In article > 
writes:

>And people of mixed origin have less value?  Actually, I heard rhetoric
>almost identical to this last night on tv.  Some skinheads were addressing
>some African Americans, telling them that they didn't hate them, they just
>wanted to preserve racial diversity.  I'm not saying you're a skinhead...I
>just think your arguements draw on some of the same sources of legitimacy.

>Scary, eh?

Yes, that is scary. However, I can not help thinking that some forms of
cultural integration simply can not work in the short (or even long) run.
While skinheads generally evoke a violent racist vision in everyone, this
stereotype should not be applied to every person who supports the preservation
of a cultural identity in their society. Generally a society can remain stable
as long as the cultural background of its inhabitants remains relatively
homogeneous. Once this changes, there is generally an upheval. This has
happened many times in history, the American Revolution being a good example
of this. I am concerned about the 20th century trend of large scale migration
of people across the globe. Witness the beginnings of such a backlash taking
place in California against the massive influx of immigrants. Such a reaction
is viewed as racist by liberal elements, and as xenophobic by immigrant
groups. However, it really is neither. It is a natural reaction of
discomfort and alienation of the "native" population, which is confronted by a
seemingly huge masses of non-American (read foreign language speaking, and
strangely dressing) people. The reason for the aversion to these new
immigrants is here, not in the money that is being spent on the financing of
their assimilation into America. (And this is the reason why immigrant groups
who quickly adapt the local culture in favor of their own manage to become
'native' within a single generation)

Well, that is my two cents worth. As an assmilited immigrant to this country,
I feel somewhat qualified to make this statement.

Steve (Istvan)

On  January 18, Charles wrote

C>On Tue, 17 Jan 1995 07:46:22 -0800 Tibor Benke said:

T>>
T>>I don't believe much in statistics.  It might be math phobia, I still
don't
T>>know my standard deviation from my mean error and my eyes blurr out when
I
T>>see a frequency distribution table.  I share Sam Clemens' attitude, he
T>>said: "There are lies, damned lies and statistics".

>
C>First off, it was Disraeli.  Second, if you understand statistics, no
C>one can lie to you with them, because it is easy to spot the lies.


I stand corrected for the first part, what Can I say?  I'm cognitively
challenged, as I mentioned before.  As for your second point,  even if the
numbers are absolutely flawless, the indeces can always be faulted, and
there is no politicaly neutral way to pick indeces.  As Piaget remarked,
even in Physics everything ultimately depends on your theory of
measurement.  (I am paraphrasing from a very interesting little book
called, _Structuralism_, have a look, tell me what you think, absolutely
politics free, I got everything I know about Go~dell from there.).


T>>          Official rates of unemployment (which vastly undercalculate
the
T>>actual number of those who have no work), however, continue to hover
T>>between 9% and 13% with 20% or more in,  Newfoundland.   The average
real
T>>wage is way downfrom even a decade ago.  Supposedly, there was no
inflation
T>>this year; nevertheless, if your "basket of goods and services" is
T>>different from what Stats Can uses you might experience a rise in your
cost
T>>of living, as I have.

C>--There.  Evidently you believe in the statistics that support your point
C>and disbelieve those that don't.
>

No I am merely pointing out the discreptancies.

T>>terms  like: 'advanced', 'bakward', 'civilized', 'primitive', etc.  as
T>>unscientific and ideological.


C>--Are you arguing that you are value-free?>

No, but I don't go out of my way to allow more ideology into my  labeling
then must remain after I have done all I can to compensate. (Theory of
measurment again)

Tibor

On January 20, Charles wrote quoting Greg:

C>On Thu, 19 Jan 1995 07:32:38 -0800 > said:

G>>Charles writes:
>>
C>>>  I see no moral reason why I should support a person who is able
C>>>  to work.
>>

G>>What?  Even if the decision to support such people was democratically
arrived
G>> at?

C>--That's a political decision.  And I know of no country, including
C>Sweden, that takes the position that work is optional for those able
C>to work.  I used to have a publication by an economist in the pre-
C>1988 Soviet Union which stressed the necessity of work as a duty of
C>the citizen to the state.  Sweden has a public assistance program whose
C>official pamphlet read something like--"limited assistance is available
for
C>those who cannot work."  Even if a country democratically arrived at the
C>policy that one could live as well whether working or not and that
C>one simply had to exercise the option, I wouldn't find the policy
C>MORALLY--caps for emphasis, not shouting--compelling, although I might
C>have to live with it.  There are many people in my business who
C>claim to believe that the state should support people whether they
C>make a contribution to the society or not just as a right of
C>citizenship.  This isn't even good socialism.
>
>Charles

I think Charles is confused.  Unless someone lives at his direct
expense,(i.e. he gives the person money or goods or services himself or
designates an agent, say, a trustee attorney, or some charitable agency to
do it for him, he is supporting no one.  He pays taxes to the government
for the services the government provides him, namely the protection of his
property, the guaranteeing of contracts, perhaps the provision of an
infrastructure for his activities.  Others may be paid by the government
for whatever the government decides.  He has input into how the government
decides to spend what is now *the government's money and not Charles'*
through the democratic process.  He might feel that the government should
under no circumstances give away its money to idlers for any of a number of
reasons, perhaps he feels that such payments inflate the labour market
obliging him to pay more for labour than he otherwise would  (though I
doubt that wage costs would decline, my reasons are apparent below), or he
may simply feel as he says, that it is immoral not to work  (Though one
might ask how would he feel about Fineas Fogg, the man of modest but
independent means).  Others who have input into the democratic process may
not be as sanguine about the work ethic and may find such payments a
costefficient method of preserving property, considering the alternatives
of killing or inprisoning  those who might not be willing to commit suicide
when unable to earn a living and would rather do their robbing with actual
weapons instead of a fountain pen.  Were I to be deprived of my "Guaranteed
Annual Income for Need", for example, though I don't believe in violence, I
may walk into the nearest supermarket, load my grocery cart and walk out
without payment and take the jail term I'd get, at least its a roof over my
head and three square meals. Keeping me in prison is minimally three times
as expensive as my GAIN.  And not everybody is as peaceful as I am.

We might look at the issue another way.  When a worker sells his/her labour
power, if the conditions of the economist's assumptions hold, that is our
worker is _Homo Economicus_, he/she  sells his/her labour power in the
knowledge that the government pays for a minimum living, else he/she would
have to demand higher wages so that he/she could provide a savings for
periods of unemployment and disability.  Thus, welfare programs can be
viewed as a social wage or "storage costs for the reserve army of the
unemployed".  Alternatively, we admit that the market system is less
rational then the models and we have another debate topic.

Charles rightly points out that his view that everyone should work is
shared by capitalists and socialists alike.  Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx
believed in something called  "the labour theory of value".   This is my
chance to distance myself from Marx, (I am pretty tired of being obliged to
be the house marxist alla time, even ol' Unca' Karl, himself,  refused the
title).  I think he was wrong about it and I think so precisely for the
reasons his critics did: the labour theory of value is an *ethical* rather
then an economic construct.  But even further then the economist critics, I
believe the work ethic to be obsolete.  If one belived in the work ethic,
one would have to live like the Amish (another interesting anabaptist sect,
who refuse to use any technology that wasn't mentioned in the Bible; that
they manage to do this, live fairly well and buy fourty acres in
Pennsylvania or Ohio for all their male offspring is a testimony to their
faith in hard work and the disadvanteges of gadgets - something little that
Charles an I find agreement on).  During the great farm debt crisis (I
forget when) I remember reading an interview with an Amishman.  The
reporter asked him why he shunned technology, to which he quoted the
appropriate verses from  _Genesis_  "By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou
earn thy bread...etc" and then pointed out the wisdom of scripture in that
he was leaving land for others to work and he didn't owe money to the bank.


Now I come to why I think the work ethic is obsolete, at least the way we
presently formulate it is.  The more laboursaving technology we use and
nevertheless continue to work hard, the faster we turn the biosphere into a
pile of garbage.   Most of todays troubles  from wars to the loss of
'family values' can be traced to our living too well and working too hard,
and the harder we work, the better we are forced to live because we have to
compensate ourselves for the effort.  The further we delay gratification,
the greedier we get.  It's a demonic cycle.  Some people on "KORNYESZ"
(Environmental scientists list on HIX) figure the standard of living of the
average Hungarian intellectual  might be feaseable on a world scale, but no
more.

Actually people gladly do meaningful work volutarily.  I, myself, did
volunteer tutoring of adults who needed to learn English or finish
highschool, and I didn't mind at all.  In my co-op the gardening and much
maintenance as well as preparations for community events are done by
volunteers.  A British educator, A.S. Niell, found that children who had
been problem pupils in other schools learned as much as four years' worth
of material in six months when told they could play all day, if they wanted
to.  Infact, I think genuine liberty is only possible when some small
living is guaranteed for all.  Enterprenours  would then be obliged to
adapt the technology to the worker as much as to the production process.

Tibor

Greg writes, quoting me:


G>Tibor Benke writes:
>
T>>  >>...if I, for example,
T>>  >>maintain that 17th century aboriginal Australian or  Tlinglit
culture
T>>  >>was the highest  ever because both
T>>  >>maintained their economies and ecologies in ballance.
>
G>If you maintain that, we'd consider you a worshiper at the altar of
economic and
G>ecologic balance.
>
G>Please feel free to consider defenders of "Western Culture" as
G>worshipers at the altar of individual liberty and dignity.
>

I believe in freedom of religion, so, as far as I am concerned, you can
worship at whatever altar you want.  Destroying *our* planet, however, is
another matter.   As the anti-smokers say your freedom ends where my air
begins.

>Tibor Benke writes:
>
>>  The third world isn't poor because its backward
>>  and less 'civilized',  it is poor because Europe has been robbing it for
>>  some four centuries and is continuing to do so.
>
>I'd like your opinion on whether, in the last 50 years, any formerly poor
> nations
>"made it" out of poverty, and how they did it.

I imagine you are alluding to the Asian "little tigers'" or whatever they
are called now.  These paragons of respect for human rights, (especially
that of indegenous peoples), and practicioners of sustainable development
are often cited as examples of pulling onself up by one's bootstraps and
using one's "comparative advantege" wisely.  But it is a mistake to imagine
that every country could do the same thing.  Metropoles can be overcome by
other Metropoles as Babylon overcame Ur, az the Hittites overcame Babylon,
down to our day when Japan is overtaking the U.S.  It could go on 'till
there is no planet worth living on is left.  Further, the "hinterland" does
not have to be in another country.

>
>>  Hungary should be looking at
>>  using its human capital (Relatively well educated citicens) for finding
>>  XXI. century solutions for the world not blindly imitating the West in
>>  order to 'catch up' to some mirage of progress.
>
>The funny thing is, streets, sewers, bridges, are all made the old-fashioned
> way.
>Unless you have hope that the XXI century will allow contruction of the top
> floor
>first (which of Gulliver's travels was that?), I suggest Hungary's
>"hope" is in getting
>the basics right and doing first things first.
>
>

I suggest Hungary's hope is the comparative advantage of having the choice
of paving the country or designing a sustainable infrastructure for the
XXI. century.   They have the scientists and engineers.  Further, their
markets will be in the "developing" world, so they should think about
manufacturing appropriate (in Schumacher's sense) tools to sell to those
countries, they will not compete with Hundai and win.  Finally, they should
pick an area of communications/information science and specialize in being
the best at it.  The KOG (cognitive scientist's list) looks like a
promising direction.

Tibor

Jeliko writes:


>Tibor Benke writes:
>business
>> men and women who usually own some franchise business and work 70 hours a
>
>Now you give examples of your "robber capitalists"? I thought
>according to you these guys did not exist.
>

Small businessmen like the franchise owners might be called "petit
bourgoise" by Marxists.  I just see them as proletarian working for piece
work and entertaining delusions of grandeour.  The robber Barons are the
real estate companies that own the malls where their little shops are.
Have you seen one of their leasing contracts?
No wonder we have to pay fortunes for stuff made in Malaysia for pennies!

Tibor

On January 16, Charles wrote among other things:

[Snip]

T>>                                                          I'll revise my
T>>statement above and say that from the point of view of many modern
T>>Australian Aboriginals, Western  Culture is considerably *less*
legitimate
T>>then any Fourth World culture.  The inevitable value judgement is now in
T>>the phenomenon I am speaking of and not in my argument.
>
C>--And is this opinion original with the modern Austrialian aboriginal,
C>or is it the result of contact with Western ideas?  And is it phrased
C>in terms of a philsophical quest for legitimacy or in a more common
C>sense belief that "the whites stole our land, and we resent it."

C'mon!  Not that old "outside agitator" nonsense.  Modern native peoples
get educated and read and watch the same media as everyone else.  They hear
all sides and select the stuff that accords with their experiences most
closely and add their own original thoughts.  Black Elk or Chief Seattle
did without any influences and expressed their disapproval of being robbed
eloquently enough.

[snip]


T>>not our fate, // So let us not talk falsely now,// The hour's getting
T>>late!.' "  [ Robert Zimmerman, "All Along the Watchtower"])
>
C>--This is the same Bob Dylan that spent 7 mil for a house in Los
C>Angeles?  Gee, I'm impressed by his penetrating social analysis.

I don't know what you have against a nice middle class kid from Hibbing
living the American Dream?  Arguably Dylan is one of the ten most important
poets of theXX. century in America, along with Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and
Allen Ginsburg.  Pound was a fascist, (literally, he worked for Mussolini
and wrote admiringly about him) Eliot was a conservative (and an
Episcopelian), and Ginsburg was a beatnik.  But poets, if they are great,
have been free of moral obligations to us lesser folk since at least the
Greeks  and their politics is irrelevant.  I don't share Dylan's stand on
Israel  either but his stuff is in my head and I can't help quoting it all
the time..



>                                                                        If
T>>it be so, I think it's time for another bout of scourging, and if we
don't
T>>want any, we better get out of the way.
>
C>--Aren't you one of the non-violent ones?

For some ten years, I was an active member of the General Conference of
Mennonites in Canada, a traditional peace church.  Lately I've been
thinking of Stoeckley Carmichael (Sp?) who used to help co-ordinate the
freedomriders for the Southern Non-violent Co-ordinating Committeee (SNCC-
snik).  Then he joined the Black Panthers.  He used to tell this story in
those days.  "You know, I saw the sheriff of New Orleans just before Easter
and you know, he and I go way back. So he asked me, 'Hey, Stoeckley! what
d'ya give up for lent this yeah?'  and I said, 'Non-Violence, baby,
non-violence!'"  Though I haven't got to that point yet, I think generation
X is on the right track.



Tibor

Jeliko wrote on January 17,


J>Tibor Benke writes:

T>> Unca' Karl refuted this  BS in his writings on "primitive accumulation"
T>> more then a hundred years ago, and this has nothing to do with the
T>success
T>> or failure of the asiatic* despotic state known as the USSR.

J>Obviously, because there was no private capital accumulation in unca
Joe's
J>practical application of Unca Karl's theories.

Unca Joe was a Georgian tirant, he could've used any theory to justify his
policies, but you cannot call it an application of Marx's theories.  Marx
said little about how the "expropriation of the bourgeoise and the
dictatorship of the proletariat" was supposed to work.  What little he did
say, was in regards to the Paris Commune and he consistently rejected all
utopian solutions.

>[snip]

T>>I've never taken anything that wasn't due me according to the
T>> actual rules in effect, nor do I want anything but everyone off my
back.
>
J>Are you intimidating that I did?
>

Nou in the least, I know nothing of your circumstances and I imagine you
earned everything you have, engineers do ok, my father did, and he just did
his job..

 bye, Tibor

Tibor Benke writes:

>  I'm cognitively  challenged...

What does that mean?

--Greg

>  >>  The third world isn't poor because its backward
>  >>  and less 'civilized',  it is poor because Europe has been robbing it for
>  >>  some four centuries and is continuing to do so.
>  >
>  >I'd like your opinion on whether, in the last 50 years, any formerly poor
>  > nations
>  >"made it" out of poverty, and how they did it.
>
>  I imagine you are alluding to the Asian "little tigers'" or whatever they
>  are called now.  These paragons of respect for human rights, (especially
>  that of indegenous peoples), and practicioners of sustainable development
>  are often cited as examples of pulling onself up by one's bootstraps and
>  using one's "comparative advantege" wisely.  But it is a mistake to imagine
>  that every country could do the same thing.

Perhaps.  But if these countries were once poor because of European robbery,
when did the robbery stop, and how was it stopped?

--Greg

Tibor Benke writes:

>  Destroying *our* planet, however, is another matter.

Oh, well, I didn't know saving the Earth and individual liberty and dignity
were incompatible.  Now I'm straightened out.  Thanks.

--Greg

Tibor Benke writes:

>  But poets, if they are great,
>  have been free of moral obligations to us lesser folk since at least the
>  Greeks...

Now I've heard everything.

--Greg

Thomas Breed writes:

>Respectfully, Pipes wrote that many of the economic problems in Russia's
>history can be traced to the Varangians who, while they did assimilate,
>retained a colonial attitude toward their domains (as opposed to the Normans
>who eventually started to develop their land).


With due respect to Richard Pipes this is a far-fetched hypothesis. I don't
want to go into early Russian history at great length (after all, this is a
list concerning Hungary) but I feel compelled to correct some of Thomas
Breed's claims. Although my main field was not Russian history I have a fair
background in it (prior to my receiving a Ph.D. in history, I received an
M.A. in Russian and East European Studies, which was a multi-disciplinary
program). Moreover, I was a T.A. (teaching assistant) for many years in
Russian history while a graduate student.

For those who don't know much early Russian history, the Varangians were
Swedish Vikings who wandered around the main rivers of western Russia in the
late eighth and early ninth centuries. These marauding groups eventually
settled and established a series of city states, which are collectively known
as the Kievan State. Most of our information about this very early history of
Russia comes from the Russian Chronicle, according to which the Russian state
was established in Novgorod in 862, but that is simply a Romantic legend.
According to the Annales Bertiniani a mission of a people who called
themselves Rhos appeared in Constantinople in 839. By all accounts the Rhos
were of Scandinavian origin but by the late ninth-early tenth century these
Kievan prices already had Russified names. Waldemar became Vladimir; Helga
became Olga, and so on. Prince Igor's son was called Sviatoslav (we are
talking about mid-tenth century)--a name as Slavic as anything. To blame the
Varangians for the relative backwardness of Russia is really stretching it.
This was not colonialism in the accepted sense of the word.

Further Thomas Breed says:

>Secondly, in way it can argued that Moscovy colonized the rest of what
>would become Russia.  The destruction of Novgorod and Pskov during the
>Oprichnina and resettlement of Muscovites there seems to fit into the
>catagory of colonization (considering Novgorodians didn't call themselves
>Russian, but rather Novgorodians).


The Kievan state, much weakened by strife among the city states, fell to the
Tatar invaders at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The "Tatar yoke"
lasted for almost 300 years--during this time, the Russian principalities
were paying tribute to the Golden Horde. It was during the reign of Ivan III
of Muscovy (1462-1505) that the so-called "gathering of Russia" began. During
the Tatar domination, it was Muscovy whose princes managed to become strong
enough to lead the forces against the Golden Horde and eventually unify the
principalities under Muscovy's rule, which indeed included the occupation of
Novgorod. The inhabitants of Novgorod may have called themselves Novgorodians
but they were Russians, just as the inhabitants of Muscovy were Russians. The
difference between them was that while the former was run democratically
through the veche (a kind of parliament) while the latter was run by an
absolutist prince, later tsar.

And finally, the "oprichnina" took place during the reign of Ivan the
Terrible, that is, during the 1560s, many years after the occupation of
Novgorod. The oprichnina (which is often compared to Stalin's purges of the
1930s) was an enigmatic event of an enigmatic tsar. Ivan and his household
left the Kremlin and began sending messages to the capital, including one
which indicated his resignation from the state of affairs. The boyars managed
to change his mind but Ivan the Terrible had a few demands in exchange,
including the setting up of a special royal domain (oprichnina) exempt from
the jurisdiction of the general administration and subject to the direct
control of the tsar. Ivan's aim was the breaking of the political influence
of the landed aristocracy. The provinces, cities, and even certain Moscow
streets which belonged to the oprichnina were cleared of boyars. So, Thomas
Breed mixes up the two events: the gathering of Russia, during which indeed
they were some population transfers and the oprichnina whose aim was the
destruction of the boyars.

Finally, Thomas Breed says:

>From the standpoint of desirability, most societies would want to be like
>the West.  This might be a Faustian situation, however, where a higher
>standard of living is exchanged for a liveable environment (assuming
>Capitalism is not able to develop methods of preventing environmental
>decay).

May I remind Thomas Breed that the environmental damage caused by forty years
of noncapitalist development in Eastern Europe was far worse than anything we
have known in the West. As the matter of fact, the new western capitalist
owners are spending millions of dollars at cleaning up the mess created by
the former socialist regimes. This was happening while the gap between the
developed west and the lesser developed east was actually growing.

Eva Balogh

Tibor Benke writes:
>  I'm cognitively challenged...

        Does this mean that you will stop arguing with people on this list who
aren't?  I mean, if you make such a major admission, why would you want to
continue dwelling on things you don't understand?

        Norb

        P. S. I will be overjoyed if this public confession will inspire more
people to "come out of the closet."

On Sat, 21 Jan 1995 13:34:57 -0800 Tibor Benke said:
>
>I stand corrected for the first part, what Can I say?

--You may have been thinking of Mark Twain's paragraph in "Life on
the Mississippi" when he discusses the problem of linear projections.
I won't copy it here, but it is on the last page of so of the book as
I recall.  The gist of it is that one can do wonders with science.  If
one were to believe the rates of erosion, at one time the Mississippi
river must have stuck out on the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod.

  I'm cognitively
>challenged, as I mentioned before.

--I'm not sure what this means.  You appear to have the usual facility
with language and you know how to look up sources.  Clearly, you are
not stupid.  Well, your viewpoint is a bit naive, but one expects that
from anthropologists!

  As for your second point,  even if the
>numbers are absolutely flawless, the indeces can always be faulted, and
>there is no politicaly neutral way to pick indeces.

--But my point is that if one understand statistics, he or she knows
exactly what they do and how far one can trust them.  I will confess
that I have chosen statistical procedures that make the numbers come
out in favor of the argument I am making.  Editorial reviewers are not
always sophisticated enough to understand what has been done, right in
front of their eyes, and they have accepted the piece for publication.
There is no need to lie.  Just use the procedure that works best.  But
a really knowledgeable person would have known what was done.

  As Piaget remarked,
>even in Physics everything ultimately depends on your theory of
>measurement.

--Exactly.  And currently I am teaching a doctoral seminar on
measurement and I candidly tell the students that very thing.

                                                               absolutely
>politics free, I got everything I know about Go~dell from there.).

--Huh?
>
              Official rates of unemployment (which vastly undercalculate
>the
>T>>actual number of those who have no work), however, continue to hover
>T>>between 9% and 13% with 20% or more in,  Newfoundland.

--Well, most people who deal with these things are well aware of the
problem in unemployment statistics.  The reason they continue to use
a faulty statistic is that it is constant.  But nobody with any knowledge
of the problem is deceived.  The same is true of the American poverty
measure.  It has serious shortcomings, but to adopt a less flawed approach
would make comparisons more difficult.  We continue to use it, knowing its
flaws, and therefore are cautious about it.  This is not a major problem.

   The average
>real
>T>>wage is way downfrom even a decade ago.  Supposedly, there was no
>inflation
>T>>this year; nevertheless, if your "basket of goods and services" is
>T>>different from what Stats Can uses you might experience a rise in your
>cost
>T>>of living, as I have.

--Again, to change to a more realistic measure would confuse more than
help.  The basket of goods and services has the argument for continuity
going for it, and people who use the measure know of its shortcomings,
but to change would engender more confusion.  If you understand what is
going on, it's not a serious problem.  By any measure, inequality is
increasing, and there is little academic dispute about that.

>T>>terms  like: 'advanced', 'bakward', 'civilized', 'primitive', etc.  as
>T>>unscientific and ideological.
>
--Sure.  This is why it is important for people to make their values
explicit.

>No, but I don't go out of my way to allow more ideology into my  labeling
>then must remain after I have done all I can to compensate. (Theory of
>measurment again)
>
--Well, I almost posted a note to Eva Balogh on this issue.  I would have
said that she should remember that you are a post-modernist.  I was
trained in analytic philosophy.  This is a forerunner to what is now
called deconstruction.  The difference is that deconstructionists accept
sociological Marxism without applying their own criterion to it.  Most
of your postings reek of the post-modernist world view, which is quite
anti-Western.  The problem as I see it is that post-modernism is a
Western view as well, but most post-modernists don't seem to know it.

Regards,

Charles

On Sat, 21 Jan 1995 13:35:13 -0800 Tibor Benke said:

>G>>Charles writes:
>>>
>C>>>  I see no moral reason why I should support a person who is able
>C>>>  to work.
>>>
>I think Charles is confused.

--Why am I not the least bit surprised?

>                                      He has input into how the government
>decides to spend what is now *the government's money and not Charles'*
>through the democratic process.

--You are avoiding the crucial question.  By what MORAL right should I
support people who are able to work?
                                                             (Though one
>might ask how would he feel about Fineas Fogg, the man of modest but
>independent means).

--Pheas Fogg was, of course, a fictional character.  In fiction, one
may create any kind of person one wants.  Including Bertie Wooster
and Indiana Jones.  I enjoyed Phineas.  Recently a left-leaning
friend of mine from Newcastle-upon-Tyne went around the world on
money graciously provided by a private foundation.  We were in
contact from several places.  He signed his messages "Pheneas Fogg."
It was great fun.

>when unable to earn a living and would rather do their robbing with actual
>weapons instead of a fountain pen.

--I believe in punishing white collar crime as well as street crime.

  Were I to be deprived of my "Guaranteed
>Annual Income for Need", for example, though I don't believe in violence, I
>may walk into the nearest supermarket, load my grocery cart and walk out
>without payment and take the jail term I'd get, at least its a roof over my
>head and three square meals. Keeping me in prison is minimally three times
>as expensive as my GAIN.  And not everybody is as peaceful as I am.
>
--I do not, frankly, support theft in principle.  I do support a
guaranteed annual income, and I have endorsed the principle in
an article that I have submitted for publication.

                                          Thus, welfare programs can be
>viewed as a social wage or "storage costs for the reserve army of the
>unemployed".  Alternatively, we admit that the market system is less
>rational then the models and we have another debate topic.

--No one will argue that the market system is perfect.  Only that,
as Churchill said about democracy, preferable to any alternative.
>
>Charles rightly points out that his view that everyone should work is
>shared by capitalists and socialists alike.

--And even by Leninists in the former Soviet Union.

  Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx
>believed in something called  "the labour theory of value".

--Smith?  Where?  I don't recall it by that name.  Smith believed
in paying laborers well, and I can locate his discussion on that
if you want it.

                              But even further then the economist critics, I
>believe the work ethic to be obsolete.  If one belived in the work ethic,
>one would have to live like the Amish (another interesting anabaptist sect,
>who refuse to use any technology that wasn't mentioned in the Bible; that
>they manage to do this, live fairly well and buy fourty acres in
>Pennsylvania or Ohio for all their male offspring is a testimony to their
>faith in hard work and the disadvanteges of gadgets - something little that
>Charles an I find agreement on).

--Haven't seen the Amish lately, have you?  There are a few of the Old
Order left, but many Amish drive cars and use tractors.  The cars are
usually black and have few gadgets, but even the Amish are a'changin'.
I admire them tremendously, and often stop and buy their cheese when
passing through Arthur, Illinois.  Not all the Amish are in Pennsylvania.

>Now I come to why I think the work ethic is obsolete, at least the way we
>presently formulate it is.  The more laboursaving technology we use and
>nevertheless continue to work hard, the faster we turn the biosphere into a
>pile of garbage.

--Now you've left off preachin' and gone to meddlin'.  Actually, some
indicators have improved.  As I once mentioned, my nephew Michaelm  makes
a good living selling anti-pollution technology.  I think that our major
problem in this area is population pressure, and the faster we develop
technology, the sooner the birth rate falls.

   Most of todays troubles  from wars to the loss of
>'family values' can be traced to our living too well and working too hard,
>and the harder we work, the better we are forced to live because we have to
>compensate ourselves for the effort.  The further we delay gratification,
>the greedier we get.  It's a demonic cycle.  Some people on "KORNYESZ"
>(Environmental scientists list on HIX) figure the standard of living of the
>average Hungarian intellectual  might be feaseable on a world scale, but no
>more.
>
--You are not convinced by statistics.  I am not convinced by the doom
and gloom folks, either.  Back in the 1960s, I had students going into
shock over the projected famine of 1977.  A man called Ehrlichman, who
apparently was a biologist, predicted that in that year--or thereabouts--
every man, woman, and child would be standing on one square foot of
land.  Of course, one cannot dependably reproduce in that position, and
anyway it didn't happen.

>Actually people gladly do meaningful work volutarily.  I, myself, did
>volunteer tutoring of adults who needed to learn English or finish
>highschool, and I didn't mind at all.

--Sure.  I take one or more pickup loads of recyclable material to a
recycling center once a week and I get nothing for it, not even
reimbursement for my petrol.  But I am retired on a decent pension,
and if this were not so, I couldn't volunteer.  Very frankly, my
wife and I worked like dogs and did things that other people wouldn't
do sometimes.  That's why we had jobs.

  In my co-op the gardening and much
>maintenance as well as preparations for community events are done by
>volunteers.

--Sure.  This is an old American tradition, and it is good.

  A British educator, A.S. Niell, found that children who had
>been problem pupils in other schools learned as much as four years' worth
>of material in six months when told they could play all day, if they wanted
>to.

--But.  Summerfield is not all gas and gaiters.  If Neill's idea had
been all that hot, it would have been duplicated.  You must get up to
date on his interesting, but flawed, project.

  Infact, I think genuine liberty is only possible when some small
>living is guaranteed for all.  Enterprenours  would then be obliged to
>adapt the technology to the worker as much as to the production process.
>
--But America is an experiment in something different.  Traditionally,
nothing is guaranteed.  My Atherton ancestors came here with no
prospects, and, I hope, knew the rules of the game.  They didn't do
very well, unfortunately, but they survived.  I have always believed
that me against the world was fair odds, my physical handicaps
notwithstanding.  My personal philosophy is:  "Never give up.  Make
them beat you, if they can."

Charles, a survivor.

On Sat, 21 Jan 1995 13:36:29 -0800 Tibor Benke said:
>On January 16, Charles wrote among other things:
>
>C>--And is this opinion original with the modern Austrialian aboriginal,
>C>or is it the result of contact with Western ideas?  And is it phrased
>C>in terms of a philsophical quest for legitimacy or in a more common
>C>sense belief that "the whites stole our land, and we resent it."
>
>C'mon!  Not that old "outside agitator" nonsense.  Modern native peoples
>get educated and read and watch the same media as everyone else.

--Of course.  Nothing to do with outside agitators which I agree is
nonsense.  I can understand the aboriginal who believes that he has
had his land taken.  Of course it was taken.  What else is new?  Like
it or not, this is the way the world works.  People suck.  But isn't
Social Darwinism so whether we like it or not?

>C>--This is the same Bob Dylan that spent 7 mil for a house in Los
>C>Angeles?  Gee, I'm impressed by his penetrating social analysis.
>
>I don't know what you have against a nice middle class kid from Hibbing
>living the American Dream?

--Ordinarily nothing.  But I do have a problem with people who kick
the shit out of the American Dream while making a good living at it.

  Arguably Dylan is one of the ten most important
>poets of theXX. century in America, along with Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and
>Allen Ginsburg.

--I'll give you Eliot.  The others aren't very poetic.  I prefer
Auden.

                                             But poets, if they are great,
>have been free of moral obligations to us lesser folk since at least the
>Greeks  and their politics is irrelevant.  I don't share Dylan's stand on
>Israel  either but his stuff is in my head and I can't help quoting it all
>the time..
>
--That's your problem.  And when poets speak on politics, it is relevant.
Including Lord Byron who wrote a hilarious poem on the death of George IV.

                                                    Lately I've been
>thinking of Stoeckley Carmichael (Sp?) who used to help co-ordinate the
>freedomriders for the Southern Non-violent Co-ordinating Committeee (SNCC-
>snik).  Then he joined the Black Panthers.

--Don't recall that Stokely Carmichael joined the Black Panthers.  Last I
knew, though, he married Marian Makeeba, the singer, and was living
quietly in Ghana.

                  Though I haven't got to that point yet, I think generation
>X is on the right track.

Generation X is simply another cliche.  And as far as I know, they
are hardly revolutionists.  Most of them are just trying to make a
living and get on with their lives.

Regards,
>
Charles

Charles writes:

>  --You are avoiding the crucial question.  By what MORAL right should I
>  support people who are able to work?

>  I do support a
>  guaranteed annual income, and I have endorsed the principle in
>  an article that I have submitted for publication.


I'm missing something.  How is a GAI different from supporting people who
are able work?

--Greg

On Sat, 21 Jan 1995 17:21:05 -0500 > said:
>
>With due respect to Richard Pipes this is a far-fetched hypothesis. I don't
>want to go into early Russian history at great length (after all, this is a
>list concerning Hungary) but I feel compelled to correct some of Thomas
>Breed's claims.

--I always enjoy your postings and never have any quarrel with
their accuracy.  I must say, however, that you are playing a losing
game.  Most of your antagonists are post-modernists.  They have
accepted as an article of religion that the West is the great villain
of history.  In the name of what they call "multiculturalism," which
is a misnomer, they tend to give credence to any point of view which
is critical to the West.  The ironic thing is that they use a set of
Western values to do it!

Regards,

Charles.

>May I remind Thomas Breed that the environmental damage caused by forty years
>of noncapitalist development in Eastern Europe was far worse than anything we
>have known in the West. As the matter of fact, the new western capitalist
>owners are spending millions of dollars at cleaning up the mess created by
>the former socialist regimes. This was happening while the gap between the
>developed west and the lesser developed east was actually growing.
>
--Good point, but the post-modernists have a predictable answer!
Starting with, "That wasn't socialism, it was Leninism!"  I have
enjoyed watching my socialist friends distance themselves from the
old Soviet Union as fast as they can.  They didn't do this until
about 1989.

Charles

If anybody could give me information regarding the legal ownership of the Grand
Hotel Corvinus,
The Kempinski Hotel.
Thank you

George E. Kantor

Subject: Re: Literacy bias!
From: paul, 
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 20:22:08 EST
In article > paul,
 writes:
>Tibor wrote:
>
>>But how was Eastern Europe behind and how do you know?  What
criteria are
>>you using and what makes those criteria more valid then if I, for
example,
>>maintain that 17th century aboriginal Australian or  Tlinglit
culture (in
>>what is now northern Vancouver Island) was the highest  ever
because both
>>maintained their economies and ecologies in ballance.  What if in
the long
>>term scheme of things, it turns out that what we call
'civilization' is an
>>evolutionary dead end?
>
>Bravo, Tibor!!  Absolutely correct.  We even see signs that some
westerners
>are beginning to understand this, but making expediations into
remote
>jungles, and learning from 'primitive' natives about the medical
uses
>of various plants.  I think scientists sometimes forget that their
>assumptions and criteria for judging the value of something need to
be
>re-examined periodically, at least to prevent arrogance.  Western
>cultures have achieved great things thru science, but we need to
lose
>our superiority complex about our scientific understanding making
our
>decisions and priorities more valid than those of lesser developed
>cultures.  People who live in jungles and in remote tribes are not
>necessarily less happy than the rest of us - and people who live
>in metropolitan areas are not necessarily more sophisticated and
>wise than those in rural or undeveloped areas (people in NY sure
>think their lives are better than the lives of those of us in
>the suburbs). In short, 300 tv channels does not bring happiness.
>
>Paul

the original sense of superiority of western culture was not based on
'scientific achievement' but on moral, ethical and religious
superiority.
the crusades, the reconquista, the conquest of much of asia, africa
and
the americas was justified by the mission to spread christian values
and
occurred at a time when scientists were imprisoned and executed for
heresy,
etc. the appeal to the "advances" in the period since the age of
enlightenment
and the various scientific revolutins is quite recent. it has
frequenlty
been the case that scientific method has been aped in order to
provide
post hoc justification for unwarranted prejudices. classic examples
include
the study of the shapes of heads to determine racial superiority.

and, of course, the issue is not of "happiness" versus "unhappiness".
the issue seems to me to be whether there is any substance to the
notion
of "adavanced culture". while it is reasonably easy to use the
expression in a deliberately vague way to denote the use of
micro-wave
ovens, it is not clear notion can bear closer examination.

d.a.