[extropy-chat] Heinlein and thinking for yourself

Adrian Tymes wingcat at pacbell.net
Sat Oct 30 19:17:03 UTC 2004


--- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The faulty socialist idea that Heinlein was
> suffering from (likely
> contributed to significantly by such early SF as the
> socialist
> Bellamy's "Looking Backward" as well as his
> education at the hands of
> the US Navy) was that we have government to thank
> for everything, that
> government is in some way synonymous with 'the
> public good', 'the
> commons' etc. and that therefore our taxes are
> legitimate
> confiscations.
> 
> The problem, of course, is that the
> redistributionist tendencies of
> government work at cross purposes to this claim. It
> is the productive
> members of society who are responsible for the
> civilization we now
> enjoy, yet it is those same productive members who
> pay the most for
> their 'debt to the past', while their payments are
> redistributed as
> entitlements to the unproductive classes who are not
> responsible for
> the height of our civilization, but who instead are
> responsible for it
> being held back from greater heights.

Two problems with that:

1. If not paid, the unproductive classes might engage
in violence which would cause even more lack of
progress.  There are many examples of this throughout
history, so one would likely have to show how those
historical examples no longer apply in order to refute
this point.  Yes, this is essentially bribing - but if
you can make so much more during peace than war that
you can afford to part with the bribe, it's still
worth it.  It is usually coupled with efforts (usually
labelled "education") to move individuals from the
unproductive classes to the productive classes, but
those do not suppress things in the near term like the
bribes do.

2. There are a number of goods and services that help
all, or at least most, members of society to be
relatively more productive.  Roads, police (who help
protect against certain classes of predators that drag
down society's output, although the proper versus
actual nature of their protection is debatable),
firefighters, water and sewer systems, and so forth.
Some of these have proven to be of insufficient
benefit to members of the productive classes that they
would fund these on their own, thus a central
government must operate (and collect funding for)
these improvements if their benefits are to be reaped.
Others can, for various (including technical) reasons,
be funded and operated a lot more efficiently if done
so by one or a few agencies on behalf of everyone,
rather than each obtaining their own, so again more
progress per unit time is enabled by having government
do this than by leaving it to individuals.  (Also
known as the "tragedy of the commons".)



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