Tim Daneliuk (in ) said:

| 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 ..

I've never seen this - perhaps I live in a "quieter" neighborhood.
Come to think of it, I haven't even /heard/ shots fired. I'm pretty
sure I'd have noticed...

People here have been fairly rational in *voting* school bond issues
up and down. Given that we've voted for additional funding fairly
frequently, I'd have to conclude that people here don't generally feel
as you do.

I spent some time in Florida some years back. People there *voted*
"no" more frequently than here - and the quality of education provided
seemed seriously lacking. So lacking, in fact, that we moved back to
Minnesota where we felt our kids would receive a higher quality
education.

|| 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.

Non-sequitur. Not sure what you were responding to here.

|| 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.

Thanks for your permission. I do exactly that every time I pay a tax.

Although my kids are long out of school I earnestly want for present
and future students to have the best education possible. Others
contributed to financing my education and, in turn, my kids
education - for which I'm grateful. I could hardly consider myself an
ethical person if I denied (or even just begrudged) that same help to
others. YMMV.

|| 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.

All set in motion with funding voted by elected representatives who
presumably hope to be re-elected. Just out of curiosity, have you made
your views clear to /your/ elected representatives and made them
understand that you will work to get them voted out of office if they
continue to fund education, public works, and disaster relief?

||| 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).

Bingo!

|| 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.

That's very true. The only preventive that seems to work is a
well-educated population capable of recognizing past mistakes and with
the intellectual tools to spot new ones - with the courage to use
every power at their disposal to prevent/stop tyranny before
irreparable damage is done.

And you begrudge the cost of this learning that Jefferson called
"informing their discretion"?

I'm done with this thread.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html