From: Jim Wise <jw250@columbia.edu>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 14:38:29 -0800 (PST)
To: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Subject: Re: Redlining
In-Reply-To: <32AD7FA4.4C47@gte.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.95L.961210172610.29109A-100000@ciao.cc.columbia.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Tue, 10 Dec 1996, Dale Thorn wrote:

> The logical implication here is that a thousand people "getting together"
> and doing something is no different in principle than one person doing
> that something.  Not a valid implication, although the result is not
> necessarily false on a per-case basis.

Actually, I think this is a very valid implication.  One of the main ways
in which statist societies justify their restrictions on individuals is by
reifying large bodies of individuals and giving them their own rights and
responsibilities _as_a_seperate_entity_.  To speak of a mass of individuals,
whether you call it a corporation, a collective, or a government, as having
a different set of rights than the individuals who make it up, is the
heart of statism.

> Ironically, discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, hate, etc. are often
> judged by the public on a "gut level" as well.  It's just a matter of
> how to "educate" the public to see these things.

Exactly.  Like most, I have a strongly visceral negative reaction to bigotry.
I wish there could be a system of law which contained it.  There cannot, or
at least not without doing even more harm.

What will contain bigotry is education and example which inculcate this same
visceral response to the destructiveness of bigotry.  Unfortunately, statist
systems (and IMHO especially those of a cpaitalist nature) thrive on turning
subsets of society against each other, so that the populace are to busy to
turn against the state.

--
				Jim Wise
				System Administrator
				GSAPP, Columbia University
				jim@santafe.arch.columbia.edu
				http://www.arch.columbia.edu/~jim
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