HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: leecr@microsoft.com (Lee Crocker)
Subject: Re: PLEASE SIGN IN!
Date: 06 Jan 93 05:00:33 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

I'm sure I've made enough noise here lately that many know where I
stand, but here's a more formal introduction anyway:

I am Lee Daniel Crocker, a programmer for Microsoft.  I serve on the
MsGreen environmental group that watches environmental policy here
at Microsoft (we are not sponsored by or officially affiliated with
the company itself, other than the fact that they let us use their
meeting rooms).  I am a vegetarian, I support GreenPeace (except
for their silly anti-nuke stuff), and have campaigned actively for
efficient and responsible use of resources both here and in California,
where I moved here from.

I am whole-heartedly, unapologetically, vocally Libertarian.  The
future of the planet depends on free minds and free markets; private
ownership of all resources; and rejection of all forms of violence,
especially those justified under the name of "government".
-- 
Lee Daniel Crocker    | Free minds; free bodies; free trade.
leecr@microsoft.com   | Libertarian Party  1-800-682-1776
From: Jym Dyer <jym@mica.berkeley.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: PLEASE SIGN IN!
Date: 5 Jan 1993 00:16:33 GMT
Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu

=o= I'm Jym Dyer.  I come from a blue-collar Republican family
from Pittsburgh, PA; spent a good chunk of time in heavily-
Democratic Boston, MA; and now live in a heavily-Green part
of Oakland, CA.  I've never been registered to a party (except
briefly, during primaries, in states that allowed such things),
because none have espoused values close enough to my own --
until now.  I'm now a registered Green.

=o= I've been involved in environmental issues for an awfully
long time.  I joined my first radical ecology group at age 8:
the Cub Scouts.

=o= I had some acquaintances in the New England Greens, who
at the time were too busy working on local issues to build a
party.  I went to a few meetings of the East Bay (Berkeley/
Oakland/etc.) Greens, but they were at the time too busy
building party platforms to work on local issues.
    <_Jym_>
From: alaric@sti.com (Alaric Tekiahyn)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Date: 6 Jan 1993 03:24:56 GMT
Organization: Software Transformation, Inc.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: smurf.sti.com

In article <1993Jan05.032449.17620@microsoft.com>, leecr@microsoft.com (Lee Crocker) writes:
] In article <JMC.93Jan4081611@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
] >
] > Now, while workers are still exploited...
] 
] It is unsubstantiated empty rhetoric like this that gives leftists
] a bad reputation.  In a free capitalist society, where a worker is
] free to choose whether or not to accept the conditions of employment
] offered to him, no working man can be said to be "exploited" by
] his employers.

True; if he doesn't like the conditions one employer offers, he can
go to another.  And if none of them offers conditions he would
willingly accept, well, he can always starve.  Right?


] Saving the planet is the goal of my life, too.  I want the Earth to
] be a clean, beautiful place for me and my children to live in.  It
] is for that reason I cry out against the true enemy of the planet:
] socialist ideology and governments.

Delete the words 'socialist ideology and' and you're almost on the mark.
	:-)

] Only when man is free to think,
] speak, work, and trade will he accomplish what all of us want--a
] clean planet and a decent living for all of us.

Ah, but in theory, he *is*, in a democracy.  Or hadn't you heard?
The problem with this theory is:  What about the man who *wants*
to exploit and dominate those around him?


Actually, the biggest problem this planet has right now is people.
Get rid of all the people and things'll straighten out just fine on
their own, in fifty thousand years or so.


-- 
      "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom."  --  Thomas Jefferson
    ......................................................................
    Phil Stracchino : phils@sti.com : alaric@sti.com : The Renaissance Man
      PGP 2.0 - Freeware public-key data encryption.  Get it and use it!
           Finger alaric@sti.com for PGP 2.0 info and my public key
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
From: bil@okcforum.osrhe.uoknor.edu (Bill Conner)
Subject: Re: Population (was Re: Greens vs. Property Rights)
Organization: Okcforum Unix Users Group
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 03:03:57 GMT


   According to some enviromentalists even one human is too many. Some
recovering schizophrenics now in the fore-front of enviromentalism,
have convinced themselves that other species of fauna on this
beleagured planet are more deserving of life than human beings. Some
of the less stable even argue that animals may even be more ethical
than humans (maybe that's the real reason for Carl Sagan's search for
ET - any species, even the most alien, is preferable to homosapiens).

   Yes, you and yours are probably right, there are entirely too many
people on this planet. So, what next? Surely you've discovered some
final solution ...

Bill


Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
From: leecr@microsoft.com (Lee Crocker)
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Date: 05 Jan 93 21:22:44 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1iahtdINN6uj@shelley.u.washington.edu> monaghan@cac.washington.edu (Tracy Monaghan ) writes:
>In article <1993Jan4.185148.6674@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan04.075132.9679@microsoft.com> leecr@microsoft.com (Lee Crocker) writes:
>>>>In article <1678600006@igc.apc.org> Dale McMillen <dmcmillen@igc.apc.org> writes:
>>>
>>>Food, shelter, defense, and all of the other things to which leftists
>>>would "entitle" everyone do not fall from heaven; they are the products
>>>of work.  Providing them means encouraging work, and history has shown
>>>that the best way to encorage work is to guarantee to each worker his
>>>or her exclusive right to the fruits of his/her labor.  That system is
>>>called Capitalism, and any other system is heartless and immoral.
>
>Actually, it was the fact, during the late 1800's, that laborers were not
>getting the fruits of their labor, that caused Marx to question the
>internal contradictions of capitalism, and propose an alternative (which
>was NOT Leninism/Stalinism/Maoism).

The government-supported mercantilism of the 1800's was indeed hideous,
and Marx was right to be disgusted.  He missed the point by blaming
the Capitalist ideals which were not what was being practiced, but only
being preached as justification for the slavery.  No nation in human
history has every had a truly free capitalistic society, and until one
does, there will always be slavery.
-- 
Lee Daniel Crocker    | Free minds; free bodies; free trade.
leecr@microsoft.com   | Libertarian Party  1-800-682-1776
From: aphrael@cats.ucsc.edu (Robert D West)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: PLEASE SIGN IN!
Date: 8 Jan 1993 18:29:57 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: si.ucsc.edu


In article <1678600010@igc.apc.org> Dale McMillen <dmcmillen@igc.apc.org> writes:
>
>Hi everybody!
> 
>This being a new discussion group, it's kinda nice to get to know
>everybody a little more.  Please let us know who you are by posting
>a reponse to this topic.  It would be interesting to know where
>you are from, your job, interests and that other general personal
>stuff.  Since this is a discussion about the Green Party, it would
>also be interesting to know if you are an active member, have had
>contacts with or opinions about the Green Party.
> 

	(I feel like a member of Greens Anonymous, ....) I'm Robert
West, student of (gasp! horror!) politics and history at the University
of California, Santa Cruz. Living in California, I had the ability
to register with the Green party in 92, and did so; living in Santa
Cruz, where people who aren't members of the activist community have
a hard time being taken seriously as activists, I'm not active in the
party - I'm just a number. But numbers are important, too, I guess ...
From: ausman@ocf.berkeley.edu (James Ausman)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: PLEASE SIGN IN!
Date: 5 Jan 1993 04:47:54 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: planecrash.berkeley.edu

Oh sure, I'll bite.

My name is Jim Ausman, I go to school here at UC Berkeley. I am studying Biophysics
and am going to graduate next semester.  I am trying to decide if I want to go
to med school or not after I graduate.  I live in the University Student Housing
Cooperative (a limited equity co-op housing 1200 students) and help pay for my
way through life by "working" as the VP of Finance for the co-op.  I am also 
working for the UC over the break doing safety inspections, but this is temporary
(and boring) and the less said about it the better!  I am looking for a part-time
job in a research lab, but this is turning out to be tougher than I thought.

I have been "involved" with the Green Movement for about 5 years, but never spent
that much time on it.  I am a Green Party member here in California (helped get 
us on the ballot, too).   I have been a leftist for some time (being in the Army
really radicalized me) and the part of the Green platform that really interests
me is the social justice part.  But I realize the environment is probably going 
to be a Big Issue, if not The Big Issue soon and read a fair bit about Deep 
Ecology and other radical green stuff.

Jim Ausman
-- 
	"You are not thinking.  You are merely being logical."
				-Niels Bohr to A. Einstein 
				(during their famous debates on QM)
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: NOT LEFT NOR RIGHT BUT UPFRONT
Date: 11 Jan 93 15:39:54 GMT
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO

In article <JMC.93Jan8151856@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>In article <1993Jan8.153413.27870@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>
>I regard the second aspect as mere busybodyism.  If you think people
>shouldn't buy something you regard as shlock, your only alternative
>it to try to attract them with something you regard as better.

And I think this is a big part of a bottom up strategy.  For example,
I don't like many aspects of corporate capitalism.  My suggestion is
not to ban it but to provide worker cooperative alternatives so that
people will have a choice.  Of course, this will take a long time to
develop, but if the alternatives are good, then the corporations will
just wither away.  The legislative component is to see that special
perks for corporations are removed and that the alternatives have a
fair treatment; for example tax law.
>
>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>*
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

-- 
==============================================================================
	Dean Myerson     (aka dingo in boulder)     dean@vexcel.com
==============================================================================
From: dmcmillen@igc.apc.org (Dale McMillen)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: Back the Greens with Greenbacks
Date: 11 Jan 93 23:03:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:1iruf9INNbk9@usenet.ins.cwru.edu:1707656812:cdp:1678600086:000:147
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!dmcmillen    Jan 11 15:03:00 1993


> I believe the title is self explanatory.

I enjoyed your joke about breeder reactors.  Is this a joke, too?
No, it's not self explanatory.

Dale
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<JMC.93Jan4081945@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <1993Jan4.185753.6783@vexcel.com>
Date: 5 Jan 93 20:42:48

In article <1993Jan4.185753.6783@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
Path: CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU!stanford.edu!agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!copper!vexcel!dean
   From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
   Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
   Date: 4 Jan 93 18:57:53 GMT
   References: <1hs8brEINNfle@uni-erlangen.de> <1678600014@igc.apc.org> <JMC.93Jan4081945@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
   Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
   Lines: 21

   In article <JMC.93Jan4081945@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
   >Does the experience with having socialists in power in many countries
   >in this century have any relevance at all to what to do next?
   >What ought present socialists to learn from it?
   >
   >--
   >John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
   >*
   >He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

   The Greens have learned that centralized authority is not the way
   to egalitarian goals that were espoused by the socialists you
   refer to.  This is a central message that Greens need to get out.
   There are other differences (sustainability, etc.), but the
   bottom-up focus of the Greens is, to me, the main lesson that
   Greens have to communicate.
   -- 
   ==============================================================================
   A thought for the holidays:
      "Wine is living proof that God loves us and likes to see us happy"
	   - Benjamin Franklin			dean@vexcel.com


Hmm.  Is that all the socialist experience has to teach?  Oh well.

Is it possible that when a bottom up movement gains power, it cannot
sustain its alleged bottom up character.  Read _Red Star over China_
by Edgar Snow for its description of the alleged bottom up character
of the way the Chinese communists did things.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
From: Genevieve Grafe Marcus -- Ph.D. <gmarcus@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Date: 03 Jan 93 22:15 PST
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Nf-ID: #R:1hs8brEINNfle@uni-erlangen.de:-1634168734:cdp:1678600022:000:196
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!gmarcus    Jan  3 22:15:00 1993


Just a reminder that Greens are for ecological and democratic
alternatives, many of which haven't been invented yet.  Dale
speaks only for Dale's interpretation of Green values.

Genevieve Marcus

Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
From: leecr@microsoft.com (Lee Crocker)
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Date: 08 Jan 93 04:25:16 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1678600046@igc.apc.org> Dale McMillen <dmcmillen@igc.apc.org> writes:
>
>It's understandable Marx was so down on capitalism since history only
>showed him how it produced slavery.  Do you see anything different
>in capitalism today?  What steps would you suggest to make it freer?

Not much difference.  Several things could make it freer: eliminate
the state-sponsored "incorporation" laws that let businessmen escape
responsibility for their crimes by dissolving their companies and
floating away on golden parachutes.  When a company incurs debts
beyond its assets (as might happen if it lost a large civil suit for
polluting private property), its stock price should go negative and
each shareholder held responsible in court for his share of damages.
Eliminate the state-created monopolies of patent law, medical and
other professional licensing, public education, the post office.
Eliminate legal barriers to honest businesses like drug trade,
prostitution, gambling, and usury.  Eliminate barriers to cheap food
and housing like farm price supports, restrictive zoning and building
codes, subsidies of cash and water to meat producers.

The US may be the closest thing to capitalism in the world, but it's
not even in the ballpark compared to _true_ laissez-faire capitalism.
Even in the US, people are afraid of real freedom because it implies
real responsibility.
> 
>Please explain why the capitalists and the government always seem
>to be in collusion with each other.

Why does a mountain climber climb the mountain?  Because it's there.
So long as powerful and intrusive governments exist, the powerful
will try to use them.  Reduce government only to its necessary
functions or protecting individual liberty, and allow competing
governments to vie for services, and they will be small, efficent,
and not so powerful as to be worth exploiting.
-- 
Lee Daniel Crocker    | Free minds; free bodies; free trade.
leecr@microsoft.com   | Libertarian Party  1-800-682-1776
From: ausman@ocf.berkeley.edu (James Ausman)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: NOT LEFT NOR RIGHT BUT UPFRONT
Date: 11 Jan 1993 05:56:54 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: planecrash.berkeley.edu

In article <1678600013@igc.apc.org> Dale McMillen <dmcmillen@igc.apc.org> writes:
>
>Greens have a slogan: "We are neither right nor left, but upfront."
> 
>Having given this background, I would like to start a discussion about
>what people think about "the left", "the right", or possible third
>approaches.  How do you identify which ideas come from the left or the
>right?  What might be the benefits or drawbacks of each?  Why do you
>think people are so prone to choose sides to do ideological battle?
>Is there a better way?

Well, it has been said that "all politics is personal" (I forgot by
who), and this would tend to be my answer to your question of why
people choose sides.  My personal experience living in The Projects
and in rurual poor neighborhoods certainly has affected my political
outlook.  I consider myself a leftist, but I realize that a lot of
good ideas come out of "the Right" and that compromise is an 
inevitable part of living peacefully with your neighbors.  The 
question of trying to identify whether ideas are from the left or
right is difficult and getting harder all the time (IMHO - of course
this may just be to an increasing ability to see the world in shades
of gray on my part).  Drug legalization is a good example.  Both 
mainstream parties are against it, but many on the "fringe" both 
left and right support it. There are others. 

Jim Ausman
-- 
	Where there is a lower class I am in it.  Where there is a criminal
	element I am of it.  Where there is a soul in prison I am not free.
					-E.V. Debs
From: bane@vtx.ma.man.ac.uk (Michael!)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: PLEASE SIGN IN!
Date: 5 Jan 93 13:33:20 GMT
Reply-To: bane@vtx.ma.man.ac.uk
Organization: Magic Michael's Mushroom Factory.

In article <Jym.4Jan1993.1616@naughty-peahen>, jym@mica.berkeley.edu (Jym Dyer) writes:
|> =o= I'm Jym Dyer.  I come from a blue-collar Republican family
|> from Pittsburgh, PA; spent a good chunk of time in heavily-
|> Democratic Boston, MA; and now live in a heavily-Green part
|> of Oakland, CA.  I've never been registered to a party (except
|> briefly, during primaries, in states that allowed such things),
|> because none have espoused values close enough to my own --
|> until now.  I'm now a registered Green.
|> 
|> =o= I've been involved in environmental issues for an awfully
|> long time.  I joined my first radical ecology group at age 8:
|> the Cub Scouts.
[rest deleted]
|>     <_Jym_>
the scouts are a radical ecology group?
the scouts as in the boy scouts as in camping and knots?
crumbs theyt must be different in US to UK



And now my intro:

Michael Bane - age: mid-20s
been involved in Friends of the Earth for about 5 years and
great interest in environmental issues; also help set up an
environmental network in Greater Manchester (UK).

Personally, I'm *NOT* a member of a Green Party and hope that 
I will still find these group useful

Maybe people could say why they agree or disagree with the statement:
The environment is much more than politics and by being a political party
concentrating on the environment leaves the party open to criticisms (and
big problems) by leaving out all other "political" concerns (eg housing)"

Cheers,
Michael.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<1993Jan04.075132.9679@microsoft.com> <1ib1jfINNmuq@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 4 Jan 93 21:24:25

Why does Mr. Ausman thinks the world could not sustain 6 billion
people at the U.S. standard?  This is merely a fashionable idea
of the literary culture.  There is no resource limitation that
prevents even 30 billion from living at the U.S. standard.  Beyond
that, it might be hard.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
From: gummitch@techbook.com (Jeff Frane)
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 00:22:30 GMT

leecr@microsoft.com (Lee Crocker) writes:

>In article <JMC.93Jan4081611@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>>
>> Now, while workers are still exploited...

>It is unsubstantiated empty rhetoric like this that gives leftists
>a bad reputation.  In a free capitalist society, where a worker is
>free to choose whether or not to accept the conditions of employment
>offered to him, no working man can be said to be "exploited" by
>his employers.  No man in history has ever gotten rich without making
>everyone around him rich as well, except by slavery; and slavery
>must be maintained by force of law to work.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!  Is this a joke?

Is Microsoft hiring the historically-impaired?

Lee Crocker, read some history.  Wait, you don't even need to strain
yourself that much.  Go out and rent Grapes of Wrath and learn about how
agricultural workers, to cite a recent example, are exploited.  Learn
how a worker -- with a family to feed and house -- can "choose" the
conditions of employment, when hundreds or thousands or equally
desperate workers are willing to work for just a little less -- even if
it virtually assures starving on the wages offered.  If the choice is
accepting 25 cents a box for picking peaches -- or having no money at
all, how free is he?

And this statement that no man in history ever got rich...  You simply
cannot be serious!  Have you really no idea how many "capitalists" built
enormous personal wealth on the backs of immigrant labor, pitting one
group against another and taking advantage of the huge boom in potential
labor during the latter part of the 19th century?

Didn't you ever crack a book in high school?


>If a worker is exploited at all, it is by those who use
>force to reduce his options--the government that hordes public land
>that might be used to feed him; the licensing, minimum wage,
>and zoning laws that prevent him from going into business on
>his own; the building codes that prevent him from finding affordable
>shelter; laws against gambling, prostitution, and drug use that limit
>the businesses he may choose; it is the tax collector who robs
>half of his wealth before he can invest in in useful enterprise
>to squander it on ineffective social programs.  It is this, not
>the free market, that is the modern slavery.

This is what happens to Libertarians when they don't get enough sleep.

--Jeff Frane

-- 
gummitch@techbook.COM  Public Access UNIX at (503) 220-0636 (1200/2400)