Mike Lorrey said
> Well, my personal opinion is that education is the prime problem, and
the prime solution. The common saying among black kids today is that 'books
are for whites'. That sort of racial/cultural aversion to
knowledge and learning to me seems to be the prime contributor to the
vicious cycle of poverty, crime, and hate.
Mike, that seems a fair enough comment. I think at one point you said that
you'd be prepared to accept public investment in education as an exception
to your libertarian views against taxes and public expenditure, but I may be
misrepresenting you. Remind me what you think about this (it's not a problem
for me because I don't believe in absolute property rights, but let's not
get into that).
I also tend to think that knowledge and learning is the key, and you're
right that it's not *just* poverty. It's poverty, under-education,
partly-justified social resentment, and culture-specific memes about
appropriate attitudes to society, all in a vicious circle. But how do we
best turn the key? What limitations do you think your political philosophy
imposes (I'm not disputing your philosophy at this point, just asking a
question)?
Note: I do not believe in reparations in the sense of simply handing
government money to people of particular racial descent. I *do* support
economically efficient (if this is possible) public expenditures to address
the structural issues of racially skewed poverty and under-education. In my
local context, I would even support increased taxes for this purpose *if* I
thought the money would be spent efficiently and effectively. I suspect that
this would also be the position of the other
semi-libertarians/non-libertarians floating around here, but I obviously
can't speak for them.
Russell
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