution: na Organization: MDS Qantel, Hayward, CA Lines: 27 Keywords: not so fast One quick and obvious comment on JoSH's critique of socialist thought using the extended metaphor of the social engineer operating on society 'from the outside', adjusting or discarding parts of the machinery. The metaphor is apt and I won't argue with it but it sounds strange coming from a libertarian who is proposing radical reforms which would mean adjusting and discarding a great deal and walking over a great many people. [I am not talking about Libertaria now but the means of getting there from here.] Take the dismantling of the welfare state, for example. Your starting point is a society in which around one third of all households receive a part of their income from government sources. As a matter of political reality, such payments represent a form of property right no less real than the income from bonds inherited from a rich uncle. This political reality will not disappear through rational argument about legitimacy, force and fraud - or by convincing the deluded owners of these phantom property rights that they are bound to be better off when the experiment is finished. You can only make it disappear through the very same process of social engineering that you find so abhorrent in socialists. Such social engineering would have to be underpinned by systemic arguments treating society as a whole, just as the dreaded socialist doctrines do. So if systemic thinking and a propensity for social surgery are inadmissible then socialists and libertarians are equally guilty of thought-crime. ----- Gabor Fencsik {ihnp4,dual,hplabs,intelca}!qantel!gabor