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Subject: Is money power?
Message-ID: <12234057603.49.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Wed, 27-Aug-86 01:25:34 EDT
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Posted: Wed Aug 27 01:25:34 1986
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    From: campbell%maynard.UUCP@harvisr.harvard.edu

    ... Money is power over people, and people only.  Money and power
    are two sides of the same coin, and they are convertible to each
    other the way matter and energy are equivalent and convertible.

  Sigh.
  Suppose you want to make me a slave.  You want me to pick cotton.
You can get a gun and point it at me and threaten to kill me if I
don't pick cotton.  Probably I would then do so, as slowly as I could
get away with - any you had better never turn your back on me or that
gun is going to end up where the sun don't shine.
  Another approach is to offer to PAY me to pick the cotton.  Offer me
something worth more to me than my time and inconvenience and risk,
and I will cheerfully pick cotton for you.  And I will end up feeling
that I have GAINED by the transaction.  Of course this isn't slavery
any more.  This is employment.
  Note that it doesn't matter whether you are an individual or a
government in either case.  Individuals and governments are both
capable of either way of treating people.
  If you still insist that money is coercive power, please give an
example of its coercive use.  Don't bother to list:

1) Hiring a killer.  This is as illegal in a libertarian system as in
   any other.

2) Bribing legislators.  This wouldn't even NEED to be illegal in a
   libertarian system, since legislators wouldn't have the power to
   enact special interest legislation.

                                                              ...Keith

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