Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!aplcen!jhunix!ins_akaa From: ins_akaa@jhunix.UUCP (Ken Arromdee) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Democratic Rights and Property :re to Tanenbaum Message-ID: <2085@jhunix.UUCP> Date: Tue, 4-Mar-86 14:32:22 EST Article-I.D.: jhunix.2085 Posted: Tue Mar 4 14:32:22 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 6-Mar-86 19:28:45 EST References: <1691@bbncca.ARPA> <536@whuts.UUCP> <1636@ihlpg.UUCP> <540@whuts.UUCP> <1948@jhunix.UUCP> <2004@psuvax1.UUCP> Reply-To: ins_akaa@jhunix.ARPA (Ken Arromdee) Organization: TARDIS Repairs, Inc. Lines: 72 Summary: LONG In article <2004@psuvax1.UUCP> berman@psuvax1.UUCP writes: >> >Moreover imagine what happens when there *is no town square* or >> >public place except for the mall - what freedoms are left? >> Forcing the mall owners to allow pamphleteers to distribute material is >> also depriving freedoms--the freedoms of the owners to not be forced into use >> of their property for a cause that they do not support. >> If you can't give out literature in one place, that doesn't mean your views >> are being suppressed. If there is "no public place", that would appear to >> show that nobody is interested in your point of view, and you shouldn't >> continue to proselytize to people who don't want to be proselytized to. >> If enough people support your view, they can exert pressure on the mall >> owners; in the USSR no such possibility exists. >It is all to easy to argue that USA is better place than USRR. >However, one must notice a power of moneyed interests to manipulate >the public opinion not by shutting up the opposing views but by >controlling the dominant channels of communication. Oh no, those evil capitalists are at it again! Really, one organization doesn't own all the channels of communication, at least in the US. (In the USSR, the situation is, of course, exactly that--the state has a monopoly on information sources.) Even if there are so many "moneyed interests" who "control the channels of communi- cation", they don't all agree with one another, so different opinions do get expressed. >One of such channels is distributing literature in the places >frequented by majority of local population... What Tim Sevener exhibited was a >flagrant confluence between private interests (mall owners) and the law >enforcement (local police). Police expelled pamphleteers even when shown >court decisions that it is unlawful. >The argument "you should not proselite to people who don't want it" >is a fallacy, because Tim was not proseliting the mall manager, but >the shoppers. The second argument "if enough people support your >view" is almost equally ridiculus. How people can support my views >if they do not know them? --Piotr Berman The point was that the mall managers have to respond to the shoppers' desires. If they do not, the shoppers can shop somewhere else. As for people supporting the views if they don't know them, obviously they DO know at least enough about themto not want to be exposed to them in the mall, and their desires about this are widely enough known that the mall managers know this also. >> Because the shoppers disagree with certain beliefs and don't want to be >> proselytized. The question here is not music or art, but politics. >Bulshit. Any supermarket in my area has a rack with free copies of >"Plain Truth", a proseliting right-wing/religious propaganda. It is possible for shoppers to dislike some types of proselytization more than they dislike others. That is the shoppers' right. >I cannot imagine a shopper who refrains from going to a mall because >he/she may be handed in a leaflet. You yorself worried about >> the freedoms of the owners to not be forced into use >> of their property for a cause that they do not support. OK, let me clarify: The owners don't want such use of their property because it alienates shoppers. Being forced to allow their property's being used in such a manner reduces their profits from shoppers, thus making them lose money. I cannot imagine a shopper who buys one product in preference to another because the product is advertised with an advertisement that says nothing about the product itself or the product's price. Yet such ads obviously are effective. Other shoppers often do things for reasons that you or I might not. -- Kenneth Arromdee | | BITNET: G46I4701 at JHUVM, INS_AKAA at JHUVMS -|------|- CSNET: ins_akaa@jhunix.CSNET -|------|- ARPA: ins_akaa%jhunix@hopkins.ARPA -|------|- UUCP: {allegra!hopkins, seismo!umcp-cs, ihnp4!whuxcc} -|------|- !jhunix!ins_akaa | |