Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!gauss.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!klaatu.rutgers.edu!josh
From: josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Relevance of Daiell's postings
Message-ID: 
Date: 1 Dec 88 22:23:47 GMT
References: <799.23934284@isishq.FIDONET.ORG>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 68


     Doug Thompson writes:
     e>From: eric@snark.UUCP 

     e>Nevertheless, he has hold of a basic moral truth that you, with all your 
     e>sophistication, are still evading. There is no 'public money'; there is 
     e>only stolen or extorted private money, and advocating *more* tax-funded 
     e>boondoggles makes one accessory before the fact to more crime. 

    Hmmm. I guess that means there is no "public" either? Does that 
    mean that there is no "family money", only stolen or extorted 
    private money? Does that mean my church has no "church money", 
    only stolen or extorted private money? 

There *is* a significant difference between a nation-state and a 
family, and it is the blindness to this difference that is the 
vital essence of the garden of misconceptions Doug is heir to.

The the ultimate producers of wealth in a family *are* the parents.
Mommy and Daddy do *not* derive their income from taxing the kids;
they have outside jobs.  Gifts to the kids are true gifts, not
stolen goods as in the case of "public" bounty.

Churches have "church money" because the private money they receive
is freely and uncoercedly donated.  

There is, of course, true public money.  Some $100 million is given
gratis to the government every year.  However, it disappears in the
noise since the government steals ten thousand times as much in the
same period.

     There obviously is a thing called a "public",

Oh, absolutely.  There are also such things as theives, rapists,
and murderers.  Just because one admits the existance, at some
level of abstraction, of a collective entity, does not make it
moral for that entity to violate the rights of individuals.

The fact that the "public" exists does not imply that individuals
do not exist!

                  ... and it also 
    obviously has democratic decision-making apparatus through which 
    such things as national defense and welfare are funded by the 
    people, for the people. Now I suppose you think welfare and 
    defence should be left to the free market too? 

Try this insight on for size:  The political and the economic
systems are *both* simply collective decision-making mechanisms.
Furthermore, a wide variety of other systems is available.
Which should be used for what applications is *not* properly
a matter of ideological reflexology...

    And they say that the left is unrealistic . . .   

...left, right, populist, *or* libertarian.

   {lots of heart-rending stuff about "nasty, brutish, and short"}

Political science is still in its alchemy stage.  All systems,
from anarcho-capitalistic to pure communism, are built on a
framework of mutually agreed-to rights and privileges.  

If poli-sci had advanced as fast as comp-sci in the 20th century,
we'd be living in a utopia.  Question for the group:
Why hasn't it?

--JoSH