On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 09:45:33AM +0100, Emile van Bergen wrote:
mineral resources, agricultural land, etc. Disorganized people can't stand against a modern army. Therefore every country needs an army.This is getting rapidly off-topic, but that is also a good counter- argument against the anarchistic notion that 'the people interestedenough in wellfare will pay for it'.
Not really. Under anarchism, the means of production would be in the hands of the people. So if they didn't have food to eat it would most likely be their own fault for not working, in which case let them starve. But given how easy it is to grow food, I doubt anyone would starve; there would always be some kind souls ready to share their food with those who couldn't work to get their own. This isn't theoretical, but actual; it's how society got along for aeons.
Of course, that's how democracy works, and in theory it can work quite well, if the freedom of the individual is protected from that all mighty government of that 51 % majority, from his fellow individuals and, not unimportantly, protected from the private organizations run by them.
If each person has the weaponry to take out 10 other people, people will be pretty polite to each other.
It's too bad that the framers of the US constitution thought the government more dangerous to the liberty of its citizens than anything 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. Quotes from the framers demonstrate that they purposely didn't want the government to protect against private concentrations of power; you see, the framers were quite wealthy men in their own right. By their own words, they wanted the government to "defend property". They were scared that the poor dirt farmers who couldn't get enough credit to be a few more hogs and cattle to get their farm really booming were jealous of the huge landowners who were working their lands with slaves.
Or do you think the AMD vs. Intel competition is really needed to spark the creativity of their engineers? I think human competition is needed, but it need not necessarily be among corporations that are in it for the 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.
I agree with you.
Jonathan
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