From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 13:59:45 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Socio-Economic Cults (Re: CypherPunk Cults)
In-Reply-To: <v03102800b022928487f6@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <19970821222631.62433@bywater.songbird.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



On Thu, Aug 21, 1997 at 08:27:30PM -0400, William H. Geiger III wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> In <v03102800b022928487f6@[207.167.93.63]>, on 08/21/97 
>    at 05:56 PM, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> said:
> 
> >The United States has a lot of redistribution of wealth and a lot of
> >crime.
> 
> 
> This is one of the problems of socialism.
> 
> When you have a group in society that never has to earn what they have
> they tend to have little respect for the property of others.

More precisely, people only respect other's property when they have 
property of their own.  If you don't own anything, it doesn't matter 
to you what other people own.

> A prime example is the welfair class in America. All their basic needs are
> provided for by the State (food, housing, medical, education, ...) and yet
> they have the highest crime rates.

The question is, do they have a realistic opportunity to aquire 
property of their own?  If they do not, then the crime will be there 
whether or not they get welfare.  That is, if the best job available 
is being a criminal, guess what?  

> And make no mistake this isn't 18th
> century England where people are stealing a loaf of bread to survive the
> majority of these criminal are commiting their crimes to support their
> entertainments.

True enough.  One possible outcome of eliminating welfare would be to 
change the crimes back to stealing bread to survive.

The dream is that if you eliminate welfare the cold glare of reality 
will force the "welfair class" to become productive citizens or die.  
There are other possibilities.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html