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From: norm@ariel.UUCP (N.ANDREWS)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: tale of the slave
Message-ID: <532@ariel.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Dec-83 18:06:23 EST
Article-I.D.: ariel.532
Posted: Mon Dec 19 18:06:23 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Dec-83 01:03:23 EST
References: <4408@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T-ISL, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 22

Paul Torek recently submitted to this newsgroup an excerpt from Nozick's
Anarchy, State & Utopia.  In this excerpt, a slave who is subject to brutal
abuse from his master undergoes a change in status (gradually) until he now
is (only?) subject to brutal abuse from a majority of a voting population of
10,000 people. (The slave can vote with the same weight as the others).

It would be interesting to see what conclusion or principle Nozick derives
from all this.  I regard democracy as the moral equivalent of slavery.  The
framers of the U.S. Constitution tried to prevent the slavery of a democracy 
by making this government a constitutional republic in which the power of 
government is constitutionally limited.  Unfortunately, the Constitution's
protection wasn't sufficiently iron-clad to prevent democratic injustices
from being enacted into federal law.

No political system will be immune to corruption or perversion if it isn't
built on the solid foundation of a culture whose dominant outlook is reason,
self-interest, and recognition that self-interest is opposed to seeking the
unearned.  Of course this statement can be interpreted to mean a lot of 
things, so rather than try to pin it down in this article, let me just indicate
that I mean a culture based substantially on Ayn Rand's philosophy of
Objectivism.  In such a culture, slavery wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance...
--Norm Andrews, AT&T Information Systems, Holmdel, N.J.   (ariel!norm)