Subject:
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Re: socialism etc. (was: Re: Blue Hopper Car Mania...)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 19 Nov 1999 15:11:04 GMT
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Viewed:
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1198 times
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Jasper Janssen wrote:
>
> On Thu, 18 Nov 1999 19:04:34 GMT, Christopher Weeks
> <clweeks@eclipse.net> wrote:
> > Jasper Janssen wrote:
> > >
> > > If you come home, find someone there, and shoot him, you have shot
> > > down an innocent man and therefore deserve to be punished. That is
> > > what "innocent until proven guilty" means.
> >
> > Well....I disagree. But he was proven guilty. He proved it to me by
> > raping my wife. Under your world view, what would be the appropriate
>
> He was proven guilty to you because you saw him. When was it that you
> said "I don't want to play judge, jury, and executioner"? Oh, right,
> four messages up.
If you're going to quote me, please have the decency to do so
accurately. I said "I wouldn't say that anyone (or everyone) should
have the right to be
judge, jury, and executioner." That statement means that I do not
support a system of explicitly approved vigilante justice, but that the
law should allow for people to make situations right even if it's not
how the law should or would have done it.
My main reason for being against the death penalty is that I think the
only point to having a government (as a collection of people being
rational) is so that it can make better decisions than individuals
would. If the sum is not greater than the individuals, then the
government has no reason to be. The government should be above such
actions while individuals are sometimes not.
And the point of that scenario is that someone (the husband) was not
making a perfectly sound and careful attempt at keeping the rapist's
rights in mind, but was ending the rape situation. He protected his
family. You then claimed that killing him was wrong because he was
"innocent until proven guilty." He was clearly not innocent.
> > response to finding yourself in that situation? Calling the police?
>
> I'd probably start off by grabbing a poker and trying to beat him
> senseless.
Oh, so what if he sees you as you approach and is a much better fighter?
You're putting yourself and your wife at more risk. I think that's
irresponsible. His 'right' not to be shot was surrendered at the door
when he broke in a started raping my wife.
> Should I happen to have a gun, and know how to use it
> (which both are highly hypothetical, but that aside), I'd probably
> start off trying to threaten him into leaving, and only shoot at last
> resort. Certainly not as first solution.
OK, that's reasonable. Maybe I would too. Or maybe I'd be so pissed
off that I'd kill a guy in cold blood. Either way, I think the law
should understand that it was a stressful situation and that sometimes
shit happens.
> Or I'd go blind-bull-seeing-red mad and clobber the guy to death. But
> I don't _think_ I'd think I should be able to get away with it.
Well, I think you should get away with it. Or maybe you should be
rewarded by society for cleaning things up and making it safer for
decent folks.
> So you want your fate resting in the hands of $RANDOM_CITIZEN who
> thinks you were trying to hold him up because you "looked funny",
Mostly, I trust people with that responsibility. Frank's story is
extreme and rare. And it is extremely rare for one normally lawful
citizen to kill another over a misunderstanding. That's why it makes
the news.
> Agreed. Full-out-socialist is Bad. Providing a baseline
> standard-of-living is, IMHO, Good, but let's keep that issue for
> another thread, huh?
Well, OK.
> From what I've heard, there are no country-regulated unemployment
> benefits, zero-to-none regulated pension plans, and welfare only if
> you have underage kids.
I think the unemployment insurance system is centrally governed at least
to some extent since it works the same from state to state. We have a
system called Social Security which is a federally mandated pension
plan, in effect. Welfare is available to lots and lots of people not
just those with children. So, I guess I think that you're wrong on all
three counts. Does that make us a socialist nation?
> anarchocapitalistic (once you lose the governments..), the
> technological world we have now would cease to exist. And once that
> happens, there is arguably not really any way for it to start up
> again.
I don't think such an event (without some world-wrecking war) would
drive the rest of the world into the stone age. Maybe it would be hard
and even a major set-back, but I think the rest of the world would stay
above the level of say steel production.
> The current technology-based, Western-European society (for that is
> today the origgin of all the dominant societies), started out in
> Sumeria, Egypt, Greece. Around that region, for one example petroleum
> simply bubbled to the surface. No digging required. Same for coal,
> which made the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age possible
> (you can't smelt iron ore with wood or charcoal fires - they don't
> burn hjot enough). All those surface deposits have long since been
> mined away, just like the near-surface deposits of everything from oil
> to copper and tin ores, and even flint.
Right but in the case of all those except the combusted stuff, it didn't
just disappear. There is now a wealth of consumer goods for such a
restarting civilization to mine.
> > Or do you mean that there's no solution? If that's what you mean, I
> > might agree. I fear that basically, someone has to eat $h!t so that
> > others can live better. I don't like that though.
>
> This is _currently_ the case.
>
> With continuing automation, pretty soon the unskilled labour demand
> will continue to decline, and without some sort of social security, or
> whatever you want to call it, those people are going to turn into
> mobs. And nothing resists a mob... See the French Revolution, Russian
> Revolution, heck, see the American revolution.
They won't be mobs if they're fed...I think that's what you mean by
saying without social security. I think the system will provide for
them (and they could even provide for themselves). As it is, the rich
are throwing the poor a bone to keep them off their backs. That will
continue. The problem is that right now, the rich have coopted the
middle class into paying for the bone.
Chris
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