Morris Dovey wrote:
Tim Daneliuk (in ) said:
| Renata wrote:
|
|| Just a short reply to some of your comments (I wanna get outta
|| here)...
||
|| On 07 Oct 2005 10:15:58 EDT, Tim Daneliuk
|| wrote:
||
||| Renata wrote:
|||
|||| What's your proposal for educatin' the populace, pray tell?
|||
||| Why do I have to have one? I don't have a proposal for instilling
||| religion in everyone else's children. I don't have a proposal for
||| clothing everyone else's children. I don't have a proposal for
||| inflicting particular personal values on everyone else's chidren.
||| These, and a host of other things, are the job of the *parents*
||| not a meddlesome program of public theft and wealth
||| redistribution. Government as an instrument of education is
||| analogous to having Michael Jackson run a day-camp for 12 year
||| old boys.
||
|| Education is the responsibility of parents only as far as making
|| sure the kids get a good one. Most parents aren't gonna be
|| capable, have
|
| That's a lovely assertion. Now justify why it's OK to raid
| one man's wallet and make him pay for another man's children's
| education. It's theft plain and simple.
Individual and group survival is enhanced in proportion to the extent
of knowledge and skills held by the individual and the group(s) of
which that individual is a part.
So is having a single strong-man dictator to make decisions that
keep society more efficient. If utility is your moral justification,
you can justify almost anything.
All societies and cultures of which I'm aware make demands on members'
resources. In this society one of those demands is for the resources
At the implied point of a gun ..
to imbue the largest possible number of young people with knowledge
and skills that (we hope) will ensure their (and our) survival.
Yes, we've heard many versions of this befo "From each according to
his ability, to each according to his need". But it doesn't work -
It just creates a new ruling class with lots of serfs to support them.
*Voluntary* coooperation, however, has been demonstrated to work
far better for the preservation of society as a whole and the
individiual in particular. I have existence proofs that the two
assertions above are true.
It's theft only to those members of society who feel their personal
aims are more important than the survival of other members or of the
society itself.
No. It is theft anytime force or the threat of force is required
to extract the wealth - for example the threat of being jailed for not
paying for someone else's children to go to school. You, if you feel
diffently, are always free to support Other People's Children with
voluntary donations of your own wealth.
For such individuals, there is an easy remedy: they can remove
themselves from that society and refuse (or be denied) any and all all
of the benefits derived from the contributions of the willing members.
I completely agree - you should not be obliged to make an unwilling
contribution. The problem is - where can you go?
The problem is that the US *used* be an alternative. It's use
of government force was constrained to that little necessary to
preserve individual liberty fairly for all. Now, though, it
has become increasingly collectivized to the point where most
people don't even question the morality of using the force of
government to educate, build levees, and otherwise rescue people
from their own poor choices.
| Oh ... never mind. Let's not go there. Besides,
| I've already seen that movie. It's called "collectivism" and
| was responsible for untold human misery over history ...
You might have come in late to that movie. There was an important
point that you missed: in collectivism, your contribution is 100% of
It *became* that at some point. But most all the forms of collectivism -
Socialism, Communism, Nazism - started out taking something less than
all and migrated towards the full taking over time (because the
economics of these system is degenerate and unsustainable without
force).
everything. In extreme cases, that "everything" can include your
personal survival.
But it does offer an interesting insight: Groups that fail to provide
for survival of the individual generally don't survive as groups.
That's perhaps the inevitable case in the long-run. But we a long
and studied history on this planet of collectivist systems that
enabled the few at a fairly horrid cost to the individual over
very long periods of time. These would include monarchies, dictatorships,
theocracies, and pure rule-by-force. While they all eventually have
their sunset they do a lot of damage in the mean time.
Hmm...
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html
--
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Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/