(please don't CC, I'm on the list, see Mail-Followup-To) Hi, On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 10:09:13AM +0100, Russell Coker wrote: > On Wed, 30 Oct 2002 09:45, Emile van Bergen wrote: > > > else and therefore hardly protects against the enormous private > > concentrations of power you see today. Given the foresight, the framers > > would have no doubt forbidden all use of private resources for political > > campaigns, whether they come from the rich candidate himself or campaign > > 'donations'. > > No. It would be better if they clearly stated that a company is not a person > and does not deserve the rights of a person. That would be great, yes, but I don't really care whether a natural person decides to spend money to gain political influence in order to promote the interests of the companies he owns, or it's the companies that spend the money directly. Both are just as effective and just as undemocratic. > Currently a company is given all the rights of a person under contract and > civil law. But when a company does something wrong it can't be punished. > In the US someone who kills a few dozen people will at best be jailed for > life, and probably get the death penalty. A company who kills as many people > will at worst get fined. I agree there, but solving that won't cure the ills of democracy. If we don't want to vote with our dollars, but want the people to vote, then we must minimize the effective power of dollars in the government. It's that simple. > > I doubt that. If a public society can build highways that costs millions > > of euros per kilometer, then why can it not build chip fabs? > > It can't build such expensive highways. My observation is that it's often > quite difficult to get fence repairs done between two properties because the > people involved have a dispute about cost sharing. How do you get agreement > on cost sharing of a million euros for 1Km of road among the 100,000 people > who drive on it? > > The only solution is to have the people taxed by a government and then the > government decides which roads the taxes are to be spent on. Of course. I'm assuming a democracy here, where the government is backed by 51 % of the public. Government money == public money. > > money. You can see the same beneficial effect in two publicly funded > > rivalling R&D groups I guess. Lots of people will do that extra bit for > > fame and and public recognition as well as for money. > > If "publically funded" means "government funded" then yes I agree that can > work (but that goes against the anarchist philosophy). That's what I meant. And yes, the difference with anarchist philosophy is that they /do. assume that the funding by the people that are interested is enough. I think they underestimate the effect of "I'll only pay if my neighbor pays too", which only a government can leverage. Cheers, Emile. -- E-Advies / Emile van Bergen | emile@e-advies.info tel. +31 (0)70 3906153 | http://www.e-advies.info
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