Congratulations Britain!!
josef Moellers
CONGRATULATIONS BRITAIN!
News just reached me that SHE has decided to step down, so
You finally got rid of HER!
(I just LOVE those flames B-{)
--
| Josef Moellers | c/o Siemens Nixdorf Informatonssysteme AG |
| USA: molle...@nixdorf.com | Abt. STO-XS 113
| !USA: molle...@nixdorf.de | Heinz-Nixdorf-Ring |
| Phone: (+49) 5251 104662 | D-4790 Paderborn |
Igor L. Bel'chinskiy
>
>CONGRATULATIONS BRITAIN!
>News just reached me that SHE has decided to step down, so
>You finally got rid of HER!
There were GREAT THREE of 80-s: Reagan, Thatcher, Gorby.
Oh, God, send the time for last.
| Anything here is my own. Opinions especially.
--
Igor L. Bel'chinskiy. b...@hq.demos.su
Demos, Moscow, USSR. and Institute for Informatics Problems of the Academy
of Sciences of USSR (IPIAN), Moscow, USSR.
josef Moellers
>In article <josef.659277480@ugum01> jo...@nixpbe.nixdorf.de (josef Moellers) writes:
>>
>>CONGRATULATIONS BRITAIN!
>>News just reached me that SHE has decided to step down, so
>>You finally got rid of HER!
>There were GREAT THREE of 80-s: Reagan, Thatcher, Gorby.
IMHO it does no honor to Gorbachev to be put in one line with
Ronny and Maggie.
Alain Cedelle
>She has been proposed as the new president of the European Commission,
>succeeding Jaques Delors, so we might get her back all of us.
OHH Noo !
>It might be good idea actually. She would prevent the French and the Germans
>from creating an unliberal Europe.
You mean, She would prevent Anyone from creating Europe !
> We need English liberalism and pragmatism from the Atlantic to Ural,
It's a joke ! I'm sure nobody needs the model of U.K economic stagnancy !
> not French colbertism and German authoritarianism.
Colbert was essentially a merchant. Your comment would be better as " French
authoritarianism and German colbertism " !
A.C.
John-Olof Bauner
>News just reached me that SHE has decided to step down, so
>You finally got rid of HER!
>
She has been proposed as the new president of the European Commission,
succeeding Jaques Delors, so we might get her back all of us. It might
be good idea actually. She would prevent the French and the Germans from
creating an unliberal Europe. We need English liberalism and pragmatism
from the Atlantic to Ural, not French colbertism and German authoritarianism.
Regards
John-Olof
josef Moellers
>In article <josef.659277480@ugum01> jo...@nixpbe.nixdorf.de (josef Moellers) writes:
>>
>>CONGRATULATIONS BRITAIN!
>>News just reached me that SHE has decided to step down, so
>>You finally got rid of HER!
>>
>She has been proposed as the new president of the European Commission,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That's what we in Germany call "den Bock zum Gaertner machen" ("make the
goat a gardener")
>succeeding Jaques Delors, so we might get her back all of us. It might
>be good idea actually. She would prevent the French and the Germans from
>creating an unliberal Europe. We need English liberalism and pragmatism
>from the Atlantic to Ural, not French colbertism and German authoritarianism.
I'll accept Your comments on France and "this our country" (H.K.), but
to expect "liberalism" from Margeret ...
>Regards
>John-Olof
Josef
Ken Warkentyne
>There were GREAT THREE of 80-s: Reagan, Thatcher, Gorby.
jo...@nixpbe.nixdorf.de (josef Moellers) writes:
> IMHO it does no honor to Gorbachev to be put in one line with
>Reagan and Thatcher.
I guess it's true that Gorby is more popular in Germany than in the U.S.S.R.
Also, a recent poll in the U.S.A. showed that Thatcher was more popular
than Bush. So, why not arrange a trade: Thatcher -> U.S.A.; Bush -> Japan;
Kaifo -> U.S.S.R.; Gorby -> Germany; Kohl -> France; and Mitterand ->
Great Britain. Oh sorry, the last one won't work since the Queen stays put.
--
Ken Warkentyne - Laboratoire de Teleinformatique, EPFL, Suisse.
Matthew Huntbach
>be good idea actually. She would prevent the French and the Germans from
>creating an unliberal Europe. We need English liberalism and pragmatism
>from the Atlantic to Ural, not French colbertism and German authoritarianism.
>
economic issues, she has been appallingly authoritarian and
centralist. Local democracy, where Britain once led the world,
has been totally smashed. Local councils now have to do exactly
what the central government tells them to - the freedom local
people had to decide on things like housing, education,
taxation has all been taken away. Lenin would have thoroughly
approved of Thatcher's central planning.
Matthew Huntbach
Magnus Kempe
: Local democracy, where Britain once led the world,
: has been totally smashed.
Local democracy, where Athens once led the world, is the political
system based on unlimited majority rule. That's how Socrates was
legally murdered, isn't it? Maybe democracy is not *good*, and then,
maybe it's a good thing that local democracy "has been totally
smashed"...
: Lenin would have thoroughly approved of Thatcher's central planning.
Could you elaborate on your statement? explain what "central planning"
is, and then apply your concept to Lenin's and Thatcher's ideas and
actions, if you can.
--
Best Premises, mag...@elcgl.epfl.ch
"We never make assertions, Miss Taggart. That is the moral crime peculiar to
our ennemies. We do not tell -- we *show*. We do not claim -- we *prove*."
-- Hugh Akston, in _Atlas Shrugged_, by Ayn Rand
Harald Fuchs
>I guess it's true that Gorby is more popular in Germany than in the U.S.S.R.
>Also, a recent poll in the U.S.A. showed that Thatcher was more popular
>than Bush. So, why not arrange a trade:
I second this one.
--
Harald Fuchs <fu...@it.uka.de> <fuchs%it.u...@relay.cs.net> ...
<fu...@telematik.informatik.uni-karlsruhe.dbp.de> *gulp*
Walter Mildenberger
|In article <josef.659277480@ugum01> jo...@nixpbe.nixdorf.de (josef Moellers) writes:
|>
|>CONGRATULATIONS BRITAIN!
|>News just reached me that SHE has decided to step down, so
|>You finally got rid of HER!
|>
|
|She has been proposed as the new president of the European Commission,
|succeeding Jaques Delors, so we might get her back all of us.
Hey, why didn't you post it to eunet.jokes ?
Mrs. Thatcher the new president of the European Commission ?
Harharhar...
Regards
---
Walter Mildenberger, Morgenstr. 55, W-7500 Karlsruhe 1, FRG
SubNet: wa...@chumly.ka.sub.org ****** Voice: +49 721 385090
BitNet: 2 b announced soon * Discl.: none, I speak 4 myself
Joe
I'd like first of all to apologise to Magnus for any offense he may
have taken from my remarks. He's quite right that comments on his person
are not relevant to any political discussion, even if such is very
traditional in this context.
In eunet.politics Magnus writes:
>In article <mellon.659347058@peun32> mel...@nixdorf.de (Joe) writes:
>: Magnus [...] among other things rejects relativity and quantum physics
>: because they are not "objective".
>First point: I do not "reject relativity and quantum physics".
>Second point: what is the relationship between your allegations and politics?
The relationship is that your political and economic views are based on your
philosophy. When the premises of this philosophy are questionable, the entire
philosophy is questionable. It could help the debate if you give us a short
introduction to the premises of the philosphy to which you adhere,
which I believe is Objectivism, perhaps with references so that the interested
can read for themselves in greater depth. I believe that Objectivists have
some difficulty with relativity and quantum physics due to their premises.
Perhaps you could explain to us the relevant Objectivist premises which
cause these difficulties and then we might see whether these premises
have consequencies in the political and economic fields. You of course
may hold different views, which you could also explain to us.
>Last point: how about arguing about the *subject* of this thread of messages:
>the classification of political ideologies and parties? I have given short
>explanations of why I consider the "reformist"/"conservative" dichotomy
>useless -- and pointed out that "wealth distribution" and "wealth concen-
>tration" do not clearly indicate who does what. Now, if you disagree with
>my arguments, please explain why, i.e. argue. Ad hominems are not valid
>arguments.
>--
I dont know that you've given an explanation of anything yet Magnus, you've
just said in reply to someone else "you haven't given an exhaustive
explanation of all assumptions which you have made, therfore
your views are useless".
Perhaps you could give us a brief outline of *your* assumptions and premises.
_____ _ _
/ / / /
/_ _ / / /_ / / _ _
__/(_)_(-_ / / /(-_/_/_(_)_/ )_
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Joe Mellon, STO-13, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme |
| 55 Pontanusstrasse, 4790-Paderborn, uucp : mello...@nixpbe.uucp |
| Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Tel : (Deu)- 5251 - 146478 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
John-Olof Bauner
>In article <27...@ztivax.UUCP>, ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) writes...
>>She has been proposed as the new president of the European Commission,
>>succeeding Jaques Delors, so we might get her back all of us.
>
> OHH Noo !
>
>>It might be good idea actually. She would prevent the French and the Germans
>>from creating an unliberal Europe.
>
> You mean, She would prevent Anyone from creating Europe !
The question is really what kind of Europe we want. The current EC-Europe
lacks democratic legitimation and is not worthy an old democracy
like England. It is also a scandal that migrant EC-workers lack voting
rights for local elections as they do in Germany. The Germans treat immigrant
workers as slaves in old Sparta.
>> We need English liberalism and pragmatism from the Atlantic to Ural,
>
> It's a joke ! I'm sure nobody needs the model of U.K economic stagnancy !
Well, the English Sickness has been going on since the second world war,
in which Britain lost its empire. The Thatcher time has changed this trend.
But the basic problems, like a poor educational system, etc., remains in
Britain.
>
>> not French colbertism and German authoritarianism.
>
> Colbert was essentially a merchant. Your comment would be better as " French
>authoritarianism and German colbertism " !
>
I don't think so. Colbert was a mercantilist who tried to pursue French
interests at the expense of other nations by protection the national industry
and demanding tariffs against foreign produce. Other countries replied with
tariffs against French goods. Colbert's policy was also the main reason
for the Dutch war of 1672-1678.
The German Customs Union in the 19th century was also used as a mercantilistic
and imperialistic device. Finished goods from the West, especially England,
were discouraged from entering the customs area. In the same manner were
low tech goods from the East discouraged from entering the customs area.
Weaker and smaller surrounding states were made subservient to the Prussian
state.
The same thing is happening today in the EC. Smaller states like Switzerland,
Sweden, Austria, etc. are forced to Anschluss because of the coming customs
union. I admit that through the European Parliament/Court/Council
institutions exist to balance national interests.
When I speak about Colbert I mean the method of trying to define a geographic
area, Festung Europa, and excluding others free access to the market. Today
the EC is mainly an organisation for supporting French (France is under-
industrialized) and Bavarian peasants through the CAP (Common Agricultural
Policy).
The best way of helping the poor countries is to let them have free access to
our markets. Countries like Poland and Hungary (not to speak about Bangladesh,
Argentina, etc) would be best helped by letting them export agricultural
products and textiles.
Here England has the right free trade approach opposing Germans and French who
want to regulate everything from the top. The meaning with trade is really
to use comparative advantages of different areas. Through the British
influence and Maggies hard work the EC has moved in the liberal direction with
the common market program of 92.
Regards
John-Olof
Matthew Huntbach
>m...@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
>: Local democracy, where Britain once led the world,
>: has been totally smashed.
>
>Local democracy, where Athens once led the world, is the political
>system based on unlimited majority rule. That's how Socrates was
>legally murdered, isn't it? Maybe democracy is not *good*, and then,
>maybe it's a good thing that local democracy "has been totally
>smashed"...
You have this totally the wrong way round. Local democracy is
the balance to the unlimited majority rule of the national
state (in the UK system for "majority" read "majority of the
largest minority"). A balance of powers between the various
levels of government helps avoid the situation that worries you.
Mrs.Thatcher has wrecked this balance of powers by drastically
reducing the power of local authorities to act independently of
national government (in fact you could blame Michael Heseltine
for it, as he was the Minister responsible at the time; he was
yesterday re-appointed to the post).
>: Lenin would have thoroughly approved of Thatcher's central planning.
>
>Could you elaborate on your statement? explain what "central planning"
>is, and then apply your concept to Lenin's and Thatcher's ideas and
>actions, if you can.
By "central planning" I mean that rules and quotas are set by
national government. Local authorities are forced to abide by
these rules no matter what the local circumstances are. For
example, local authorities are forced to sell off their
rented housing, no matter how much demand there may be for it,
and are not allowed to spend the revenues they receive from the
sales. Pre-Thatcher, local authorities could decide their own
housing policy. Another example, pre-Thatcher local authorities set
their own school curriculums; now schools must teach exactly what is
dictated to them by central government. Had a Socialist
government done this, it would undoubtedly have been denounced
as Marxist-Leninist central planning.
Matthew Huntbach
Chris Cooke
> m...@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
> : Local democracy, where Britain once led the world,
> : has been totally smashed.
>
> Local democracy, where Athens once led the world, is the political
> system based on unlimited majority rule. That's how Socrates was
> legally murdered, isn't it? Maybe democracy is not *good*, and then,
> maybe it's a good thing that local democracy "has been totally
> smashed"...
Yes, it's a wonderful thing!
I think we should totally smash national & supranational democracy too.
A thoroughly good thing.
Let's all have dictatorships like Thatcher's...
0000-Admin(0000)
> war...@ltisun5.epfl.ch (Ken Warkentyne) writes:
> >I guess it's true that Gorby is more popular in Germany than in the U.S.S.R.
> >Also, a recent poll in the U.S.A. showed that Thatcher was more popular
> >than Bush. So, why not arrange a trade:
> I second this one.
> --
>
> Harald Fuchs <fu...@it.uka.de> <fuchs%it.u...@relay.cs.net> ...
> <fu...@telematik.informatik.uni-karlsruhe.dbp.de> *gulp*
You can't do that. Some of my best friends are French.
Kohl->Elba->St.Helena
billp
=============================================================================
Bill Potter : {pyramid,unido}!pcsbst!distel!billp
PCS GmbH :
D8000 Muenchen : You can't sink a RAINBOW
=============================================================================
L.B. Brown
I have heard. Mrs Thatcher has done a great deal for Great Britain. She
has *removed* Government intervention so that business and commerce may
prosper, as well as allowing people to buy their Council houses at knock
down prices thus allowing working class people to have investments. This
is also true of selling off the nationalised industries.
When Thatcher came into power unemployment in Britain rose because all the
people who were employed by local government lost their jobs, as well as those
people employed by companies that should have gone bankrupt, save for heavy
Government (ie. Labour) support. However, after a period of introducing
policies that allowed businesses to prosper unemployment fell and reduction
in public spending has meant that the Government has been paying off Britain's
debts for the last 10 years.
Mrs Thatcher's attitude was that people should help themselves, and that
initiative would be rewarded (ie lower taxes). This is one of the aims
of the poll tax. When people found they had more money a large credit boom
began which seriously damaged Britain. The same people who created the credit
boom complained when interest rates went up to stop it.
Another bad attitude that people in Britain have is that they should have
annual pay rises at the rate of inflation or more. This is not how things
are conducted in, say, Germany, and this itself reduces Britains productivity
in Europe and the world. Until our entry into the European Exchange Rate
mechanism this was offset by the pounds devaluation against the DM. However
this cannot happen any more.
So, in summary, it is the bad attitude of people in Britain that has
contributed to the current problems. John Major has been elected as Prime
Minister as he does not share Mrs Thatchers view that people should help
themselves, and he will increase public spending (he said so). I do not
regard this as a good thing, but I'm sure many people who like to supported
by the state do.
(Just thought I'd mention it, that's all)
Leigh Brown.
Leigh Brown. UK : L.B....@uk.ac.newcastle
World: L.B....@newcastle.ac.uk
Ronald Kunenborg
>>: Lenin would have thoroughly approved of Thatcher's central planning.
>>
>>Could you elaborate on your statement? explain what "central planning"
>>is, and then apply your concept to Lenin's and Thatcher's ideas and
>>actions, if you can.
>By "central planning" I mean that rules and quotas are set by
>national government. Local authorities are forced to abide by
>these rules no matter what the local circumstances are. For
>example, local authorities are forced to sell off their
>rented housing, no matter how much demand there may be for it,
>and are not allowed to spend the revenues they receive from the
>sales. Pre-Thatcher, local authorities could decide their own
>housing policy. Another example, pre-Thatcher local authorities set
>their own school curriculums; now schools must teach exactly what is
>dictated to them by central government.
The statement 'Lenin would have approved of this' is incorrect.
Stalin would have approved of it. Not Lenin, whose ideals
where *democratic* planning of production, i.e. the people
decided what should be produced. Not by voting for
a bunch of people in some faraway country who decided
for everyone, but by deciding at factory-level what was
going to be produced, based on the needs of the people.
Ofcourse, Stalin turned Lenin (who had denounced him in
his last will) into an idol, who had done nothing wrong
and in whose name all orders were given.
Completely against what Lenin himself had written, but
that did not matter too much: anyone daring to
comment upon the fact that Stalin ordered things which
were clearly not what Marx or Lenin had intended, was
shot or exiled (Trotsky, most notably, and a few
million others :( ).
>Matthew Huntbach
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ronald Kunenborg, Victoriestraat 3, 3815 ML Amersfoort, The Netherlands
(rkun...@praxis.cs.ruu.nl)
"If we must die, let it not be like hogs...
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!"
- Claude McKay, 1919.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Magnus Kempe
: [...] your political and economic views are based on your philosophy.
Which is certainly true, whether one holds an explicit or an implicit
philosophy. Please note also that some people may hold contradictory
ideas, which means that you cannot necessarily and infallibly deduce
their political views on the basis of their epistemology and ethics.
Further, Mr Mellon writes:
: It could help the debate if you give us a short introduction to the
: premises of the philosphy to which you adhere, which I believe is
: Objectivism, perhaps with references so that the interested can read
: for themselves in greater depth.
No. If you disagree with what I write, you'll have to find arguments
about the subject at hand (see below). However, as I have nothing to
hide about my ideas, I will send such information as you ask for, by
e-mail, as well as to anyone who cares enough to send me a message
asking for it. For the purpose of arguments in this newsgroup, and in
order to save bandwidth, I'll simply state that I am a radical for
Laissez-Faire Capitalism, which is the political system based on the
recognition of inalienable, individual, rights, and that I advocate
capitalism because I advocate reason and rational self-interest.
Let me add that I find your demands rather surprising: why ask such
information from me, and not from the rest of the writers? are you ready
to volunteer a description of *your* premises, or do you have some sort of
double-standard?
And, finally, Mr Mellon writes:
: I believe that Objectivists have
: some difficulty with relativity and quantum physics due to their premises.
If you think I, or "Objectivists", have problems with some parts of modern
physics, please explain what makes you *assert* that. I cannot answer
unsubstantiated accusations (neither will I answer in eunet.politics on
*that* topic).
-----
It might be useful to remind you that your whole attack, and ad hominems,
followed a message where I replied to an advocate of political classification
based on "reformists/conservatives" and "wealth distribution/concentration"
dichotomies. I wrote that:
- reformists, respectively conservatives, do not universally agree on what
they want to reform, respectively conserve; and
- it is not clear whether distribution and concentration of wealth are meant
to imply coercive actions initiated against some people, or only voluntary
individual actions.
And I (quite undiplomatically, as someone pointed out in e-mail) added that,
therefore, these criteria of classification are useless. I stand by my
statements.
Adam Hamilton
>in which Britain lost its empire. The Thatcher time has changed this trend.
Wrong! The English Sickness is lack of investment. During Thatcher's
reign investment went down not up. That is why we are in even more trouble
than before.
Magnus Kempe
: Local democracy is the balance to the unlimited majority rule of the
: national state. A balance of powers between the various levels of
: government helps avoid the situation that worries you [e.g. the
: legal murder of Socrates].
No, it doesn't. Unlimited majority rule is still unlimited, whether
it is practiced on a familial, local, or national scale. The only
proper way to limit government power is to restrict the scope of
actions open to government.
That is precisely the purpose of the political system based on the
recognition of individual rights: each man should have the freedom
to act in accordance with his ideas and with the requirements of his
life, which, basically, means that he should be free from coercive
intervention. The greatest threat of coercion is the state, as is
made evident by the scale of murders and expropriation committed,
throughout most of human history, on behalf of government power.
Capitalism bans the initiation of force from human relationships,
most emphatically including the actions of the government.
Mr Huntbach wrote:
: >: Lenin would have thoroughly approved of Thatcher's central planning.
and writes:
: By "central planning" I mean that rules and quotas are set by
: national government. Local authorities are forced to abide by
: these rules no matter what the local circumstances are.
: [example of housing policy and school curriculums]
So, if national government sets up the rule that "murder is forbidden",
it is "central planning", because "local circumstances" could be that
family X hates and wants to murder family Y...?
Seriously, central planning, as ascribed to Soviet Russia, depicts the
fact that all decisions relative to the economy, i.e. to production and
consumption, are taken in a given centre of the country, without any
regard to the possibility of a free market. Mrs Thatcher has removed
housing power from local authorities, in order to let the free market
rule housing! And you surely know that she had plans to reform the
British school system - which could explain her taking away school
authority from the local level (this last one is a hypothesis, I sure
welcome illuminating information and comments on that topic).
Chris Cooke
> Here England has the right free trade approach opposing Germans and French who
England has no approach to anything except certain kinds of sport.
The U.K. is the country which has approaches to things like free trade.
England ceased to be an independent country in 1707.
-- Chris.
Matthew Huntbach
>Well, the English Sickness has been going on since the second world war,
>in which Britain lost its empire. The Thatcher time has changed this trend.
>But the basic problems, like a poor educational system, etc., remains in
>Britain.
In what way has Thatcher changed the trend? Britain continues
to have a worse economy than the rest of Western Europe. All
that has changed is that the newspapers are so pro-Conservative,
they don't print the bad news.
In the past elections were lost on bad trade deficit figures
(notably the 1970 election). Now no-one even notices them, because
the newspapers have decided not to headline them. It appears a
high trade deficit is a terrible thing when there's a Labour
government, but nothing worth worrying about when we're
"enjoying" a Conservative "economic miracle".
BTW why do we never hear talk about the French ex-empire and
it's terrible effect?
Matthew Huntbach
0000-Admin(0000)
>>>She has been proposed as the new president of the European Commission,
>>>succeeding Jaques Delors, so we might get her back all of us.
>>
>> OHH Noo !
>>
>>>It might be good idea actually. She would prevent the French and the Germans
>>>from creating an unliberal Europe.
>>
>> You mean, She would prevent Anyone from creating Europe !
>
>lacks democratic legitimation and is not worthy an old democracy
> ^^^^^^^
When I read a contribution like the one you make I am never very sure if
this is perceptive irony or just plain bloody ignorance.
The first point is that England is not, never has been and in all
likelyhood never will be a democracy.
The United Kingdom has played around with the idea for many years but
has not got there yet. I'll back up that statement with three examples:
1) The electoral system - I'm not a supporter of the Liberals/SDP or
whatever they call themselves this week but it seems to me that
they got about 25% of the vote at the last general election and
about 3% of the seats in the House of Commons or what about the
Green Party and the European Parliament Elections. They got about 16%
of the vote (the best Green result in Europe) and 0 seats - You call
this democratic?
2) The House of Lords - Need I say more? Can you imagine the reaction
here in Germany if there was a second chamber populated by appointees
of the current government in power?
3) The colonial government of Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland and the
emasculation
of local government. I not blaming the conservatives 100% for this.
Previous governments started the process but Thatcher's government
brought it to perfection.
IMHO The UK would benifit greatly from being having a democratic system,
such as is practised in most W.European countries, imposed on it. It might
even make it a decent place to live in again.
Richard Tobin
>system based on unlimited majority rule. That's how Socrates was
>legally murdered, isn't it?
I quite agree that the death penalty is legalised murder.
Socrates himself took quite a different view.
Though he criticised the members of the jury who found him guilty and
sentenced him to death, he had no complaint about the right of the
laws or state to so condemn him.
Indeed, he refused the opportunity to escape on the grounds that this
would injure the country and its laws, and agreed that he was "above
all other Athenians in his affection for this city and its laws".
He further believed that "if you cannot persuade your country you must
do whatever it orders, and patiently submit to any punishment that it
imposes".
-- Richard
--
Richard Tobin, JANET: R.T...@uk.ac.ed
AI Applications Institute, ARPA: R.Tobin%uk.a...@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Edinburgh University. UUCP: ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!R.Tobin
Alain Cedelle
>BTW why do we never hear talk about the French ex-empire and
>it's terrible effect?
There was precisely no terrible effect in this case. The British empire was
mainly working for trade, making profits for the city-capital London. When
this flow was stopped, economic recession appeared.
The French empire was mainly administrative. For this reason, it turned to
an hexagon and some islands without great economic problems.
A.C
Alain Cedelle
>
>It is also a scandal that migrant EC-workers lack voting
>rights for local elections as they do in Germany. The Germans treat immigrant
>workers as slaves in old Sparta.
I think the situation is the same in France.
> Colbert was a mercantilist who tried to pursue French
>interests at the expense of other nations by protection the national industry
>and demanding tariffs against foreign produce.
Colbert has a very bad reputation in Brittany, since he destroyed the
flourishing trade the bretons had with England. Some people even pretend that
he deliberately ruined the Breton cloth industry because he was himself from
a familly of northern-France cloth producers.
>The best way of helping the poor countries is to let them have free access to
>our markets. Countries like Poland and Hungary (not to speak about Bangladesh,
>Argentina, etc) would be best helped by letting them export agricultural
>products and textiles.
I'm not sure that a free market could really help those countries. On the
contrary, economic liberalism generally kills the poor. (of course death is a
soution !-(
It doesn't seem that the free access of ex-DDR to western market has really
helped this country...
>Here England has the right free trade approach opposing Germans and French who
>want to regulate everything from the top. The meaning with trade is really
>to use comparative advantages of different areas. Through the British
>influence and Maggies hard work the EC has moved in the liberal direction with
>the common market program of 92.
I think the first objective of European Economic policy is a defensive power
in front of Japan and U.S.A. This has nothing to do with free trade.
A.C.
Wolfgang Grieskamp
>... Laissez-Faire Capitalism, which is the political system based on the
>recognition of inalienable, individual, rights, and that I advocate
>capitalism because I advocate reason and rational self-interest.
Capitalists do not universally agree on what is laissez-faire.
Jurisdication has no exact means on what is violating individual
rights. Politicals cannot give a sounding definition of what is
self-interest of systems. Philosophy battels for centurys just to
define rational (some call this "ethics", BTW).
So what? Capitalism cannot solve anything of the problems.
Mr. Kempes original points:
>- reformists, respectively conservatives, do not universally agree on what
> they want to reform, respectively conserve; and
>- it is not clear whether distribution and concentration of wealth are meant
> to imply coercive actions initiated against some people, or only voluntary
> individual actions.
> ... therefore, these criteria of classification are useless.
Reformistic (and conservative, depending on the historical situation)
approaches are based on the conviction that there is a common sense
of what might be *unwealthy*. I would agree that this sense is often
ambigious. But is your radical (and, i guess, a little fashioned)
believing in capitalism less?
--
Wolfgang Grieskamp
w...@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de tub!tubopal!wg wg%op...@DB0TUI11.BITNET
Ken Warkentyne
BTW why do we never hear talk about the French ex-empire and
it's terrible effect?
Matthew Huntbach
Because the "ex" is incorrect. ;-)
--
Ken Warkentyne - war...@ltisun.epfl.ch | "In fact, the "fame" is sometimes the
Laboratoire de Teleinformatique, | worst part." - Brad Templeton, humble
EPFL, Suisse. | moderator & bookseller.
Magnus Kempe
: Capitalists do not universally agree on what is laissez-faire.
To my knowledge, there is exactly one concept of laissez-faire:
the state has no power to initiate the use of force, be it in matters
of property, expression, and any other field of human activity;
the purpose of the state is to protect man against criminals, not
to allow the state to be a criminal.
: Jurisdication has no exact means on what is violating individual
: rights.
Wrong. Any violation of individual rights necessitates the initiation
of the use of force. This principle was discovered by Ayn Rand. If you
think about it, you'll grasp that point. If you want to read about it,
just ask me by e-mail, and I'll send you a short bibliography with
relevant references.
: Politicals cannot give a sounding definition of what is
: self-interest of systems.
I don't need politicians to tell me what my self-interest is. My
only guide to reality is my reason. What I want is to be free to
act according to my thinking, to be free from coercion; that is
what laissez-faire capitalism offers: the right to life, to property,
and to the pursuit of happiness.
Matthew Huntbach
>The statement 'Lenin would have approved of this' is incorrect.
>Stalin would have approved of it. Not Lenin, whose ideals
>where *democratic* planning of production, i.e. the people
>decided what should be produced.
Lenin invented "democratic centralism". That is exactly what
Thatcher is practising. Like Lenin, Thatcher claims to have a
democratic mandate. It was not Stalin who was responsible e.g.
for the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion.
Matthew Huntbach
Paul Johnson
Wrong again! The English Sickness is the high level of Union Wage
Demands, and Index Linked Pay Rises (yes, I am talking about senior
civil servants).
Mrs T tried to curb this, but to no avail. True, the current
recession was triggered by Lawson's bad economics, but it is being
fuelled by high wage demands. Inflation is linked to wages
(trivially). If wages are then linked back to inflation you have a
classic positive feedback loop. Full circle ahead!
Paul.
BTW what is the difference between "investment" and "spending"?
--
Paul Johnson UUCP: <world>!mcvax!ukc!gec-mrc!paj
--------------------------------!-------------------------|-------------------
GEC-Marconi Research is not | Telex: 995016 GECRES G | Tel: +44 245 73331
responsible for my opinions. | Inet: p...@uk.co.gec-mrc | Fax: +44 245 75244
Hugh Osborne
>In article <22...@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de> w...@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de writes:
>: Jurisdication has no exact means on what is violating individual
>: rights.
>Wrong. Any violation of individual rights necessitates the initiation
>of the use of force.
Define "force".
Are my rights being violated if someone in the same room smokes a
cigarette? If they let a skunk loose? If they fill the room with tear
gas? Or cyanide? Give a clearly defined border for "the initiation of
Jack Campin
> So, in summary, it is the bad attitude of people in Britain that has
> contributed to the current problems.
I think Brecht had the definitive comment on this style of reasoning;
after the East Berlin riots of 1953, he commented that since the people
had rejected the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the executive
should elect a new people.
(Maybe someone has the exact quote?)
--
-- Jack Campin Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank
Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland 041 339 8855 x6044 work 041 556 1878 home
JANET: ja...@cs.glasgow.ac.uk BANG!net: via mcsun and ukc FAX: 041 330 4913
INTERNET: via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk BITNET: via UKACRL UUCP: ja...@glasgow.uucp
Magnus Kempe
: mag...@disuns2.epfl.ch (Magnus Kempe) writes:
: >Any violation of individual rights necessitates the initiation
: >of the use of force.
:
: Define "force".
A physical intervention, or the threat of intervention, intended to
impose some particular action upon someone's property (including his
life, his own body), *against* his judgment, or without his consent.
(I do not claim that this is *the* best formulation, but I think I
have included the essential points.)
Now, let me quote a few words from Galt's speech (in _Atlas Shrugged_,
reprinted in _For the New Intellectual_, by Ayn Rand):
"To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man
and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his
means of survival; to force him to act against his own judgment,
is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to
whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer
acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder:
the premise of destroying man's capacity to live."
: Are my rights being violated if someone in the same room smokes a
: cigarette?
If the room is yours, and you do not want that person to smoke there: yes.
If not, you are free to leave the room.
: If they let a skunk loose?
Again, yes if the room is yours. If not, I can't answer, because I need
the full context; maybe you're a forceful occupant of someone else's
room, in which case you're the violator of rights... (the same goes for
tear gas, though you could question the method: it is, once more, a
question of context; are you an intruder, and is it self-defense, or
should the owner simply call the police?) This raises the topic of
the need for objective laws and justice courts, for the purpose of
settling disputes between honest men. If you want to know more about
that, just ask me by e-mail, and I'll send you a bibliography.
: If they fill the room with cyanide?
Here, there is a clear intent to kill. The context is necessary: is it
self-defense, and, if so, is it necessary to kill for the purpose of
self-defense (some soporific gas would certainly do the job, so I
would say, although you haven't provided the context, that it is a
violation).
Individual rights, the initiation of force, and self-defense, are not
out-of-context absolutes. In each case, it should be remembered that
the guiding standard is life, qua man, and that the purpose of these
concepts is to delimit the good (what's favorable to each man's life) and
the evil (what's against each man's life).
: Give a clearly defined border for "the initiation of the use of force".
Got it?
John-Olof Bauner
>In article <27...@ztivax.UUCP> ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) writes:
>>be good idea actually. She would prevent the French and the Germans from
>>from the Atlantic to Ural, not French colbertism and German authoritarianism.
>>
>You really have no idea of Thatcher in action.
My comment is related to Europe and not the British Isles. The fact is that
England is the number one in implementing the Common Market program of 92.
Mrs Thatcher was not a big European in her rhetorics but de facto is England
far ahead of Mr Kohl's and Mr Mitterand's countries in the implementation.
And a prefer real actions to lousy rhetorics. You can trust people like Mrs
Thatcher. You know where they stand. Mitterand and Kohl try to stand out
as the big Europeans. But in reality, they are coward and their nations will
have the most problems with a liberal Europe. Why not solve the problems we
have today, like the GATT negotiations and the Gulf crises, instead of talking
of the Europe we want to have in ten years. This difference in approach was
especially obvious at the Rome summit.
Regards
John-Olof
Mike Rogers
>The question is really what kind of Europe we want. The current EC-Europe
>lacks democratic legitimation and is not worthy an old democracy
>like England. It is also a scandal that migrant EC-workers lack voting
You can't be serious! England a worthy democracy? Next thing you'll be
claiming its a classless society.
Any country where one party can gerrymander first past the post voting
boundaries at will is not worthy of a second thought.
I wonder how badly the next election will go for Labour, seeing as how
there are now millions of disenfranchized Labour Poll Tax objectors. Not good.
--
Mike Rogers,Box 6,Regent Hse,TCD,EIRE | Radio, live transmission.
mi...@hamilton.maths.tcd.ie (UNIX=>AOK)| Radio, live transmission.
mi...@tcdmath.uucp (UUCP=>oldie/goodie)| Dance dance dance dance dance
msro...@vax1.tcd.ie(VMS => blergh) | To the radio.
josef Moellers
[ text deleted ]
>BTW what is the difference between "investment" and "spending"?
Seems obvious to me:
You invest in order to gain something from the money you spend.
I.e. "spending" is a one-way road for Your money, whereas "investing" is
supposed to be a two-way road.
That's why we small people are supposed to "spend" our money, when the
big people are "investing".
--
| Josef Moellers | c/o Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG |
| USA: molle...@nixdorf.com | Abt. STO-XS 113 |
| !USA: molle...@nixdorf.de | Heinz-Nixdorf-Ring |
| Phone: (+49) 5251 104662 | D-4790 Paderborn |
MIKE ROGERS
>fuelled by high wage demands. Inflation is linked to wages
>(trivially). If wages are then linked back to inflation you have a
>classic positive feedback loop. Full circle ahead!
Correct, but inflation is also linked to unneccessary enlargement of the
money supply, as happens in Britain with the huge expenditures on the Military.
Stands to reason if you're spending, say, 5% of your GNP on Military,
you're never going to get the inflation much below 5%: all the money you give
soldiers, weapons makers, etc, just gets funnelled back into the supply without
actually producing anything.
Stefan Merten
1) This is my first bigger article.
2) English is not my native language, thus I can't express all my
thoughts in the way I wish.
3) I added "talk.politics.theory" to the newsgroups because there
a longish discussion between libertarians and so called
"statists" took place. I think the following thoughts belong
also to this discussion.
In article <12...@disun5.epfl.ch> mag...@disuns2.epfl.ch (Magnus Kempe) writes:
>In article <25...@wn1.sci.kun.nl> hu...@phoibos.cs.kun.nl (Hugh Osborne) writes:
>: Define "force".
>
>A physical intervention, or the threat of intervention, intended to
>impose some particular action upon someone's property (including his
>life, his own body), *against* his judgment, or without his consent.
>(I do not claim that this is *the* best formulation, but I think I
> have included the essential points.)
I find it very interesting how central the term "property" is
used in this definition. Please tell us which ways of enforcing
property you will use. At least in extreme situations there
seems to be no other way than using physical force. Thus
property is one way of initiating force or the threat of physical
force itself. But isn't the initiation or the threat of physical
force that what you wanted to minimize?
How about exchanging the term "property" with the term
"possession". Though it seems to me that the notion of
possession can't be defined as clearly as the notion of property
(by contracts between people who all believe in and rely on such
a thing), the term "possession" is far more oriented at the real
needs of people.
>: Are my rights being violated if someone in the same room smokes a
>: cigarette?
>
>If the room is yours, and you do not want that person to smoke there: yes.
>If not, you are free to leave the room.
Does this mean:
"If someone owns a room (but doesn't possess it, e.g. live in,
isn't actually there), sHe can claim the real possessor not to
smoke"?
If this is not what you mean, this leads to a political system
where:
1) No property at all or at least not every form of property exists.
(e.g. the old private property of large means of production)
or
2) Property is not the power of dispotion [is this the right word
for the german "Verfuegungsgewalt"?] on the things owned.
It seems questionable to me whether property can be seen as
anything other than power of dispotion.
I think none of these systems you would agree.
If this is what you mean, the owner of any non-personal good
(e.g. factories and other large means of production,
appartements for rent) has far more power than the people working
or living there. Power means physical force in extreme
situations and the threat of it in normal situations. Under such
circumstances no fair contact can be done because contacts always
reflect the powers of the contract parties.
I think one big problem for mankind is the minimization of all
sorts of power (e.g. political, economical) or at least of it's
concentration. If anyone has the same power (at least more or
less) noone has a real possibility to initiate force.
--
Hope you can reach me at <mer...@informatik.uni-kl.de>.
"Socialism or barbary" -- Rosa Luxemburg
John-Olof Bauner
>>The question is really what kind of Europe we want. The current EC-Europe
>>lacks democratic legitimation and is not worthy an old democracy
>>like England. ^^^^^^^^^
>> ^^^^^^^
>
>When I read a contribution like the one you make I am never very sure if
>this is perceptive irony or just plain bloody ignorance.
>
>The first point is that England is not, never has been and in all
>likelyhood never will be a democracy.
>
>The United Kingdom has played around with the idea for many years but
>has not got there yet. I'll back up that statement with three examples:
>
>1) The electoral system
>2) The House of Lords
>3) The colonial government of Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland and the
>emasculation of local government.
>
>IMHO The UK would benifit greatly from being having a democratic system,
>such as is practised in most W.European countries, imposed on it. It might
>even make it a decent place to live in again.
>
Do you know that elections were held in Britain during the second world war,
a time when many nations were fascist. There are philosophers like Karl
Popper who argue that the majority system is the most stable one.
He was forced out of fascist Austria in the thirties, since then he lives in
England and is rather happy with that. I admit that the proportional election
system has some nice features as long as it works.
The House of Lords is naturally an antiquated institution and a sign that
England is still very much a class society. Mrs Thatcher was also very much
against the Establishment.
Most countries in Europe have some colonial areas within their territories
and that has been discussed in eunet.politics before. It would be nice if
one could create a European Senate, a second chamber of the European
Parliament, where regional interests can be adjusted for. The Bavarian
government is developing initiatives in this direction, but it naturally
very difficult to implement these ideas on the European level.
Regards
John-Olof
John-Olof Bauner
>In article <28...@ztivax.UUCP>, ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) writes...
>>
>>It is also a scandal that migrant EC-workers lack voting
>>rights for local elections as they do in Germany. The Germans treat immigrant
>>workers as slaves in old Sparta.
>
> I think the situation is the same in France.
>
Sweden, Switzerland, etc. have a reasonable approach here.
>
> It doesn't seem that the free access of ex-DDR to western market has really
>helped this country...
>
with the Federal Republic. Therefore you can not conclude that the state
in Hungary would get worse if they could sell ham and goose liver directly
to the EC and not via Italy and France.
> I think the first objective of European Economic policy is a defensive power
> in front of Japan and U.S.A. This has nothing to do with free trade.
Yes, you and the French want to destroy the whole world trade system. This
is obvious in the GATT-negotiations.
Regards
John-Olof
John-Olof Bauner
>I'll accept Your comments on France and "this our country" (H.K.), but
>to expect "liberalism" from Margeret ...
>
I think one should be aware that there is a political and an economical
liberalism. They are not necessarily linked. It is clear that Mrs Thatcher
stands for market economy and economical liberalism. Many articles in
e.g. eunet.politics argue that her reign has not increased political liberalism
in England, and I assume that these arguments might be valid.
Regards
John-Olof
Ronald Kunenborg
This is getting somewhat confused.
Are you referring to democratic planning or democratic
centralism ?
Neither democratic planning nor democratic centralism
were things practised by Thatcher.
(democracy never was something she understood or liked :).
Democratic planning: the workers in the factories
decide what they are going to produce, dependant
on what is needed by the people.
Now, I do not recall Thatcher saying to the
workers in the factories: "you decide what
to produce!" :).
Democratic centralism: the members of the party
make a decision after a debate or discussion,
by voting about it (democracy). The entire
party then abides by this decision (centralism)
but factions inside the party can continue
to agitate freely.
Best example: The party decided the time was
not ripe for a revolution (summer 1917),
Lenin disagreed but was the onliest (wellknown)
person in favor of a revolution. He then continued
to send letters to large numbers of party-members,
write letters and articles in the Pravda and
in general continued to argue for revolution,
with as result that finally the party
turned to his side and a revolution was made.
THIS is what democratic centralism means,
not the fallacy Stalin turned it into.
About Kronstadt: not one person but the entire
party was responsible for the decision (which
was made for very good reasons IMHO).
>Matthew Huntbach
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ronald Kunenborg, Victoriestraat 3, 3815 ML Amersfoort, The Netherlands
(rkun...@praxis.cs.ruu.nl)
"If we must die, let it not be like hogs...
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!"
- Claude McKay, 1919.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Magnus Kempe
: [I wrote]:
: >A physical intervention, or the threat of intervention, intended to
: >impose some particular action upon someone's property (including his
: >life, his own body), *against* his judgment, or without his consent.
: >(I do not claim that this is *the* best formulation, but I think I
: > have included the essential points.)
:
: I find it very interesting how central the term "property" is
: used in this definition. Please tell us which ways of enforcing
: property you will use. At least in extreme situations there
: seems to be no other way than using physical force. Thus
: property is one way of initiating force or the threat of physical
: force itself. But isn't the initiation or the threat of physical
: force that what you wanted to minimize?
Please, please, *read* and *grasp*. What I want to ban from human
relationships is the *initiation* of the use of force, and someone
asked me to define "force". However, I have never written that I
"want to minimize" the use of force, contrary to what you imply; it
is a fundamental need and right to have recourse to *self-defense*,
i.e. to use force against someone/something which has *initiated*
the use of force.
The rest of your message rests on an equivocation between political
and economic power. Now, [sigh] if you think about it, you will
understand that you're equating the power of a gun and the power of
a dollar. What kind of incentive is it to point a gun at someone, and
say "do this, or I'll kill you"? What kind of incentive is it to
show a dollar to someone, and say "I'll trade this value for that value:
do you agree?"? Do you understand the difference between coercion and
trade? between destruction and production? between death and life?
: "Socialism or barbary"
If you, or anyone else, wants to understand why socialism *is* barbary,
and that the choice is not between these tribal beliefs, but between
individualism and collectivism, between selfishness and altruism,
between rationality and mysticism, just drop me a message, and
I'll send you a few relevant references (including _Socialism_ by Ludwig
von Mises, a thorough demonstration of the impracticality of a socialist
economic system, among other vices).
Marc Riese
> In article <1990Dec1.1...@irisa.fr> ced...@yin.irisa.fr writes:
> >In article <28...@ztivax.UUCP>, ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) writes...
> >>
> >>It is also a scandal that migrant EC-workers lack voting
> >>rights for local elections as they do in Germany. The Germans treat immigrant
> >>workers as slaves in old Sparta.
> >
> > I think the situation is the same in France.
> >
> Unfortunately you are right. Only smaller countries like the Netherlands,
> Sweden, Switzerland, etc. have a reasonable approach here.
Switzerland? I don't have voting rights for local elections here.
Mind you, I don't agree that this equates to slavery (see my recent posting
if you care :-).
P.S. Here's some text to make the postnews program happy.
Here's some more text to make the postnews program happy.
And yet more text to make the postnews program happy.
Happy, happy, happy, happy.
Magnus Kempe
> In article <28...@ztivax.UUCP>, ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) writes...
> >It is also a scandal that migrant EC-workers lack voting
> >rights for local elections as they do in Germany. The Germans treat immigrant
> >workers as slaves in old Sparta.
>
> Sweden, Switzerland, etc. have a reasonable approach here.
B*S*. In Sweden, foreigners have no right to vote, and so-called "political
refugees" (i.e. people who have another color of skin) are not allowed to
work. Some of these people, even *doctors*, have been kept in "refugee camps"
for years, and are totally forbidden to work. They are supposedly taught to
speak/write swedish, but, again, some of them have to wait years before they
get any courses... Of course, some of them prefer that to a possible death in
their home country, but, please, do not say that "Sweden has a reasonable
approach". So much for the "Swedish welfare paradise"...
The only reasonable approach is to leave all men free to choose where they
want to live and work, and to become part of the electorate after a few years
of residence. This is just another tenet of laissez-faire capitalism: no
customs, just freedom to move to the destination of your choice, with your
property; no tariffs, no import/export restrictions, no "protection" against
"foreigners": political freedom, for each individual man, no matter what his
characteristics may be (e.g. age, origin, brother, wealth, education).
Alain Cedelle
What is certainly obvious in the GATT-negotiations is that every country is
defending its own interests.
"negotiation" might not be the proper term for this round of ultimatums,
arrogance, and national egoisms.
The U.S.A. are so aggressive in their one-way position of "open *your*
market for *our* products !" that they've succeeded in strengthening the
cohesion of EEC !
Indeed, we are far from the 'free market', but you give too much importance
to the French position, here. They are just a small part of the general system.
A.C.
Torkel Franzen
>B*S*. In Sweden, foreigners have no right to vote, and so-called "political
>refugees" (i.e. people who have another color of skin) are not allowed to
>work. Some of these people, even *doctors*, have been kept in "refugee camps"
Ah, the persuasive voice of Reason, always reasonably Proving, never
merely Claiming (let alone electronically foaming at the mouth). As for
voting in Sweden, residents who are not Swedish citizens have (since
1976) the right to vote in local elections, and are also themselves
eligible for election.
Erland Sommarskog
>B*S*. In Sweden, foreigners have no right to vote, and so-called "political
>refugees" (i.e. people who have another color of skin) are not allowed to
>work. Some of these people, even *doctors*, have been kept in "refugee camps"
>for years, and are totally forbidden to work. They are supposedly taught to
>speak/write swedish, but, again, some of them have to wait years before they
>get any courses... Of course, some of them prefer that to a possible death in
>their home country, but, please, do not say that "Sweden has a reasonable
>approach". So much for the "Swedish welfare paradise"...
This is not entirely correct. As Torkel Franzen pointed out, foreign
citizens who lived in Sweden for some time (which is well-defined,
but I don't remember it) may vote to local and regional assemblies.
Neither can the statement about political refugess not being allowed
to work be considered as a factual argument. There is a truth hiding
behind it, but as Magnus puts it you could believe that they have to
stay in the camps forever. Eventually they get asylum - or are thrown
out. And, of course, if they are allowed to stay they get also get a
working permit and may work with whatever they like.
Unfortunately, reality is somewhat more harsh. Many high-educated
foreigners have jobs far below their competence. This sad fact has
to with the attitudes in the industry and elsewhere. Part this is
due to an uncertainty of what the foreign exams are worth, but since
foreigners with Swedish exams have problems too, this is not the entire
truth.
Let me say, that I am not very happy with my country's reception of
immigrants and refugees. The idea to examine each case seems reasonable,
but when it takes two years to do the examination and the immigrant
is not allowed to work in the meantime, then it is getting very
inhuman.
Anyway, the situation here isn't that bad as Magnus describes it,
but it isn't that bloody good either. And if you read the letters
to the editors in papers you find more people who think that we
are too generous than who agree with me and Magnus.
--
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - som...@enea.se
Matthew Huntbach
>
>Democratic centralism: the members of the party
>make a decision after a debate or discussion,
>by voting about it (democracy). The entire
>party then abides by this decision (centralism)
>but factions inside the party can continue
>to agitate freely.
The Thatcherite claim is that the entire country made a
decision to elect Thatcher as PM, and must thus abide by this
decision, though agitation (i.e. opposition parties) is still
freely allowed. The claim that Thatcherism has a democratic
mandate has been used to override the competing claims of local
government authorities. This is a form of democratic
centralism.
Matthew Huntbach
Matthew Huntbach
>Wrong again! The English Sickness is the high level of Union Wage
>Demands, and Index Linked Pay Rises (yes, I am talking about senior
>civil servants).
>
>Mrs T tried to curb this, but to no avail.
When Mrs.T. was leader of the opposition, she explicitly denied
this. We were told that inflation was due solely to the rise in
money supply figures, and that if industry agreed to pay high
wage demands, this was the free market economy in action.
Mrs.T. went as far as to support the demands of the Ford
carworkers who were campaigning for wage increases above the
limit that the Callaghan government had set.
Matthew Huntbach
John-Olof Bauner
>In article <28...@ztivax.UUCP>, ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) wrote:
>>The question is really what kind of Europe we want. The current EC-Europe
>>lacks democratic legitimation and is not worthy an old democracy
>>like England. It is also a scandal that migrant EC-workers lack voting
>
> You can't be serious! England a worthy democracy? Next thing you'll be
>claiming its a classless society.
>
Well, John Major, already speaks about the classless society (ha, ha). One
could think he is a marxist.
Regards
jo
John-Olof Bauner
In article <12...@disun5.epfl.ch> mag...@disuns2.epfl.ch (Magnus Kempe) writes:
>In article <29...@ztivax.UUCP>, ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) writes:
>> In article <28...@ztivax.UUCP>, ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) writes...
>> >It is also a scandal that migrant EC-workers lack voting
>> >rights for local elections as they do in Germany. The Germans treat immigrant
>> >workers as slaves in old Sparta.
>>
>> Unfortunately you are right. Only smaller countries like the Netherlands,
>> Sweden, Switzerland, etc. have a reasonable approach here.
>
>B*S*. In Sweden, foreigners have no right to vote, and so-called "political
>refugees" (i.e. people who have another color of skin) are not allowed to
>work. Some of these people, even *doctors*, have been kept in "refugee camps"
>for years, and are totally forbidden to work. They are supposedly taught to
>speak/write swedish, but, again, some of them have to wait years before they
>get any courses... Of course, some of them prefer that to a possible death in
>their home country, but, please, do not say that "Sweden has a reasonable
>approach". So much for the "Swedish welfare paradise"...
>
Sweden allows bearers of foreign passports to take part in local and regional
elections after five years of residence. That I think is a reasonable approach.
Political refugees are distributed among the communes. Some stay in refugee
camps, some in hotels, normal apartments, tourist resorts, etc. What do you
expect - a new villa for each refugee? As in most other cuntries, refugees are
disallowed to work until they have permanent residence permit. This is also the
case in Germany. This praxis has become unpractical, because of the enourmous
influx of political and economical refugess, and I think most countries will
introduce a temorary work permit that will be valid until the refugee status is
cleared. To the credit of Sweden one could mention that Sweden has the highest
rate of recognized refugees in Western Europe, 1 per 61 inhabitants.
Regards
jo
John-Olof Bauner
>In article <29...@ztivax.UUCP>, ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) writes...
>>In article <1990Dec1.1...@irisa.fr> ced...@yin.irisa.fr writes:
>>> I think the first objective of European Economic policy is a defensive power
>>> in front of Japan and U.S.A. This has nothing to do with free trade.
>>
>>Yes, you and the French want to destroy the whole world trade system. This
>>is obvious in the GATT-negotiations.
>
> What is certainly obvious in the GATT-negotiations is that every country is
> defending its own interests.
> "negotiation" might not be the proper term for this round of ultimatums,
> arrogance, and national egoisms.
>
> The U.S.A. are so aggressive in their one-way position of "open *your*
> market for *our* products !" that they've succeeded in strengthening the
> cohesion of EEC !
The U.S. has a liberal approach, and they are supported by all poor countries
who want to export textiles and agricultural products to the rich Western
Europe. The aggressor is in this case the EC. On the other hand you are right
that Europe is now so united that it can test a show down with uncle Sam
and Japan. And the French always wanted to reduce the American influence in
Europe.
>
> Indeed, we are far from the 'free market', but you give too much importance
> to the French position, here. They are just a small part of the general system.
It is quite clear that the French, and partially the Germans, are responsible
for the breakdown of the GATT-negotiations. The EC tax payers are supposed
to pay for the French agricultural export. That is the French national
interest. The French have too much influence in Brussels and the Germans do not
want to take a position against the French, because the French have become so
touchy since German reunification.
Regards
Jo
Stefan Merten
> relationships is the *initiation* of the use of force
OK, I should have asked for your definition of property! But I
think we already disagree on the definition of force. However, I
think mankind should ban all force from human relationships, but
that's idealistic.
> However, I have never written that I
> "want to minimize" the use of force, contrary to what you imply
OK, I must admit I thought we agree on some very fundamental
assumptions. These assumptions lead me to the conclusion, you
want to minimize force (BTW: If you minimize force in whole you
also minimize the initiation of force). In the following I want
to clarify some of these fundamental assumptions. Some of the
notions used are not fully definable, they are surely subject to
discussion (sometimes I'll write them in double quotes). But a
discussion which leaves a twilight zone is better than to say:
"We can't fully define this notion, so let's take a minimal
definition which noone can complain on.".
Here are some of my assumptions (these are surely not all but
they are important). Unfortunatly they got a little bit long
[:-)].
(1) We want to *think* about a (human) society (not only
postulate some dogmas).
(2) This society should be "better" than the one existing. (If
the existing society is the best one we can imagine, we don't
need to think further. We know that the ideal society can't be
realized, but we hope it can be approximated.)
(3) A "better" society is one where as much as possible people
are "happy" (does anyone really deny this?).
If you followed me to this point, what can we do now? I think the
steps are:
(a) Try do approximate what makes people "happy" (the results of
this approximation should be constantly discussed by anyone who
wants).
(b) Try to find ways to approximate a society which maximizes
"happiness" found in (a) (these ways also should be constantly
discussed by anyone who wants).
(c) Realize approximations of the ways found in (b) in the real
world.
(d) Go to (a) (this is very important because this leads to a
dynamic system which should get better and better).
If you agree with me on these points no fixed theory or ideology
is possible (as libertarianism or marxism (this is not the
thinking of Marx but that of his descendants!)).
Now I want to talk about some of the problems.
As I wrote earlier in this article, not everything in human life
can be defined as in the natural sciences (e.g. physics).
"Happiness" surely is one of these things. However, the opposite
of happiness is obvious in at least one case: hunger. (I know
there are some more pathological cases where hunger can make
people happy, but I think we doesn't need to discuss this point.)
Another thing which seems relatively obvious to me is the want of
absence of "coercion" (some kind of "freedom"). It's obvious
that there exists some types of biological coercions (one must at
least eat and sleep). It's also obvious that there are some
coercions which stem from the contradiction of individual and
collective needs (see below). Thus a society with no coercion is
not possible. The result of this is: "We don't like coercion.
Though we can't eliminate it, we should try to minimize it".
(BTW: *This* leads to my assumption, you want to minimize (the
initiaion of) force (one type of coercion).)
There are surely some more points which make people happy (an
important example is "social warmth"!) but I want to concentrate
on "coercion" because this has been shown to be a central point
for the discussion with libertarians (sorry Magnus if you are
don't claim to be a libertarian).
> Do you understand the difference between coercion and trade?
The normal libartarian statement on coercion is to say "only
physical force can lead to coercion". (BTW: If taken seriously,
this reduces men to biological machines which only don't want to
be hurted physically but don't deny starvation if it wouldn't
hurt.) This is the kind of minimal definition which I stated I
don't want because I think it doesn't *really* help.
It's clear that phycical force leads to coercion, but wouldn't
you agree that a decision of the type "work under my conditions
or starve" is coercive, too? Libertarians usually now argue, that
[flames on] their holy free market [flames off] would add the
option to work for another one under better conditions. (BTW: I
don't think free markets and free trade are the evil as such.
But I do think free markets (especially the labour market) and
free trade lead to some unwanted effects on society (at least
together with property). Thus one must think about methods how
to tame free markets and free trade.)
But as soon as you have a certain amount of unemployment, this
option vanishes in a puff of smoke (at least for
non-specialists). (BTW: If you open your eyes and take a look
around you, you will know what I mean. This holds true
especially in the USA of today. Or think at the so-called Third
World.) If you really would state that the decision above isn't
coercive in the decribed scenario we can stop the discussion
here.
At this point libertarians usually state, that the [flames on]
evil state [flames off] prevents the free market to work. They
usually now bring lots of examples how the state (they tend to
use only the USA) violates free markets and conclude that with no
state the free market would [flames on] magically solve all
problems (BTW: *This* is what I call mysticism) [flames off].
As a counter-example I would raise the FRG (now extended by the
eastern colonies). Here the disadvantages of a capitalistic
system (very shortly i.e.: free markets and free trade together
with large private property) are compensated by the state with
the so-called social system. The world of today shows that this
seems to be one of the most stable and effective capitalistic
systems! (BTW: This has nothing to do with any national feelings
(I don't like (not to say: hate) germany for several reasons), I
only look at the economic, social and political situation.)
But I can give theoretical reasons to this conclusion, too. It's
really in the interest of the ideal all-capitalist (german:
"ideller Gesamtkapitalist") to tame the workers *in the own
political system*. One way of doing this are to pay relatively
high wages. Another way is to *make the workers believe* that
they participate in the political power. A third way is to
install a social system to take *some* of the worker's worries
(not all, since then the capitalists loose much of their power!).
Now one can say "Fine! Let's do like FRG!". But the destructions
that capitalism does are not gone! They are only exported
(especially to the so-called Third World, especially ecological
destruction and massive exploitation) and hidden (especially
internal ecological destruction and less massive exploitation).
[Oh Lord, this was a very long and verbose statement and I think
on my way I forgot some important things!]
> The rest of your message rests on an equivocation between political
> and economic power.
[Did I get you right if you think I "equated" ("set equal")
economical and political power? If not I don't understand you
here.].
Wrong! I didn't equate economical and political power! I only say
that political power (guns) can lead to coercion and economical
power (property) can lead to coercion, too. (BTW: I must repeat
myself: Which ways do you want to use to enforce property?
Doesn't use all your ways political power (at least in extreme
cases)? Do you see the *connection* between political and
economical power?). Naturally this statement relies on a certain
definition of "coercion". I think here is the real difference
between us.
> If you, or anyone else, wants to understand why socialism *is* barbary,
> and that the choice is not between these tribal beliefs, but between
> individualism and collectivism, between selfishness and altruism
I fully agree with you on that point. I also think one (*the*?)
central problem of human societies is the contradiction between
individual and collective needs. There seems to be no easy way
out of this dilemma, but I *believe* it's none of the extremes.
I suppose history would have brought up one of the extremes
(total individualism or total collectivism) if it were the
optimum for all. With this assumption the only way to get to a
"better" society is to wander between these extremes. Are you
still following me?
BTW, socialism can't be barbary by definition. But I even don't
insist on that term. What I really want is a society where as
much people as possible are happy (see (3) above). As a
abbreviation for such a society I use the term "socialism". So I
would define socialism by the purpose to reach (see (2) above)
not by the way to get there. The ways to reach this purpose are
subject to discussion (see (b) above).
> the choice is between rationality and mysticism
Can you elaborate on this? Do you think all collective thoughts
are mystic?
I would like to here comments on the thoughts presented here.
Take your keyboards and write all you net.libertarians,
net.socialists, net.anarchists, net.capitalists and other
net.*sts or net.*ans. [A last BTW: Does this article reach for
example the USA?]
Erhard Sanio
>relationships is the *initiation* of the use of force, and someone
>asked me to define "force". However, I have never written that I
>"want to minimize" the use of force, contrary to what you imply; it
>is a fundamental need and right to have recourse to *self-defense*,
>i.e. to use force against someone/something which has *initiated*
>the use of force.
>
(no revenge, no excess), usage of force (esp. violence) is always questionable.
The biggest "arm" I would personally use against e.g. a burglar would be a
camera in order to ease prosecution by the police. Stopping a thief by a fire-
arm would be an immoral and criminal action, IMHO. Thus, not only initiation,
but also escalation of force has to be banned.
>
>The rest of your message rests on an equivocation between political
>understand that you're equating the power of a gun and the power of
>a dollar. What kind of incentive is it to point a gun at someone, and
>say "do this, or I'll kill you"? What kind of incentive is it to
>show a dollar to someone, and say "I'll trade this value for that value:
>do you agree?"? Do you understand the difference between coercion and
>trade? between destruction and production? between death and life?
>
the power of say, a contract. In civilized societies, a layer of customs and
laws is implemented to regulate dissent between individuals.
Anyway, it would be ignorant to deny that any contractual relationship implies
the threat of force if the contract is not fulfilled. Within a nation, you
are entitled to use the whole power of the state to force a contract party to
fulfil the contract as soon as you have a legal demand when a malevolent
contract partner refuses to serve the contract. Thus, the power of the dollar
implies the power of the gun.
Everything is a bit different in the international arena. Here, the superpowers
(any of them) frequently ignored international laws and contracts. As there
is no police to force them, the came away with that kind of behaviour.
Btw., even "normal" trade always implies the existence of power. As long as
power is balanced between demander and supplier, this aspect may be ignored.
But if either the demander or the supplier control a central resource (e.g.
a haciendero "owning" a whole county), economic power may have the same effects
as direct use of force.
In summary: Real socio-economical life is a bit more complex than the simplistic
objectivist "premises".
>--
>Best Premises, mag...@elcgl.epfl.ch
regards, es
Alain Cedelle
>The rest of your message rests on an equivocation between political
>and economic power. Now, [sigh] if you think about it, you will
>understand that you're equating the power of a gun and the power of
>a dollar.
Of course they are not equal. A dollar has much more power, as it has been
prooved by Japan since 1945.
> What kind of incentive is it to point a gun at someone, and
>say "do this, or I'll kill you"? What kind of incentive is it to
>show a dollar to someone, and say "I'll trade this value for that value:
>do you agree?"? Do you understand the difference between coercion and
>trade? between destruction and production? between death and life?
A man died, two days ago, in Quimper (Bzh). Noone used any gun. He was just
homeless, and didn't survived to the cold weather, while sleeping outside.
What kind of incentive is it to ask a dollar to someone and say "You don't
have the money, you won't have anything" ? ( and you won't live anylonger...)
A.C.
Glen Raphael
>The normal libartarian statement on coercion is to say "only
>physical force can lead to coercion". (BTW: If taken seriously,
>this reduces men to biological machines which only don't want to
>be hurted physically but don't deny starvation if it wouldn't
>hurt.) This is the kind of minimal definition which I stated I
>don't want because I think it doesn't *really* help.
I don't understand what you're saying here: nobody's *forcing* you to
starve! If you go hide in a cave, and refuse to find food, grow food,
beg for food from private charity, or work for food, you will starve. So?
>It's clear that phycical force leads to coercion, but wouldn't
>you agree that a decision of the type "work under my conditions
>or starve" is coercive, too? Libertarians usually now argue, that
>[flames on] their holy free market [flames off] would add the
>option to work for another one under better conditions. (BTW: I
>don't think free markets and free trade are the evil as such.
>But I do think free markets (especially the labour market) and
>free trade lead to some unwanted effects on society (at least
>together with property). Thus one must think about methods how
>to tame free markets and free trade.)
>But as soon as you have a certain amount of unemployment, this
>option vanishes in a puff of smoke (at least for
>non-specialists). (BTW: If you open your eyes and take a look
>around you, you will know what I mean. This holds true
>especially in the USA of today. Or think at the so-called Third
>World.)
1) Did you mean to say "at least for specialists"? Obviously, non-
specialists can work *anywhere*.
2) If I'm unemployed now, and can't find a job, all I have to do
is look for a job at a lower salary level. Absent minimum wage laws
(which are, of course, evil and produce *real* unemployment), in
a functioning economy there must be *some* wage level at which
an employer is willing to hire me! I get a job there until I can find
a better one. Most unemployment in the US is either caused by the
minimum-wage law and would go away in a libertarian society, or is
people who haven't yet found a job *at the level they require*.
The latter would of course remain, but is not coercion because those
involved could always lower their expectations. Oh, and a lot of
unemployment in the US is mandated by social programs now in force,
that is, John Q. Smith *can't* get a job because he would lose his
unemployment benefits that pay more than the job he could currently get.
3) A case in point: Me. I made a conscious decision not to work for
IBM partially because I disagree with their policy on drug testing.
My choice was not put-up-with-it-or-starve, it was put-up-with-it-or
work-someplace-else. But if IBM were the *only* company hiring for
the sort of job I was interested in, I could have settled for a data-entry
position somewhere else at a third the salary, or I could have worked
for Fry's Electronics as a clerk or at McDonalds for $5/hour, no
experience necessary, or I could have worked as a shipping clerk
or night watchman or something that didn't require people interaction
and a firm grasp of English for even less. OR I could have put up
with it and worked for IBM anyway, or I could have starved. When you
look at it that way, IBM was only coercing me *as much as I was willing
to be coerced*. Almost everybody has a similar set of options, no
matter what field they work in. The fact that somebody is unemployed
now (and thus that unemployment exists) does not imply to me that she
*couldn't* work at a McDonald's, only that she chooses not to.
So in sum, I don't agree that "this holds true especially in the USA of
today." Could you elaborate in light of the above? Of course, I also
disagree that third-world workers are [flame on] "exploited" or
"coerced" [flame off], but for reasons that have been well explored
in the past on this and other groups; there's no point in bringing it
up again.
>If you really would state that the decision above isn't
>coercive in the decribed scenario we can stop the discussion
>here.
If you would state that IBM's behavior in my example (3) above *is*
coercive, we can likewise stop the discussion here.
>Now one can say "Fine! Let's do like FRG!". But the destructions
>that capitalism does are not gone! They are only exported
>(especially to the so-called Third World, especially ecological
>destruction and massive exploitation) and hidden (especially
>internal ecological destruction and less massive exploitation).
>[Oh Lord, this was a very long and verbose statement and I think
>on my way I forgot some important things!]
You forgot to define [flame on] "massive exploitation" [flame off].
Do you mean, "Giving people the opportunity to work for more money
under conditions that they are willing to accept in order to make
that money?" Be careful unless you believe IBM was "exploiting" me
in example (3) above!
(Oh, darn! And I said I wasn't going to bring up the third world...:-) )
I'll leave the rest of your post for somebody else.
Glen Raphael
rap...@fx.com
..ames!fxgrp!raphael
Matthew Huntbach
>Well, John Major, already speaks about the classless society (ha, ha). One
>could think he is a marxist.
>
on ownership. John Major is the opposite of a marxist because
he does not believe there are serious class divisions in
society today.
Matthew Huntbach
Chris Cooke
> The House of Lords is naturally an antiquated institution and a sign that
> England is still very much a class society. Mrs Thatcher was also very much
> against the Establishment.
There's a limit to how much you can be against the establishment, while
at the same time being FOR the very rich.
--
-- Chris. c...@cs.ed.ac.uk (on Janet, c...@uk.ac.ed.cs)
Paul Johnson
cannot see the difference between the statement "Do this or I shoot
you" and "Do this or I let you starve to death". In addition as far
as I can see you are willing to just say "Starve to death", which,
when you have the ability to save someone is morally equivalent to
shooting them (perhaps worse: I would far rather be shot than starve).
I understand your point about the initiation of force, but surely it
is better to use a little violence to force a Have to save the life of
a Have-not than to condemn the Have-not to death by starvation.
Starvation is just as violent and forceful as any other death.
To say "the non/charitable use of his property is up to the Have" is
to allow the Have to kill people. The fact that this is done by
inaction rather than action is irrelevant.
Paul.
--
Paul Johnson UUCP: <world>!mcvax!ukc!gec-mrc!paj
--------------------------------!-------------------------|-------------------
GEC-Marconi Research is not | Telex: 995016 GECRES G | Tel: +44 245 73331
responsible for my opinions. | Inet: p...@uk.co.gec-mrc | Fax: +44 245 75244
Steve Wallis
Not quite true. Major has (or claims to have) a *dream* of a classless
society. He does not claim that today's society is classless. He is the
opposite of a Marxist because Tory policies widen the class divide as the
rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Hence he is either lying, or knows
as much how to achieve it as he knew how to solve Britain's economic
problems. :-) His first step was to appoint an all-male cabinet where 19
out of 21 went to public (i.e. private) schools, and 17 went to Oxford or
Cambridge. BTW, the "state" school his children go to costs over #3,000 a
year...
Some Tories do (claim to) believe society is classless. Lady Porter (you
know, the infamous council leader who sold cemeteries for a few pence)
recently tried to sell some flats which had been left in the will of a Duke
for the "working classes" to live in. But it was proved in court that the
working class still does exist...
Steve.
--
/ / / \ / / -------------Steve Wallis-------------
\/\ /\ \/ \ / \\/ / | JANET: ste...@uk.ac.man.cs.r5 |
/ \ \/ \/ \\//\ / | Internet: ste...@r5.cs.man.ac.uk |
\/ \/ | UUCP: ..mcvax!ukc!man.cs.r5!stevew |
alain Cedelle
>
>who want to export textiles and agricultural products to the rich Western
>Europe.
In agricultural domain, the U.S. are not that much liberal. They protect their
home market, and assist the U.S farmers, exactly like EC.
Around 1980, the U.S. farmers were even more State-aided than the EC farmers:
37% of mean state subsidy for the income of a U.S. farmer, only 27% in EC.
Since that time, both U.S. and EC realized the need to reduce those costs.
An other good way to protect a market is -national- sanitary rules.
The apples produced in Brittany and Normandy cannot be exported to U.S. due to
one of those rules.
Of course, in the same time, the U.S. are in great anger, for not being able to
export in EC their beef-meat containing 'anabolisants' (sp?).
(A difference is that I don't mind eating my apples, although the U.S.
consumers don't even accept to eat their beef-meat !)
>The aggressor is in this case the EC.
I don't see how EC would be an aggressor in this domain.
The fact is EC has greatly developed his agriculture, in the last 20 years. And
U.S. are not pleased to lost the leading position they had after the end
of WWII.
In 1970, EC was importator of 30 mega-tons of cereals per year, as in 1990 they
are exportators of the same quantity of cereals.
Today, EC exports agricultural products for 120 Milliards of $ per year, as
U.S. exports for 60 Milliards.
EC imports in the same time for 50 Milliards, as U.S. imports for 20 Milliards.
The advantage of EC is clear in those numbers, and it is even worse for U.S.
since their part of the European importation is decreasing year after year.
>It is quite clear that the French, and partially the Germans, are responsible
>for the breakdown of the GATT-negotiations. The EC tax payers are supposed
>to pay for the French agricultural export.
EC tax payers give much more for the agricultures of Netherlands, Belgium,
Denmark, Ireland and UK.
Here are the mean costs per famer, in ecus, for the year 86:
Netherlands: 5100
Belgium: 4600
Denmark: 2500
Ireland: 2200
U.K. : 1900
France : 1800
A.C.
(dscmr: since I'm not quite french i'm not responsible for the GATT failure !-)
Alain Cedelle
>Everything is a bit different in the international arena. Here, the superpowers
>(any of them) frequently ignored international laws and contracts. As there
>is no police to force them, the came away with that kind of behaviour.
>
>Btw., even "normal" trade always implies the existence of power. As long as
>power is balanced between demander and supplier, this aspect may be ignored.
>But if either the demander or the supplier control a central resource (e.g.
>a haciendero "owning" a whole county), economic power may have the same effects
>as direct use of force.
It is also worth noting the similarities in the methods of economic and warlike
strategies. In terms of conquests of new positions, defences of existing
settlements, balance of powers, need for information and activities of
disinformation...
The ancients chinese strategists, like Sun-Tzu, are perfectly applied to the
modern economic 'wars'.
A.C.
Stefan Merten
> nobody's *forcing* you to starve!
> If you go hide in a cave, and refuse to find food, grow food,
> beg for food from private charity, or work for food, you will starve. So?
This statement is very important, because it marks one of the
great red threads in the whole libertarian discussion. It's
true: *no person or single instiution* coerces you, but the
*economical and political system as a whole* coerces you to do
this or that.
In my previous posting I stated, that every society must tend to
coerce the community and/or the individual because collective and
individual needs are contradictory sometimes. But to make people
*happy* we should search for a society that among other things
minimizes coercion for both, the community *and* the individual
(I elaborated on this in my last article). Libertarians reduce
the coercion for the community to zero and state that this
extreme is the best possible society.
BTW, how do libertarians think about the contradiction between
collective and individual needs? Does they really still think
that societies are linear and that any kind of freedom for a
single person, leads to the same kind of freedom for all other
persons? If this is so, we are at the end of the discussion,
because I think, that societies develop their own dynamics, which
can (and should) be considered.
> If you go hide in a cave, and refuse to find food, grow food,
> beg for food from private charity, or work for food, you will starve. So?
Back to my original point: Is this what you think makes people
*happy*? Shouldn't a society care for such situations in a
adequate manner (which is subject to discussion)?
>>It's clear that phycical force leads to coercion, but wouldn't
>>you agree that a decision of the type "work under my conditions
>>or starve" is coercive, too? Libertarians usually now argue, that
>>[flames on] their holy free market [flames off] would add the
>>option to work for another one under better conditions.
>
>>But as soon as you have a certain amount of unemployment, this
>>option vanishes in a puff of smoke (at least for
>>non-specialists). (BTW: If you open your eyes and take a look
>>around you, you will know what I mean. This holds true
>>especially in the USA of today. Or think at the so-called Third
>>World.)
>
> 1) Did you mean to say "at least for specialists"? Obviously, non-
> specialists can work *anywhere*.
Oh no, I really meant non-specialist, though in some degree the
statement holds true for specialized workers, too. Specialists
can be *needed* by employers and therefore they have some *power*
as single persons. One fixed non-specialized worker is not
needed by anyone and therefore he has no power in relation to the
employers.
> 2) If I'm unemployed now, and can't find a job, all I have to do
> is look for a job at a lower salary level.
Hah, trapped :-)! The community of employers (and not a single
one!) coerces you to work at wages of their will!! If you don't
want to work under their conditions, you have the option to beg
or starve. Great!
I want to elaborate on this: Every single employer has a interest
in low wages (becauce concurrency between producers). So, every
"good" employer tends to lower his wages more and more! This
leads to what is called reduction to misery (german:
"Verelendung") of the employees. Tell me a mechanism in a
libertarian society, which prevents this effect.
> Absent minimum wage laws,
> in a functioning economy there must be *some* wage level at which
> an employer is willing to hire me!
Why? Tell me the natural law that guarantees that this wage level
is greater than zero (BTW, that's easy)! If you found one, what
natural law guarantees that this level is higher than the
absolute minimum to life (BTW, I don't know the answer, I think
there is none).
> 3) [talking about IBM not coercing him]
It's not IBM, it's the system! Or theoretical: It's not the
capitalist, it's capitalism!
> The fact that somebody is unemployed
> now (and thus that unemployment exists) does not imply to me that she
> *couldn't* work at a McDonald's, only that she chooses not to.
OK. What is coercion? Coercion exists if someone must do things
against his willing. OK? Then, isn't your scenario a kind of
coercion? I admit, that with this definition a lot of things are
coercive. But that doesn't lead me to the definition: "If one
has at least one other option, a situation is not coercive".
> You forgot to define [flame on] "massive exploitation" [flame off].
The old Marxian discussion about the surplus value of work comes
to mind. Human work creates surplus value (makes things more
valuable). With a morally view it's fair, that this surplus
value of one's work should go to the worker. However, in
capitalistic systems (some to most of) the surplus value goes to
the employer. This can be seen as a form of exploitation because
it's not fair.
Exploitation can have many degrees, I think this depends on the
situation of the one who is exploited. In countries like
germany, there exists a relative large group which are
wage-dependent and are relative wealthy. I suppose they don't
suffer from their exploitation too much (in my last article I
gave reasons for this situations (taming the workers in the own
political system)). But one can think of stronger forms of
exploitation.
Ken Warkentyne
Alain Cedelle writes:
Today, EC exports agricultural products for 120 Milliards of $ per year, as
U.S. exports for 60 Milliards.
EC imports in the same time for 50 Milliards, as U.S. imports for 20 Milliards.
The advantage of EC is clear in those numbers, and it is even worse for U.S.
since their part of the European importation is decreasing year after year.
This seems to imply that the EC has a net benefit of 70 billion US$ compared
to 40 billion for the US. However, I would like to know how much the EC tax
payer has had to fork out to obtain this result.
EC tax payers give much more for the agricultures of Netherlands, Belgium,
Denmark, Ireland and UK.
Here are the mean costs per famer, in ecus, for the year 86:
Netherlands: 5100
Belgium: 4600
Denmark: 2500
Ireland: 2200
U.K. : 1900
France : 1800
So if we total up the farmers' subsidies and subtract it from the 70 billion,
how much is left over? What about the U.S.A?
By the way, don't you think that by indulging in income subsidies, export
subsidies, and import barriers, the EEC is damaging third world countries'
economies by reducing the possibility of their gaining income by selling
agricultural products to the EEC?
> What kind of incentive is it to ask a dollar to someone and say "You don't
>have the money, you won't have anything" ? ( and you won't live anylonger...)
Hey, maybe the EEC will use the 70 billion $ profit to pay off some of those
starving Africans.
--
Ken Warkentyne - war...@ltisun.epfl.ch | "I am outnumbered by hundreds to one"
Laboratoire de Teleinformatique, | - Jones Maxime Murphy
EPFL, Suisse. |
Magnus Kempe
: cannot see the difference between the statement "Do this or I shoot
: you" and "Do this or I let you starve to death".
[I am not a libertarian, but an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism.]
The difference is that in the first case there is a demand that someone
act against his own judgment (otherwise no threat would be needed), whereas
in the latter case that someone is free to judge and act according to his
own thinking. In addition, your formulation is quite strange; I doubt that
you have ever heard someone tell you "do this or I let you starve to death",
but, rather, something like "I offer you this value in exchange of your giving
me this value", which is the only acceptable kind of human relationship.
Trade is based on reason. Force is anti-reason. Choose your side.
: I understand your point about the initiation of force, but surely it
: is better to use a little violence to force a Have to save the life of
: a Have-not than to condemn the Have-not to death by starvation.
No. I am not responsible for your "Have-not"'s life and problems, especially
if these problems are chosen (like someone who refuses to work and preaches that
the "Haves" should give to the "Have-nots"). What is it that the "Have-nots" do
not have? maybe they have not chosen to live by their own independent mind and
productive work.
: To say "the non/charitable use of his property is up to the Have" is
: to allow the Have to kill people. The fact that this is done by
: inaction rather than action is irrelevant.
Wrong. For example, I have not sold my car in order to send food to Ethiopia
(or any other similar "hungry" country) -- which is a kind of "inaction". Do
you consider that I have thus killed the people who died of starvation over
there? There is a serious flaw in your argument. I suggest you think about it.
Mukesh Patel
>The first point is that England is not, never has been and in all
>likelyhood never will be a democracy.
[stuff deleted]
>IMHO The UK would benifit greatly from being having a democratic system,
>such as is practised in most W.European countries, imposed on it. It might
>even make it a decent place to live in again.
Any British person who agrees with this sentiment should join Charter 88,
a pressure group devoted to lobbying for PR, Bill of Human Rights, an
elected second Chamber of Parliament and a written Constitution (one that
distinguished between the executive/legislative and judicial authorities).
I will be happy to email the Charter 88's London address if anyone is
interested in learning more about their activities and signing the Charter
which sets out these demands in a more formal manner.
Mukesh Patel
Mukesh Patel
>>BTW why do we never hear talk about the French ex-empire and
>>it's terrible effect?
>
> The French empire was mainly administrative. For this reason, it turned to
> an hexagon and some islands without great economic problems.
>
According to this simplistic summary, Algeria was just a bad nightmare.
Maybe the poor Algerians should be told......
Mike Williams
B*S* (= Bad Sweden ????:-) I live in Sweden. I am not Swedish. I can vote
and have voted in local and municipal elections.
GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT!!!!
---Mike
Stefan Merten
article. Because at the moment I can't answer by mail and because
I think some of the thoughts presented here are of wider
interest, I'll post my answer. Sorry Chris, if you don't wanted
this. (To all the others who sent me mail: At the moment I can't
send you my answers by mail. I hope soon this situation changes.)
Another reason for posting it, is, that this article is kind of
soft. Political articles on the net which don't *fight* the
other position are very rare. This leads to articles which must
be waterproof (not attackable) in any direction.
I think by fighting against "the other side" nobody *really* wins
anything. In a precious discussion one must take the other's
arguments and in an answer they must be *examined* and not only
*crushed*. The mail I received by Chris is a good example for
what I mean.
> I agree to a considerable extent with what you write (viewing myself
> as a socialist libertarian green :-); but would like to refine one
> of your initial axioms a bit.
First of all: thank you for you friendly and enlighting answer.
That's the way I hoped we can discuss such problems.
> In article <1990Dec10.1...@incas.informatik.uni-kl.de> you write:
>>
>>(3) A "better" society is one where as much as possible people
>>are "happy" (does anyone really deny this?).
>
> It is probably necessary to include a survival criterion, since
> one might have a society in which everyone is perfectly happy, but
> which uses all available resources so that the society will collapse
> at some time in the future.
Good point! Do you or someone else have an idea how to
incorporate this? Personally I think (hope :-) ), that mankind
should be wise enough to recognize and handle such problems in a
adequate manner. If it's not, the human race is a dying one
anyway and [cynism on] one can ask if it's worth all the trouble
[cynism off].
Today one can ask if we should *force* mankind to survive to save
the later possibility for a better society. I'm afraid, that any
such force would tend to be self-stabilizing and would get a new
kind of tyrrany "in the name of the survival of mankind".
> Also, I assume there is some kind of non-coercion assumption when
> defining happiness; otherwise a society could drug all its members
> (soma) so that they would be perfectly happy.
Several thoughts come to mind:
I think in a discussion about happiness, most people would tend
to say: "We think the feeling caused by coerced use of drugs is
not one we want to call happiness." But if the discussion tends
in the other direction, why shouldn't they do so?
At the moment I think, that if a real soma (non-destructive, no
addiction (is this even *possible*)) exists, why shan't people
use it?
I think the deeper problem in this statement seems to be: "What
is *real* happiness"? I think nobody can define *for others* when
they have to be happy. Everybody must (should) know by
him/herself what makes him/her happy. The problem here is, that
many of us have some imagination about what is happiness and we
think that this imagination should be incorporated in a society.
Then we are afraid that people won't share our thoughts. My hope
on this point is, that the reasonable parts of our imagination
should be considered as a need by many people and this way they
are incorporated by most members of a society.
One can argue, that people are mentally depraved by our society
and therefore they can't even imagine happiness. Though I think
this is true at some extent, there exist some people which are
not so strong infected by the bad influence of modern western
societies (e.g. hunt for profit, concurrency). I hope there is
a chance, that these people can convince the others if the things
they say are reasonable. But after all in the model I proposed,
point (d) causes a feedback which should work as a permanent
correction.
> Finally, there is a kind of contradiction between happiness and
> productivity, for many people in many endeavours. Artists seem
> to produce their best works when they are miserable, for example.
> If a person is slightly unhappy, s/he is more likely to be driven
> to spend the concentration and effort in producing something lasting,
> than if that person is perfectly happy and has no desire to do
> anything other than lead a hedonistic life. One of the effects of
> the best universities (whether by evolution or intent) is to make
> students dissatisfied, so that they go into the world and become
> famous by focussing the resultant channelled drive.
My hope (and belief) on this point is, that people *want to work*
because work can be a kind of self-realization. However, most
work of today is enstranged and this is a simple reason, that
nobody wants to do this sort of work. My hope is, that a society
can be organized in a way such that enstranged work is minimized
for everyone (Marcuse once estimated, that an amount of two hours
of enstranged work per day and capita are really needed).
Enough for today. I have to do some enstranged work for my
diploma thesis :-). BTW, am I boring many people with my longish
statements? :-)
--
Hope you can reach me at <mer...@informatik.uni-kl.de>.
"Socialism or barbarity" -- Rosa Luxemburg
Jeremy Duncan Russell
> EC tax payers give much more for the agricultures of Netherlands, Belgium,
>Denmark, Ireland and UK.
> Here are the mean costs per famer, in ecus, for the year 86:
> Netherlands: 5100
> Belgium: 4600
> Denmark: 2500
> Ireland: 2200
> U.K. : 1900
> France : 1800
>
These are interesting figures, but I am sure that I have heard that the UK
gives a disproportionate amount of money to the CAP. (I may be wrong it was
back in the days of Mrs T. :-) ). To really know who is paying for what
it would be necessary to have figures saying how much money each country
*contributes* to the CAP as well. I think you may find that France and
Germany get a better deal than the above figures suggest.
--
Jeremy D. RUSSELL - Lab TIM3/IMAG INPG - e-mail : rus...@archi.imag.fr
Paul Johnson
>
>>The first point is that England is not, never has been and in all
>>likelyhood never will be a democracy.
>
>>such as is practised in most W.European countries, imposed on it. It might
>>even make it a decent place to live in again.
>
>Any British person who agrees with this sentiment should join Charter 88,
>a pressure group devoted to lobbying for PR, Bill of Human Rights, an
>elected second Chamber of Parliament and a written Constitution (one that
>distinguished between the executive/legislative and judicial authorities).
Elected second chamber? How does this differ from the elected first
chamber? Can someone please explain the American congress/senate
system?
The House of Lords has only one major defect: hereditary peers. Since
most of these are Tories, this allows the government to stack the
house on important votes (there was a blatent example of this a year
or two ago). I would like to see hereditary peers removed from the
HoL voting lists.
The rest of the HoL system is pretty good. It functions as a damper
on government in two ways.
First, the peers have been appointed by past governments over the last
thirty years or so. Since appointment is for life, this time could be
extended by appointing younger peers. This means that among life
peers there is a pretty even split between Labour and Tory.
Second, their careers are over. A peer has a seat for life, but there
is no hope of promotion (or not much). Hence the whips (MPs of both
houses whose job it is to ensure that other MPs vote according to the
party line) have almost no leverage. Since most of them are at least
slightly concerned with the good of the country, they will vote in
what they see as the interests of the country, rather than themselves.
The government should be able to appoint a limited number of life
peers each year (say about 10, or perhaps enough to make the total up
to 600). These peers should be prominent and successful people in
various walks of life, e.g. buisnessmen, politicians, scientists.
It is worth noting that the US seems to have something resembling this
in the Supreme Court, but that is limited to five members who are
chosen from the judiciary.
Steve Wallis
>I want to elaborate on this: Every single employer has a interest
>in low wages (becauce concurrency between producers). So, every
>"good" employer tends to lower his wages more and more! This
>leads to what is called reduction to misery (german:
>"Verelendung") of the employees. Tell me a mechanism in a
>libertarian society, which prevents this effect.
The same mechanism which can prevent this effect in all societies, be they
capitalist, Stalinist or whatever. WORKERS CAN GO ON STRIKE. True, the
company can sack them all, but this could result in secondary action from
other workers. If the situation escalates, it could result in a revolution
and a transformation of society.
I presume trade unions would be allowed to exist in a libertarian society.
People must be free to join a trade union, if they wish. The tremendous
power of united workers would inevitably lead to its downfall.
And this is why there will never be a libertarian society. You can't just
wish away progress that has been achieved over the years - such as trade
unions and the welfare state. The working class has fought hard over the
years to achieve these gains, and we're not going to give them up.
Magnus Kempe
: I want to elaborate on this: Every single employer has a interest
: in low wages (becauce concurrency between producers). So, every
: "good" employer tends to lower his wages more and more! This
: leads to what is called reduction to misery (german:
: "Verelendung") of the employees. Tell me a mechanism in a
: libertarian society, which prevents this effect.
I am not a libertarian, but an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, within
a philosophical framework of individual rights. I would appreciate it if you
could use the term "capitalism" to name the capitalist economic system.
Thank you.
Your argument is wrong. WRONG. Look at the actions of one Henry Ford, who hired
the best workers in the country by offering the highest wages. He got the best
workers. The "mechanism" you are asking for is a rational man's virtue: self-
interest. Henry Ford sought his own self-interest and *profit* when he offered
above-average wages.
: The old Marxian discussion about the surplus value of work comes
: to mind. [...] in capitalistic systems (some to most of) the surplus
: value goes to the employer. This can be seen as a form of exploitation [...]
I'm not surprised to see your invocation of Marx. Now, get this: Marx was
wrong. WRONG. The labor-value theory of economics has been shown to be
false, since the end of 19th century (by the Austrian school of economics).
I'll give references, if you make the effort to ask for it (which you should
do, if you are intellectually honest). This offer is valid for anyone on the
network: just send an e-mail message.
The exploitation theory is a crude attempt at removing any value from all
*intellectual* work; a value presupposes a valuer, and a standard of value.
Labor as such has no value; imagine a man sitting on a desert island,
moving his fingers back and forth in front of his body: no value: now,
imagine a man sitting in an office, typing a program: consider the source
of *that* value.
I suggest that you go to a library, and read a few of Ludwig von Mises's
books, as well as Henry Hazlitt's _Economics in One Lesson_. After that,
your comments on economics might be closer to reality.
: "Socialism or barbary" -- Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a moral monster, whose main purpose was murder and
destruction. She was a true barbarian. Read your history books. Your
next message makes a reference to Marcuse, a German philosopher who was
the intellectual leader of the nihilist movements in the 60's; if you
agree with Marcuse, why not announce it from the beginning? that way,
we'll know that you preach subjectivism and the destruction of industrial
society, just because your wishes are not automatically granted by
reality (quite a terrible form of coercion, indeed). That could explain
why you keep asserting that reality is coercive ("individual needs" are
not automatically satisfied, because your "needs" are whims).
A J Cunningham
Not to mention the situation in IndoChina which developed after
DeGaulle decided to re-establish French Colonial rule there. A group of
American backed nationalists, the Vietminh, decided they didn't want the
French back. It wasn't until 1975 they eventually got their country back
(after kicking out the French and the Americans).
Tony
sod
off
and
die
inews
--
Tony Cunningham, Edinburgh University Computing Service. t...@castle.ed.ac.uk
If a man among you got no sin upon his hand
Let him cast a stone at me for playing in the band.
Richard Caley
In article <10...@pcsbst.pcs.com> root@pronto (0000-Admin(0000)) writes:
>IMHO The UK would benifit greatly from being having a democratic system,
>such as is practised in most W.European countries, imposed on it. It might
>even make it a decent place to live in again.
Any British person who agrees with this sentiment should join Charter 88,
a pressure group devoted to lobbying for PR, Bill of Human Rights, an
elected second Chamber of Parliament and a written Constitution.
Well, that depends whether one thinks that what C88 is lobying for is
the kind of democracy we want. (personally, I want PR, wouldn't mind a
BoR, would hate an elected second chamber and find a written
constitution at best irrelevant).
--
r...@uk.ac.ed.cstr
Richard Caley
In article <1990Dec12.1...@irisa.fr> ced...@yin.irisa.fr writes:
> Here are the mean costs per famer, in ecus, for the year 86:
> Netherlands: 5100
> Belgium: 4600
> Denmark: 2500
> Ireland: 2200
> U.K. : 1900
> France : 1800
These are interesting figures, but I am sure that I have heard that the UK
gives a disproportionate amount of money to the CAP. (I may be wrong it was
back in the days of Mrs T. :-) ). To really know who is paying for what
it would be necessary to have figures saying how much money each country
*contributes* to the CAP as well.
Also the numbers of farmers would be useful. I was under the
impression that the reason that France, in particular, gets a larger
slice than the UK is simply that France has more farmers getting that
1800ecu. Also food productivity, since one effect of the CAP is to
support uneconomic farms.
Not that splitting by nation makes much sense.
What we need is a cost/benefit analysis by person (e.g if it turns out
that the average Italian truck driver gets less for his tax
contribution than the average German shopkeeper I think he aught to
know), and that is slightly impossible.
--
r...@uk.ac.ed.cstr
Matthew Huntbach
>In article <29...@ztivax.UUCP>, ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) writes:
>
>> The House of Lords is naturally an antiquated institution and a sign that
>> England is still very much a class society. Mrs Thatcher was also very much
>> against the Establishment.
>
>There's a limit to how much you can be against the establishment, while
>at the same time being FOR the very rich.
>
the "establishment". For some reason, wealthy businessmen and
newpaper owners are regarded as not part of the establishment.
On the other hand, struggling lecturers in the less prestigious
colleges like myself are. It is rather strange reading articles
in the right-wing newspapers, written by wealthy people who
have nice big houses, saying how people like myself should be
attacked and our "privileges" (whatever they might be) should
be reduced as part of an attack on the "establishment".
Matthew Huntbach
Richard Caley
In article <31...@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk> m...@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
>In article <29...@ztivax.UUCP> ol...@ztivax.UUCP (John-Olof Bauner) writes:
>>Well, John Major, already speaks about the classless society (ha, ha). One
>>could think he is a marxist.
>>
>A marxist believes that society is divided into classes based
>on ownership. John Major is the opposite of a marxist because
>he does not believe there are serious class divisions in
>society today.
Not quite true. Major has (or claims to have) a *dream* of a classless
society. He does not claim that today's society is classless. He is the
opposite of a Marxist because Tory policies widen the class divide as the
rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
To the best of my knowledge, the Marxist agenda _is_ to widen that gap
while `educating' the proles and so inducing revolution. That, I
thought, was what distinguished Marxism from other brands of
socialism.
The Poll Tax, for instance, is a Marxist dream, nothing has incited so
much dislike of the government for decades.
--
r...@uk.ac.ed.cstr The Tory party _is_ totally lacking in class.
Stefan Merten
> Maybe I was being too obscure. What I was trying to demonstrate was
> that it's not the *economic system* that is performing the "coercion"
> you describe/detest, it's *life*. Reality. The Deity. Fate.
I already said, that in a person's life there always is coercion.
That kind of coercion which is implied by the biological nature
of humans. So life actually coerces people to do things.
> If people
> don't work, nothing gets accomplished. If members of a society don't
> make an effort to get out of bed in the morning, the whole society
> starves to death and disappears en masse.
Right!
> The economic system is merely a reflection of this.
No, no, no! Unfortunately this is *wrong*!
Economic systems are *NOT* the reflections of any natural laws.
They are *made* by man (and therefore they can be *changed* by
man). This is easily shown by the wide range of economic systems
that exist today and that existed in the past (often with the
same preconditions!). If economic systems would be determined by
natural laws, this wouldn't be possible.
However, economic systems develop *their own* laws! It seems to
me, that a major mistake of many (most?) western thinkers is to
believe that the capitalistic western system is the only one
which can work and moreover produces the best results for all.
This is called one-dimensional [right word?] thinking and it's
one of the important bads of this system.
A more theroretical aspect: That people need to work for their
lifes does not imply trade, a market in any form or a central
plan or money or a state or no-state or... So if a economic
system exists, the economic system must be determined by other
factors.
One (the most important?) factor is: Economic systems are
reflections of the distribution of *power* in a society. It can
be easily seen in history, that the most powerful person or group
or class in a existing society has often (ever?) a strong
interest in the organization of the economic system because at
least in the long run this is the source of their power! In
western countries the capitalists have the *real* power (you
don't believe that? A simple question will help: How long do you
believe that in germany or the US or any other western industrial
country, a anti-capitalistic government can rule? A week, a
month, surely not a year. So who has the power?), so we have
capitalism.
> The more hard-working, productive people
> there are in a society, the better off that society as a whole is.
Very questionable!! Three relative independent answers:
This statement has a very important underlying implication:
"People only want to maximize their material wealth". Back to my
original point: People want to be *happy* (and not *wealthy* in
the first place)!! One ascpect of happiness surely can be some
wealth, but it's *not* the only one. Again: People have not only
material needs and wants, they also have *social needs and
wants*! (BTW, a short look at your own life shows, that this is
right! Or are you really living to maximize your wealth. What's
about your friends? Are they your friends only to maximize your
wealth. Or your mother (at least if you love/d her?)...)
One example from real life: Many people with relative high wages
want to reduce their working-time and they don't mind to reduce
their wage by the same amount (at least in germany, shown in
opinion polls). This contradicts your hidden assumption that
people are interested only in material wealth. So one can
conclude, that societies with maximum productivity are not
necessarily the best ones.
Speaking of wealth and society and happiness, the important
question is: Where does the wealth of a society flow to? It can
be easily seen that if the wealth goes to a small number of
members in a society, "the *worse* off that society as a whole
is". That's a central point in criticizing capitalism.
> So an economic system that naturally rewards those most who are the
> most productive *works*. And it works even when applied to an individual
> living off the land, or a member of a commune, or whatever because
> it reflects the way *life* is.
It's not the question if a economic system works (many different
economic systems do that more or less). It's the question if it
makes it's members *happy*! Though I think we should put some
performance principle in a better society, I would strongly
advocate against this principle to be the only one!
One point I noticed many times before in this discussion: Many
(all?) of the libertarians seem to have only one sorrow: "How can
we coerce these bloody sluggards to work?" Their solution is
"Work or die!". Though in some extent work is needed by any
society, what should be done with those persons who *can't* work
(because they are ill, or old or have to do some non-paid social
work (as educating children...))? Should they starve? If they
need nursing care, who pays the nurse or should only the rich get
nursing care? The libertarian answer seems to be, "It's not my
fault that these people can't have a good life, why should I do
anything?".
>>> If you go hide in a cave, and refuse to find food, grow food,
>>> beg for food from private charity, or work for food, you will starve. So?
>
>>Back to my original point: Is this what you think makes people
>>*happy*? Shouldn't a society care for such situations in a
>>adequate manner (which is subject to discussion)?
>
> I'm not sure what you're responding to here. See above. What do you
> mean by "such situations"?
I'm sorry, this was indeed somewhat unclear (please don't forget
that english is my second language!). With "such situations" I
meant the situations described in the last paragraph (illness
etc.).
>>>>It's clear that phycical force leads to coercion, but wouldn't
>>>>you agree that a decision of the type "work under my conditions
>>>>or starve" is coercive, too? Libertarians usually now argue, that
>>>>[flames on] their holy free market [flames off] would add the
>>>>option to work for another one under better conditions.
>>>
>>>>But as soon as you have a certain amount of unemployment, this
>>>>option vanishes in a puff of smoke (at least for
>>>>non-specialists). (BTW: If you open your eyes and take a look
>>>>around you, you will know what I mean. This holds true
>>>>especially in the USA of today. Or think at the so-called Third
>>>>World.)
>>>
>>> 1) Did you mean to say "at least for specialists"? Obviously, non-
>>> specialists can work *anywhere*.
>
>>Oh no, I really meant non-specialist, though in some degree the
>>statement holds true for specialized workers, too. Specialists
>>can be *needed* by employers and therefore they have some *power*
>>as single persons. One fixed non-specialized worker is not
>>needed by anyone and therefore he has no power in relation to the
>>employers.
>
> But, one non-specialized worker has power in that he can always
> find a job somewhere else. The specialized worker is working in a smaller
> niche and will find fewer employers competing for his service.
>
> So how come McDonald's, Wendy's and Jack-in-the-Box all pay higher
> than minimum wage? Doesn't this conflict with your earlier claim
> that all of this applies *especially* to the U.S. today?
I admit I had to think a bit about that question. Two points
before my answer:
I'm sitting here in germany and never was in the US. All I know
is from second source. But what I know (at least I hope I know
:-) ) is, that in the US no social system like the german one
exists (other countries may have similar social systems). In
germany, if you have no job for a long time at least you can get
some public assistance ("Sozialhilfe") from the state. Though
you have a social decline at least you have not to beg, starve or
freeze to death. If I'm right, in the US this is not the case.
Therefore if you are unemployed for a longer time, you loose
anything you have and you have to beg/starve/freeze by death.
Correct me if I'm wrong. "Especially" comes from the fact, that
the US are (were?) a very wealthy state and that they can
(could?) afford a social system if they only want to.
Specialized workers obviously have at least the same
possibilities as non-specialized one. Even (some[:-)])
specialists can do simple work.
But here's my answer (this is thin ice, I don't know much about
McDonald's or Wendy's (what is "Jack-in-the-Box"?) in US):
If McDonald's or Wendy's would employ *anybody* wouldn't you
expect this would lower their sales? A little bit of hygienic
thinking (even :-) ) a customer of McDonald's or Wendy's expects
by the producers of his food. Can you imagine the press campaign
if one can prove that the products of one of these big companies
are not very hygienic? Surely this is a effect of the market and
the competition.
Moreover, I always thought the US have very strong unions. In
germany the unions bargain with the employers for the wages.
Because they have some political (one of our bigger parties is
close to our unions) and economical power (strike), they have a
influence on the height of the wages. Isn't this similar in US?
>>I want to elaborate on this: Every single employer has a interest
>>in low wages (becauce concurrency between producers). So, every
>>"good" employer tends to lower his wages more and more! This
>>leads to what is called reduction to misery (german:
>>"Verelendung") of the employees. Tell me a mechanism in a
>>libertarian society, which prevents this effect.
>
> Again, tell me why this hasn't happened yet.
[Today it seems to me that the right word for concurrency is
competition :-).]
In some extent this *happens* already (again: so-called third
world). There are several reasons why this doesn't happen in
extreme ways in the industrial states to often. Most (all?) of
these reasons are in the interest of the ideal all-capitalist
(e.g. s/he needs tamed workers for good business, s/he needs a
market to sell his/her products). For many of these reasons a
state is a good construction if not the only way to go. A state
can do all the things which are needed by all capitalists but
can't be done by any of them (because of their competition). Not
at least the state is a good power to ensure the property rights.
BTW: Therefore Libertaria would be the worst capitalistic society
one can think of. If it would work actually (who guarantees
property or am I missing something?).
> With a minimum wage
> law and your mechanism, all employees would now be getting minimum wage.
^^^^
This is not *my* mechanism, this is one of the central mechanism
of pure capitalism! BTW, the labour market is a market and
therefore not *all* of the employees get minimum wages (because
of supply and demand). Only those employees which are
non-specialized get low wages, because there is a high supply for
them. Another thought at this point: The wage of a worker is not
determined by *it's work*, but it's determined by the *value of
the worker on the labour market*. Is this fair?
> If some industry doesn't collude to set wages, they're in competition
> for the workforce.
They don't need to collude, they are all subject to the same
capitalistic mechanism!
> If they *do* collude to set wages,
> (1) employees can unionize and collectively bargain to raise wages
This is the reason for the existance of unions (developed for
that reason among other similar reasons). BTW, this was and (to
some extent in some countries) is one of the great sources of
socialistic thinking! BTW, which role play unions in Libertaria?
> (2) there's a tremendous incentive for another business to break the
> cartel and pay higher wages in order to siphon off the *best*
> employees from the other businesses, which would give a competitive
> advantage
Though this is true for many businesses, in our highly industrial
society this is not longer true for some businesses. Some
businesses need such a large amount of starting capital, that
effectively noone can compete which doesn't do it already.
> (3) employees will die out or move out-of-state or switch to another
> industry and the colluding business will go belly-up for lack of a
> workforce.
That was the easy solution for wage levels greater than zero :-) .
>>> Absent minimum wage laws,
>>> in a functioning economy there must be *some* wage level at which
>>> an employer is willing to hire me!
>
>>Why? Tell me the natural law that guarantees that this wage level
>>is greater than zero (BTW, that's easy)! If you found one, what
>>natural law guarantees that this level is higher than the
>>absolute minimum to life (BTW, I don't know the answer, I think
>>there is none).
>
> Well, sure. The "absolute minimum to life" is defined by what businesses
> can afford to pay. In the US, "the absolute minimum to life" includes a
> color television set and a stereo.
From a moral view (and this is what the discussion is all about,
not if a economic system works or not in the first place!): Is it
fair that "the absolute minimum to life" is a color TV and a
stereo (no car? :-) ) in the US and a handful of rice per day in
the so-called third world?
BTW, this is no natural law. You sounded as if you know one.
>>The old Marxian discussion about the surplus value of work comes
>>to mind. Human work creates surplus value (makes things more
>>valuable). With a morally view it's fair, that this surplus
>>value of one's work should go to the worker. However, in
>>capitalistic systems (some to most of) the surplus value goes to
>>the employer. This can be seen as a form of exploitation because
>>it's not fair.
>
> Obviously management and investment is a form of human work which
> creates surplus value (makes employees' work more valuable), as without
> it the jobs wouldn't exist in the first place as the company would
> not exist. The employer is generating value, and the employer is
> getting paid for that value.
>
> I can hardly believe there are still people who believe otherwise.
> Do you *really* believe it is *unfair* for management and investors
> to get paid for the risks they take and the decisions they make?
I'm afraid my explanation was to short. Naturally managers and
investors must get *paid* for their *work*. But this isn't the
case in capitalism (or Libertaria). The owner of the means of
production is not *paid* for his *work*, he simply *gets* all of
the surplus value!
[Oh Lord, these articles are getting longer and longer!]
--
I am Stefan Merten and I hope you can reach me at
<mer...@informatik.uni-kl.de>
"Socialism or barbarity" -- Rosa Luxemburg
Glen Raphael
>In article <1990Dec11.0...@fxgrp.fx.com> rap...@fx.com (Glen Raphael) writes:
>> nobody's *forcing* you to starve!
> ^^^^^^^^
>> If you go hide in a cave, and refuse to find food, grow food,
>> beg for food from private charity, or work for food, you will starve. So?
>This statement is very important, because it marks one of the
>great red threads in the whole libertarian discussion. It's
>true: *no person or single instiution* coerces you, but the
>*economical and political system as a whole* coerces you to do
>this or that.
Maybe I was being too obscure. What I was trying to demonstrate was
that it's not the *economic system* that is performing the "coercion"
you describe/detest, it's *life*. Reality. The Deity. Fate. If people
don't work, nothing gets accomplished. If members of a society don't
make an effort to get out of bed in the morning, the whole society
starves to death and disappears en masse. The economic system is
merely a reflection of this. The more hard-working, productive people
there are in a society, the better off that society as a whole is.
So an economic system that naturally rewards those most who are the
most productive *works*. And it works even when applied to an individual
living off the land, or a member of a commune, or whatever because
it reflects the way *life* is.
>> If you go hide in a cave, and refuse to find food, grow food,
>> beg for food from private charity, or work for food, you will starve. So?
>Back to my original point: Is this what you think makes people
>*happy*? Shouldn't a society care for such situations in a
>adequate manner (which is subject to discussion)?
I'm not sure what you're responding to here. See above. What do you
mean by "such situations"?
>>>It's clear that phycical force leads to coercion, but wouldn't
>>>you agree that a decision of the type "work under my conditions
>>>or starve" is coercive, too? Libertarians usually now argue, that
>>>[flames on] their holy free market [flames off] would add the
>>>option to work for another one under better conditions.
>>
>>>But as soon as you have a certain amount of unemployment, this
>>>option vanishes in a puff of smoke (at least for
>>>non-specialists). (BTW: If you open your eyes and take a look
>>>around you, you will know what I mean. This holds true
>>>especially in the USA of today. Or think at the so-called Third
>>>World.)
>>
>> 1) Did you mean to say "at least for specialists"? Obviously, non-
>> specialists can work *anywhere*.
>Oh no, I really meant non-specialist, though in some degree the
>statement holds true for specialized workers, too. Specialists
>can be *needed* by employers and therefore they have some *power*
>as single persons. One fixed non-specialized worker is not
>needed by anyone and therefore he has no power in relation to the
>employers.
But, one non-specialized worker has power in that he can always
find a job somewhere else. The specialized worker is working in a smaller
niche and will find fewer employers competing for his service.
So how come McDonald's, Wendy's and Jack-in-the-Box all pay higher
than minimum wage? Doesn't this conflict with your earlier claim
that all of this applies *especially* to the U.S. today?
>> 2) If I'm unemployed now, and can't find a job, all I have to do
>> is look for a job at a lower salary level.
>Hah, trapped :-)! The community of employers (and not a single
>one!) coerces you to work at wages of their will!! If you don't
>want to work under their conditions, you have the option to beg
>or starve. Great!
>I want to elaborate on this: Every single employer has a interest
>in low wages (becauce concurrency between producers). So, every
>"good" employer tends to lower his wages more and more! This
>leads to what is called reduction to misery (german:
>"Verelendung") of the employees. Tell me a mechanism in a
>libertarian society, which prevents this effect.
Again, tell me why this hasn't happened yet. With a minimum wage
law and your mechanism, all employees would now be getting minimum wage.
If some industry doesn't collude to set wages, they're in competition
for the workforce. If they *do* collude to set wages,
(1) employees can unionize and collectively bargain to raise wages
(2) there's a tremendous incentive for another business to break the
cartel and pay higher wages in order to siphon off the *best*
employees from the other businesses, which would give a competitive
advantage
(3) employees will die out or move out-of-state or switch to another
industry and the colluding business will go belly-up for lack of a
workforce.
Actually, you're probably going to say "anti-trust laws". But the above
mechanisms render them obsolete.
Like it or not, businesses *need* workers. So they have to pay wages.
>> Absent minimum wage laws,
>> in a functioning economy there must be *some* wage level at which
>> an employer is willing to hire me!
>Why? Tell me the natural law that guarantees that this wage level
>is greater than zero (BTW, that's easy)! If you found one, what
>natural law guarantees that this level is higher than the
>absolute minimum to life (BTW, I don't know the answer, I think
>there is none).
Well, sure. The "absolute minimum to life" is defined by what businesses
can afford to pay. In the US, "the absolute minimum to life" includes a
color television set and a stereo.
>> 3) [talking about IBM not coercing him]
>It's not IBM, it's the system! Or theoretical: It's not the
>capitalist, it's capitalism!
It's not the system, it's the way the world works!
>> The fact that somebody is unemployed
>> now (and thus that unemployment exists) does not imply to me that she
>> *couldn't* work at a McDonald's, only that she chooses not to.
>OK. What is coercion? Coercion exists if someone must do things
>against his willing. OK? Then, isn't your scenario a kind of
>coercion? I admit, that with this definition a lot of things are
>coercive. But that doesn't lead me to the definition: "If one
>has at least one other option, a situation is not coercive".
>> You forgot to define [flame on] "massive exploitation" [flame off].
>The old Marxian discussion about the surplus value of work comes
>to mind. Human work creates surplus value (makes things more
>valuable). With a morally view it's fair, that this surplus
>value of one's work should go to the worker. However, in
>capitalistic systems (some to most of) the surplus value goes to
>the employer. This can be seen as a form of exploitation because
>it's not fair.
Obviously management and investment is a form of human work which
creates surplus value (makes employees' work more valuable), as without
it the jobs wouldn't exist in the first place as the company would
not exist. The employer is generating value, and the employer is
getting paid for that value.
I can hardly believe there are still people who believe otherwise.
Do you *really* believe it is *unfair* for management and investors
to get paid for the risks they take and the decisions they make?
>Exploitation can have many degrees, I think this depends on the
>situation of the one who is exploited.
-----
dictionary-> exploitation
ex.ploi.ta.tion n \.ek-.sploi-'ta-sh*n\
1 : an act of exploiting : as
a : utilization or working of a natural resource
b : an unjust or improper use of another person for one's own
profit or advantage
c : coaction between organisms in which one is benefited at
the expense of the other
2: [...]
-----
When a employee agrees to work for an employer, *both*
benefit from the arrangement. If you consider end-labor to be a
resource then 1(a) above might apply, but (b) and (c) certainly don't.
Glen Raphael
Erhard Sanio
>
>Your argument is wrong. WRONG. Look at the actions of one Henry Ford, who hired
>the best workers in the country by offering the highest wages. He got the best
>workers. The "mechanism" you are asking for is a rational man's virtue: self-
>interest. Henry Ford sought his own self-interest and *profit* when he offered
>above-average wages.
>
>
of the Red Indians, slave trade, selling arms and toxic gases to Saddam etc. .
For a single company, it is clearly more rational to dispose their toxic
waste somewhere in the countryside, to pollute air and water etc., as it
damages their profit to build filters or to dispose safely, if the competitor
doesn't.
>I'm not surprised to see your invocation of Marx. Now, get this: Marx was
>wrong. WRONG. The labor-value theory of economics has been shown to be
>false, since the end of 19th century (by the Austrian school of economics).
>I'll give references, if you make the effort to ask for it (which you should
>do, if you are intellectually honest). This offer is valid for anyone on the
>network: just send an e-mail message.
>
All the capital "WRONG's" only uncover that you didn't understand the
scientific method. While a theory like special relativity may be disproven,
if it's wrong, that is not the case with philosophical theories.
Under this definition, sociological or economic theories are "philosophical"
ones as well. They can be checked for consistency and their explanatory
value can be checked to a certain amount, but they cannot be disproven.
Thus, the assertion that the Marxian theory in special and the labour-value
theory in general are "proven wrong", only demonstrates your lack of under-
standing.
In short:
The labour-value theory derives the balanced price of a given product (value)
from the average necessary amount of human work to produce the amount of
those products needed/wanted in a given society at a given time
(Socially necessary labour).
Products which don't need labour to be present (e.g. air) have no value,
those which are not needed/wanted, too (not socially necessary)..
Value is an objective term derived from real (average) production effort.
Limiting value theory, on the other hand, derives the value of a given good
from the demand/supply relation for that good, calculated by the price of
the last good (profitably) marketed. "Free Goods" (e.g. air) have no value
(supply is infinite), those which are not needed/wanted, too (zero demand).
Value is the (average)subjective estimation of value by the market agents.
Obviously, both theories have explanatory power. The one concentrates on
the production cost side, the other on the market aspect.
Both can be criticized: the labour value theory seems to introduce the
supply/demand aspect through the backdoor by the term "socially necessary
labour" and seems, in general, more likely to explain big aggregate movements
over longer periods as well as structural aspects rather than market events
(That was/is indeed the goal of that access).
The subjective value theory, on the other hand seems to presuppose the
existence of money (or some other kind of exchange value) before starting
to explain its origin (a mathematician would be tarred and feathered by
her/his colleages when attempting such an approach). Besides that, the
theory seems more likely to explain existing equilibria/imbalances rather
than long-term processes or general structures.
(And that is, indeed, the major purpose of that approach)
>
>The exploitation theory is a crude attempt at removing any value from all
>*intellectual* work; a value presupposes a valuer, and a standard of value.
>Labor as such has no value; imagine a man sitting on a desert island,
>moving his fingers back and forth in front of his body: no value: now,
>imagine a man sitting in an office, typing a program: consider the source
>of *that* value.
>
Sorry, but that's babbling. The Marxian surplus value theory (as I recall)
defines the surplus as the difference of the value of the labour a worker
produced during worktime to the value of workforce (what the employer actual-
ly bought). It defined the value of workforce as the average production cost
of a worker able to work at a given qualification and average conditions of
life. What you are telling, all the theorists basing on labour value (such
as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and lots of others, among them Marx) already
recognized - that labour with a value must be useful labour inside a society
with division of labour and exchange between the producers.
Btw. the surplus theories - that of Adam Smith as well as that of Marx -
didn't imply any condemnation of the capitalists getting surplus.
>I suggest that you go to a library, and read a few of Ludwig von Mises's
>books, as well as Henry Hazlitt's _Economics in One Lesson_. After that,
>your comments on economics might be closer to reality.
>
Compared with the stuff you wrote above, that sounds utterly arrogant
to me. Get aware of your own flaws and go on studying. Up to now, nobody
possesses absolute wisdom - neither you nor me.
>
>Rosa Luxemburg was a moral monster, whose main purpose was murder and
>destruction. She was a true barbarian. Read your history books. Your
>next message makes a reference to Marcuse, a German philosopher who was
>the intellectual leader of the nihilist movements in the 60's; if you
>agree with Marcuse, why not announce it from the beginning? that way,
>we'll know that you preach subjectivism and the destruction of industrial
>society, just because your wishes are not automatically granted by
>reality (quite a terrible form of coercion, indeed). That could explain
>why you keep asserting that reality is coercive ("individual needs" are
>not automatically satisfied, because your "needs" are whims).
I doubt that you ever read a line of Marcuse nor of Rosa Luxemburg and
that your historical knowledge about Rosa Luxemburg is worth while to be
mentioned. The only people besides ignorants speaking about Ms. Luxemburg
that way are fascists. One may doubt in the realism of her ideas and con-
victions, but clearly she doesn't deserve hateful tirades as above.
If you have to make knowledgeable objections on Marcuse's theories, fine.
Statements as above sound to me like stalinist denunciations - loud, hateful
and without any contents.
>--
>Best Premises, mag...@elcgl.epfl.ch
regards, es
----
Dr. Erhard Sanio Tempelhofer Damm 194 D-1000 Berlin 42
----
Richard Caley
>In article <10...@pcsbst.pcs.com> root@pronto (0000-Admin(0000)) writes:
>Any British person who agrees with this sentiment should join Charter 88,
>a pressure group devoted to lobbying for PR, Bill of Human Rights, an
>elected second Chamber of Parliament and a written Constitution (one that
>distinguished between the executive/legislative and judicial authorities).
Elected second chamber? How does this differ from the elected first
chamber? Can someone please explain the American congress/senate
system?
In brief (and to the best of my memory), they are both elected, but
the electorates differ (Representitives have constituenceis drawn up
more or less on the basis of population whereas senators represent
states (2 per state?). It seems to work ok, but is not really much of
a hamstring on the lower house (which is what I would like the upper
house to be). Having a separate executive is more of a limit on the
legislature.
The House of Lords has only one major defect: hereditary peers. Since
most of these are Tories, this allows the government to stack the
house on important votes (there was a blatent example of this a year
or two ago). I would like to see hereditary peers removed from the
HoL voting lists.
While I agree they are a pain because of their inherent biases (though
there was a comunist in their once) the hereditary peers at least have
the advantage that _some_ of them are independents. The life peers are
just old politicians.
I'd like to see an upper chamber which was (a) non elected (so that it
is not subject to electoral panic) and (b) at least to a large extent
not appointed by the government.
The best thing I have come up with is to have it done as a draft.
Stagger the appointments and make them last, say, 6 months. Select at
random from the electoral roll. Ifthis is good enough to select juries
to decide people's futures, it should be good enough to select people
to knock the feet out from under the government when it gets ideas
above its station.
That way we would have some people who know what the real world is
like (unlike the peers and the commons) and possibly even some people
who had IQs above 50...
It would be nice to have some appointments too, if there were some way
to stop them being simple political gifts.
--
r...@uk.ac.ed.cstr
Erhard Sanio
>
>To the best of my knowledge, the Marxist agenda _is_ to widen that gap
>while `educating' the proles and so inducing revolution. That, I
>thought, was what distinguished Marxism from other brands of
>socialism.
>
In the history of social movements (as I recall it from my university lessons)
in the 19th century Marx and his adherents emphasized that workers would be
able to improve their situation by forming unions, taking political influence
etc., while other socialist branches (e.g. Ferdinand Lassalle, the other
founding father of the German Social Democratic Party) asserted that there
would be an "iron law of wages" in capitalism, making it impossible for the
workers to raise their standard of life as long as capitalism exists.
Marxists expected the revolution to be done by the most skilled industrial
workers rather than the most empoverished.
The "Marxist agenda" assumed, that within the social and political fights
the working class could win more and more skill, polititical and economical
influence etc., so that they finally would consider that they could do the
job better than their masters, thus starting revolution. This (obviously
disproven) prognosis was modelled after the uprise of the capitalist class
against Feudalism in Europe. It has nothing to do with a "the worse, the
better" strategy, which you seem to assume.
Most amusingly, Lassaleans were reformists, while Marxists mainly were
revolutionaries.
Anyway, your scheme seems to misfit.
Though socialism (and especially Marxism) has a tough time, just now, one
should withstand the seduction to impute them arbitrary intentions, as long
as they are sufficiently evil.
>The Poll Tax, for instance, is a Marxist dream, nothing has incited so
>much dislike of the government for decades.
>
Except to the statement about the "Marxist dream" (see above), I agree.
>--
>r...@uk.ac.ed.cstr The Tory party _is_ totally lacking in class.
regards, es
Steve Wallis
>> In article <31...@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk> m...@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
>> >A marxist believes that society is divided into classes based
>> >on ownership. John Major is the opposite of a marxist because
>> >he does not believe there are serious class divisions in
>> >society today.
>>
>> Not quite true. Major has (or claims to have) a *dream* of a classless
>> society. He does not claim that today's society is classless. He is the
>> opposite of a Marxist because Tory policies widen the class divide as the
>> rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
>
>To the best of my knowledge, the Marxist agenda _is_ to widen that gap
>while `educating' the proles and so inducing revolution.
Marxists don't widen that gap - capitalists do. Don't confuse the policies
of a Marxist government with the policies of a capitalist one (which may
happen to present opportunities for Marxism).
Ideas change through struggle. And struggle is likely when workers' living
standards are reduced. But it is the winning of struggles that is most
important - massively increasing workers' confidence. Marxists always fight
to narrow the class divide.
>That, I
>thought, was what distinguished Marxism from other brands of
>socialism.
What distinguishes Marxism from other brands of socialism (i.e. reformism) is
that Marxists recognise that capitalism must be abolished by a swift
transformation of society (i.e. revolution) - abolishing the class divide.
Marxists realise that reforms won during booms will be lost again during
slumps, and hence reformism will not achieve socialism.
>The Poll Tax, for instance, is a Marxist dream, nothing has incited so
>much dislike of the government for decades.
A marvellous opportunity *AS LONG AS WE WIN IT*. If the poll tax had been
accepted it would have massively demoralised the working class. Hence
Marxists fight to narrow the gap whilst many reformists sit back and let the
gap widen.
Steve.
Alain Cedelle
>In article <1990Dec1.1...@irisa.fr> ced...@yin.irisa.fr writes:
>>In article <31...@sequent.cs.qmw.ac.uk>, m...@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes...
MH: BTW why do we never hear talk about the French ex-empire and
MH: it's terrible effect?
AC: The French empire was mainly administrative. For this reason, it turned to
AC: an hexagon and some islands without great economic problems.
MP:According to this simplistic summary, Algeria was just a bad nightmare.
MP:Maybe the poor Algerians should be told......
???
My point was certainly neither to present any 'summary' about the French
colonisation, nor to give any global judgement about it, in Algeria or
annywhere else.
The comment was only a response within the limited field of the former
discussion about economical fall of British ex-empire.
In the original context, the 'terrible effects' were about internal
difficulties of U.K., and certainly not about the situation in colonized
countries.
Please, try to keep everything you read within the real context of the
discussion.
A.C.
Matthew Huntbach
>thirty years or so. Since appointment is for life, this time could be
>extended by appointing younger peers. This means that among life
>peers there is a pretty even split between Labour and Tory.
>
each party appointed. This convention has already been almost
abandoned by Mrs.Thatcher who has appointed far more
Conservative peers than Labour, despite the already high
pro-Conservative bias of the Lords due to the herditary
element.
I favour peers appointed strictly in proportion to the number
of votes cast. In fact, let us have a separate election with
the list of prospective appointees published in advance.
Matthew Huntbach
Glen Raphael
>It seems to
>me, that a major mistake of many (most?) western thinkers is to
>believe that the capitalistic western system is the only one
>which can work and moreover produces the best results for all.
>This is called one-dimensional [right word?] thinking and it's
>one of the important bads of this system.
It's a "bad" of capitalism that western thinkers prefer it?
>A more theroretical aspect: That people need to work for their
>lifes does not imply trade, a market in any form or a central
>plan or money or a state or no-state or...
It does imply that people need an incentive to work. And value-for-value
trade has historically been the best such incentive. The market and
money flow naturally from the premise that people mostly want to exchange
their work for value rather than, say, a warm fuzzy feeling in their hearts.
Economic systems based on the latter premise tend to go belly-up quickly.
>[In] western countries the capitalists have the *real* power (you
>don't believe that? A simple question will help: How long do you
>believe that in germany or the US or any other western industrial
>country, a anti-capitalistic government can rule? A week, a
>month, surely not a year. So who has the power?), so we have
>capitalism.
All the above tells me is that the people in those countries *prefer*
capitalism. The *people* in those countries are capitalists! So the
*people* have the power!
>> The more hard-working, productive people
>> there are in a society, the better off that society as a whole is.
>Very questionable!! Three relative independent answers:
I meant "better off economically." By the way, you gave only one
answer, not three. Yes, you could conceivably have a poorer but
"richer in spirit" society, but that wasn't what I was addressing.
>Speaking of wealth and society and happiness, the important
>question is: Where does the wealth of a society flow to? It can
>be easily seen that if the wealth goes to a small number of
>members in a society, "the *worse* off that society as a whole
>is". That's a central point in criticizing capitalism.
Easily seen by whom? Economics is not a zero-sum game. If rich
people get richer, so do poor people, in general.
>>>>>It's clear that phycical force leads to coercion, but wouldn't
>>>>>you agree that a decision of the type "work under my conditions
>>>>>or starve" is coercive, too? Libertarians usually now argue, that
>>>>>[flames on] their holy free market [flames off] would add the
>>>>>option to work for another one under better conditions.
>>>>
>>>>>But as soon as you have a certain amount of unemployment, this
>>>>>option vanishes in a puff of smoke (at least for
>>>>>non-specialists). (BTW: If you open your eyes and take a look
>>>>>around you, you will know what I mean. This holds true
>>>>>especially in the USA of today. Or think at the so-called Third
>>>>>World.)
>>>>
>> So how come McDonald's, Wendy's and Jack-in-the-Box all pay higher
>> than minimum wage? Doesn't this conflict with your earlier claim
>> that all of this applies *especially* to the U.S. today?
>I'm sitting here in germany and never was in the US. All I know
>is from second source. But what I know (at least I hope I know
>:-) ) is, that in the US no social system like the german one
>exists (other countries may have similar social systems). In
>germany, if you have no job for a long time at least you can get
>some public assistance ("Sozialhilfe") from the state. Though
>you have a social decline at least you have not to beg, starve or
>freeze to death. If I'm right, in the US this is not the case.
>Therefore if you are unemployed for a longer time, you loose
>anything you have and you have to beg/starve/freeze by death.
>Correct me if I'm wrong. "Especially" comes from the fact, that
>the US are (were?) a very wealthy state and that they can
>(could?) afford a social system if they only want to.
So you think that "if we open our eyes and take a look around"
we will see that the USA of today is horribly coercive, but you've
never been there yourself. You also don't realize the USA *has*
social systems, several of them, but the social systems of the US
are horribly inefficient and ineffective and work at cross-purposes
with one another and as a result a lot of people fall through the
cracks. The US has in fact various and sundry programs which include:
Unemployment insurance (you get paid first by your employer and then
by the government after you lose your job)
Federally-subsidized housing programs, which pay people to rent cheap
apartments to poor people
Food stamps (coupons redeemable for food are given to poor people)
Social Security (which pays you a living wage after you retire)
Medical insurance programs
...And many other programs at the Federal, State, and local level,
subsidized by a wide variety of taxes.
I would have to say your information about the US is, at best,
misleading.
>But here's my answer (this is thin ice, I don't know much about
>McDonald's or Wendy's (what is "Jack-in-the-Box"?) in US):
>[...]
Don't you have McDonald's in Germany yet? It's a hamburger chain.
Working at McDonald's requires no specialized knowledge and little
training. It requires only the ability to speak English, wash
one's hands, and smile at customer as you perform various well-
defined tasks. Many high-school students work there part-time.
Wendy's and Jack-in-the-Box are two other hamburger chains.
>Can you imagine the press campaign
>if one can prove that the products of one of these big companies
>are not very hygienic? Surely this is a effect of the market and
>the competition.
YES, YES, YES!!!! The reason McDonald's has to pay higher than
minimum wage is an effect of the market and the competition. If
McDonald's paid less money, nobody would work there and all the
McDonald's stores would go out of business. So the wages which
McDonald's pays tends to go up so that it can compete with other
consumers in the labor pool. This effect counteracts your "wages
tend to go down" premise.
>>>I want to elaborate on this: Every single employer has a interest
>>>in low wages (becauce concurrency between producers). So, every
>>>"good" employer tends to lower his wages more and more! This
>>>leads to what is called reduction to misery (german:
>>>"Verelendung") of the employees. Tell me a mechanism in a
>>>libertarian society, which prevents this effect.
I just described one of several such mechanisms.
>[Today it seems to me that the right word for concurrency is
>competition :-).]
I thought you meant "collusion". Competition would tend to drive
wages UP.
>Not
>at least the state is a good power to ensure the property rights.
>BTW: Therefore Libertaria would be the worst capitalistic society
>one can think of. If it would work actually (who guarantees
>property or am I missing something?).
The state exists in Libertaria, and one of its primary functions is to
guarantee property rights.
>Only those employees which are
>non-specialized get low wages, because there is a high supply for
>them.
Again, McDonald's workers are non-specialized, and they get above minimum
wage in all the big cities (where the cost of living is high enough that
it's not worth working for minimum wage).
>Another thought at this point: The wage of a worker is not
>determined by *it's work*, but it's determined by the *value of
>the worker on the labour market*. Is this fair?
How else are you going to determine the value of the worker's work?
By committee?
>> (1) employees can unionize and collectively bargain to raise wages
>This is the reason for the existance of unions (developed for
>that reason among other similar reasons). BTW, this was and (to
>some extent in some countries) is one of the great sources of
>socialistic thinking! BTW, which role play unions in Libertaria?
Unions are free to operate in Libertaria.
>>>The old Marxian discussion about the surplus value of work comes
>>>to mind. Human work creates surplus value (makes things more
>>>valuable). With a morally view it's fair, that this surplus
>>>value of one's work should go to the worker. However, in
>>>capitalistic systems (some to most of) the surplus value goes to
>>>the employer. This can be seen as a form of exploitation because
>>>it's not fair.
>>
>> Obviously management and investment is a form of human work which
>> creates surplus value (makes employees' work more valuable), as without
>> it the jobs wouldn't exist in the first place as the company would
>> not exist. The employer is generating value, and the employer is
>> getting paid for that value.
>>
>> I can hardly believe there are still people who believe otherwise.
>> Do you *really* believe it is *unfair* for management and investors
>> to get paid for the risks they take and the decisions they make?
>I'm afraid my explanation was to short. Naturally managers and
>investors must get *paid* for their *work*. But this isn't the
>case in capitalism (or Libertaria). The owner of the means of
>production is not *paid* for his *work*, he simply *gets* all of
>the surplus value!
Right. The surplus value is his pay for his work. If he weren't
providing the means of production, that surplus value wouldn't
exist, hence he is responsible for its existence. So he has every
right to it.
>[Oh Lord, these articles are getting longer and longer!]
I tried to snip a bit.
>I am Stefan Merten
Glen Raphael
Steve Wallis
>most of these are Tories, this allows the government to stack the
>house on important votes (there was a blatent example of this a year
>or two ago). I would like to see hereditary peers removed from the
>HoL voting lists.
>
>The rest of the HoL system is pretty good. It functions as a damper
>on government in two ways.
It is pretty good if you want a damper on government rather than democracy.
Hence a democractically elected government with the support of the majority
of the population cannot do what it has been elected to do. Democracy in
action!
Ah well, it may be able to carry out these wishes in 30 years time when new
peers have filtered through the system...
>First, the peers have been appointed by past governments over the last
>thirty years or so. Since appointment is for life, this time could be
>extended by appointing younger peers. This means that among life
>peers there is a pretty even split between Labour and Tory.
Even if appointment is done proportionally, it is hardly democratic that the
leaders of the various parties can pick their buddies.
>Second, their careers are over. A peer has a seat for life, but there
>is no hope of promotion (or not much). Hence the whips (MPs of both
>houses whose job it is to ensure that other MPs vote according to the
>party line) have almost no leverage. Since most of them are at least
>slightly concerned with the good of the country, they will vote in
>what they see as the interests of the country, rather than themselves.
Their carreers are over, so they will be, on the whole, rather well off
having received a hefty salary as an MP (for example). Hence, they will tend
to vote in accordance with the wishes of the rich.
>The government should be able to appoint a limited number of life
>peers each year (say about 10, or perhaps enough to make the total up
>to 600). These peers should be prominent and successful people in
>various walks of life, e.g. buisnessmen, politicians, scientists.
It would be a shame if the government abused the system by appointing
cleaners, train drivers, firefighters, teachers, nurses,...
muk...@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Mukesh Patel) writes:
>Any British person who agrees with this sentiment should join Charter 88,
>a pressure group devoted to lobbying for PR, Bill of Human Rights, an
>elected second Chamber of Parliament and a written Constitution (one that
>distinguished between the executive/legislative and judicial authorities).
I find it amazing that a group (presumably) claiming to want more democracy
is in favour of retaining the House of Lords. Could it be that Charter 88 is
merely a LibDem front, campaigning to ensure that middle-of-the-road watered
down policies are carried out for years to come?
So come on, all you PR advocates - show that you're not being hypocritical,
and that you don't just want a system that makes it easier for your favourite
party to get into power, by agreeing with me that the House Of Lords should
be abolished.
On a related note, surely nobody is in favour of the Queen having the power
to dissolve parliament if she doesn't like their policies? If you think she
wouldn't do it, look at Kuwait and Pakistan.
Magnus Kempe
: I wrote:
: >In Sweden, foreigners have no right to vote [...]
:
: I live in Sweden. I am not Swedish. I can vote and have voted in local and
: municipal elections. GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT!!!!
OK. Let's the get our facts right...
How much of a right would it be to have freedom of speech on "local" level, but
not on a national level? Consider a man who has the "right" to his property on
a "local" level, but who has no such right on a national level: is it a right,
or a "local" permission?
What kind of *right* is it to be allowed to vote for "local" representation,
while being denied representation on a national level? In addition, you have
omitted to say that local councils have no constitutional power against the
Swedish state; Sweden is a democracy, i.e. it is a government led by the
principle of unlimited majority rule, on a *national* basis.
alain cedelle
>This seems to imply that the EC has a net benefit of 70 billion US$ compared
>to 40 billion for the US. However, I would like to know how much the EC tax
>payer has had to fork out to obtain this result.
If I have numeric information about how much the tax payer pays, i'll post it.
But I prefer giving money for agriculture, than for the incredibly
expensive nuclear-power projects, or for the incredibly stupid military
industries. But this position might be a French specificity ?
>By the way, don't you think that by indulging in income subsidies, export
>subsidies, and import barriers, the EEC is damaging third world countries'
>economies by reducing the possibility of their gaining income by selling
>agricultural products to the EEC?
Some of these coutries, like Brasil, have increased their agriculural
exportations towards Europe. In fact they have taken parts of markets that
had been lost by U.S.
I'm not sure that it is good for most of third world countries to search income
by such exportations.
Because, as someone else said, in an other newsgroup, there are countries
like Ethiopia who export food (meat), while their populations are starving.
Third world countries must firstly produce enough to feed their population.
The results of worldwide exchanges show that most of third world countries are
getting poorer, year after year. This trend will not change only by questions
of trade barriers. The whole economic system must be revised.
>> What kind of incentive is it to ask a dollar to someone and say "You don't
>>have the money, you won't have anything" ? ( and you won't live anylonger...)
>
>Hey, maybe the EEC will use the 70 billion $ profit to pay off some of those
>starving Africans.
EEC spends money to help Africans. But after more than 20 years of assistance,
the great question is not about 'how much', but about 'what kind of action' ?
Some African agricultural projects have only had results in ecologic disaters,
increasing droughts and turning grass land into desert.
A.C.
Magnus Kempe
: I already said, that in a person's life there always is coercion.
: of humans. So life actually coerces people to do things.
You have here stated explicitly what you were implying in all of your previous
messages: that life itself is coercive. What this obviously means, is that you
consider reality to be coercive, because you *have* to respect it, in order to
live: reality won't let you have your cake and eat it too -- reality is
coercive; you can't eat your cake before you've baked it -- reality is
coercive; reality won't adjust automatically to your feelings and whims
-- reality is coercive.
What you have made explicit is your resentment that reality is what it is,
that A is A. Things are what they are, and life, being what it is, does not
allow you to defy reality. Your resentment, your premise, accounts pretty
well for your resentment of capitalism; why? because capitalism requires
that men deal with each other with justice, i.e. that only the good should
be rewarded and only the evil punished, i.e. that men should bear the
consequences of their own actions -- but the application of causality to
men's actions is coercive; you resent capitalism because it is the only
political system based on the recognition of man's nature -- but to have
a specific nature and specific needs is coercive; capitalism won't let
moochers and looters use the power of the state to steal the achievements of
the productive -- but the refusal to be stolen and sacrificed is coercive;
capitalist price-setting (including the price of labor) reflects objectively
the production and the individual values of all men involved -- but to be an
objective aspect of reality is coercion.
Check your premises.
Alain Cedelle
Caley) writes...
> In article <1990Dec12.1...@irisa.fr> ced...@yin.irisa.fr writes:
> > Here are the mean costs per famer, in ecus, for the year 86:
> > Netherlands: 5100
> > Belgium: 4600
> > Denmark: 2500
>
>impression that the reason that France, in particular, gets a larger
>slice than the UK is simply that France has more farmers getting that
>1800ecu. Also food productivity, since one effect of the CAP is to
>support uneconomic farms.
One major problem of the CAP, as shown in the numbers, is to assist the most
productive farms (Netherlands ...), increasing the surproduction risks (milk...)
and increasing the phenomenon where the rich turn richer and the poor poorer.
> Not that splitting by nation makes much sense.
Certainly not. It is more interesting to count per person, since the nations
of EC have not equal populations. How could-you compare the expenses of Belgium
to those of Germany ?
>What we need is a cost/benefit analysis by person (e.g if it turns out
>that the average Italian truck driver gets less for his tax
>contribution than the average German shopkeeper I think he aught to
>know), and that is slightly impossible.
It might not be impossible for long. Such studies still need to be developed,
on European scale. This is only an other aspect of the so-called European
Integration.
A.C.
Stefan Merten
> It's a "bad" of capitalism that western thinkers prefer it?
Sorry, I wasn't exact enough. What I meant is that capitalism
has a very strong capability to make people think it's the only
possible system. But this may be normal in any established
system.
>>A more theroretical aspect: That people need to work for their
>>lifes does not imply trade, a market in any form or a central
>>plan or money or a state or no-state or...
>
> It does imply that people need an incentive to work. And value-for-value
> trade has historically been the best such incentive.
Clearly people have a very natural incentive to work: They want
to eat! Since people don't live in Cockaigne they need to work to
avoid starving. So this is the major incentive to work! Anything
else is an addition developed by a special *culture*. But
*cultures* are changeable, biological needs are not.
But an incentive for a value-for-value exchange seems naturally,
too: People specialize their work and want to exchange their
products (this is not given, but a cultural step! Bushmen
cultures are often widley full selfmade-men). As I pointed out
in another article, market and trade *as such* are not the points
of my criticism (please read this last sentence several times
:-) ).
But capitalism HAS another quality! In capitalism the human
oriented exchange of utility values tips over to *making money*
(as everyone of us know). This tip-over develops a lot of new
qualities which are NOT even similar to the simple value-to-value
exchange in pre-capitalistic markets and trade. THESE
developments are the source of my capitalism-criticism.
Again, personally I think some elements of a market and some form
of competition are good for any society. But I think it's wrong
if such principles are the only one.
>>[In] western countries the capitalists have the *real* power (you
>>don't believe that? A simple question will help: How long do you
>>believe that in germany or the US or any other western industrial
>>country, a anti-capitalistic government can rule? A week, a
>>month, surely not a year. So who has the power?), so we have
>>capitalism.
>
> All the above tells me is that the people in those countries *prefer*
> capitalism. The *people* in those countries are capitalists! So the
> *people* have the power!
No, no. I may have forgotten to say that this is a thoughts
experiment. Suppose the situation that the *people* *wanted* an
anti-capitalistic government.
BTW, this is a incorrect conclusion and unfortunately it's a
little bit complicated to explain this: If you say that the
collapse of a anti-capitalistic government shows that *people*
prefer capitalism, you already assume that there is no other
power than people which can kill a government. But as we all
know capitalists *have* the power to overthrow governments
against the will of the people. History has lots of examples for
this.
>>> The more hard-working, productive people
>>> there are in a society, the better off that society as a whole is.
>
>>Very questionable!!
>
> I meant "better off economically."
I'm glad, you see that this is not necessarily the same. I'm
afraid most libertarians can't do this distinction.
> Economics is not a zero-sum game. If rich
> people get richer, so do poor people, in general.
This seems questionable. World-wide capitalism has grown a lot
of decades. In this time the sum of the game was positive. But
since the middle 70's it seems that this sum gets more and more
negative. It seems that the big (end) crisis of capitalism is
coming. One indicator for example is the world-wide debt crisis.
But even if your assumption is true, it leaves the question,
whether the *gap* between the poor and the rich gets smaller or
bigger. I'm sure we have not to quarrel about the point, that
the more pure a capitalism is, the bigger this gap gets.
Personally, I would prefer a society where this gap get smaller
over time if they have to exist at all.
> So you think that "if we open our eyes and take a look around"
> we will see that the USA of today is horribly coercive, but you've
> never been there yourself. You also don't realize the USA *has*
> social systems,
As I said, I don't know the USA from my own eyes, but I think the
net is a good chance to hear about the USA (and other countries)
from *people's* views and feelings and not only through mass
media. I want to thank for your short list of US social systems.
Especially, I find it very interesting that after you loose your
job, your *employer* pays. Can you explain how this works (how
much do you get, who decides such sums)? I'm just curious.
BTW, I have the strong feeling that my statement hit a national
nerve...
You said, that the US social systems are "horribly ineffeicient
and ineffictive". Surely this must be criticized and this
criticism should lead to politics which install *efficient* and
*effective* social systems not politics which kill all social
systems. I'm afraid you would prefer social systems organized by
private capitalists. Can you tell me how this should work?
Especially how does the capitalist makes his profit? What if he
feels he can't make profit any longer?
Now to the point of coercion [sigh!]. Aren't in most bigger
cities in the USA quarters with a very high criminal rate (caused
mainly by poverty?)? Where it's dangerous to walk without a gun?
Aren't there even quarters (Bronx?) which are not longer under
control of the government? Do you really think, that the people
living there *wanted* such a live? If not, why do they live there
if not coerced by something (not someone!)? Or for even stronger
examples take the third world. Do you really believe the 40,000
children a day die because they are all strange suicides? What
would you call the situation they are in?
BTW, this question about coercion is getting on my nerves. I
feel we can't find a common definition of coercion.
Unfortunately this is a very central point because libertarians
say: "People are always free to decide, only physical force or
the threat of physical force can change this." (BTW, if presented
a gun and a demand a man is free to decide to die or not to
die...). Non-libertarians (anybody knows a better word?) say:
"Indeed, phyical force or the threat of physical force prevents
men to decide freely, but there are some more things which do
this." I feel if we can't clarify this question we shouldn't
discuss any more because we can't *understand* us.
BTW, all a libertarian must do is to decide if someone uses or
threats the use of physical force (looks rather easy). The
non-libertarians, however, have to discuss their different models
of human societies. Might it be, that libertarians just take it
easy?
> The state exists in Libertaria, and one of its primary functions is to
> guarantee property rights.
Oh, I thought there should be no state at all. I remember a
discussion between "statists" and libertarians, so I thought,
that libertarian want *no* state at all. I already wondered how
to enforce property in such a system. Do all libertarians on the
net think that?
>>Another thought at this point: The wage of a worker is not
>>determined by *it's work*, but it's determined by the *value of
>>the worker on the labour market*. Is this fair?
>
> How else are you going to determine the value of the worker's work?
> By committee?
No. The simplest form seems to be the payment for *work time*
(surely this approach must be refined). This model seems to me
as a *fair* model where people who cut equal amounts of their
free time are rewaded with equal amounts of money (or another
value).
>>Naturally managers and
>>investors must get *paid* for their *work*. But this isn't the
>>case in capitalism (or Libertaria). The owner of the means of
>>production is not *paid* for his *work*, he simply *gets* all of
>>the surplus value!
>
> Right. The surplus value is his pay for his work.
If you like to *define* it that way, do it and we can't talk
about it. But I think the payment of a man should be measured by
his individual *work* and not by his *property*. I always
thought that *payment* should have to do with *work*. The very
different "payment" of different capitalists already shows that
their "payment" has *nothing* to do with their work.
> If he weren't
> providing the means of production, that surplus value wouldn't
> exist, hence he is responsible for its existence. So he has every
> right to it.
That's another central point: You *presume* the existance and
right of (individual) property in any form and amount (leads to
the possibility to provide this property). I deny strongly the
"any form and amount".
Please get me right: *property* is not *possession*. Property
can't exist without the use or the threat of force in normal
cases. Though sometimes possession also needs such beasts, in
the common case it should be clear what someone possesses (e.g.
an appartement or his clothes).
--
My name is Stefan Merten and I hope you can reach me at
Erland Sommarskog
however he is not quite successful:
>What kind of *right* is it to be allowed to vote for "local" representation,
>while being denied representation on a national level? In addition, you have
>omitted to say that local councils have no constitutional power against the
>Swedish state; Sweden is a democracy, i.e. it is a government led by the
>principle of unlimited majority rule, on a *national* basis.
Many immigrants have to a right to vote on a national level. In
their home country. Exactly whether they have or not depends on
the constiution of that country. I must admit that it feels
strange that a person would have a right to vote both in Swedish
national elections and those in his home country. On the other
hand, living abroad does not always mean that you have a right to
vote for local councils in your home country.
Does any country allow foreign citizens to vote in national elections?
--
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - som...@enea.se
"There is only one success, namely to lead your life in your own way"
Anyone who can give a source for this?
Erhard Sanio
[ ... in reponse to S. Merten's posting:]
>What you have made explicit is your resentment that reality is what it is,
>that A is A. Things are what they are, and life, being what it is, does not
>allow you to defy reality.
Hard to see what that has to do with all the boring "A=A" stuff. When looking
at our world as it is, there's clearly a lot to object, be it starvation, wars,
environmental damages etc etc . You yourself are preaching that only onbound
laissez-faire capitalism and following the immortal wisdom of Ms. Rand may
improve the world. Granted that you reject different proposals for improvement,
but the fact remains that you are heavily arguing for your way of improvement.
What follows, is that you yourself hold a resentment about the world as it is,
about "A=A" as it is and argue for changes. Thus it's pretty ignorant to blame
the mere fact that others argue for different ways of changes. It would be
wiser to tame your polemics - they point back to yourself.
> Your resentment, your premise, accounts pretty
>well for your resentment of capitalism; why? because capitalism requires
>that men deal with each other with justice, i.e. that only the good should
>be rewarded and only the evil punished, i.e. that men should bear the
>consequences of their own actions -- but the application of causality to
>men's actions is coercive; you resent capitalism because it is the only
>political system based on the recognition of man's nature -- but to have
>a specific nature and specific needs is coercive; capitalism won't let
>moochers and looters use the power of the state to steal the achievements of
>the productive -- but the refusal to be stolen and sacrificed is coercive;
>capitalist price-setting (including the price of labor) reflects objectively
>the production and the individual values of all men involved -- but to be an
>objective aspect of reality is coercion.
Your passionate praising of capitalism accepted (as an opinion among others),
all the polemics against Mr. Merten are ridiculous.Following your argumentation
Mr. Merten dislikes capitalism b e c a u s e capitalism is just, rewards
the good and punishes the evil, b e c a u s e it recognizes man's nature
and disallows looting and stealing and b e c a u s e it objectively reflects
the value of labour.
Logically, Mr. Merten hates justice and the good , loves and defends the
evil and the thieves and rejects human nature in general.
Clearly, Mr. Merten is a subhuman - if not the devil himself - .
What do you suggest? Burning? Shooting? Hanging?
>
>Check your premises.
Check your style of argumentation against Mr. Vyshinsky's speech at the
Moscow Trial in 1936 (Stalinist show trial against Bukharin et alii).
You might be struck by the similarities.
>--
>Best Premises, mag...@elcgl.epfl.ch
regards, es
-------
Dr. Erhard Sanio Tempelhofer Damm 194 D-1000 Berlin 42
-------
Ronald BODKIN
>Clearly people have a very natural incentive to work: They want
>to eat! Since people don't live in Cockaigne they need to work to
>avoid starving. So this is the major incentive to work! Anything
>else is an addition developed by a special *culture*. But
>*cultures* are changeable, biological needs are not.
human needs are structured in a hierarchical fashional, much as
Maslowe postulated. I certainly don't think that satisfication
of the lowest level of needs is the primary motivation for
people anymore, and while it is necessary to work to do so, it
is also necessary to work to satisfy all of one's needs. In
any system.
>But capitalism HAS another quality! In capitalism the human
>oriented exchange of utility values tips over to *making money*
>(as everyone of us know)...
I don't "know" this -- I don't agree. Money is simply a
store of value for material things, and the fact that many people
nowadays are materialists rather than sufficiently interested in
mental/spiritual benefits (mostly because they don't think about
or understand these matters too well), doesn't have as much to
do with capitalism as with other social woes in society.
>... But as we all
>know capitalists *have* the power to overthrow governments
>against the will of the people. History has lots of examples for
>this.
Another sweeping generalization. But if true, I'd say that
I prefer a society where freedoms are protected to a democratic one,
if it is indeed possible to have such a society. Democracy in and
of itself is only marginally better than oligarchy, as historically
it seems to be the case that the many are a bit wiser than the
"best" few, since the few rarely remain the best for long. But
what's important is not the method of government, its the laws
which the government generates.
>I'm glad, you see that this is not necessarily the same. I'm
>afraid most libertarians can't do this distinction.
Why do you make such a sweeping (and untrue IMO)
statement? What possible evidence do you have that libertarians
are unaware of the difference between material benefits and
total benefits? How many libertarians on the net do you think
would prefer to work as a garbageman for the same hours and same
rate of pay as a computer programmer? I bet none, and if you
<asked> them why, you'd hear a recognition of non-material
benefits. And I don't think one needs be so devious, just
asking would suffice in most cases.
>> Economics is not a zero-sum game. If rich
>> people get richer, so do poor people, in general.
>
>This seems questionable. World-wide capitalism has grown a lot
>of decades. In this time the sum of the game was positive. But
>since the middle 70's it seems that this sum gets more and more
>negative. It seems that the big (end) crisis of capitalism is
>coming. One indicator for example is the world-wide debt crisis.
I don't agree that the current economic situation can really
be attributed to capitalism: after all there are large elements of
socialism in the world economy, and while I understand that you
don't mean laissez-faire capitalism, I believe this IS the issue
at hand, and I condemn other forms of "capitalism" (generally
possessed of some fascism).
>But even if your assumption is true, it leaves the question,
>whether the *gap* between the poor and the rich gets smaller or
>bigger. I'm sure we have not to quarrel about the point, that
>the more pure a capitalism is, the bigger this gap gets.
>Personally, I would prefer a society where this gap get smaller
>over time if they have to exist at all.
Why? This sounds like pure envy to me: since what it
comes to is the fact that capitalism improves the standards of
the worst-off members by the most, you simply don't like the
thought of having others doing better?? What a sickening
viewpoint -- generally people worry about gaps under the
0-sum assumption that one CAN benefit the worst at the expense
of the best, which is bad enough, but if the assumption is true
then opposing capitalism is incredibly sick.
>You said, that the US social systems are "horribly ineffeicient
>and ineffictive". Surely this must be criticized and this
>criticism should lead to politics which install *efficient* and
>*effective* social systems not politics which kill all social
>systems. I'm afraid you would prefer social systems organized by
>private capitalists. Can you tell me how this should work?
>Especially how does the capitalist makes his profit? What if he
>feels he can't make profit any longer?
I agree that they are inefficient & ineffective (though not
that they should exist as a government service). The problem is
that the US political system, like many others rarely manages to
come up with effective implementation of any policy, whether that
policy is a good one or not.
As for the coercion issue, I think you are making a big
mistake in equating the current situation in U.S. inner cities
with a situation which would be in a libertarian society: simply
put the government is lax in law enforcement, wages a "war on
drugs" which gives incredible incentives to young people to
engage in criminal activity & there is a general societal problem
involved too, which no political system could cure overnight,
and not without people changing.
>Oh, I thought there should be no state at all. I remember a
>discussion between "statists" and libertarians, so I thought,
>that libertarian want *no* state at all. I already wondered how
>to enforce property in such a system. Do all libertarians on the
>net think that?
Some do & some don't. A statist is one who believes in
statism, "the theory or practice of concentrating economic and
political power in the state..." (from my Collins English
Dictionary), not one who advocates having a state.
>No. The simplest form seems to be the payment for *work time*
>(surely this approach must be refined). This model seems to me
>as a *fair* model where people who cut equal amounts of their
>free time are rewaded with equal amounts of money (or another
>value).
So there is to be no reward for ability, and no reward
for work? If these are to be rewarded, how better to decide
these issues than the free market? Centrally planned economies
are notoriously bad at the simplest decisions, let alone
complex evaluations like these.
>... But I think the payment of a man should be measured by
>his individual *work* and not by his *property*. I always
>thought that *payment* should have to do with *work*. The very
>different "payment" of different capitalists already shows that
>their "payment" has *nothing* to do with their work.
Don't you understand the notion of capital, i.e. saving
wealth and instead of immediately consuming it, using it to
produce future wealth? Inheritance is just a form of charity,
and I can see no reason to decry a person choosing to give
to other people if they so desire.
>That's another central point: You *presume* the existance and
>right of (individual) property in any form and amount (leads to
>the possibility to provide this property). I deny strongly the
>"any form and amount".
Well, the simplest answer to why it should exist is that
it is extremely beneficial to have property, in any form &
amount, since without it people are only made to harm society &
themselves through irrational choices (why work if it will only
be taxed at 95%, better to enjoy yourself; why save if it will
not do you any good, better to spend today).
>Please get me right: *property* is not *possession*. Property
>can't exist without the use or the threat of force in normal
>cases. Though sometimes possession also needs such beasts, in
>the common case it should be clear what someone possesses (e.g.
>an appartement or his clothes).
What a bizarre distinction. I don't see why one should
be allowed to possess small things, but not to be able to make
large investments & plans. Don't you think that managing and
capital are also valuable inputs to the economic process? Or
what?
Ron
Chris Cooke
> muk...@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Mukesh Patel) writes:
> >Any British person who agrees with this sentiment should join Charter 88,
> >a pressure group devoted to lobbying for PR, Bill of Human Rights, an
> >elected second Chamber of Parliament and a written Constitution (one that
> >distinguished between the executive/legislative and judicial authorities).
>
> I find it amazing that a group (presumably) claiming to want more democracy
> is in favour of retaining the House of Lords.
Huh? Read the sentence above, Steve. An elected second chamber.
Since when are Lords elected?
As has been pointed out, the Lords do a lot of the minor detailed
work that the Commons can't be bothered with. If you had
no second chamber, the laws passed in Parliament would be even
worse than they are now - pure tory think-tankery with little
or no realism added, drawn up far too hastily.
--
-- Chris. c...@cs.ed.ac.uk (on Janet, c...@uk.ac.ed.cs)
"He's not the sort of chap you'd want to invite to dinner. Or even lunch."
Edward Heath on Saddam Hussein