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Lincoln
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quote:
Originally posted by Boshko
GS by any change? I forget
I also got atheized, Eroberer moved around politically a lot, Imran got sane, and BD stopped being pro-drug war. All I can remember off the top of my head. |
I think it was Bill something.
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DinoDoc
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AECCP loves Democracy
Sep 1999
time: 23:20
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Never mind
Last edited by DinoDoc on 14-06-2002 at 10:20
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axi
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Athens Greece
Sep 1999
time: 07:20
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I first visited Apolyton in the 30th of August 1999. I was back from my vacations and I was bored. Until then, I had never visited any message boards, although it was almost a year that I owned a PC. I was fascinated about all the stuff you could find on civ2 in these boards. Lurked for a couple of days and then registrated in September 9th. My fist post was in civ2 strategy, where I asked some question for which the answer was so obvious, that I was indignantly told by some old fart to RTFM (read the ****ing manual) which of course I did not posess because I had borrowed the CD from a friend, installed the game and gave it back.
Soon after that I discovered the OT. I was lurking for quite some time. My first real engagement in OT conversations was in a really hot debate, concerning the right of government to collect taxes. All of the holy monsters of flaming were in that, including Wraith, Black Dragon, Eroberer as the main contesters and all the other big dogs participating too (including Ming). The debates back then were a bit different looking than nowdays because there were no quotes at that old version of ubb. I was overwhelmed by the fierceness by which Wraith and BD supported such a conservative position which may be quite common in the US and in Apolyton, but would be totally untenable inside my own social environment. One might say that I had not yet discovered the vast differences in the mindsets of people across the globe and that I assumed that everyboday was thinking the way a modern Greek would. So I countered Wraith with a totally immature and inexperienced attack in the very essence of capitalism: private property. That was a big audacity from my part but thanfully only Ming considered my newbie status to accuse me of being a DL (of Eroberer). Perhaps back then newbies were faced with less suspicion. I will quote here my first post in that debate (of course I quit the debate after a while because I could not read page after page after page of crossfire, but, being my first experience, it is stuck into my memory.
quote:
WRAITH:
" Beg pardon? Are we going back to the tired old "property is theft" argument? It's perfectly possible to create something without stealing. "
I believe that your esteem towards the advocates of such an argument (that is Proudhon and his successors, the anarchists and the liberal communists) is low, but how can you call this argument "tired" (What does this mean anyway? That you are tired of having it pointed out to you every time you post?) without having it logically examined it and disproved?
Although I haven't read the actual study by Proudhon (Since it is too large, I haven't had the time yet, but if you want to, you can find it in the Project Gutenberg archives: http://promo.net/pg/ ), I firmly believe that PROPERTY IS THEFT, although, as you have said, it's perfectly possible to create something without stealing.
As a matter of fact, since participating in a society, everybody has the moral obligation (and should have the legal too) to produce as much value as he can, in order to contribute to the welfare and progress of the community, in exchange for the privilege to partain to its benefits. Nevertheless, this doesn't happen in any western society, where quite a lot of people enjoy more than their share without ever doing a day's work (eg. stockholders), or, worse, an even greater amount of people gets away with their "work" being actually detrimental to the common interest (eg. warmongers), or at least beneficial to themselves only, since their trades are parasitic and in no way productive (eg. lawyers). All these social deformities are only made possible because these people, by claiming to have property and the right to defend it (the first being impossible without the second), legalize their anti-social behavior. Property becomes thus the greatest thieving mechanism ever concieved, since the person possessing it has the option of either using his priviledge to prevail in any competitive task, or, worse, using it to swindle the other people's production out of their hands by means of a capitalist relationship (the infinite circle of capital-labor-wages-production-consumption-capital...and so on), which is more profitable and less effort demanding, since, after the first stage, it works for itself yielding more and more property (aka power) to the hands of the proprietor.
All of the above though are only indicating that property USUALLY leads to theft, in the same way that a buildup of military forces usually leads to war, since these forces are useless for anything else. In fact, a large property owned by a single person is, pretty much in the same way, useless for him (since he can only consume a small portion of it), unless he needs it to steal from the others, in order to keep them subjugated and thus perpetuate his priviledge. I am now going to suggest that, even if it is not used in such a way, property is still theft, and that it should be done away with sooner or later, in our effort to finally reach utopia. Why should the fact that you have produced them make any goods in your possession your private property? If I were working in a toy factory, and I were producing 1000 toys per annum, wouldn't it be ridiculous if I claimed that all those toys were mine and nobody should play with them. Sure I would need 2-3 of them for my kids, but all the rest would be useless if they were not given to other peoples kids, to be THEIR toys. This example is to demonstrate the fundamental principle that all goods produced should be distributed according to peoples needs, regardless of their productive capacity. That means that only if I NEED something, it is my RIGHT to have it, and then I am not its PROPRIETOR but its USER. The fact that, concerning the distribution of goods,the principle of UTILITY is far better than the principle of PROPERTY is proved by the evident fact that the former is totally more beneficial to the average person and consequently to society as a whole. Therefore, if you use the claim that certain goods are your property in order to withold them from the people who have the natural right to use them, you are commiting theft against them and you behave anti-socially. Any society based upon the principle of property is a huge scam, staged by thieves, for two main reasons:
a) To keep them thieving us perpetually without them ever being punished and
b) To appease their own concience by twisting ethics in order to suit their actions.
Living in such a perverted society causes ethics to be severely distorted, their distortion growing bigger as property grows, pretty much what happens to a spring supporting a load that always grows heavier. You, living under the enormous influence of the social and ethical system that surrounds you, may denounce my arguments (say that I'm talking bull), but, hey, our ethics are different, so I pretty much do not expect you to behave otherwise. As long as I'm concerned, all kinds of welfare taxes that the US or any other government forces to its citizens, are just some kind of corrective - preventive measures, to assure that the load on the spring does never grow so big that it could make it snap, in other words causing revolution. As for those who constantly grumble about the government stealing their money, they should just consider those taxes as a small retaliation for the theft that they are constantly commiting against their peers. |
Two months later, I was involved in Mark Everson's Clash of Civilisations project and that hooked me up in Apolyton for good. However I am a rather slow poster (at 0,7 ppd) and with the scarcity of my writings, I have kept a rather low profile during most of my time here.
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14-06-2002 03:02
Bill3000 and others 
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