From fork-admin@xent.com Tue Sep 24 10:48:38 2002 Return-Path: Delivered-To: yyyy@localhost.spamassassin.taint.org Received: from localhost (jalapeno [127.0.0.1]) by jmason.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E481816F03 for ; Tue, 24 Sep 2002 10:48:36 +0100 (IST) Received: from jalapeno [127.0.0.1] by localhost with IMAP (fetchmail-5.9.0) for jm@localhost (single-drop); Tue, 24 Sep 2002 10:48:36 +0100 (IST) Received: from xent.com ([64.161.22.236]) by dogma.slashnull.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g8NNm5C08423 for ; Tue, 24 Sep 2002 00:48:06 +0100 Received: from lair.xent.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by xent.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 559952940F5; Mon, 23 Sep 2002 16:44:08 -0700 (PDT) Delivered-To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org Received: from homer.perfectpresence.com (unknown [209.123.207.194]) by xent.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A8DB29409A for ; Mon, 23 Sep 2002 16:43:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [66.157.233.109] (helo=regina) by homer.perfectpresence.com with smtp (Exim 3.36 #1) id 17tcvH-000093-00; Mon, 23 Sep 2002 19:47:27 -0400 From: "Geege Schuman" To: "R. A. Hettinga" , "Geege Schuman" , "Owen Byrne" Cc: "Gary Lawrence Murphy" , "Mr. FoRK" , , "Digital Bearer Settlement List" Subject: RE: Comrade Communism (was Re: Crony Capitalism (was RE: sed /s/United States/Roman Empire/g)) Message-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-Msmail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: Importance: Normal X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 X-Antiabuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-Antiabuse: Primary Hostname - homer.perfectpresence.com X-Antiabuse: Original Domain - xent.com X-Antiabuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [0 0] / [0 0] X-Antiabuse: Sender Address Domain - barrera.org Sender: fork-admin@xent.com Errors-To: fork-admin@xent.com X-Beenthere: fork@spamassassin.taint.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Friends of Rohit Khare List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 19:44:22 -0400 First, misattribution. I did not write the blurb below. I made one statement about VP Cheney only, to wit, that he has a short memory. I couldn't agree with you more on this: "in short, then, economics is not a zero sum game, property is not theft, the rich don't get rich off the backs of the poor, and redistributionist labor "theory" of value happy horseshit is just that: horseshit, happy or otherwise," however, I resent being lumped in a zero-sum-zealot category for suggesting nothing more than that rich and successful at face value is apropos of nothing and I am beginning to understand that people who immediately and so fiercely object to my ad hominem (re Cheney) align themselves weird sylogisms like "if rich then deservedly" or "if rich then smarter." Given that, I am also beginning to understand why some people NEED to be rich. WRT to meritocracies - all hail, meritocracies! WRT Harvard: over 90% of 2002 graduates were cum laude +. INTERESTING curve. Those eager to be measured got their wish; those unwashed shy folk who just live it provide the balast. Speaking of Forbes, was reading about Peter Norton just today in an old issue while waiting for my doctor. Norton attributes his success to LUCK. Imagine. Geege -----Original Message----- From: R. A. Hettinga [mailto:rah@shipwright.com] Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2002 10:01 PM To: Geege Schuman; Owen Byrne Cc: Gary Lawrence Murphy; Mr. FoRK; fork@spamassassin.taint.org; Digital Bearer Settlement List Subject: Comrade Communism (was Re: Crony Capitalism (was RE: sed /s/United States/Roman Empire/g)) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 11:15 AM -0400 on 9/22/02, Geege Schuman wrote: > Most of them seem to have Ivy League educations, or are Ivy League > dropouts suggesting to me that they weren't exactly poor to start > with. Actually, if I remember correctly from discussion of the list's composition in Forbes about five or six years ago, the *best* way to get on the Forbes 400 is to have *no* college at all. Can you say "Bootstraps", boys and girls? I knew you could... [Given that an undergraduate liberal arts degree from a state school, like, say, mine, :-), is nothing but stuff they should have taught you in a government-run "high" school, you'll probably get more of *those* on the Forbes 400 as well as time goes on. If we ever get around to having a good old fashioned government-collapsing transfer-payment depression (an economic version of this summer's government-forest conflagration, caused by the same kind of innumeracy that not clear-cutting enough forests did out west this summer :-)) that should motivate more than a few erst-slackers out there, including me, :-), to learn to actually feed themselves.] The *next* category on the Forbes 400 list is someone with a "terminal" professional degree, like an MBA, PhD, MD, etc., from the best school possible. Why? Because, as of about 1950, the *best* way to get into Harvard, for instance, is to be *smart*, not rich. Don't take my word for it, ask their admissions office. Look at the admissions stats over the years for proof. Meritocracy, American Style, was *invented* at the Ivy League after World War II. Even Stanford got the hint, :-), and, of course, Chicago taught them all how, right? :-). Practically *nobody* who goes to a top-20 American institution of higher learning can actually afford to go there these days. Unless, of course, their parents, who couldn't afford to go there themselves, got terminal degrees in the last 40 years or so. And their kids *still* had to get the grades, and "biased" (by intelligence :-)), test scores, to get in. The bizarre irony is that almost all of those people with "terminal" degrees, until they actually *own* something and *hire* people, or learn to *make* something for a living all day on a profit and loss basis, persist in the practically insane belief, like life after death, that economics is some kind of zero sum game, that dumb people who don't work hard for it make all the money, and, if someone *is* smart, works hard, and is rich, then they stole their wealth somehow. BTW, none of you guys out there holding the short end of this rhetorical stick can blame *me* for the fact that I'm using it to beat you severely all over your collective head and shoulders. You were, apparently, too dumb to grab the right end. *I* went to Missouri, and *I* don't have a degree in anything actually useful, much less a "terminal" one, which means *I*'m broker than anyone on this list -- it's just that *you*, of all people, lots with educations far surpassing my own, should just plain know better. The facts speak for themselves, if you just open your eyes and *look*. There are no epicycles, the universe does not orbit the earth, and economics is not a zero-sum game. The cost of anything, including ignorance and destitution, is the forgone alternative, in this case, intelligence and effort. [I will, however, admit to being educated *waay* past my level of competence, and, by the way *you* discuss economics, so have you, apparently.] BTW, if we ever actually *had* free markets in this country, *including* the abolition of redistributive income and death taxes, all those smart people in the Forbes 400 would have *more* money, and there would be *more* self-made people on that list. In addition, most of the people who *inherited* money on the list would have *much* less of it, not even relatively speaking. Finally, practically all of that "new" money would have come from economic efficiency and not "stolen" from someone else, investment bubbles or not. That efficiency is called "progress", for those of you in The People's Republics of Berkeley or Cambridge. It means more and better stuff, cheaper, over time -- a terrible, petit-bourgeois concept apparently not worthy of teaching by the educational elite, or you'd know about it by now. In economic terms, it's also called an increase in general welfare, and, no, Virginia, I'm not talking about extorting money from someone who works, and giving it to someone who doesn't in order to keep them from working and they can think of some politician as Santa Claus come election time... In short, then, economics is not a zero sum game, property is not theft, the rich don't get rich off the backs of the poor, and redistributionist labor "theory" of value happy horseshit is just that: horseshit, happy or otherwise. To believe otherwise, is -- quite literally, given the time Marx wrote Capital and the Manifesto -- romantic nonsense. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPY511cPxH8jf3ohaEQLAsgCfZhsQMSvUy6GqJ5wgL52DwZKpIhMAnRuR YYboc+IcylP5TlKL58jpwEfu =z877 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'