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From: josh@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory,net.politics
Subject: Re: Extent of hunger in America
Message-ID: <4105@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Mon, 21-Oct-85 18:15:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.4105
Posted: Mon Oct 21 18:15:23 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Oct-85 20:19:45 EDT
Reply-To: josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall)
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 70

In article <791@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
>In article <4080@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes:
>> [The socialist] is *not interested in hunger per se*.
>> He is interested instead in *using* hunger to further his political ends.
>> He is, in a word, EXPLOITING the hungry.
>
>How would I be exploiting the hungry by giving them the food they want?

If your true motives, as I claim, are political rather than altruistic,
you are obviously exploiting them.  Since the programs you espouse have,
if Carnes is to be believed, failed to provide adequate nutrition while
spending hundreds of times as much as would be necessary to do so, their
political and social engineering nature is clear.

>I'm certainly not coercing them.  I'm not asking anything in return: just
>making a case why we should do more than feed the hungry minimally.

Do more indeed, much more, and still not feed them minimally...

You don't have to be coercing someone to exploit them--indeed, consider
Mr. Carnes' Marxist definition of exploitation: You (like the Capitalist)
offer someone something he cannot afford to refuse, to get money out of
*someone else*.  You are not concerned with the person you give the 
bait to, he is just the means to an end.  You are *using* him.

>A definition of exploit in my dictionary sounds like what you have in mind:
>to make use of selfishly or unethically.  How do you suggest I am exploiting
>anyone by arguing for better than minimal food?  

This is as if you owned a slave and argued, "How can I be exploiting him?
The exercise he gets working for me improves his body.  He is better off
than before."  But you have ignored the very factors that determine
exploitation, and they are exactly parallel in the case of your slave 
and your welfare recipient:  (a) you ignore that the interaction is
benefiting you tremendously in other ways, and (b) you have reduced the
unfortunate person to *dependence* on you, something which I consider
a moral evil in itself.

>Maybe if I was stubborn
>enough to let people starve instead of getting the full program I would
>prefer?

How ingenuous.  Our sole point of agreement, you will remember, is that 
there is a level of support a tiny fraction of your "full program", that
would provide complete nutrition and totally eliminate physical hunger.

>But I'm sure you would stand by proudly watching them starve and beat
>your chest exclaiming "Well, at least I'm not expoiting them by making
>them accept food!"
>Mike Huybensz		

More lies.  You know perfectly well that's not my position.  
My position is that it would be good to make available "human chow"
instead of the monetary (or moneylike) programs we have now.  The main
reason is that current programs provide a strong disincentive to 
self-improvement and self-sufficiency.  They are the bait in the
poverty trap.  

Furthermore, this is orthogonal to the question of whether such
aid should be provided by the government.  I would oppose programs
like the current ones even if administered by churches and foundations.
They actively hurt the poor.

Mike and those like him are using the poor as pawns in a game of 
power politics.  Their "concern" is a smokescreen, and the fact that 
their programs actually make the hard road out of poverty harder,
concerns them not at all.  The more poor the better, as long as
they can be shown eking out a desperate hand-to-bureaucrat-to-mouth
existence.

--JoSH