> [Arlo previously] > My "point" is get beyond one-liners. Your answers? > > [Platt] > So you want to get beyond Pirsig's line about socialism? I thought so.
The absence of your denial speaks volumes about your socialist leanings. > [Arlo] > Answers? To humor you I'll play along with your idiotic questions. > Are the "poor" better or worse off because of public libraries? Would > the"poor" be better off if we shut down all the public libraries and > converted them to Barnes and Nobles? Without individuals choosing to write books and publishers choosing to print them, there would be no libraries, public or otherwise. > Let's go back to the fabled pre-socialist era of the early 20th > century. Give me some measures you would use to show me how the > "poor" were better off then? Better income? Better health care? > Better education? Contrast the workers in the Pullman camps to the > factory workers at GM today. Tell me in what ways the Pullman > laborers were "better off"? Without individuals choosing to build profit-making businesses and drug companies choosing to invent new medicines, there would be no improvements in income or health care. (Arguably, people were better educated in the early 20th century.) > Since we favor the "free market", do you think people would be better > off with a privatized police force than a socialized one? Why? Why is > a socialized police force better than a private one? Without individuals choosing to become policemen, there would be no police force, public or private. The more individuals are free to choose, the more dynamic and wealthy the society becomes, as Pirsig suggests and America demonstrates. One of the ills of SOM is the bias towards thinking about groups and systems while ignoring the individuals in it. That bias spills over into academe and politics, helping to account for the appeal of socialism and Arlo's propensity. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
