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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