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From: kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Who pays?
Message-ID: <12229750073.51.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sun, 10-Aug-86 15:03:36 EDT
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Posted: Sun Aug 10 15:03:36 1986
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    From: campbell%maynard.UUCP@harvisr.HARVARD.EDU

    Universal, inexpensive communications yield substantial benefits
    both economically, and politically.

  Those who receive the benefits should be the ones to pay for them.

    Economic example: Sears Roebuck drew most of its early growth from
    mail order business from rural customers.

  At the expense of nonconsenting others?  If so, how do you justify
it?

    ... despite all the self-righteous breast beating of capitalist
    ideologues,

  Flattery will get you nowhere.

    the single biggest reason for the wealth of the U.S. is not our
    economic system, but our agricultural and mineral wealth, tapped
    by rural pioneers.

  Another fine myth.
  Tell that to Mexico.  Or does the agricultural and mineral wealth
of the continent stop abruptly at the Mexican border?
  Is Japan's recent success due to its adoption of free enterprise?
Or is agricultural and mineral wealth responsible there too?  Strange
how no communist countries seem to have any.

    ... when telephones first started, there WAS competition, and it
    DID NOT WORK.  Businesses often had to have three, four, or five
    phones on each desk, because the private phone companies didn't
    interconnect.

  You think this might have a little bit to do with the low level of
19th century electronic technology?

    Recall also that with the technology of the 19th century it was
    impractical to allow more than one phone company to place wires on
    telephone poles in most areas.

  I won't argue the point.  But do you think we would be restricted to
such technology today?

    Telephones did not become successful, and never would have, until
    a regulated monopoly was established with the charter of providing
    universal service.

  Various countries have telephone systems with various degrees of
regulation.  Without exception, the less regulation, the more
succesful the phone service.  Who can say how much more successful
ours would have been had it been as unregulated as, say, the computer
industry?

    Of course there is such an entity as 'society'.  Just because it
    cannot be precisely defined does not mean that it doesn't exist.

  What I meant is that it is not meaningful to talk of society as it
it were an entity.  People were saying 'society has decided...' and
'it is society's fault that...' and 'society should pay...', etc,
which is not conducive to any kind of discussion since it doesn't
really seem to mean anything.

    Now, many objectivists and libertarians like to moan and groan
    about how society has no right to "pick my pocket", or "force me
    to do something".

  See, here you are doing it.  What you are talking about is called
'government'.  Why not use the word?  It isn't all THAT loathsome.

    ... if you expect to be able to participate in the advantages that
    society provides -- culture, economic activity, safety, medicine--

  Presto!  Now society has a new meaning.  It doesn't mean government
in this paragraph.  Government supplies none of those except possibly
safety.  You can have so much fun when you change the meaning of words
in the middle of an argument.

    none of which you can provide all by yourself --

  No, I have to voluntarily trade what I can produce for these things.
What does government have to do with that?

    ... then you must also be willing to contribute your share to
    society.

  Shazam!  Now 'society' means 'government' again!  Clearly you don't
mean the people I get these various good things from.  I already paid
for them.  You mean I should also pay TAXES on them, for a reason
never specified.

    I was once an objectivist myself -- in high school.  I grew out of
    it, ... Objectivism (and its cousin, libertarianism) are smugly
    self-satisfying -- just the ticket for young people who are still
    struggling with the "leaving the nest" syndrome and identity
    construction of adolescence.  But they cannot speak to the larger
    problems of human society one must face as a fully functioning
    member of human civilization.

  Wow!  Subsumtion!  This is the technique used by O'Brien when
brainwhing Winston Smith in George Orwell's _1984_.  O'Brien showed
that he CONTAINED Smith, that Smith's every thought, that his whole
mind, was a SUBSET of O'Brien's.
  This can be done by saying "I (used to feel | would have felt) that
way (when | if) I was [younger and] (less mature | less wise | more
stupid | less well educated | smug and self righteous) [but I know
better now | but I grew up | but I grew out of it]."
  I could equally well make the same argument on the other side.  I
won't bother.  All I will say is I that I am no adolescent, I am not
struggling with any syndromes, I do not have an identity crisis, and I
feel that I *AM* speaking to the larger problems of human society, and
I *AM* a fully functioning member of human civilization.
  I don't know your background, but I strongly suspect you have had
far less experience with human civilization in all its forms than I
have.
                                                              ...Keith

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