Hi all: IMHO crime is the result of having replaced the community's moral building mechanizm with the amoral standards of money.
I believe that one of the mechanisms governing morality is the right of association and disassociation. With money as a dominant arbiter of value, we obtain maximum freedom from the community's moral standards. If, as once was the case, the community "looked after its own" the generosity of the community varied in rwesponseto the behavioural modification of the recipients. So long as it was done faiirly it was effective. However, when benefits became entangled with the narrow religious bigotry of the adminitrators, it all broke down. Regards Ed G ============================ At 09:32 PM 08/11/2001 +0100, you wrote: >Keith Hudson wrote: >> The [BBC] investigation arose from circumstances around the death of an 8 >> year-old girl from the Ivory Coast who'd been 'sold' by her parents to an >> aunt who lived in England >[...] >> The BBC, not normally given to exaggerated claims, consider that there are >> probably 10,000 such cases of African child 'imports'. The parents in >> Africa are often paid as little as US$50 per child. Some are put to work in >> sweatshops, and some are used to claim welfare benefits. Some time ago, I >> wrote about other enquiries that suggest that at least 50,000 girls from >> Eastern Europe have been illegally imported into the country by mafia gangs >> on all sorts of pretexts and then effectively held in capitivity as >> prostitutes in brothels from which they can't escape without risking danger >> to their relatives at home. > >Hmmm... Keith strongly advocates Free Trade, but where FT is implemented, >he complains about the ugly consequences, and even blames them on a lack >of FT ! What's described above is just the ultimate implementation of FT >-- humans being (ab)used as commodities which can be traded. Also note >that the root causes of those abuses have been created by FT practices >in the first place -- the reckless exploitation of African and lately >Eastern European countries. > >FT increases inequality and injustice -- which both *increase* criminality. > >It's true that centralistic bureaucracies are bad, but the cure is not >privatization --which leads to centralistic bureaucracies too (albeit >leaner ones), with the difference that they are private-owned, i.e. even >less under control of the people--, but de-centralized direct-democratic >structures. > >Chris > > >
