From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Oct 21 2005 - 14:29:57 BST
> [Arlo]
> Never said I support taking away your freedom to choose your own doctor.
> Everyone should be able to choose their own doctor, its just that everyone
> should also be able to see a doctor, or get the care they need when they
> need it. As I've said countless times, the ability to see a doctor and get
> healtcare shouldn't be a "market commodity". Perhaps you can tell me why
> you feel only those with enough capital should receive healthcare? Is that
> so we can let the poor die off?
Choosing your own doctor is not an option under universal health care. You
go where you are assigned, and wait in line for months to get treated.
Everyone in the U.S. get's health care without the lessening of quality
inherent in nationalized systems.
> [Arlo]
> So then, it's all relative. You are a relativist. You keep saying we can't
> make Quality statements about things, that the entire MOQ boils down to "if
> you like it, it has Quality". Is that right?
Pretty much so as regards products and services. As for morality, no.
> So then what was the point of ZMM? Pirsig was clearly critical of
> production and consumption. Quality was at the heart of fixing the problem
> he saw. The whole MOQ evolved out of the desire to "fix" a problem. If that
> problem was merely "Pirsig's opinion", than I don't see what the point of
> this all is.
To bring back a since of "gumption," i.e., self-responsibility for self-
fulfillment.
Pirsig in ZMM, "Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can
> never see anything through the concrete and brick and neon but he knows
> that buried within it are grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the
> manners that will convince themselves they possess Quality, learning
> strange poses of style and glamour vended by dream magazines and other mass
> media, and paid for by the vendors of substance. He thinks of them at night
> alone with their advertised glamorous shoes and stockings and underclothes
> off, staring through the sooty windows at the grotesque shells revealed
> beyond them, when the poses weaken and the truth creeps in, the only truth
> that exists here, crying to heaven, God, there is nothing here but dead
> neon and cement and brick."
>
> That's a fairly non-relativist condemnation of the currect cultural crisis,
> isn't it?
That's surface stuff. For the current culture crises caused by today's
intellectuals, read Chapter 24 of Lila.
> [Arlo]
> So, the only way to truly support a free market is to make everything a
> market commodity? Should we discontinue support for education, and see
> school on the free market, so that the rich can attend the "Ferrari"
> schools and the poor can just jump right into a life collecting the rich's
> garbage? We'd have to abolish libraries too, since they offer goods that
> are for sale on the "free market". Only those with money should have access
> to books, yes?
Have we not agreed that tax-supported schools and libraries are legit
because they support the intellectual level? But, like libraries, I would
give parents the choice of schools to attend through a voucher system.
> So, healthcare is something that I feel should not be a market commodity.
> As for "business regulations", I can read history. I'm well aware of the
> gross "lack of freedoms" posed by unfettered business. Unless you want to
> argue that more people were "freer" back in 1890 than today? And,
> progressive taxation, I'm actually more in favor of abolishing income tax
> altogether and implementing a consumption tax.
As for taxes, we agree. As for back to the 1890, yes, people were more
free from government interference then.
> [Arlo previously]
> So, now "jobs" and "culturally enriching" are both relative. Tell me, why
> are these things relative? Are you the arbiter of what's relative and
> what's not?
>
> [Platt]
> No. But you seem to be want to be the arbiter of what's quality and what's
> junk.
>
> [Arlo]
> Then who declared them "relative"? What about them makes them so? And other
> things "not"? And you avoided my question, are drug lords "enriching the
> culture" by virtue of their desired product and amount of sales? Is that a
> relative answer too?
Don't you think drugs should be legalized? I mean, don't we need more
people hallucinating so they too can create a new metaphysics like Pirsig?
> [Platt]
> Why do you hold out Pirsig to be like Jesus Christ? He would be the first
> to laugh out loud at your wish that everyone be like him.
>
> [Arlo]
> More evasiveness. Actually, I am holding him out to be nothing of the sort.
> I think what motivated Pirsig is at the core of all of us. It is you, in
> your need to show how man is by nature motivated only by "profit" and the
> need to bring capital and power to him/herself and his/her family In YOUR
> world, Pirsig is the rare exception who's motivation to Quality rises above
> "money and fame" that casts him as an abberration. My point all along was
> that the Quality that Pirsig was moving towards in authoring and
> publishing, the "point of a book like this", should be something the
> culture promotes and encourages as "natural". Instead, we tell people that
> following selfish interests of "personal profit, power and fame" are the
> "norms", and even something to be proud of.
I know. You want to change human nature. Lotsa luck. I prefer to work with
it, like the natural human desire to be free. .
> [Platt]
> What about freedom to choose? That's my highest priority. I think that's
> Pirsig's, too, as I've explained a number of times.
>
> [Arlo]
> The whole point of ZMM was that people were choosing without a means of
> seeing that Quality is a real part of the world. And this is where all the
> junk in production and consumption originated, and caused those Interstate
> funeral processions. Pirsig offered a way out that has nothing to do with
> changing the "freedom to choose", but enriching the dialogue so that
> Quality was the focus of the choice. Since, as you've said repeatedly, the
> MOQ has not gained universal acceptance, I can only conclude that people
> are still producing and consuming in a free market with no recognition of
> Quality. Are you suggesting that what Pirsig wrote about in ZMM has been
> fixed? How?
I don't see that Pirsig was out to "fix" the free market. He was out
"fix" morality, rescuing it from the barren wasteland it has become due to
SOM..
Platt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries -
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Oct 21 2005 - 15:42:32 BST