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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (21537)	6/22/2003 11:00:30 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

Or do you believe that ALL US citizens are highly skilled and therefore should make at least $50 an hour? I believe that liberty and justice should be for all. It makes for a better country. A higher wage is just a reflection that the wage earners have more options than those who would take 5 cents an hour. At the risk of getting too complex for you: constitution.org Freedom and opportunity are really a common resource. Everyone is born naked and too small to uphold their own rights. It is in the self interest of those who can to increase their options and opportunities at the expense of others. <font color=purple>As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component. .............. Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. </font> This is where you need to make the intellectual leap. In this circumstance I am not talking about sheep, but about opportunities. For example there is a flexible but limited number of available great opportunities. Only so many CEOs or Convienence Store managers, or real estate agents can be accomodated in a given area. This is reasonable of course, but it also makes these opportunities fit the description of a common resource and subject to the incremental erosion inherent in competition. When opportunity becomes a private resource then democracy has been replaced by some version of aristocracy. Of course opportunity is a complex and abstract notion, so it takes a lot more thought to compare and contrast it to the specific items like sheep pasture or clean water. One of the tragedis playing itself out more obviously is the common right to support and help finance a candidate to public office. That is following the pattern in both a rapid and visible way. <font color=purple>When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind became more free, not less so. Individuals locked into the logic of the commons are free only to bring on universal ruin; once they see the necessity of mutual coercion, they become free to pursue other goals. I believe it was Hegel who said, "Freedom is the recognition of necessity."</font> TP