From: larocqu@gaul.csd.uwo.ca (JOHN LAROCQUE)
Subject: Re: NDP "communism?" (was Re: A vote for Reform...)
Organization: Computer Science Dept., Univ. of Western Ontario, London, Canada
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 04:26:37 GMT

In article <C0r8nI.1H0@ecf.toronto.edu> pelton@ecf.toronto.edu (PELTON MATTHEW ALAN) writes:

Me the genius the almighty:
>>The Great Society failed. Social help cannot work. Only decent American
>>enterprise can. And as long as black people are told to expect that kind 
>>paternalistic help from the white-majority government they will continue
>>to be looked on as charity cases and not human beings. Malcolm X was right
>>- you can't rely on the white man, only on yourself.

>   What about government interventions to help out disadvantaged black
>businesses?  You can't believe that a black business starts off or operates
>on a level playing field with other businesses on a continent where the 
>business world is run by WASPs.  A truly helpful government initiative would
>give disadvantaged people the support they need to get started -- like
>education, startup costs, and so on -- so that they can support themselves
>better in the future.  That way, the hard work they invest would have some
>effect.  We all know that it's easier to turn $1000 into $10000 than it is
>to turn $1 into $10.  Once the black (or other disadvantaged) businesses
>got running -- and I'm not saying all will, but at least some -- the initial

How about lowering taxes? Or a system of loans. I met this artist who
came from the ghetto in Detroit (still lives there) and he told me that
people there have most of the luxuries we have - cars and color tv's and
that shit. The problem is that bureacracy and regulations make it damn
near impossible to move out. I wonder if all of that rent control which
the commies/NDP types love so much has already constructed an apartheid
for underpriveleged citizens. But that's another debate....

As for "level playing field", the only place were this can be insured is if
everybody operated under the same rules - the rules of the unregulated
marketplace where unintentionally racist legislation can't keep these
people down. Basic economics. Only economic freedom can give a true
equitable playing field. As for the so-called level field - well that
is what the Soviet system is/was all about. We'll take such and such
from region x, and such and such from region y and the field will be
levelled (usually with human corpses, but that's another sad story).
Kind of like regional development and fed-prov grants. Another sad
experiment doomed to failure.

>  And well-guided government aid (not necessarily what we have) is intended
>to help people only to the extent they need, not to make eternal charity
>cases out of them.  The real idea behind government support is to help get
>people back on their feet and keep them afloat only as long as in necessary
>before they can support themselves again.  (UIC gets cut off after a while.)
>  Of course, I'm talking about ideals here.  But so are you.

Everyone wants that. Nobody got it with Welfare. Boy has that one worked.
You have whole generations of people who pass on Welfare to their kids, 
and their kids passing welfare off to their kids. A truly evil addiction
- all because the temptation to take free money instead of earning it
was put there in the first place by unbelievably stupid politicians. And
as for the soup kitchens and food banks - I will give you one reason they
are so populare - because it is free. Dump the idealism. It makes me sick.

>  FDR was scum.  But the American government did intervene economically.
>What about the highway construction plans?  And the Depression was when
>the U.S. became a welfare state.

And the basket case the world laughs at today. Shut down the Pentagon and
you have the Soviet Union in technicolor - a third world country with
badly educated young people and governments that spend money like it
was going to dissappear tomorrow.

>  Technology is a tool, not a savior.  It doesn't necessarily improve
>lifestyle, unless you think we're all better off for the nuclear bomb.

Wrong. Atomic research has done wonders for medical science. It's 
the government's desire to make war that ruins a good thing. And 
government always grows with each new war. Lasers and computers are
also products of the military machine - are they bad?

>It's no end in itself -- it's good if used properly, and bad if used
>badly.  And the government is often the one too decide how it should be
>used.

Precisely why there is so much misery in the world. Government, their
big business financeers and arms manufacturers and the military complex
would convince us all that waging is always the right thing to do.
Technology almost always benefits under war, because business people
are so lazy they couldn't do it in peacetime. But then again, when
did big business people ever promote true unfettered free enterprise.

> (Of course they don't always make the right decisions.  But 
>somebody has to decide.)
>  And this is coming from an engineer.

"Someone has to decide" - do you have an authority complex? Why is it 
always someone in authority who has to decide? When have these scum
ever done any good? Just look at all the wars in the last 50 years,
all the wasted social programs that have bankrupted the country. The
world's problems today would be alleviated if everybody stopped 
relying on the authority figures who fucked it up in the first place.

As I have said in previous posts - the first words of a freeman are
"I shall not serve". A thought for the new year.

>  But that's just the point.  The programs are designed to help people
>fulfill their potential, and overcome the restrictions and disadvantages
>they were born into.  Welfare was never meant to be a crutch.  If it is,
>it's just being implemented wrong.  That doesn't mean the entire concept is flawflawed.

You're kidding, right. Where's the smiley?

Welfare is a bad concept because it  pays people to be poor. Because it
offers people an easy way out. Because it offers something for nothing,
which is not completly true because if you accept welfare you are giving
up a piece of your freedom to others. Like the good slave who shut up
when his master gave him another meal. Or when the big bosses paid the
workers a little more money to shut them up over working conditions.

Man was not meant to live in quiet servitude to others. Every man 
should have only one master - himself. If he does not he does not
-- 
***FEAR*AND*LOATHING**FEAR*AND*LOATHING**FEAR*AND*LOATHING**FEAR*AND*LOATHING**
**  John LaRocque         **   "If you're the new messiah.. I'm going to be  **
**  marshall.law@uwo.ca   **   the one to drive in the nails"  MARSHALL LAW  **
***FEAR*AND*LOATHING**FEAR*AND*LOATHING**FEAR*AND*LOATHING**FEAR*AND*LOATHING**
Newsgroups: can.politics