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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory,net.politics
Subject: Re: Extent of hunger in America
Message-ID: <792@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Oct-85 11:25:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.792
Posted: Tue Oct 22 11:25:56 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Oct-85 05:54:33 EDT
References: <4105@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 109
Xref: linus net.politics.theory:1336 net.politics:10964
Summary: 

In article <4105@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes:
> In article <791@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
> >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.

Since I'm just a working person, rather than a politician, the least you
could do when attributing false motives to me is to call me a misguided
tool.  :-(

And of course we will take it on faith that you have absolutely no political,
social engineering, or economic motives for your opposing social program,
and thus certainly couldn't be exploiting the poor.  :-(

Nor have the programs advocated "failed": they've provided nutrition for
millions, and continue to do so.  But they do need to be improved in an
assortment of ways, including reaching more who need the help.  This is
one of the reasons I opposed Reagan and his ilk with their ideological
(rather than need-based) cutbacks in social programs.

> 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.

Oh, heavens!  Let's all sit on our hands lest we accidentally "use" someone!
Anything we decide, including doing nothing, can be construed as "using"
someone.  Whereas you, by proposing to lessen benefits by substituting
"human chow" for a more usual diet, are much more directly interfering in
what the poor might consider their own best interests.  Or do you propose
to decide their best interests for them also?

> 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.  

Evidentally you haven't done much trapping.  Cheap food baits as well as
expensive food (providing the nutritional value is similar.)  Any program
will provide some disincentive.  Your idea would just make the trap harder
to escape from in a variety of ways.  Such as providing incentive for the
first generation of recipients to spend discretionary dollars on normal
food rather than any sort of long-term investment in education, business, etc.
Such as forming a basic social barrier between the following generations
(which isn't used to normal food) and the rest of society.

> >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."

Your analogy fits your scheme better: "let's feed our slave minimal rations,
if he wants better he can plant his own garden.  We'll claim this provides
incentive for self-improvement and self-sufficiency, when in reality he'll
be so busy trying to survive that he won't have any time for either of
those, let alone political organizing!"

The people-chow idea brings to mind the breeding of a class of cheap labor
grown on animal feed to be exploited by the libertarians/capitalists.

> 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.

Your people-chow proposal bears these two faults equally.  (a) In addition
to any ways current social programs might benefit one or the other of us,
it has the benefit of being cheaper to Joe Libertarian.  (b) If I'm dependent
on you for gruel or steak, I'm still dependent.  We're both talking about
programs that remove hunger as an incentive for independence.  We're
thinking of other factors to produce desire for independence.  You want to
create an underclass and rely on status consciousness.  I prefer other
ideas.

> 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.

Feeding the poor people-chow actively hurts them, by teaching them that
they are merely domesticated animals used for labor or kept as pets.

> 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 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-capitalist-to-mouth
existence.  :-(
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh