"Mike Palij" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> [Christopher D. Green wrote:]
>> You don't really think that people would behave well toward each
>> other if there WEREN'T laws, police, courts, prisons, etc., do you?
>
> When did Canada become such a dog-eat-dog anti-cooperative
> anti-altruistic country? :-)
Answer: at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969.
>From The Blank Slate, by card-carrying Canadian Steven Pinker, p. 331:
"As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic
1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off
my parents' argument that if the government ever laid down its arms
all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to
the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police
went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon
most downtown stores had closed because of looting. Within a few
more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine
service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop
sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into
several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his
suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed,
a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty
carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million
dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city
authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties
to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics
in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist)."
=================================================================
Charles S. Harris, PhD
webmaster, No Two Alike website
http://xchar.home.att.net/n2a/
webmaster, The Nurture Assumption website
http://xchar.home.att.net/tna/
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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