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To: Clarksterh who wrote (37714)	8/5/1999 3:39:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 152472

Clark, We have reached a philosophical impasse. The old one. The collective versus the individual. They are intertwined as much as a double helix of DNA is intertwined. Each exists only as a function of the other. It becomes simply a question of power. There is a shifting sands of power. Mao, Stalin and Hitler took your position to the extreme where state power totally reduced the individual so near to zero there was little left. The other extreme, where the individual has maximum freedom with protection of private property and themselves against others, has never been tried anywhere though the USA pretends to have that philosophy. The USA comes closest to it and it shows. The protection is dubious [most people are armed in self-defence, futilely]. The freedom is fake; try smoking dope or treating yourself with medicines, or doing all sorts of things. They'll come and take you away and put you in a nice cage. The taxes are something like 30%. A third of your efforts are confiscated and given to somebody else. Imagine how good it would be if REALLY free. There is no intergalactic law of the jungle which says it's unlawful for a lion to eat an antelope, a government to eat aliens [foreigners such as Chinese in embassies], or $ill Gates to be given a sole monopoly by a government, or achieve one anyway, or have it all confiscated by that government. The only law of the jungle, so far, is DNA propagation. What works wins. One could argue that India is winning these days. Or China. They probably have the biggest collection of a particular DNA with unique character. The real test is the DNA 1000 years from now - that's the one which won. But the world of the Web is going to make the organic DNA competition between alpha males an anachronism. Oops, I digress. So you think a state-run pricing system is desirable and by logical extension, that would be for everything because all sales with profits higher than bank rates are derived from a transient monopoly. The more powerful the monopoly, the higher the profit. The more useful the product or service, the higher the profit. That price control system was tried in USSR. It was tried right here in New Zealand throughout my earlier years. The results were abysmal. Stifling of economic progress. Economic destruction on a grand scale. Crushing of human energy. So now, where to draw the line. It will be totally arbitrary and the degree of economic harm will be directly proportional to the degree of price control. Maybe $ill Gates prices can be set by Janet Reno or somebody instead of an infinite variety of decisions by a billion people. Good luck! We'll need it. Heck, the mere discussion of it has caused a fall in the markets. But now a dead cat bounce in the internut stocks. Maybe $ill's OS is overpriced and poorly written, but how come then I chose to use it? Because it has another function, the same as our philosophical divide. It provides the benefits of the collective. And while I whine about the collective crushing individuals, I'm pleased to be part of it and pleased to use $ill's collective, poorly written though it might be. It is better than individualism when disconnected from the rest of people. These things are sent to try us. I don't see alpha males and their courtiers, even if voted in, as the best deciders of my life. You prefer them to your own decisions. I don't need them to tell me whether the price I'm paying for something is 'right'. Mqurice [Do I win the argument on word numbers? Or a vote? Or by seeing what happens in the real world, with us as observers? Imagine if the government was pricing our ideas for each other. They could price each word. Or maybe some syllabic complexity and spelling correctness. Maybe I'm selling my monopoly, my ideas, to you too cheaply?]