Offtopic ancient thread Re: [Gllug] Re: Anarchy (was Geforce2)

[William Palfreman]

On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, Jonathan Harker wrote:

> On Monday 28 January 2002 19:04, William Palfreman wrote:
> > These elected people don't do a single thing for me, or at
> > least not a single thing that I wouldn't rather sort out for myself on my
> > terms.  Even if I did get something out of it it is still a useless
> > burden of a way to live.  
> <snip>
> 
> Right.
> 
> So you are going to shrug off the roads, trains, airports, landfills, 
> sanitisation, sewerage, hospitals, health care, schooling of your children, 
> policing, etc. ad infinitum as a burden? 

Huh?  Only the roads are fully government run in this country.  
Everything else is either a mixture of independent and government or just
government-influenced.  Never noticed all those security guards around
today?  What is it, >50% of kids going to private schools in London now?  

> I suppose they're crap anyway, 
> right? I am dying to know how you're going to sort all that out by yourself.

Pay them to do it properly with a small amount of the money I'll save by
not paying any tax.  Yes, government "services" are crap in this country.
 
> Without elected government, even a crap one, we'd have companies in
> charge.

Assertion.  When has that actually happened?  Plenty of nice countries
have been ruined by their government.  When governments have generally
left people alone, not persecuted anyone, not taxed them to death or
invented rubbish new laws by the ton, were the "companies in charge"?  
No.  What normally happens is large chunks of sociaty lift themselves out
of poverty and people call it a miracle.

> I know which I'd rather have. At least a crap government can be voted
> out next time round. I won't even mention the millions of people last
> century who died to preserve your right to vote. Oops...

Twit.  It's not the vote that counts, it's the freedom.  Hitler was voted
into power too.  Anyway, your talking about a government being crap and
waiting 5 years to vote it out, assuming millions of probably uninterested
people agree with you.  I'm talking about one service provider being crap, 
and you calling them up *that day*, canceling your account, and signing up 
for someone else then and there.  It's simple.  Your way takes three to 
five years and needs a good 10 million to agree with you.  My way can be 
done in half an hour.

> Nobody said democracy was perfect (well maybe some do), but in the face of 
> the alternatives, it's perhaps the best compromise we've come up with so far. 
>
> Sorry folks, I couldn't resist...

Eh?  Couldn't resist what?  Look, no offense or anything, but this isn't
some kind of big joke.  I wouldn't say anything about it normally, because
I know how a lot of people see the government as an essentially parental
figure.  But the thread led onto it naturally, and in the end it makes me
feel sad to see so many very good technical people plodding along
believing in the almost messianic virtues of a group of people who have 
bascially done nothing, just found themselves in a "job" where they think 
they are able to invent laws and take any money they want and use as 
much force as they like to get their way.  An all this comes about 
from people thinking a vote makes things ok.

-- 
William Palfreman


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