Xref: utzoo talk.politics.misc:6615 alt.flame:1375
Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdcad!ames!ucbcad!pasteur!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!robinson
From: robinson@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (Michael Robinson)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.flame
Subject: Re: The Difference It Makes . . .
Summary: Oh, just structural poverty.  That's all.
Message-ID: <22630@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 18 Jan 88 07:53:17 GMT
References: <8801160000.AA20929@jiff> <2296@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <22620@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <2333@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: robinson@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Michael Robinson)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 52

In article <2333@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> lazarus@athena.mit.edu (Michael Friedman) writes:
>Michael Robinson's flame is tough to respond to because all he does is
>attack.

I don't seem to recall much constructive content in yours either, and I didn't 
find it all that hard to respond to.

>Like anything else, my vision of how to run society is not
>perfect. Utopias cannot exist in a real world. My only claim is that
>in the long run my vision of society is better than any other.

Not bad for an undergraduate.  Maybe you'll walk on water for your Ph.D.

>I agree that society as I would like it to be would have problems.
>There would still be the dirt poor and the filthy rich. The poor still
>would not be as comfortable or live as long or have as much power as
>the rich. The children of the poor would still not have as good a
>chance as the children of the rich. 

Society as you would like it to be would have intrinsic problems.  Your life
as you would like it to be would have no problems.  Not very sporting, are you?

>If Mr. Robinson posts his version of what our government should do I
>will respond by trying to explain why my version is better. Until then
>I will ignore him.

Me?  I would like to see a decentralized, non-industrial, high-technology,
highly integrated, self-sustaining, neo-tribal society, the details of which
would take many, many articles to describe, and the justifications for which
would take far more than that. 

I'm not willing to put that kind of effort into alt.flame (or
talk.politics.misc, which seems to have a lower idea density).

If there is interest, I may write the articles for my BBS and post copies here.

>One final note. Anyone who assumes that people who disagree with him
>are automatically evil is either paranoid or an idiot. They may be
>stupid, they may be intelligent but wrong, or, just possibly, they may
>be right.

There's hope yet.

>My comment about MIT people was a bit out of line, but I was
>rather annoyed by Andrew Lazarus.

Apology accepted.


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Michael Robinson                              USENET:  ucbvax!ernie!robinson
                                              ARPA: robinson@ernie.berkeley.edu