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From: trc@houca.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: the reason govt should not fund space exploitation/exploration
Message-ID: <412@houca.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Oct-83 09:45:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: houca.412
Posted: Tue Oct 25 09:45:43 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Oct-83 06:04:07 EDT
Organization: American Bell, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 67

Responses to phs!jtb and Scott Preece on Govt vs Space

I doubt that we share a common philosophical basis, so I will present
an argument that should appeal to your common sense and/or sense of
justice.  Please bear with me, as I have to lay some ground work.

First, understand what a government is:  it is the social institution vested 
with a monopoly on the right to use of retaliatory force, within a geographical 
area.  It may have taken other functions, but this is fundamental to the 
definition of government.  (You may not like this fact, and wish it were
otherwise, but it is certainly true that this is the present case with
governments.)  Accepting this, we have to consider what the nature of
force is, and what the government can justly use that force for.  Having
gotten to that point, we can discuss whether funding space exploration is
one of the things a government can justly do.

The only fundamental way that force can be used is to attack human life.  
Some important derivative ways include: threat of use of force, causing 
pain (torture, beating), expulsion or exhile, imprisonment.  It might seem 
that imprisonment is not an attack on human life but in fact imprisonment 
means that the prisoner is put under the total control of the jailer, and 
any attempt to escape is blocked by threat of death.  Exhile requires that 
the exhiled be threatened (directly, or by putting him in a remote area 
from which he cannot return alive) with death if he should try to return.  
Torture uses pain, which is a direct death threat - this threat goes deeper
than one's consciousness.

Thus, when you consider whether something is just for a government to do,
you must ask yourself whether it would be just for the government to
back up that action with torture and death.  To take a practical example,
consider a man who does not agree that it is just that he should be forced
to send his child to school.  He refuses to do so.  He refuses to surrender 
his child to authorities.  The authorities threaten physical force.  He 
replies with equal threats, and cannot be convinced by reason.  The 
authorities now have a choice - agree that the man is right about their 
law, or use direct force to fulfill their ends, backed by torture or death.  
They can imprison him in order to achieve their ends, but they have to use 
direct force to do this.

In most cases, there is one simple question that you can ask yourself to get 
a common sense answer to whether something is proper for a government to do.
"Is this thing important enough that the government should be allowed, if
necessary, to beat a person in order to get it, or even kill him?".  (Applied 
to the case of preventing a man from murdering another, the answer is yes, for 
example.)

Now apply this to the $10 that you would take from everyone to pay for space
exploration.  "Is getting $10 from someone for the space effort important 
enough that the government should be allowed, if necessary, to beat a person
in order to get it, or even kill him?"

I say NO, it is not, and that this makes any arguments about what is practical
irrelevant.  

(In fact, I still reject the argument of practicality - my small amount of 
observation of history and politics inclines me to believe that backing any 
effort with the government's *force* allows the effort to become corrupt and
lazy.  And then there are considerations of the effects of the regulation 
intended to prevent corruption that almost inevitably goes with with a 
government backed monopoly.  The Anti-trust laws fall into this category, and 
yes, I would abolish them.  See "The Myth of Antitrust" [author forgotten].
In most cases the "serious abuses" amounted to either government backed
real abuses, or companies complaining that a competitor was being too
efficient.  Hardly an abuse from the consumer's point of view!)

	Tom Craver
	houca!trc