Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: All hail the status quo! (esp. J. Giles) Message-ID: <345@cybvax0.UUCP> Date: Fri, 8-Feb-85 18:21:12 EST Article-I.D.: cybvax0.345 Posted: Fri Feb 8 18:21:12 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 12-Feb-85 05:06:15 EST References: <21183@lanl.ARPA> <647@unmvax.UUCP> Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Distribution: net Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA Lines: 44 Summary: In article <647@unmvax.UUCP> cliff@unmvax.UUCP writes: > > It's not wrong for a person to take money from himself. Why would it be > > wrong for a group to take money from itself? That's how taxes work out for > > a democracy anyway. > > Think hard friend, if you are alone on a subway, and two people enter it, you > are now a group. If those two vote that you should give them all your money, > then would it be wrong for a group to take money from itself? That's how > taxes work out for a democracy anyway. Your analogy breaks down rather rapidly. In practice, in the US, the groups do not form and break up so frivolously. For the most part, groups are stable and the taxation is predictable. And if you don't like one group, you can relocate rather freely. There is at least one US state without income tax (Alaska), and I believe there are several nations with no taxes as well. > Actually, the fruits of someone's labor allowed someone to claim it. > You have to reach the land to claim it. Reaching unclaimed land (which > is NOT what the colonists did since there was already a group of people > using the land) is very much labor. The best source of unclaimed land > now is not on this earth, and you can bet your toenails that when someone > claims it, there will have been quite a bit of labor going into that claim. My, it all sounds so equitable. Until you consider that it's only the FIRST one to perform that labor who can benefit. "I'm sorry, you were born into the wrong historical time-frame to perform this labor to claim land, so you are denied access to the primary means of production. Because we all own it already. Nyah nyah." Perhaps if infinite resources were available at the same rate.... For someone concerned with what's right and wrong, you seem to want to overlook a fundamental injustice that is addressed by the current system of redistribution, but ignored by libertarians. > What people who rally around the democracy in the u.s. are really saying is > that they are well off and are happy that things worked out the way they did. And why shouldn't they? Why should they think that they'd be better off and happier under your system? They already are the best off in the world: perhaps you should perform an experiment somewhere where there is less to lose? It would be so much more convincing there. Or does your small group want to inflict its ideas on the rest of us? I don't think you'd want to do it: sounds inconsistant. -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh