[From Bill Powers (2000.04.13.0807 MDT)]
Mike Acree (2000.04.12.1213 PDT)--
You're consistently assuming that overwhelming physical force is the only
thing that could keep people from acting on their desires, but there's
another major one: It's typically very expensive.
Not if you don't pay up, or if you lie about how much it will cost, etc..
My example was preventing people from using marijuana. That will take many
thousands of people, as does the current War on Drugs, who will be placing
their lives at risk. How are you going to get them to do it for free? The
job will be ongoing, so they won't be willing to wait for payment until the
task is done.
Are we talking about the same thing? You're asking what can keep people
from acting on their desires. I thought you were saying that the expense of
acting on their desires was another factor (beside the fear of overwhelming
force) that can keep them from doing it. But people commonly act on their
desires in ways that incur great expenses, and then simply do not pay up.
The only way we have for _making_ them pay up is our ability to apply, as
necessary, overwhelming physical force. When you're asking what the
ultimate determinant is, you have to say, "OK, the expense can be a
discouraging factor. But what if the person gets around that by simply not
paying? The expense then ceases to be a factor." This leads to asking how
the expense can be made into an _unavoidable_ deterrent, and the answer is
that payment is legally _enforced_. So we're back to physical force.
It's too easy to take for granted the underlying agreements that make
social life possible.Maybe so, but _I_ wasn't taking them for granted.
As I understood the discussion, you took it for granted that if satisfying
a desire entailed great expenses, the person would necessarily _pay_ them.
I was pointing out that this assumption is not warranted if the person
really wants to satisfy the desire; the expense can be blown off, paid with
a bad check, fled from, and so forth. If there were no penalties for
evading the payment, then the expense would no longer be a deterrent. So in
the final analysis we're back to force again.
Who is this "government," anyhow? Doesn't it consist, at the top, of people
you and I elected to office?
Those who are rich enough to afford private schools for their children, if
they are dissatisfied in any way with a given school, can simply put their
children in a different school. Those who are too poor to afford private
schools, if they are dissatisfied with the public school, have to lobby the
school board for change. It is possible for school boards to change, but
you will be exceptionally lucky if you succeed before your children have
graduated.
Sure, some problems with the system can't be solved quickly enough to
prevent further abuses. So what do you do, shoot the school board? If your
concern is with improving the system (even if you can't immediately
benefit), you will vote for a better school board and try to get others to
do the same. Then at least perhaps your grandchildren will have it better.
Note that the rich person who simply shifts a child to a different school
does nothing for the system as a whole, or future generations.
If all the people in Colorado were required to buy the same kind of car, to
be determined by vote, how much effort would you put into campaigning for
your preference? If you were consistently in the minority, would you even
bother voting? Why would you ever favor such a system over one where you
could simply choose what you wanted?
If I didn't like that requirement, I would be working against it. Why waste
your time fighting the effects when you can be working on the cause?
Actually, we _are_ required to buy the same kind of car: we can only buy
cars with headlights, brakes, and emission controls if we want to drive
them on public roads. I very much favor that idea. I would like to keep
cars off the road that do not meet those requirements. And I would like to
see it done in some way other than by shooting the drivers.
Complaining about what "the government" does as if it were some alien race
is simply ineffectual.Unlike complaining about businessmen as though they were some alien race?
See previous post.
I have always been concerned to try to establish a slope in the right
direction, by which I would mean less arbitrary, or coercive, interference
in our lives. I'm not sure why it would ever have looked otherwise, except
that our discussion has been focused more on the endpoint, where we clearly
diverged.
Yes, and I am coming to the conclusion that these "endpoint" discussions
are of little use. The real questions are about what to do NOW.
You, if I understand, want also to minimize such arbitrary
control of others, but with a big exception made for businessmen.
You don't seem to believe that businessmen try to exert any control over
other people, such as their employees, or people whose air and water they
pollute, or whose money they take for bad products, or politicians, and so
on. Your position seems to be that it's all the fault of politicians, who
put temptation in the way of perfectly innocent businessmen by offering to
take bribes from them.
'Tis so, 'taint so. Enough.
Best,
Bill P.