From: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Newsgroups: uk.misc,uk.politics
Subject: Re: Transport subsidies - Was: Car Parking
Date: 12 Jan 93 14:48:31 GMT
	<1993Jan7.171631.20645@maths.nott.ac.uk>
	<930108.150220.1l3.rusnews.w165w@mantis.co.uk>
	<1993Jan8.190815.16151@maths.nott.ac.uk>
	<30040@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Followup-To: uk.politics
Organization: Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.

[Please note the "Followup-To:".  Note also that editing ">" into "~" plays
havoc with the "References:" ....  Corrected above.]

In article <30040@castle.ed.ac.uk> fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes) writes:
>anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker) writes:
>~	Fine, but if 49% won't pay, then the 51% shouldn't either, because
>~a half-baked nuclear deterrent is actually worse than none.  This is the
>~tyranny of the minority. 
>translation: If we can't have it all our own way then we`ll cut off our
>nose to spite our face.

	No!  Try again.  If you want to determine how large a police force,
say, we should have, then it is not totally unreasonable to ask everyone,
and to average the results.  But if you want to, let's say, build a new
road, then the average, half a new road (or even 95% of a new road) is
worse for everyone than no road or a complete road.  You've caused most
or all of the environmental damage, but are getting no benefits whatsoever,
because the road can't be used until it's finished.  In the case of roads,
or railways, or power stations, or coal mines, or many other civic works,
it is silly to start unless you can finish.  The sensible democratic process
is to ask everyone whether or not they want the finished product, and then
either to abandon it or to push it through to a conclusion.

>						  Result -- collapse of the
>~state education system, and social anarchy.
>Death of Society predicted - film at eleven. Maybe there should be a new
>usenet rule to join the Nazis one: An argument ends when someone
>predicts the death of Usenet/Society or Anarchy of Feudalism.

	Anarchy isn't death, as all Net users know.  I'm happy for the
Net to be an anarchy;  rather less happy to contemplate educational or
medical anarchy -- especially when there is no evidence that that is
what "we" want.

>translation: I don't believe in participatory democracy because I don't
>think people are up to it.

	No:  rather that I don't believe that "participatory" democracy
can co-exist with "representative" democracy.  Feel free to argue that
PD is better, but my view would be that most people are happy to leave
the politicians to squabble about such things, and really don't want to
be bothered between elections.

>If Labour want to do some social engineering then they and their
>supporters should pay for it. You can't expect those discriminated
>against in such a scheme to pay for inconvenience to themselves.

	The thesis on behalf of the elderly, the unemployed, the
children, the sick, the wheel-on-your-own-favourite-group-of-
disadvantaged, would be that they are just the people who *can't*
pay.  I expect someone on the Net has the actual figures, but a
guess might be that 5% of the population pays around 50% of the
tax, and that fewer than 50% pay *any* direct tax.  Are you really
proposing effectively to disfranchise most of the population?

>~				   Some individuals pay *huge* amounts
>~of tax.  What's to stop Mr Sainsbury zapping all categories except "9876
>~-- new supermarket scheme for the Outer Hebrides" and devoting *his* N
>~million pounds entirely to that cause, while effectively paying no other
>~tax?
>Nothing. But that's no different from a parent putting it all on
>education. As I said, if you want Mr X to have less power in this way,
>then tax him less.

	So the wealthy should contribute less?  Alternatively, the
wealthy have all the power?  That is a plutocracy, not a democracy.

>~It's a sort-of return to feudalism,
>Or a sort of return to participatory democracy?

	We've never had PD!  It's been impractical between the days of
city states and the present electronic age;  even classical Athens could
only loosely have been called a democracy in the modern sense.

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw@maths.nott.ac.uk
Newsgroups: uk.misc
From: neil@palnu.demon.co.uk (Neil Motteram)