From: KAMCHAR@ibm.cl.msu.edu
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: An Observation
Date: 26 Jan 93 04:49:21 GMT
Organization: From Beyond Political Correctness
NNTP-Posting-Host: cc210-3.cl.msu.edu

>pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes:
>>KAMCHAR@ibm.cl.msu.edu writes:
>>>pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes:
>>>>Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
>>>What happens if you get struck by cancer and die of it? Life isn't
>>>fair, Chris. Not every problem can be solved. Utopia isn't possible.
>>
>>Hmmm...a Social Darwinist declaring life unfair.  Can you smell an
>>oxymoronic situation, folks?  (sorry for the sniping tone, but...I'll
>>chat on this point later in the article...)
>
>Not only am I not a social Darwinist, but it would appear that your
>sentence lacks semantic content. What are you trying to say,
>precisely? That I'm wrong and utopia is possible? That every problem
>can be solved? What is it precisely that you object to over here?

The original comment, from Chris:
>>>>So is there a causal relationship?  What happens when the wage
>>>>offered for a job is less than that needed to live on (and the
>>>>person can't get two jobs)?  The trouble is that people's needs
>>>>tend to be a step function at the lower end (too little and they
>>>>sicken and die).

Your response was in the vein of "So what?  Personal problems don't bother me,
the GNP is what matters."  Sounds like Social Darwinism to me.

>>>To be more specific, what happens when in spite of hundreds of
>>>billions of dollars being spent every year by the government you STILL
>>>can't afford to eat? You can't wish certain problems away, Mr. Holt.
>>>When you claim that system A has flaws, we must also consider whether
>>>those flaws are not in fact worse under system B.
>>
>>     Debating between Neo-Stalinist Communism and a mythological version of
>>Capitalism based on a rosy version of America in the late 1800's does not do
>>the discussion justice.
>
>Who was bringing up neo-stalinist communism? Why not just compare
>housing prices and homelessness in New York and Houston?
>
>In New York, where the horrors of the free market have been replaced
>by a system in which housing prices are controlled, thus destroying
>the rental market and forcing all new construction to be of coops and
>condominiums that the poor can't afford, in which new construction is
>made prohibitive by restrictive zoning, thus creating a lack of new
>units of any kind, where zoning is used as an excuse to demolish
>"substandard" housing, thus eliminating more housing for the poor (the
>logic used being similar to the notion that by demolishing all
>inexpensive restaurants the poor will be able to patronize the
>expensive ones), where, in short, vast effort has been expended by the
>local government to assure fairness, there is no affordable housing
>and lots of people live on the streets.
>
>In Houston, where no effort has been made to keep housing "affordable"
>Vnd where there is no zoning, such horrors have somehow been avoided.
>
>Strictly speaking, comparing two cities isn't fair since they aren't
>identical.
Quite a bit.  Here's a few differences:
New York (Pre-fifties portions, and Manhatten today) sprawls upward, Houston
     sprawls outward (a collapsing house kills off five, maybe ten at the most.
     Collapsing tenaments kill off hundreds, maybe thousands).
New York has winters.
Houston is younger than New York.
New York's highways are crowded because of all the people around it; Houston's
     highways are crowded from intentended neglect.

>However, if you want you can be fairer -- for instance, you
>can compare homelessness levels before and after New York went on a
>ramapage destroying all the "substandard" housing. You can compare
>smaller cities with and without rent control. When you do this, you
>always reach the same conclusions.
     (As for the rent control item, I've been against it--in part because I
could never understand how it was meant to work and understand how it worked.)
>
>Compare Japan to India.
Japan:  State capitalism with a singular people (only the Appalacians have a
more inbred people) with nowhere else to turn.  Conditions would hardly be
called prosperous by our terms, and their men are dying from overwork (no, I'm
not making this up.  I wish I knew the Japanese name for this.)
India:  An old society with a megamix of peoples and groups from almost
everywhere with a long history behind them.  While I'll admit I'd rather be in
Japan than India (personal preference--hell, I'm on a computer, ain't I?) I'll
be willing to bet that India will be around long after Japan dies on its own
wastes (unless Japan exports these wastes to India, of course).

>Compare Hong Kong and mainland China.
Twenty million nervous expatriots on the edge of a massive country are bound to
embrace anything that allows them to live, however poorly.

>You could compare poverty levels before and after the Great Society programs.
     Vietnam also happened during that time, draining much of the energy of
society from constructive activities benefiting the nation towards destructive
activities both here and elsewhere.  Our nation has yet to recover from it.

>
>>Other systems which existed around the world BEFORE
>>Europeans started their souljourn around the world actually kept their
peoples
>>well off and in a population balance.  I've yet to see the European system
>>variants (and capitalism in particular) do this, indeed they seem to have a
>>line about poor people deserving their fate running through them.
>
>Evidence, please. Keeping "population in balance" seems to be
>something the evil European Phalologocentric White Supremicists seem
>to do very well -- birth rates in the developed world are quite low,
>and the poorest people in the U.S. do far better than the average
>person in Bangladesh. If you have evidence that I'm wrong, I'd like to
>see it.
Consider:  Most of mankind's two million years of existance the population
seems to be kept at a decent balance; and from what has been observed from the
few remaining hunting-and-gathering groups around, the population wasn't
balanced by malthusian mechanisms but through birth control (both before and
after conception).  Only after intensive agriculture can overpopulation become
possible.  The present low rates of birth (especially in the US) seems to be
not from comfort and prosperity, but a worry for the future.
>
>>>Your argument would have a certain degree of validity of government
>>>actually could fix poverty, but since it can't, arguing that a few
>>>people are poor under capitalism and capitalism is therefore bad seems
>>>specious when you consider how many more are starving under socialism.
>>
>>     As long as you look merely at eco-political systems, you're right. 
There
>>ARE other forces which make their effects knows ALONGSIDE the eco-political
>>world.
>
>What exactly is an "eco-political system"?
Economical/Political systems.  My fault.
>
>>     You wouldn't believe how rich the yoeman of 1800 was.  He had his source
>>of food complete with some control over how it came about (the farm), he had
>>twin sources of social and cultural stimulation (the church and the pub), a
>>rock-steady set of expectations and rewards for belonging in a society which
>>helped him to develope the ways he could (note that I didn't say spoon-fed
him
>>everything he wanted), and a government which went as far as it could in
>>protecting his investment and didn't NEED to try to create a society.  I see
>>none of this (especially the society aspect) going on today.
>
>His wife would likely die in childbirth.
     Not if they went to a midwife.
>In winter, he froze.
     What, no blankets?  No coats?  No fire?
>In summer, he sweated.
     And slowed down his pace to adjust.  What's a matter with that?
>His children would likely die before the age of five.
>He'd spend dawn to dusk all summer long in back-breaking labor, and his
>children would have to pitch in, too.
     Excuse me if I sound amazed, but wasn't farming mainly a spring and fall
routine?  True, there was other things to do, but you make it sound as if the
family had to do everything BY THEMSELVES!!!
     Haven't you heard of community?  Of people pitching together to help each
other?  Half this stuff was, I'll bet, helping OTHERS get settled--and I'll bet
they got that help themselves when they moved in.
>The food wouldn't always
>show up -- some years, bad weather or insects or other causes would
>make all his crops fail.  Starvation would often occur (or have you
>forgotten horrors like the Irish potato famine).
     Hmmm...I never knew American yeomen grew everything in monoculture.  And I
thought monoculture planting was invented with machine farming and pesticides. 
Silly me--I should have realized american yeomen were stupid idiots unable to
mix-and-match their plantings to insure a harvest under anything but abysmal
conditions.
>
>His average lifespan was under 40 years.
     Average lifestyle after the age of five: 70 years.  Granted, many died who
now would have been saved by technology and knowledge we now have, but after
that the survival rate was better.  Remember the biblical phrase (as a source
of wisdom and knowledge, not "The Truth To End All Truths"): Three Score and
Ten are the years of a man's life."

>Thanks, but I'll take my comfortable heated home, my high-tech
>healthcare, my supermarkets, and my electricity. I can do without the
>church, which preaches things I don't believe in, and I've got all the
>pubs I need.
     I'll take the warmer climate myself; keep watch over my health and eat
organic foods (unless the nearby agribusiness decides to ruin my health by
spraying your food by airplane), and I'll meet my friends at the church and the
pub--heaven knows where you'll meet yours.

Kamchatka Charlie          KAMCHAR@ibm.cl.msu.edu
Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite--you've got nothing to lose
but your lives and the world and your soul to gain!
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism