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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: soc.misc,misc.misc
Subject: Re: Poor People/Lazy People
Message-ID: <1138@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-Oct-86 13:53:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.1138
Posted: Thu Oct 16 13:53:12 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 22:27:05 EDT
References: <1010@cad.cs.cmu.edu> <1050001@hpspkla.HP.COM>
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Organization: Kontron Electronics, Mt. View, CA
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Xref: ucbvax soc.misc:48 misc.misc:22

> > in response, gadfly says:
> > *My* ethical system that demands "this obligation"?  You say this as if
> > it had to be some bizarre cultist dogma.  I'm a Jew, and my religion
> > specifies 613 obligations in some detail.[etc]
> > 
> > Correct me if i'm wrong, but you seem to imply that anyone with any sense
> > of ethics in their yuppie, designer brains is a Jew (or at least
> > acknowledges these 613 specific obligations of which you speak).
> > The person who responded (and me) is asking not why you feel that *you*
> > have these obligations, but why you feel that they are self-evident
> > to anyone WASOEITYDB, and whence comes your right to impose said 
> > obligations by force on one who does not share your view of them.
> > -- 
> > jeanne a. e. devoto
> 
> As to the latter, I'll restate my case a bit less flippantly:  We all
> have obligations to other people and society in general.  This is simply
> axiomatic.  If you don't believe it, I certainly can't force you to,

But you are quite ready to use the government to impose YOUR notion of
obligations on the rest of us, by forcing us to fund the governmental
welfare system, rather than allowing the population to decide individually
what charities, supporting what people, they will fund.

> and I wouldn't want to try.  There are, as I have noted previously, a
> number of tantalizingly different ethical philosophies--you have quite
> a banquet to choose from.  I do not proselytize for any particular one.
> But if you reject them all, then you're adopting the yuppie credo:
> "The one who dies with the most toys wins."  And then I really pity you.
> Tell me, O ethical egoists, just what do you think life is about anyway?
> 
> ken perlow       *****   *****

I'm not going to argue for the Objectivist position -- I find it distasteful
as well.  I am willing to argue vigorously that at least it doesn't purport
to impose an obligation on others.

Clayton E. Cramer