Even though his campaign lost 44 states…

4 Comments

1. Mad Joy
   Posted October 28, 2007 at 5:18 PM | Permalink

   Ahhh!
   I hate when I start thinking like a conservative. It’s too scary. Eek!

   Don’t become conservative! Progressive change is good! Helping the underprivileged is good

2. Justin
   Posted October 28, 2007 at 5:25 PM | Permalink

   I agree, progressive change and helping the underprivileged are good! But it does seem sensible that such tasks are better left to state and local governments and private institutions, rather than the federal government, which constitutionally doesn’t have any jurisdiction in such programs.

   The compulsory confiscation of someone’s wealth (i.e., mine or yours) to give to someone else infringes on everyone’s liberty and discourages the drive to further oneself in productive society. If I think the underprivileged deserve to be helped, I should donate money. Members of government shouldn’t take my money and give me no choice in the matter.

   Goldwater’s principles make sense, especially economically. Ruh roh.

3. Mad Joy
   Posted October 28, 2007 at 5:43 PM | Permalink

   Hehe… I’ve been reading “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein (a Wes alum) which has been making me feel more liberal. The tactics used by the CIA for the sake of large corporations in just the past 40 years are incredibly frightening – CIA-funded coups that replace democratically or semi-democratically elected leaders in Latin American countries like Chile, for example, or in Indonesia, that were moving dangerously in the direction of development economics (that is, a self-reliant economy, based on a Keynes kind of economic system rather than total laissez faire), with these coups facilitating the continuation of US-based giant corporations to continue exploiting the poor of those regions and making obscene profits instead of redistributing the wealth.

   The problem is, even though I think the underprivileged deserve to be helped in theory, I don’t know where to give my money to help those underprivileged. To a beggar on the street? To an organization that I only hear about because of its absurdly high administrative costs? Also, even though I believe they deserve to be helped in theory, I’m too lazy and/or selfish to part with any specific amount of money so willingly.

   Even if I believed they deserved to be helped, who’s to say that a large corporation – which owes its shareholders, not some other random people – will have the same kindness? Instead, it has a duty to turn out as much profit as possible. If it’s not taxed, this will result in a massively unfair distribution of wealth.

   I could go on, I guess. I used to be libertarian, so those kinds of attitudes used to make a lot of sense to me, but I’ve been rethinking a lot. Seeing how I grew up without ever realizing how privileged I was (even though my family was probably in the top 10% of the country in terms of wealth!), or realizing how many other people lived without the comforts I do, makes it painfully obvious how easy it would be to NOT consciously choose to redistribute my wealth in a way that was beneficial to the underprivileged.

4. Mad Joy
   Posted October 28, 2007 at 5:57 PM | Permalink

   also if you’re still online say hi on AIM