re: capital must give way

Cecile Mills (seaseal@got.net)
Sun, 20 Sep 1998 22:07:39 -0700

>At 07:31 8/25/98 -0400, Frederick R. Magdoff wrote:
>> Let's frame the discussion from the point of view of what
>>type of a social system would we want. I suggest that a humane and
>>sustainable system will create conditions and institutions that will:
>> a) meet the basic needs of all people for comfortable housing,
>>clothing, safe and adequate food, health care, and meaningful
>>opportunities for personal fulfillment and enjoyment;
>> b) dramatically narrow the gap between the wealthy and the poor;
>> c) improve the condition of the earths non-human species as well
>>as its soil, water, and air;
> ....
At 6:03 AM -0300 8/26/98, Daniel Worley wrote:
>Fred, much of what you suggest here has been tried on a small scale in
>communities across the country. Carefully planned developments with strict
>rules about what residents can and cannot do, designs that force people to
>walk rather than ride for certain daily activities such as collecting their
>mail, and so on exist. And even Congress has gotten into the act
>attempting to pass social legislation (and sometimes actually passing the
>laws).

snip

> I am an individualist and I don't want some gov'ment burro crat telling
>me how to live.

I'd like to comment on two issues here: meta and micromanaging how people
behave and legislating morality

The first seems to me to be a spectrum of the fewest *laws* or *rules* to
the *most* and Daniel gives us a grand example of telling people whether
they could run to get their mail or not. That is an instance of
micromanaging. Metamanaging would of course be the opposite: The golden
rule: Do unto others that you would have done to you is a prime example.

Creating a sustainable community in balance both internally and externally
has been done before and can be done again. The considerations Frank
mentions are important to the goal of sustainability.

Maybe we on this list can think of some more metamanagement rules.

Now, the second issue, of making people do things you think are *right*, is
similar but not identical. I am thinking of the debates on legalization of
drugs. The example that always comes to my mind is the 55-mile-an-hour
speed limit. Few people, even the most law-abiding, honored that law. Why
not? Similarly, the use of drugs not available legally is evidenced among
most age groups, most racial groups, and most economic groups--perhaps this
is a health issue rather than a legislative one and needs to be addressed
as such. The moral issues of breaking laws interest me: do we create
outlaws with poorly thought-out legislation or will there always be
criminals?

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