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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: The non-interference society; judgement in haste?
Message-ID: <4255@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Aug-84 19:06:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.4255
Posted: Tue Aug 21 19:06:37 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Aug-84 19:06:37 EDT
References: <999@hcrvax.UUCP>, <8680@watmath.UUCP>, <4226@utzoo.UUCP>, <8700@watmath.UUCP>, <8712@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 92

You want comments, you get comments...

> ...[in Ian!'s strawman proposal].............  Society does not meddle
> by forcibly taxing everyone and subsidizing individuals in unfortunate
> circumstances.  One depends on charity and volunteer funds to provide
> this assistance.  This is a society that, as a whole, has no compassion
> or standard of living; only individuals have these qualities...

I would comment, parenthetically, that many of the people (like me) who
have been expressing strong leanings in this direction do not favor the
extreme non-interference approach that Ian! is discussing.  While I
strongly believe that the functions of government should be minimized
(and that our present government is far too big and is involved in far too
many things), I do not see any practical way to reduce them to zero.

> ....  Basic rule: "If you want to do it, do it, but don't force me to."

This is technically known as "freedom".  A most important concept, not to
be confused with "democracy", which is a form of government.

> .....................the government must answer for its actions later,
> at election time...

Oh really?  When our choice is between Tweedledee, Tweedledum, and poor
old Ed Broadbent who has no real chance of ever getting in?  Canadian
elections provide essentially *no* meaningful input to the government.

> ... [the delay until the next election provides]
> time to reflect on the government's actions and it eliminates hasty
> judgements of the actions.  The actions made by the government are thus
> ones that must stand up to long inspection and consideration by the
> society.

While I do favor schemes in which the people running the show don't have
to be looking over their shoulders every minute, the claim that the
electorate carefully considers past performance is hogwash.  It's not an
accident that governments have a habit of calling elections just after
something nice has happened (e.g. a new leader replacing a disliked and
distrusted incumbent); the electorate's memory is very short.

> ...If a factory folds... ...  In a non-interference
> society, the factory can only be kept open if a whole lot of people
> know about it, are aware of its overall benefit to their society, and
> make an immediate, personal snap decision to come to its aid and lay down
> their own personal cash money right then and there...

Nonsense.  The factory will be kept open if a new owner can be found, who
believes that the factory is profitable enough to continue.  Said new
owner is very seldom a whole mob of people; more usually it's a company,
i.e. an organized mob of people (stockholders) whose money is invested
by a central management which can act quickly and professionally if
needed.  Said central management's decisions are subject to later scrutiny
by the stockholders, of course.  Sound familiar?  Quite, except that the
stockholders didn't invest their money irreversibly on threat of dire
punishment if they refused.

Incidentally, one can argue that inefficient and obsolete factories do
not have any overall benefit to our society whatsoever.  To the workers
and the owners, perhaps, but not to the customers and the rest of society.

> It is no harder
> for a government with tax money to support another urgent concern in the
> next week, but it is harder for an individual to make yet another
> contribution if he or she has just made one last week.

Even government budgets are finite, unless "with tax money" really means
(as it increasingly does) "with the willingness to print money in whatever
quantities appear useful".  This argument makes no sense to me.  If what
you are addressing is willingness (as opposed to ability), see the earlier
comments on companies.  A company is a group of people acting together,
with a central management because that works better, to invest their
money in places they think appropriate.

> Apathy does not hinder the good of society under the traditional
> government

Cough, splutter, choke.  Dead wrong.  Apathy eliminates the (already
minimal) feedback the government gets on its performance.  The result is
what we have today.

> ...The non-interference society demands that individuals make decisions
> immediately, and always make them in the spirit of overall benefit to
> society....

This, and a great deal that I've omitted, all assumes that investing is
always done by individuals, never by voluntarily-formed organizations.
Nonsense.  What you are really setting up is a society without organizations
of any kind, not just a society with a non-interfering government.  No
surprise that it doesn't look attractive.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry