Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 00:14:50 -0800
From: Joshua Houk <jlhouk-AT-mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: The Dirty Jobs...




Dave Hayman wrote:

> That's not the message I intended, and since other reactions have been
> few and unhelpful, I'm not sure whther it's me being unclear or you
> misunderstanding me (you will not be surprised to learn that I still
> lean toward the latter explanation).

I don't mind being the culprit, so go ahead and blame me... I don't mind. :).
I'm chalking it up to the internet - it's very easy to misinterpret things. I
know no one needs any examples of this.

I also should state that I think I have a looser definition of "force" than
most, so throw that in too...

I'm still not reading that economics book, though! Yawn. But that's personal
taste. I'm sure you'd be thrilled to head me ramble on about some of the
things I ramble on about...

> Now it seems that our difference may be little more than the degree of
> optimism about how well anarchists could organize an economy with
> high-tech capability (that doesn't mean high-tech has to be used
> everywhere someone sees a profit, but for medical reasons for sure I
> don't want to lose our technical capability). I am less optimistic than
> you. And I'm not in love with cars -- have never owned one, in fact --
> they just sprang to mind while making a list of stuff that requires a
> lot of organization to create.

We might still have a larger difference, but not an important difference. I
was demonstrating a plausible scenario, but I'm not sure if I'd particularly
like that one, either. I tend not to think of what an anarchist society would
be like - I just think of what it *wouldn't* be like. As far as I'm concerned,
envisaging a future anarchist society is just daydreaming. Not that
daydreaming isn't worthwhile...

> But I wonder how these conflicts will be settled. Lots of people don't
> like cars, for good reason -- they have skewed our economy as well as
> polluting the environment. But on what basis can anarchists tell anyone
> who loves their car that they have to give it up? Perhaps they would
> become so expensive to operate compared to a decent mass transit system,
> that most people wouldn't want to keep a car.

I don't particularly care for cars either, beyond aesthetic pleasure in seeing
the many older models that populate my area of town. I agree, and also I think
that there would likely be less of a need for cars - it's hard to
conceptualize an anarchist society with the wacked production mentality that
we have now, therefore less of a need to clog up the streets during rush
hour... etc.

> I don't know enough about this to say how well it supports your
> optimism.

Give Linux's development system a once over, if you have the chance. You might
be pleasantly surprised.
 
> And your reaction didn't sit well with me, justified or not. But I'm
> over it now. Fortunately Agent Zero is back to take the heat off me. I
> couldn't be that awful an asshole if I *tried*.

Yeah, I can be a major snot at times. You'd think I'd know by now to chill
out, but....

Joshua H