From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Tue Jul 19 2005 - 02:49:42 BST
On 18 Jul 2005 at 10:38, Platt Holden wrote:
Very interesting. Maybe political bias affects philosophy, too. Perish the
thought. :-)
msh 7-18-05:
No doubt. However, people who are willing to subject their beliefs
to honest philosophical scrutiny often discover that their biases are
unfounded and, therefore, relinquish them.
arlo:
> Ah, but you wax towards the idea of "evil-involuntary" rather than
> "good-involuntary". At least it comes across to me this way. If I, as a
> member of my local gym, stop paying my dues, I face possible legal action
> or expulsion. I am certainly not allowed to continue using the services.
>
> So, in this case, my dues could also be seen as "involuntary". The trouble
> with the larger case of a national tax is you join by being born into it.
> Now, since you are also by being born here using the services. So this is
> not a problematic thing for me. Indeed, I always find it ingrateful when
> people rail against "taxes", but then take their kids hiking in state
> parks, or drive their motorcycles cross-country on public roads, or make
> use of EMT services should something bad happen.
platt 7-18-05:
Well, I'd say if voluntarism is the issue that it's a lot easier to
voluntarily opt out of the gym than a country.
msh 7-18-05:
This is an odd thing to say, coming from someone who regularly asks
people who criticise American policy why they don't move somewhere
else.
arlo:
> Consider the havoc wreaked on the majority of the nation's citizens before
> government levied labor laws and workplace regulations. Its not only
> government that can do bad when telling everyone it is doing good.
platt:
In using "havoc" I was thinking of gulags and ovens, not labor relations.
There is a difference wouldn't you say?
msh 7-18-05:
Not to the people who have been killed by strike-busting thugs
(usually cops or private company police), or to children worked to
death in sweatshops, or to people who have burned to death in
sweatshop fires, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, or in modern
day sweatshop fires in Bangladesh, Indonesia, China. In the US,
much of this business behavior was curtailed by the Fair Labor
Standards Act of 1938, part of The New Deal. However, sweatshops
still exist today, even here. See below.
arlo:
> Our government, the way I see it, is a moderating force. It protects us
> from abuse from other individuals and from power structures that would seek
> to enslave.
> Sadly, I would agree, and this is why MSH started the thread,
> it is not doing so. It is, in fact, "in bed" with these coercive power
> structures.
platt 7-18-05:
Please define what you mean by "enslave." As I look around town I don't
see much slavery going on.
msh 7-18-05:
The fact that some people, in their privileged white worlds, are
unable to detect slavery, other forms of brutality, and human misery
in general, does not mean that such things are not happening.
"In August 1995, inspectors of the California Department of
Industrial Relations and the U.S. Department of Labor arrived at a
small apartment complex in El Monte, California, near Los Angeles.
What they found stunned them. Inside the complex, surrounded by
razor wire, was a garment factory. Locked inside the factory were 72
Thai workers, mostly women and mostly illegal immigrants.
"The workers told their liberators that they worked up to 20 hours a
day, 7 days a week, for 70¢ an hour. When not working, they slept
10 to a small room. They were prevented from leaving, they said, by
locked gates, barbed wire, threats of physical punishment, and their
status as illegal aliens.
"The discoveries in El Monte shocked the American public in many of
the same ways the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire had over 80 years before.
That workers could be treated this way in the United States was
simply beyond belief. That the workers were immigrants recalled both
The Jungle and Triangle Shirtwaist. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich
put it bluntly when he described El Monte as " the worst case of
slavery in America's recent history."
http://www.sweatshops-retail.org/nrf%20website/history.htm
arlo:
> But I'm curious, and this is just a rephrasing of what MSH has been asking,
> what tax-based services do you feel are in-line with the MOQ, and which are
> not? Let me ask specifically about the ones afforementioned:
>
> Public roads? State parks? Libraries? Public transportation? Museums?
> Public legal representation? EMT services?
>
> Are there any services that are NOT provided by taxes that you feel should
> be? Or that should be expanded? (I've suggested more funding for libraries
> and museums, for example).
platt 7-18-05:
I don't see anything in the MOQ that is "in line with" the tax-based
services you mention. Perhaps you can refer me to the appropriate quotes?
msh 7-18-05:
This is non-responsive. Can you find a quote in ZMM or LILA that's
"in line with" the idea that tax dollars should continue to be
funnelled into the pockets of Halliburton and other fraudulent
contractors servicing the war in Iraq?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/24/eveningnews/main645545.shtml
This is just another form of evasion common on The Carousel of Faux
Philosophy. An idea does not have to be explicitly stated in the MOQ,
and be blessed by Robert Pirsig, to be a valuable idea derived from
MOQ principles. From what has been said by MOQ-Con-Liverpool
attendees, the last thing Pirsig wants us to do is to make him the
celebrity center and final arbiter of the Metaphysics of Quality.
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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