Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!image.soe.clarkson.edu!news From: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) Newsgroups: alt.activism Subject: Re: Akwesasne Notes -- Basic Call to Consciousness 1977 Message-ID: Date: 19 Jan 90 14:36:57 GMT References: <1468@milton.acs.washington.edu> Sender: news@sun.soe.clarkson.edu Reply-To: nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu Organization: Clarkson University, Potsdam NY Lines: 28 In-reply-to: aesop@milton.acs.washington.edu's message of 19 Jan 90 10:48:25 GMT In article <1468@milton.acs.washington.edu> aesop@milton.acs.washington.edu (Jeff Boscole) writes: >From: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) > If you saw a ten dollar bill lying on the sidewalk, would you pick it up? > A greedy person would pick it up. A self-interested person would leave it > there, realizing that it doesn't belong to them, that someone will be > looking for it, and sooner or later they'll lose something that they will > want someone else to leave there. I dispute this. A "needy" person picks it up. Somebody solving the litter problem picks it up. Someone respecting the USA picks it up, recyling a bill so that it won't become defaced. Someone educating another about the problem of carelessness picks it up. Can you say "grasping at straws?" I knew you could. The fact remains that everyone who picks the bill up is stealing someone else's ten dollar bill. A person in "need" does not lose their sense of ethics. A ten dollar bill is not litter, it will retain value even if defaced, and punishment is not education. Sounds like you want to live in a place where private property left in a public place becomes someone else's private property. Foo on you. -- --russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) Russ.Nelson@$315.268.6667 Violence never solves problems, it just changes them into more subtle problems