[65502] in Cypherpunks
Re: Workers Paradise. /Political rant.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lucky Green)
Sun Sep 15 20:40:34 1996
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 16:44:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
To: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <ae61bb3e00021004ed98@[207.167.93.63]>
On Sun, 15 Sep 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
> I have no problem with letting them stay in agony (but you all knew this).
>
> "Saving for a rainy day," whether saving, investing, getting an education
> (while others are out partying), preparing, etc., all takes effort and
> commitment. If those who save and prepare are then told they have to pay
> high taxes to support those who partied....well, the predictable effect is
> that many of them will say "I'll just party and let The System take care of
> me." Thus, the effect of "not letting them stay in agony" is _more_ people
> in agony. When you tell people that a compassionate society will meet their
> basic needs, a predictable fraction of them will choose not to work hard
> and prepare themselves.
>
> I say we need to let about 20 million Americans, and a couple of billion in
> the rest of the world, meet their fate.
>
> While I will not _actively_ seek to dispose of them, I will work to make
> sure they cannot continue to subsidize their lives at my expense.
As usual, Tim sums it up. Or as Duncan once wrote [not an exact quote]
"If aid to the poor hadn't been successful, there wouldn't be so many of them"
--Lucky
