From: secsu@ariel.lerc.nasa.gov (Ralph O. Clark)
Subject: Re: = Opportunity etc.
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: NASA Lewis Research Center
Date:  7 Jan 1993 15:00 EST  

In article <1igrjfINN28t@agate.berkeley.edu>, mvij@ocf.berkeley.edu (Manish Vij) writes...
>In article <ARCHER.627.726336611@utkvm1.utk.edu> ARCHER@utkvm1.utk.edu (T. Archer) writes:
>>Unrelated:  participation in the Salvation Army is voluntary.  Participation 
>>in a state-mandated "war on poverty" is manadory, coercive, and immoral.
> 
>The first issue is whether to help anyone else, assuming they're responsible
>for their own successes, as all ultimately are.  The second is whether
>to coerce such aid by funding anti-poverty programs through taxes.
> 
>If you truly wouldn't even part with your fecal matter for anyone else's
>sake, you wouldn't really get along in a family.  Aside from altruistic
>reasons, mutual aid and cooperation eventually in a selfish sense benefits
>those who participate.  My philosophy is to extend that family concept from
>the nuclear family to human beings in general.  I may not practice it all
>the time, but it is an ideal I admire.
> 
>As for the second issue, consider:
> 
>1) Taxation can marshal enormous resources to take care of a problem.
>2) The portion of taxation which currently goes to welfare etc. is miniscule
>   compared to the so-called valid portion which goes to defense and other
>   tasks which federal gov't is well-adapted to.

According to the back of my tax form booklet, the breakdown is as follows:
	30% medicare and similar programs
	14% social programs
	__________________
	44% total

	24% defense

This is from memory. The 14% and 24% I am sure of, the 30% may be larger.
It seems to me that there was another category that would fall in with
medicare and social programs, but I don't have the form with me here.

Maybe you are thinking of the fraction of money spent by the bureaucracies
in charge of the social programs that actually gets where it is supposed to.

>3) It is not at all clear that voluntary charity alone takes care of
>   suffering; it does not now, in the current social-justice-influenced
>   system, and abuses of capitalism show everywhere, especially in
>   developing nations.

Abuses of anything abusable always show up everywhere. Under the current
"social-justice-influenced system", 30-50% of income is spirited away, with
only a small percentage actually getting to the people who need it.
If the government could steal our money and actually use it for good purposes,
people would shout a lot less about it. In fact, the government only uses
it to strengthen its hold on the people, tossing a few well-gnawed bones
to the poor to buy their support.

> 
>Again, if the belief is that "If they don't succeed on their own, f*ck 'em,"
>I disagree sharply for both the above reasons and the following example:
>without managed trade, we would have much weaker domestic auto and 
>chipmaking industries.  This is just an extension of the isolationist
>argument, but applied to business rather than individuals.

Without managed trade, GM and the rest would not have taken 20 years to
catch on to the fact that Americans like good-quality cars.

> 
>Sure; I was just taking the example of starvation.
> 
>[Of Nicaragua:]
>>As I recall, the revolution there took property from those who legally owned 
>>it without compensating them, and gave it to those who did not.  That is 
>>theft.
> 
>There are sometimes higher values than upholding the law.  Otherwise, for
>example, the American Revolution was composed of merely law-breaking
>riff-raff.  In my view, when an extreme polarization of wealth is
>achieved in a society and poverty becomes unbearable and widespread, 
>overthrow of the ruling class is perfectly justified.

The American Revolution was started and led by English citizens, mostly
mid-to-upper class, who were tired of their rights as Englishmen being
trampled on by the English government.

Exactly what part of making money to you object to? When does it become
immoral? And when does theft become moral? What we need is a government
that deals with all equally, not looking the other way when the rich
DEFRAUD the poor, but also not looking the other way when the poor steal
from the rich. Justice is justice.

> 
>>No one has claimed that the invisible hand is benevolent, only omnipotent.  
>>Anytime you try to dink with the laws of supply and demand, you cause more 
>>problems than you solve.
> 
>It is clumsy to "dink" with market forces, granted.  Farm subsidies, I'll
>give you, have caused problems.  The minimum wage, however, is better for
>our economy than the harms it causes.  Other examples abound.
> 
>>>We can strike a balance between suffocating overregulation and the cruelty of
>>>the free market.
>>>
>>
>>Not really.
> 
>You've been living far too long under Republican administrations :-).
> 
>>Vote Dempublican, it's easier than thinking.
> 
>Vote Green; at least there's some thought-provoking arguments.

It's a joke: the author of the post is criticizing both Republican and
Democratic Parties. Get it? Or did you think that "easier than thinking"
was supposed to be something positive?

> 
>Manish
>-- 
>She paints herself that bird, a thrush
>with crimson stain across her mouth
>No raspberry, a hot-sweet flush
>denies the fever frocking south.         - S.K.S.

Ralph Clark