X-Message-Number: 28067
From: "egg plant" <>
Subject: Things are better now
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 06:00:47 +0000

Anthony<>

>Perhaps I have conceeded your point - they do indeed
>vote. My point is that the vote is larely uninformed and
>driven by certain irrational needs and beliefs in the value
 > of consumer items.

That is the exact same dismal song every tyrant sings, trust me I know 
better than you do how to spend your own money, I know better than you do 
how you should live your life, I know better than you do what thoughts you 
should think. You can trust me I'm from the government.

If you don't like Wal-Mart then go to mom and pop and let them overcharge 
the hell out of you! Shop where you like, all I ask is you let me do the 
same.

>You've already pointed at that the options available might > be 
>exploitation or nothing.

It's funny because I don't remember saying bad things about  exploitation , 
in fact I believe that profiting from a tragic situation is a noble and 
virtuous thing.

>Desire for goods are sustained by commercial
>bombardment, even political proclaimation

There is one very obvious exception to all this, Anthony. Anthony will tell 
us what we should buy how much we should pay for it and where we should buy 
it. Anthony will tell us where we should work and how much we get paid. 
Unlike us Anthony is impervious to advertising, Anthony knows all.

>Are you saying that present economic conditions are akin > to a law of 
>nature?

What I said was  Unless they are running a charity nobody will pay a pay a 
worker more than $3.33 a day unless they make more than that for their 
employer . And yes, that is a law of nature.

It's a paradox. As seen in their natural habitat the common socialist is in 
a constant state of self righteous moral outrage, field observers note that 
this species is always aghast at the rapacious nature of human beings and 
with their extreme stupidity (with the significant exception of themselves 
of course). The paradox is that this odd animal advocates a system that 
could only work if everybody was a saint and a genius.

You think good intentions are enough but I don't think that is sufficient or 
even necessary. To eliminate world poverty you need to be smart, and your 
ideas are idiotic. I'm sorry, I think you mean well but there is just no 
other word for it. If implemented totally your ideas would lead to a new 
dark age. Fortunately there is absolutely no chance of that because however 
much governments try to stamp it out there will always be a black market and 
that is the freest market of all. However even partial realization would 
lead to disaster. Mao Tse-tung and Stalin had ideas much like yours and 
their great leap forward lead to the starvation of tens of millions of 
people.

50 years ago North Korea and South Korea were equally and disastrously poor, 
they had the same language the same customs and the same culture, the only 
difference is that one place embraced ideas similar to mine and the other 
embraced ideas similar to yours. Today one of those places is one of the 
richest countries on planet Earth, and the other is one of the poorest. 
Guess which is which.

>These workers are probably not aware that their US
>counterparts have it much better

These people are poor but they aren't stupid, of course they know people in 
other countries have it much better than they do; not that it matters, no 
matter what they'd prefer to get 40 cents an hour to zero cents an hour.

And workers in the USA didn't always have it so good, in the 19'th century 
conditions in factories were hellish, and yet people still flocked to the 
cities and begged for jobs in those factories. Why? Because conditions on 
the farms were even worse. Children as young as 10 worked 90 hour weeks in 
dangerous conditions, did parents back then love their children less than we 
do? No, they allowed their children to do this because the alternative, the 
starvation of their children, was even worse. No matter how you divided up 
the pie hideous things were going to happen, it was an ugly time. But things 
improved eventually because the pie got bigger.

But we need to do better. No matter how you divide up the wealth of the 
world at least a billion people are going to be living a squalid existence. 
Fortunately the wealth of the world is growing faster than the population, 
but your ideas would soon put a stop to that.

Me:
>>would it be more moral of me to fire 9 workers out of 10 >>and pay the 
>>remaining ones 4$ an hour ? Yes I know, I >>should pay all 1000 workers 4$ 
>>an hour, but I simply >>wouldn't have the money to do that because nobody 
>> >>would buy my pajamas, nobody could afford them.

You:
>because you've already driven the market in this direction > with 
>aggressive exploitation.

I tend to think the word  exploitation  is the silliest word in the English 
language; well it's in the top 10 anyway. And you didn't answer my question, 
do you think me firing 90% of my employees and making my product so 
expensive only the very rich could afford it is a step along the path to 
alleviate world poverty?

>Clearly, you do not understand that businesses need regulating.

You are absolutely positively 100% correct, I don't understand that. Some 
people say corporations rule the world but that's not true. I wish it were.

John K Clark

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