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From: berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Democratic Rights and Property :re to Tanenbaum
Message-ID: <2014@psuvax1.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 8-Mar-86 15:49:48 EST
Article-I.D.: psuvax1.2014
Posted: Sat Mar  8 15:49:48 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Mar-86 00:16:29 EST
References: <1691@bbncca.ARPA> <536@whuts.UUCP> <1636@ihlpg.UUCP>
Organization: Pennsylvania State Univ.
Lines: 72

> 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........

I did not claim that there exist a "capitalistic conspiracy".
However, there are poll results which exhibit that corporate officers
have in average political opinions which are much to the right of the
average of the public as a whole.  Thus the distribution of propaganda
trash like "Plain Truth", interprets the Bible in a way which "shows" that
the welfare "against the God's law" is much easier than the distribution
of "peace literature".  

> >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 them to 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.
> 
Sorry, but this is a peace of bullshit.  I NEVER heard about somebody who
prefers mall shopping over down-town shopping BECAUSE in a mall one is not
exposed to pamphleteers.  (Did anyone avoid some airports because of the
presence of Hare Krishna?)

> 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

As I see it, the mall management should be allowed to expell people
who dicourage shoppers with their behavior.  I disagree that quiet,
well-dressed, unobtrusive pamphleteers are in this cathegory any more
than people handing-out restaurant ads.

Piotr Berman