Re: Price gouging is beneficial. Price gouging is great!

"Robert N. Newshutz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Bob LeChevalier wrote:
>> Or I can consign them to the pit of oblivion and deal with someone who
>> is a human being.
>>
>The usual rationalization for violence. It is alright to send them 
>to death camps, because they are not really human.

I don't send subhumans to death camps.  I laugh at them.

>> I am quite sure that plenty of people could and would bring water
>> without gouging, given a strong moral and legal stance against it.
>>
>I quite sure that those who brought the water would not do so if the 
>price they asked for could be retroactively judged unfair and be 
>punished for it.

By that argument, no one would enter the marketplace today.  They
might be judged in retrospect to have committed a fraud or negligence,
and thus face criminal or civil penalties.  Of course they DO enter
the marketplace, anyway.

>> They prefer selfish greed whether there is violence or not.  At least
>> the most extreme libertarians, the objectivists, admit it.
>> http://www.dailyobjectivist.com/Heroes/JohnStossel.asp
>> 
>LOL, you really are too funny. This article is precisly about how a 
>system that eschews violence (the free market) and allows greed is 
>prefereable to systems that use violence.

The free market does not eschew violence.  Or at least if it does,
there is no such thing as a free market.

>> I suppress it without violence.  I look down my nose at those who
>> champion it.
>> 
>And call for the government to use violence against those you don't 
>like.

Nope.  Why should my likes or dislikes be justification for violence?

>> That isn't forcing THEM to behave as I wish.  That is simply removing
>> one means of their behaving criminally, for the benefit of society.
>> How they behave thereafter is none of my concern.
>> 
>> Since property is a social artifact, and government is the formal
>> embodiment of society, redefining ownership is not "force".
>> 
>LOL, come see the violence inherent in the system.

Violence is inherent in most forms of property ownership, indeed.
Deprivation of others' needs is a form of violence.  (You are just as
dead if you starve to death as if you bleed from a gunshot wound to
the head, and indeed you probably feel more pain because you have time
to do so.)

(Note that I am not opposed to violence, or property ownership, in
their proper place; I just recognize them for what they are - less
than ideal ways to cope with human motivations.)

>> I know what libertarians claim it is.  I also know what they end up
>> with given their claims.  I reject the conclusion as thoroughly
>> immoral, and therefore the entire ideology is pure bullcrap.
>> 
>> As I've said, I don't necessarily require logic in order to reach
>> conclusions.  Libertarianism generates a visceral disgust in me.
>
>That visceral disgust has lead you to hate people for what you 
>(falsely) think they are.

I don't hate people, or even libertarian subhumans.  Disgust is not
hate.  The Christian way is to love the sinner but hate the sin.

lojbab
-- 
lojbab                                             [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org