Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site watmath.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!idallen From: idallen@watmath.UUCP Newsgroups: can.politics Subject: The non-interference society; judgement in haste? Message-ID: <8712@watmath.UUCP> Date: Tue, 21-Aug-84 01:55:55 EDT Article-I.D.: watmath.8712 Posted: Tue Aug 21 01:55:55 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 21-Aug-84 03:33:08 EDT References: <999@hcrvax.UUCP>, <8680@watmath.UUCP>, <4226@utzoo.UUCP>, <8700@watmath.UUCP> Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 87 I'm going to disobey my own plea for brevity, to ask you all to help me compare the directions of a traditional and non-interference society. Proposition: Society should not force person A to pay more than necessary for a service, to benefit person B (i.e. subsidies). Such force constitutes a kind of approved theft. This proposition puts forth a view of an individual's relationship with society that is based on non-interference. Your problems and circumstances are your own responsibility, whether created by your own doing (e.g. you get lung cancer from smoking), or set up simply by chance (e.g. you were struck by lightning and hospitalized, or you were born in a geographic area with few comforts). 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, and each individual is free to assist, ignore, or exploit his or her fellow human. Basic rule: "If you want to do it, do it, but don't force me to." What direction would a society so based head? What kind of decisions are made by people in this society? Now, the current political system allows a government to make decisions for the society, and the government must answer for its actions later, at election time. This time delay is important; it gives the society 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. The society gets to look at the government's actions for a long time, and form opinions that aren't based on passing concerns and fancies. In the non-interference society, judgements must be made by each individual more often and more rapidly, and are thus more subject to concerns of the moment. An example will help show this. If a factory folds, a traditional government may instantly step in and keep it open with the funds it has taxed from the people, if it thinks it is in the overall good of the society to do so. 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. 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. Apathy does not hinder the good of society under the traditional government; those that don't care about the factory today don't affect the government's ability to save it. Apathy works *against* society in the non-interference system; if not enough people are made aware of the significance of the factory, and are willing to commit real cash money *now* to save it, it won't be done. The statement "people would pay for it if they wanted it" is too simple. If things need to be done for the society as a whole, the more effective way to get an individual to support them is to grab a bunch of money *once*, do them, and later ask for approval. This is what the government does when it taxes you once a year, makes your decisions, and later asks to be re-elected. This works better than asking for donations every time. The non-interference society demands that individuals make decisions immediately, and always make them in the spirit of overall benefit to society. (You don't want lots of people not contributing to the needy factory just because they bought a car this week.) In practice, I don't believe people will make day-to-day decisions in the spirit of overall societal good. The traditional system only demands a high level of societal responsibility when reviewing the performance of the past government and electing a new one. Even this is still hard, but not as hard as thinking on a nation-wide scale for every decision, every day. Thus, the traditional system tends to evolve with decisions based on overall public good, because people have time to see the government's decisions divorced from personal daily concerns, and the government knows this. Looking back on a decision, one can say "I'm glad that we did XYZ; it costs us all a little more, but I think it's a good idea." The non-interference system evolves with decisions based on lots of little snap personal judgements. There is no government making your decisions; you do it every time. The thought goes: "Yeah, sure, I think that XYZ's a really good idea, but see, I have my car payment this week, and besides I already paid for ABC last week, and furthermore I don't see any of my friends spending any of *their* money on this..." Comments? -- -IAN! (Ian! D. Allen) University of Waterloo