Dwayne <ddraig@pobox.com> Wrote:
>>I think I do know what you mean by "voluntary", join us
>> or take a bullet in the brain, you're free to choose.
>wow, so much for politeness on the list. Is this *really* how you
>think another listmember thinks?
I wasn't trying to accuse anybody on this list of wanting to kill people,
and in fact Alejandro proved in a later post to be an intelligent reasonable
man, just wrong about socialism. The important point is not what some member
of the list thinks, but what governments think, all governments, no
exceptions; they will just not take no for an answer. If a government tells
somebody to do something they usually will and the violence is only implicit,
but if they refuse to obey the violence will become explicit, mild at first
but escalating without limit until they make an offer that can't be refused.
It makes no difference if it started over some trivial matter, unless there
is obedience somewhere down the line confrontation with the government can
end only one way, a bullet in the brain.
>>Me:
>>Communism can't make poor people rich but it can make rich people
>>poor. What puzzles me is why you think > that's a virtue.
>This of course depends on how you define 'poor' and 'rich'.
Some truth in that, rich and poor are relative concepts not absolute.
For example, in Stalin's day the USSR imported very few American movies
but one they did was the classic "The Grapes Of Wrath", it's a tragedy
about the suffering of a very poor farm family in Oklahoma who are forced by
drought to give up their farm, load up everything they own on their old truck,
and move to California. The Soviets thought it would be good propaganda to
show a poor American family, but it didn't work as expected and was soon
withdrawn from Russian circulation. To American audiences the people in the
movie seemed horribly poor, the Russian people on the other hand figured the
characters must be aristocrats, these people actually owned their own truck.
Having said that however I still thing there are more enlightened approaches
to world poverty than the socialistic one, make everybody equally poor.
I think the Capitalistic method is more fun, create more wealth.
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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