-----Original Message-----
From: Dick.Gray@bull.com <Dick.Gray@bull.com>
To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
Date: 14 December 1998 23:43
Subject: Re: Property [was Re: The Education Function]
>
>
>Samael writes:
>>[...] I believe that capitalism is as silly as any other method of
>>organising a system (yes, I know, capitalism is in some ways not a way of
>>organising a system).
>
>So, every method of organizing is silly? Then we're doomed, aren't we?
>>I care about people and I believe that in certain situations that people
>>ought to be helped.
>
>If you really cared about people you wouldn't advocate forcing them, at
>gunpoint, to comply with your idea of "help".
>
>>But looking around I can see hundreds
>>of thousands of people starving to death when we have the technology to
>feed
>>the world and educate them all to university standard for a tiny fraction
>of
>>the amount we spend on arms each year.
>
>Those hundreds of thousands are starving due to governmental strangulation
>of markets under the guise of crackbrained socialist and interventionist
>theories.
So droughts, earthquakes and incursions from neighbouring states are all the fault fo their governments?
>>So yes, in a perfect world where Capitalism worked instnataneously to
>>equalise differences[1], I'd be happy to leave it to it's own devices, but
>>otherwise I think that I'd prefer the singularity to arrive 10 years later
>>with a load more happy well fed people than arrive ten years earlier with
>>hundreds of thousands of people dying of easily prevented diseases.
>
>You're betraying your ignorance of economics again.
No, I just disagree with your interpretation of it.
>
>>[1] A company moves into a very poor country and employs it's people
>doing
>>horrible jobs for a pittance.
>
>A "horrible" job paying a "pittance" sure beats the hell out of no job and
>starvation.
>
>>Eventually more companies move in, they have
>>to compete for labour, wages rise, quality of life rises, education rises
>>and the companies have to find someone else to make trainers. Great - in
>>the long run. In the short run I'd rather that we were sponsoring
>education
>>in these countries and making people happy now. Even if it did mean you
>had
>>to pay an extra $5 for your trainers and they were made in Ohio.
>
>So - you're advocating sacrificing everyone's long run wellbeing for short
>run (and ultimately illusory) "happiness". This is an extropian outlook, is
>it?
Nope, because educating those people will get them to the same stage, in a shorter time, that the company would in a longer time.
Samael