Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!mordor!sri-spam!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!MC.LCS.MIT.EDU!kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu From: kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU Newsgroups: mod.politics Subject: Is money power? Message-ID: <12233149314.32.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Sat, 23-Aug-86 14:16:11 EDT Article-I.D.: RED.12233149314.32.MCGREW Posted: Sat Aug 23 14:16:11 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 23-Aug-86 20:14:48 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: kfl%mx.lcs.mit.edu@mc.lcs.mit.edu Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 81 Approved: poli-sci@red.rutgers.edu From: ... we did agree that money IS in fact, power,. No, we agreed that power has many different meanings. To an electrical engineer it means I squared R. To a politician it means the ability to coerce others. KFL ,however, does not agree that this implies power over people; he maintains that the very organization which HE 'vilifies', viz. guvmint, I object not to government but to government coercion, in the form of taxation and laws against victimless crime. I object equally to coercion done by individuals and by corporations. has made the abuses of wealth illegal, therfore they wont occur, or they are susceptible of remedy through the legal system etc etc... Well, what is power? A person who can throw a stone or wield an axe has the abililty to rob and to kill. This is power. Power over other people. That is obviously what YOU mean by power, since otherwise power is not objectionable. What ADDITIONAL power does a person have who has plenty of wealth? Anything? I can't think of anything, except that he can HIRE someone to do evil deeds. But that IS illegal. The WEALTH is not. No USE of wealth, except to hire people to do evil deeds, is illegal, nor should it be. And it is equally illegal for a poor person to hire a killer, whether or not it is likely he can do so, just as it is equally illegal for a weak person to throw stones at people, whether or not it is likely he can do so. Very very few wealthy people DO hire killers. A more common crime wealthy people commit is to bribe legislators to enact favorable legislation. Under the political system I advocate, this wouldn't even NEED to be illegal because no legislator COULD enact special interest legislation! I am not an anarchist. Government does have a purpose. That purpose is to stop the axe wielders and the stone throwers. To protect everyone's individual rights against all agressors, whether they be individual criminals, corporations, or rival governments. that line of reasoning is just more byzantium to me! Please read Ayn Rand's books. She is able to explain much better than I can. ...to maintain that the power of the state should be limited, but that the power of wealth should not, is to invite plutocracy, not freedom. I still don't understand what you mean by power of wealth. I have explained that all coercive power must be restrained equally. Whether the perpetrator is a plutocrat or a bureaucrat or a plain old street thug. All I can figure is that you imagine that capitalism is a form of coercion or fraud, that wealth is a fixed quantity, and the only way some people can get more of it than others is by somehow cheating others out of their fair share. This is absolutely false. Wealth is created by individuals and corporations. The owners of the wealth are those who created it, and those who benefited directly or indirectly from others having created wealth. And, unfortunately, those who have coerced wealth from others or who have convinced government to coerce it for them. It is only this last group whose power I oppose. .....AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.... ......did he ever return? no he never returned and his fate is still unlearned, he may ride for ever 'neath the streets of boston, he's the man who never returned!... Despite my MIT net address, I am not in the Boston area. I am more likely to be lost in the Washington DC 'Metro' than in the Boston 'T'. Nevertheless, I do attend Boskone, and can be seen in person there this coming February (if I do not become trapped in the Boston subway on the way there :-) ). If 'ucsbcsl!uncle', whatever his real name is, is no longer on the net, would someone who knows him please give him a copy of this message? Thanks. ...Keith -------