From: nobody@replay.com (Anonymous)
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 02:47:28 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Workers Paradise. /Political rant.
In-Reply-To: <ae61f6ec05021004f2e5@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <199609161427.QAA05854@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Jim McCoy wrote:

> Anonymous wrote:
> >Tim May wrote:
> >
> >> The thing about _traditional_ charity, of the religious or community sort,
> >> was that it was not treated as an "entitlement," as something the resentful
> >> masses could "demand" as part of their "human rights."
> >
> >   There's no substantial difference between their resentful whining about
> >their rights and your resentful whining about your rights - except maybe
> >that you whine more.
> 
> Actually there is a fundemental difference:  what Tim demands is the
> right to be left alone and to be free from exernal influence as long
> as what he is doing does not directly hurt another, what "they" demand
> is to be taken care of by others because they either cannot or choose not
> to take care of themselves.  The latter requires that someone productive
> (like Tim) be forced to take care of them through taxation or otherwise
> at gunpoint.

   Tim is not productive. He *was* productive, but not anymore; his wealth
might be productive in some indirect way, but it it certainly severable
from him. He demands to be left alone by certain socio-economic
apparatuses (socialized welfare) but is quite content to rely on the
existence of other such apparatuses (investment entities, banks). Whether
*that* is "hypocritical" doesn't interest me; I merely pointed out that he
is constantly and resentfully whining about his own "rights" and about
others' lack thereof--in that regard, he's of a kind with the people he is
forever griping about.

> In most societies this is considered the difference between a child and
> an adult...

   This is a silly statement of the kind often made by people who have no
solid grasp of history or social organization: most societies that
radically differ from our own in their ways of maintaining/supervising
their members (successful or not) have apparatuses so invasive and
arbitrary that, in comparison, the IRS and assorted other bureaucracies
look pretty benign.