From: Clay.Olbon@dynetics.com (Clay Olbon II)
Date: Sat, 18 May 1996 18:16:04 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Edited Edupage, 9 May 1996
Message-ID: <v01540b01adc0d10ee409@[193.239.225.200]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 1:32 PM 5/15/96, Jim McCoy wrote:
>There are two kinds of libertarians, those who hate the poor and those who
>don't.  I always seem to meet the former, I am beginning to suspect the
>latter don't exist.

I think there is a great deal of misunderstanding here.  I can speak for no
one other than myself, but I don't "hate the poor", nor do I feel no
compassion towards misfortunate people.  However, I have to be realistic -
I approach problems analytically, not emotionally.  My emotions tell me
that spending more money is a good thing.  My reason tells me that we have
"been there, done that" and it DOESN'T WORK.  After spending more than a
trillion $$ on the "War on Poverty" we are worse off than we were before.
Can anyone point to ANY evidence that this money was well spent?  If not,
then why should we spend more?  It is time to look for new solutions.


At 9:09 AM 5/15/96, Doug Hughes wrote:
>Where is somebody making less than $5000/year going to move to?
>(Answer: somewhere rural and poor).  Or, if you prefer, they can
>move into tax-payer subsidized housing? (I'd prefer not, thanks)

Why wouldn't your income change when you move?  In my area, you can make
over $6/hour working at McDonalds ($12K/year).  I know several people who
work two jobs.  I know of families (almost all immigrants BTW) that work
their tails off running small businesses.  It isn't about education, it is
about hard work.  Of course hard-work can help to get a good education.

also Doug Hughes:
>environment, lack of education, lack of money, lots of factors. Nobody
>is holding a gun to anybody's head saying "Don't Read". But improving
>literacy is a goal that needs to be undertaken. Do you not agree that
>low literacy is a bad thing and needs to be taken care of? If not, why
>not? Naturally, you can't force someone to read who doesn't want to.
>But, why, given a good learning environment and an inspiring teacher
>would you not want to?

So how do we go about makeing education better?  More money doesn't work,
having a net connection probably won't help, even having more computers
doesn't make a substantial difference.  It all comes down to the fact that
people need to be responsible for their own actions.  Nowadays, you can
grow up illiterate, and expect to get food stamps, free housing, welfare,
etc, the cash equivalent of which approaches $20K/year in many places.  Or
you can become a capitalist and make big $$ selling "illegal substances".
These "consequences" are the result of people with good intentions,
thinking with their emotions instead of their minds.  Maybe it is time to
become callous and see how that works.  Can things get much worse?

        Clay


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