From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Apr 09 2003 - 03:56:04 MDT
Charles writes
> [Lee wrote]
> > To most of the people on this list there is indeed a
> > natural elite of the smart. I have no objection to
> > this perception, and even share it. But that's not
> > the elite that Michael Dickey was writing about...
> >
> > The "elite" that pays all the tax is mainly that segment of the
> > population who engage in the greatest amount of free economic
> > transactions with others, and this can include porn artists,
> > marijuana growers, and even insurance salesmen. Many of these
>
> This "elite" includes successful con-men of every description,
> successful mobsters, successful bank-robbers, etc.
I think you miss my point. I shouldn't have emphasized *just*
those that we see as undesirable, my joke about "insurance
salesmen" notwithstanding. I only meant to say that those who
make a lot of money are the economic elite, and don't form up
the same elite that Damien and others had in mind when they
mention brain surgeons and others of the intellectual elite.
> Perhaps we shouldn't be too quick to equate an increase in
> this number with an increase in ANY social good. It can be,
> but there's sure no isomorphism.
I've never seen a society getting richer that got (internally)
worse. I'd rather a country be run by rich hoodlums that by
poor hoodlums (except for the unfortunate out-country effects).
In the historical cases I know of, namely the West, the "elite"
we are discussing here who makes all the money does so with no
more moral laxity than animates the general person in the
population. Surely you don't believe that the rich got their
money because they're evil.
Lee
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