From: snail@lsl.co.uk
Newsgroups: uk.misc
Subject: Re: Transport subsidies - Was: Car Parking
Date: 14 Dec 92 13:41:47 GMT
Distribution: uk
Organization: Laser-Scan Ltd., Cambridge

In article <P3JmVB40w165w@mantis.co.uk>, mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes:
> snail@lsl.co.uk writes:
>> Some idea of freedom:- You can only go anywhere by any means as long as you'v
>> got the toll money. Great, I prefer my current form of freedom.
> 
> The trouble is, I rate my freedom to breathe and my freedom to walk and cycle
> places without being killed as more important than your freedom to drive to
> Glasgow when you could perfectly easily get the train.
> 
> Chronic asthma is on the increase.  If people are to have the freedom to
> live, you need to give up your freedom to pollute as much as you like without
> paying for the consequences.  It may not cost you much to pump toxic fumes
> into the air, but we have to pay for our bronchiodilators.  Is that fair?

I agree with that.

Thing is I regard your reply as out of context; that is the can't do if
have no money bit. There are a lot of people out there worse off than you or I,
and I don't see why they should be penalised by a freedom/force argument
which really isn't about freedom/force, it's about money/lack-of-money. FoFP
may state it is not, but if you look in the text of all these discussions
it is quite obvious what is required.

The current freedom/force things has centered on cars. I've been replying to
is not just on  a car basis. I've stuck to cars in the text, but the whole
point of my attack on this freedom/force thing is that reducing everything to
freedom/force as certain other posters have, rather reduces the comlpexity of
the argument to a very simplistic level.

FoFP in particular has stated, on several occasions that he feels the poor
should be looked after, and yet offers no way of helping such people, other
than an assertion that charities will swell to fill the gap. This is no
gaurantee as far as I am concerned. 

Studies of charities over the recent years have shown that only a few
charities will survive, mainly because they have to advertise (sic) their
presence to  ensure the public give them the money and not another charity!!
Bloody incredible.

I've described this free market libertarian position to people I know, as
described to me by FoFP and further reading of his postings on the net, and
most people say 'that is anarchy' at which point you tell them it isn't
because they missed the bit that the government is there to provide the
police and a few other bits and bobs. Further discussion then leads toward how
the society will develop, surprisingly it just about always returns to the
subject of Feudalism.

We did away with that a long time ago, didn't we?

Could be I'm not explaining it very well, but I wonder. Every time I explain it
I'm not reading from a text or anything, so I probably explain it differently
each time. Always Feudalism. Interesting?

The other response is what a load of bollocks, which isn't quite so measured.
-- 
snail@lsl.co.uk      

muso/unix joke: "which debugger do you use?"
                "I use dbx..."
                "Oh really, we use Dolby C..."
Motorola inside.
Newsgroups: uk.misc