[PLUG-TALK] Fair Use, etc.

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Fri Mar 29 01:01:28 UTC 2002


On Thu, 28 Mar 2002, Craighead, Scot D wrote:
> >Desires beyond needs are not addressed.
> 
> Is that a good thing?  Who gets to decide what someone needs?  If you
> have a 10 foot by 10 foot room with a toilet, sink, bed and access to
> a public bathroom to live in, are your living needs met?  Do you need
> music?  Do you need art?  Do you need dental care?  Who decides in
> your perfect communist leaderless world?

Gadzooks.

First, it's not MY perfect communist leaderless world.  I'm just
describing the theory.

Second, when I said that desires beyond needs were not addressed, I wasn't
saying it was a good or bad thing... just that it's not present in the
theory.

If we go back to what was argued earlier (by you, no?) and say that
industry is kept in line with the needs of the public by the public having
the option of packing up and leaving a job that failed to meet their
needs, then doesn't a society in which basic needs are gauranteed (even if
by only a 10x10 room and a toilet, nutrition paste, a tunic and a blanket)
give the public more freedom to control industry by removing the threat of
homelessness, starvation and hypothermia from the equation?

Third, the idea here is that as things become abundant and scarcity is
eliminated, it doesn't matter WHAT you call "needs", people still have
access to them.  Things that are scarce will always be easily controlled.

Lastly, art is one of the many things that has already been "communized".  
It is not scarce and it is very easy for a person with any amount of free
time at all (ten or twelve minutes a day) to create and appreciate art.  
The greatest threat to art and science today is the attempt by some to
return the sharing of information to a condition of scarcity.

> True communism is an ideal that can never be achieved.  It expects
> humans to act against there basic nature and if they don't, it
> completely falls apart into a brutal, horrible police state. That is
> way most of us look at the former soviet union or the current Chinese
> government as communists.  They have achieved all that can be achieved
> with that form of government.

As I said, Marx used the term "communism" interchangeably with "utopia".  
Of course, it can never be achieved.  But it is a goal.

You'll never achieve permanent bliss, but you increase your luxuries.  You
can never achieve omniscience, but you study.  The unattainability of a
goal is not reason enough to stop pursuing it.



> >In essence, the Constitution was written by rich men, for rich men.  
> >The Bill of Rights was an attempt to prevent the public from getting
> >TOTALLY screwed by the rich and powerful.  Any destruction of the
> >rights gauranteed by those Amendments is a blow to equity and a benefit
> >to the rich and powerful.
> 
> Your arguement is circular.  First you say that the constitution
> protects the little guy from the rich and powerful, then you say it is
> written by and for them.

No.  I made a clear distinction between the gaurantee of rights in the
Bill of Rights and the enumeration of powers and definition of structure
of the main body of the Constitution.

They were written by different people for different purposes.  I thought I
made that clear.  Sorry.

And by the way, that wouldn't have been a circular argument, but a
self-contradictory one.  It's kind of the opposite thing.  In one, a
statement is used to support itself; in the other, a statement can be used
to negate itself.

J.
-- 
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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