[Craig] I have a lot of high quality ideas: free speech, jury trials, the Pythagorean theorem. But if I go, there are still millions of others who have these ideas--the ideas themselves don't die. So my having these ideas gives you no reason to provide for my subsistance (food, clothing, shelter, health care). Now, of the 6,000,000,000 people on earth, there is someone whose ideas are important enough & unique enough for me to want to provide for their subsistance. For me, it is Alan Greenspan, for you Citizen X. Even so, I don't value these ideas enough to be FORCED to provide subsistance for Greenspan. Nor would I want you to be forced to do so. Needless to say, nor would I want to be forced to provide subsistance for X. The good news is that Greenspan (& X for that matter) have no trouble providing for their own subsistance in the free market.
[Case] Like Platt, you raise the issue of being forced to provide subsistence to another. As I have asked Platt, how can you say that you are being "forced" to pay taxes when you voluntarily participate in the system? Beyond this do you seriously think society has no obligation to those who can not take care of themselves. Children, the disabled, the elderly, we should just let them starve? Who will pick up the bodies every morning? You reckon we could farm that out to the free market? I am seriously curious as to when this idea that government was the enemy crept into our national consciousness. What has led so many of our citizens to conclude that it is right to expect the worst from their leaders? 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/
