Posted on 07/31/2002 5:20:31 AM PDT by fporretto
Each abridgement of liberty has been used to justify further ones. Scholars of political systems have noted this repeatedly. The lesson is not lost on those whose agenda is total power. They perpetually strain to wedge the camel's nose into the tent, and not for the nose's sake.
Many a fine person will concede to you that "liberty is all very well in theory," follow that up with "but," and go on from there to tabulate aspects of life that, in his opinion, the voluntary actions of responsible persons interacting in freedom could never cope with. Oftentimes, free men and free markets have coped with his objections in the recent past, whether he knows it or not. You could point this out to him, provide references and footnotes, and still not overcome his resistance, for it does not depend on the specifics he cited.
His reluctance to embrace freedom is frequently based on fear, the power-monger's best friend.
Fantasist Robert Anton Wilson has written: "The State is based on threat." And so it is. After all, the State, no matter how structured, is a parasitic creature. It seizes our wealth and constrains our freedom, gives vague promises of performance in return, and then as often as not fails to deliver. No self-respecting people would tolerate such an institution if it did not regard the alternatives as worse.
The alternatives are seldom discussed in objective, unemotional terms. Sometimes they are worse, by my assessment, but why should you accept my word for it?
Let it be. The typical American, when he opts for State action over freedom, isn't acting on reasoned conviction, but on fear of a negative result. Sometimes the fear, which is frequently backed by a visceral revulsion, is so strong that no amount of counterevidence can dissolve it, including the abject failure of State action.
We've had a number of recent examples of this. To name only two prominent ones:
In either of the above cases, could we but take away the fear factor, there would be essentially no argument remaining.
Fear, like pain, can be useful. When it engenders caution, it can prolong life and preserve health. Conservatives in particular appreciate the value of caution. The conservative mindset is innately opposed to radical, destabilizing change, and history has proved such opposition to be wise.
However, a fear that nothing can dispel is a pure detriment to him who suffers it.
Generally, the antidote to fear is knowledge: logically sound arguments grounded in unshakable postulates and well buttressed by practical experience. Once one knows what brings a particular undesirable condition about, one has a chance of changing or averting it. The great challenge is to overcome fears so intense that they preclude a rational examination of the thing feared.
Where mainstream conservatives and libertarians part company is along the disjunction of their fears. The conservative tends to fear that, without State involvement in various social matters, the country and its norms would suffer unacceptably. Areas where such a fear applies include drug use, abortion, international trade, immigration, cultural matters, sexual behavior, and public deportment. The libertarian tends to fear the consequences of State involvement more greatly. He argues to the conservative that non-coercive ways of curbing the things he dislikes, ways that are free of statist hazards, should be investigated first, before turning to the police.
I call myself a libertarian, but I can't discount conservative fears in all cases -- especially where the libertarian approach to some social ill involves a major change to established ways. Radical transformations of society don't have a rosy history.
Yet conservatives, too, could be more realistic, and could show more confidence in the ideals they strive to defend. As Thomas Sowell has written in discussing the War On Drugs, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damned fool about it."
The past two decades, starting roughly with Ronald Reagan's ascent to national prominence, have laid the foundations for an enduring coalition between freedom-oriented libertarian thinkers and virtue-and-stability-oriented conservative thinkers. Each side needs to learn greater confidence in the other, if we are to establish the serious exchange of ideas and reservations, free of invective and dismissive rhetoric, as an ongoing process. Such confidence must include sufficient humility to allow for respect for the other side's fears -- for an unshakable confidence in one's own rightness is nearly always misplaced. There is little to learn from those who agree with you, whereas much may be learned from those who disagree.
I have worked in a semiconductor wafer fab for 23+ years. I am the Quality manager. I have plenty of real life experience. I have seen companies over the years do all kinds of stunts to save the bottom line, including layoffs. But if you look at the truly successful companies THESE days, they can't keep jerking people around. They also can't pay people money they don't have, keeping them on the payroll, if they are about to go under financially.
I don't know your company, but I doubt they let any absolutely necessary person go. Perhaps they got out of the business end you were involved with. Perhaps their customer demand has dropped so dramatically, they now have to many people and not enough work. Sorry you are so anry at your company, but you can't expect them to go in debt and go bankrupt, just so some people can remain employed. Eventually the whole company will have to close and EVERYBODY loses there job.
My advice to you is not to be so confident in YOUR position.
Who told you I was angry at my old company ??? I'm not ...
Need more coffee ....
Perhaps so. But they are not letting good qualified people go for no other reason than to make a profit. They have to survive in this serious turndown of the economy. You seem to imply you blame them as if they were making unreasonable decisions about your employment. I doubt they are.
You seem to have unrealistic expectations that companies can keep you gainfully employed, irregardless of their financial situation, If they're product demand is dropping, sales are floundering, if they are losing money or going broke, how can they keep so many employees hired and paid?
level of education technical process = level of education and technical process
Where's that !@#$%^& coffee ........
Bob ... I NEVER said that ...
I was responding to and disputing your comment ...
However I believe in todays hi-tech technology job market, employers can't find enough "qualified" people.
Motorola CLOSED the entire facility in Sunnyvale. I don't blame them.
BUT to say that employers can't find enough 'qualified" people is pure bunk. My good friend Dennis ... (I'm looking at his house thru my window right now) is/was a QUALITY engineer with Cisco ... he was just given notice last week.
Again ... my advice to you is not to be so secure in YOUR position.
Sounds like we need more H-1B visas if they can't find the qualified candidates they're looking for.
Gotta become "more competitive" with the Third World.
Maybe you should seek "retraining" for a service sector job at Walmarts.
The Service Sector, afterall, is The New Global Economy!!!
</sarcasm>
You are quite right. The deity of international "free" traders, David Ricardo, asserted in his treatise on "comparative advantage" that labor is driven to the subsistance level.
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