From: ravis@axion.bt.co.uk (Richard Avis)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: The Decline of Britain (was Re: Great Britain as a malfunctioning democracy)
Date: 16 Apr 92 08:17:49 GMT
Reply-To: ravis@axion.bt.co.uk (Richard Avis)
Organization: British Telecom Research Labs


In article <1992Apr15.033115.23379@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>, baker@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Andrew Baker) writes:
|> >>In article <1992Apr14.101803@axion.bt.co.uk> ravis@axion.bt.co.uk (Richard Avis) writes:
|> >>
|> >>>To be honest, I have (personally) lost all respect and sympathy for
|> >>>the squalid little people who keep voting the Conservatives in. Frankly,
|> >>>I think they are turning into a bunch of bigotted, self-interested morons
|> >>>who seem unable to understand that the country
|> >>
|> >>If it is self-interested for a rich person to vote Conservative, is it also
|> >>self-interested for a poor person to vote for Labour?
|> >>If yes, why the whine?  If no, what's the point of the Labour Party??
|> >>
|> 
|> It is not sophistry at all.  It just shows that accusing the other side
|> of being self-interested does not get you very far intellectually.  And
|> calling them "self-interested morons" is even sillier (it would seem
|> that a self-interested moron would *fail* to achieve his self-interest!).
|> Sorry, I think that if you want to turn us conservatives into leftists, it
|> will probably take more than moral invective -- economic arguments might
|> have an effect, however (using economics, it would be easy to answer the corn
|> merchants for instance).

No, I'm afraid it's not as easy as that is it? Firstly, my arguments are more from a
moral than an economic standpoint. This is extremely outdated socialist thinking
but there is something morally wrong in amassing personal wealth at the expense
of others. It is also an environmentally unsound idea, since it represents the abuse
of natural resources.

You can easily see polarisation between the haves and have-nots in the
third world, in places like Brazil and the Phillipines. In such places, there
are small numbers of vastly rich people (often stemming from land distribution by
the colonial powers) who live behind high walls with armed guards. Very often
such people keep their money off-shore in foreign currency, and spend it on
imported goods. If these people are an asset to their countries' economies I'd like
someone to tell me how.

Exactly the same things have happened in Britain to a lesser degree, spot how
many British cars the yuppies drove?

I suppose the problem is that I believe people do do things out of more than 
self interest. Why, for instance do plenty of well off middle class people vote for the
Liberal Democrats and Labour? You can never win the economic argument because 
self-interested people aren't interested in their own country's economy - look at
Rupert Murdoch. And if they're morality does not extend to thinking of others as 
more than objects to abuse you end up with a country like South Africa - which
has gone nearly to the abyss. At least the whites realised that change had to come 
unless they wanted to be dead or exiled - I hope it's not too late.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Richard Avis (Mr. Forgettable)

EMail : ravis@axion.bt.co.uk
Mail : BT Laboratories,
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"We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it." - Unknown U.S. Army Major

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