From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Apr 25 2004 - 22:20:50 BST
Dear Wim,
> Quite a few Dutch might be convinced by a populist
> political party to keep their tax money for themselves, too. They would
> come to their senses quite soon, however, when information about the
> break-down of health-care, education, maintenance of dykes (not unimportant
> here) etc. etc. would get public.
Taxes are needed for the common defense, e.g., maintenance of dykes and
protection from criminals. That's the proper role of government. Health
care, education, retirement, welfare can all be handled privately and IMO,
should be in a free society.
> If government would break down, we would
> re-invent it before being flooded, before bored youth would form too many
> violent gangs and before too many cripples and carriers of contagious
> lethal diseases (who couldn't pay private health-care) would crowd our
> streets. Dutch politicians being more sensible than the average voter, they
> haven't yet created such a populist political party promising substantially
> lower taxes.
Politicians being more sensible than the average voter? Surely you jest.
> Do I understand rightly that in the current American political context
> "conservatives" tend to "liberate people" and "liberals" tend to "conserve
> old systems that they still consider valuable"
Conservatives tend to liberate people from the heavy hand of government
while liberals tend to consider the heavy hand of government good for
people.
> I see "war between levels" as an unfortunate metaphor. "War" in itself is
> o.k., but I see the phenomena for which that term is fitting as conflicts
> between patterns of value of the same level. Discrete levels cannot be at
> war
As DMB said, "Think of the way biological organisms must fight against
inorganic forces even while they include them." Those are discrete levels
constantly at war--life or death..
> People participating in patterns of value of different levels CAN, but
> everyone participates in patterns of value of all levels. I see no way to
> determine whether someone participates more in the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th level
> than someone else, whereas I DO see ways to determine whether the
> particular patterns of value of a particular level someone participates in
> are of higher or lower quality: by assessing their stability, versatility,
> openness to DQ and harmony with patterns of value of a higher level.
First you say you can't determine if someone participates more in one
level than another, but then you say you can tell the "particular level"
someone participates in. Which is it?
> E.g. a
> democratic 3rd level pattern of value is more open to DQ and more in
> harmony with a 4th level pattern of value like 'fairness' than an
> authoritarian one. Their relative stability and versatility is not yet
> finally decided by history, but their seems to be a trend towards more
> democracy in recent history that suggests higher quality. So "democracy"
> and "authoritarian structures" can be said to be at war; "fairness" and
> "authoritarian structures" can not. If say Russians feel a need for strong
> leadership and tend to give more power to those who seem to fit that role,
> no amount of rhetoric telling them that it is not fair that a few people
> have lots of power and a lot of people have little will make them behave
> differently.
Where did you get the idea that "fairness" is an intellectual pattern of
value? Sounds more like a social value to me.
Best regards,
Platt
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