Re: Workers, Public Schools, Tradesmen, and Justice

[snow <snow@smoke.suba.com>]

Mr. May said:
> At 1:35 PM -0500 9/27/96, jbugden@smtplink.alis.ca wrote:
> >If you want to refuse those who are too stupid or anti-social from Public
> >Schools in order to improve the social or intellectual climate, you better
> >have
> >a solution for the resulting cast-offs.
> 
> (And I reject any of the common arguments that Americans need to learn
> history, the Constitution, etc. Few of them remember a single word they
> learned, and one might as well teach the basics in earlier grades and
> dispense with meaningless lectures about how and when the Senate may invoke
> cloture, how the Foreign Powers Act modified the 1877 Trade Act, and so on.)

     I would assert that if children (ALL of them) had been thru a class
in the Hows and Whys of the constitution, rather than the glossing over 
that I remember, our government would be a lot different. I am not 
talking about _just_ an intense memorization of the document, but a 
reading of the federalist papers (which I still haven't gotten all the 
way thru) and a month or two of purely discussing and analyzing the 
document, the Feds couldn't get away with what they are doing. 

     I agree that students who aren't cut out for the academic life should
be incouraged to persue trades, or the arts (which IMO are simply trades,
and my degree will be a BFA when I finish that last Art History class) but
citizenship is _everyones_ responsibility, and there are too many people 
clamoring for laws & amendments without thinking, and without understanding
the process. Our schools are not turning out thinkers, and that is a (IMO)
a fatal flaw. 

     This is the OBCrypto part: For Crypto(in the sense of anonymity and
pseudoanonymity) to truely be accepted and appreciated by the "general 
public (yes, a vague term), they need to understand the history of anonymous
publications. They need to understand _why_ people should want to publish
anonymously.
     The other side is that for your "crypto-anarchy" to succeed, we need 
people who can understand things like "algorythms" and "mathmatical proofs".

     The rest of this is [NOISE]. 

> As I look around me, here in Santa Cruz, I see hundreds of "homeless
> persons.: We used to call them beggars, bums, panhandlers, winos, hobos,
> and drifters. The people unwilling to get up in the morning for a boring
> job, the people unwilling to take the donations they get and buy some new
> clothes at the Salvation Army (I know people of both sexes who buy their
> business clothes at thrift shops, at huge discounts, so I reject any of the
> usual arguments that this won't work.)

     I have bought "work clothes"--collared shirts, trousers &etc--at 
SalAr, and my wife still does. She works for the Merc as a secretary. 
These many of these people are unwilling to do _anything_ to help themselves,
and it is the fault of everyone who ever handed them a dime. As one 
former listmember ranted one day "You know why there are beggars in this 
city?"..."Because people like you (not me, his partner) GIVE THEM MONEY".
People wouldn't beg if it got them nothing.  

> When I see people working at Taco Bell, Burger King, gas stations, etc.,
> and then I see the so-called "homeless," the situation is completely clear
> to me. And, like pigeons, if you begin feeding the beggars, you'll have
> more of them.

     Oops. You made that point. 

> For the last couple of weeks I've been hauling 70-pound stones to build a
> retaining wall (don't ask me about the permits I should've gotten), ripping
> up redwood deck boards, digging postholes for a new fence, and generally
> doing a couple of hours of manual labor every day. While it has its
> advantages, in earlier days I could've counted on providing some employment
> for someone who today is "a homeless person." No more. They're not
> psychologically prepared to do a solid (if unspectacular) job, as they've
> been taught for all of their lives that they went through high school and
> maybe a couple of years of college (and maybe more) so they could join the
> professional ranks....when they see they really won't be joining the
> professional ranks, and that they really don't want to make the sacrifices
> to, they have nothing to fall back on.

     While I'd agree that this is true for many, I know some (me, my brother
and a couple of my cousins) that have done work like this more than once. 
Not that I would do that kind of work (for pay) today, unless I was _real_
desperate.

     Then again, it could be a family thing. 

> get money. They won't get "entitlements" from the government (= taxpayers,
> = those who are working, = me and thee). Tell them that a college education
> should only be pursued if one has a "calling" to be an engineer, a
> programmer (and probably not even that, judging by what I see), a doctor, a
> lawyer (on second thought, don't ever suggest they become lawyers), and so
> on.

     I see no reason that general programming shouldn't be considered a 
trade. Maybe more "pure" math than a carpenter, or a mechanic, but they
don't need the english, general history, & etc. that other "academic" 
careers need.  

> And make it easier to hire people, instead of harder. (And if one hires a
> maid, and the maid steals, cut off her hand. We've lost sight of justice,
> and people think that ripping off the rich is their kind of justice. This
> needs to change.)

     Cutting off hands is a little drastic. Too prone to false aqusations,
and too hard to erase if the courts are wrong. Three years at hard labor
on bare sustance would be about right tho', and if the aqusation is proved
false, it is erase from the record. 

> This is why crypto anarchy's starving of the tax system is good. It may
> "kill" some number of people, as nearly any new idea does, but ultimately
> it will put things back on track.
 
    People die for all manner of reasons every day. Fuck'em.
  

Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@smoke.suba.com