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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MacCoy who wrote (35758)	2/26/1999 1:48:00 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 67261

1.) What would it mean to strive for the removal of systems, and their incorporation within each individual? As long as people engage in complex cooperative activities, there will be external systems to enable coordination. Therefore, you seem to be calling for the cessation of civilization. 2.) I will not debate the existence of free- will with you, I will merely say that it is necessary for us to act as if we are responsible individuals, and to encourage responsibility as a cultural value, and therefore it is good to hold criminals liable for their actions. If we ever cease doing so, the notion of personal responsibility goes out the window, and with it civilized restraint. 3.) Keeping government as local as possible is actually an attempt to make decision making more rational, as much as anything else. For example, many of our anti- pollution laws are luxuries, especially when standards are set for large metropolitan areas, but imposed indiscriminately. In poorer areas, some amount of purity might reasonably be sacrificed for greater economic growth, and in rural areas, stringent automobile emissions standards might be irrelevant. In any case, if something were better handled at the federal level, my dictum only makes the test more stringent, it doesn't shut down the federal government. 4.) Among other things, the assignment of property rights ensures that someone is responsible for the maintenance and development of property, and is able to reap the rewards of taking care of it. This is a formidable incentive to put property to productive use, and to create surplus value that may be exchanged with others. Thus, property rights are the cornerstone of economic development. 5.) Loving your job and finding it fullfilling is a blessing, but it is not a realistic expectation for the foreseeable future. Until we have achieved a degree of economic development and automation that frees everyone from drudgery and want, we must rely upon simple necessity as an incentive to work: he who does not work, does not eat. 6.) We will never be perfectly harmonious, because there will always be divisions among people. Many of the higher order animals manifest the propensity to social competition and hierarchy, and the same sort of impulses are as compelling within people as the sex drive. As rational beings, we can ameliorate the worst effects of inequality, but we cannot eliminate it. 7.) Idealism posits that there are transcendent templates for the things of this world, what Plato called the eide. Through recollection, a kind of introspection aided by argument, we can "see" them. Of course, to Plato only a philosophical elite could achieve this state, and it was their job to rule over the deluded masses. I don't think that idealism will help you... As for pragmatism, it says that the "metaphysical" truth of things is beyond our knowledge, but that we can know a good deal as a practical matter, and that utility should be a test of truth. Of course, one man's utility may be another man's anathema, so as a practical matter, it is difficult to forge a deep consensus on pragmatic principles...One can daydream until the cows come home, but reverie is not philosophy.