Re: The Education Function

Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Thu, 10 Dec 1998 12:02:34 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Terry Donaghe <tdonaghe@yahoo.com>
> To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
> Date: 10 December 1998 14:40
> Subject: Re: The Education Function
>
> >
> >I'm working on a more comprehensive rebuttal, but first, I want to say
> >that the entire premise of socialism is based on violence directed at
> >the individual. When a government steals money earned by a worker, it
> >is practicing a form of violence.
>
> I dispute that the money is yours in the first place.
>
> There are three quotes that I find very useful:
>
> 1) Property is freedom.
> Capitalist view - Having property means you can support yourself.
>
> 2) Property is theft.
> Communist view - owning anything means you are stealing from everyone - as
> in a natural state nothing is owned by anyone.
>
> 3) Property is impossible.
> Scientific view: 'Property' is just a term applied to objects that you do
> not wish anyone else to take away from you. It doesn't have an intinsic
> meaning.
>

Hardly. Property is a means of storing work. If you find it morally wrong to enslave me, then you must recognise that my work belongs to me (as a socialist you must recognise that labor should control the means of production). I can exchange my labor for resources. Those resources now belong to me, they are my property. If you refuse to recognize that they are my property, then you enslave me, so you are not a socialist. ergo ipso facto sum.... Property exists and has meaning. That is why taxation is theft and governments are mere slave masters who steal the work of its citizens (slaves).

Disprove this statement if you dare and can. I doubt it.

Mike Lorrey