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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chas. who wrote (113026)	8/27/2003 7:52:51 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

Chuck, buyers have the power. They buy with their mouse these days. If they get a snitch on somebody, it's not good for the sales of that somebody. Ask any business how easy it is to get customers, stay competitive and profitable. It's a constant battle for hearts and minds. Salesmen sweat it all day and dread people getting a snitcher on their company. It's the same with countries trying to sell stuff, including their currencies, shares, political ideas and everything else. It really is a click of the mouse these days. With a tsunami of mouse clicks, the US$ can be halved, interest rates shot up, US house prices crashed, exports stopped in their tracks, profits decimated. < In the simplest of forms it really does boil down to Good vs Evil, Us or Them, our Tribe, their Tribe....... We are prevailing..... > True in a way. But I see "our tribe" as being the bearers of voluntary free trade, free association, freedom to do as people please, provided of course that they are not harming other's property. Saddam is about confiscation, force, fear, conscription. The USA and NZ have plenty of evil doers, as seen right here in this very stream, who are not at all shy about forcing people to their will, yet they are unable to see that they are the very evil doers they purport to oppose. Weird if you ask me. I'm an atheist, but I think our tribe is the Christian idea of the human tribe and love. Old-style human tribal life lived by and large by conquering neighbouring tribes and confiscating their property. It's a gradual transition away from that animalistic thinking. Great numbers of people still operate on those principles. While human populations burgeoned due to sex drive and birth rates, we were doomed to that tribe versus tribe conflict because of limited resources, as are all animals. Now though, women have control of the numbers and populations have started dropping. The biological imperative to fight is going. It's still in the DNA, but without the pressures, it'll not be manifest so often. You are right; the essential issue is freedom versus repression. People need to think carefully about exactly what repression means and where it is found. Mqurice