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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.

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Gabor Fencsik               {ihnp4,dual,hplabs,intelca}!qantel!gabor