[MD] Value and the Individual

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt]
> Perhaps you can show me where Pirsig adds "regulated" to "free market."
> 
> [Arlo]
> Pirsig provides the context for understanding why people demanded 
> regulation following the low-quality experiences that had during a 
> wholly unregulated market. But if you think Pirsig wants to abolish 
> wage laws, and pollution regulations, and workplace safety codes, and 
> child labor regulations, and the like and return to the time when 
> business turned the Chicago River into coagulated blood stew and 
> miners bodies could be dropped off with an eviction notice for the 
> family, then I think you're more concerned with the "age old 
> exploitation of the poor" than with Quality (Dynamic or otherwise).

You may be right. But I doubt if Pirsig would support the left's general 
concept that when people have low quality experiences that more government 
regulation is the answer.  Recall what he said about pragmatism. 

> [Platt]
> You can always become a traitor when your nation is threatened. But I 
> doubt you have the balls.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Excellent evasion. Nice use of "traitor" and an allusion to cowardice.
> 
> But I will reask. If the government is so evil, so inept, so 
> malicious, so enslaving, so bungling, so preposterously "bad", then 
> why should I fall lockstep with that government when it wants to take 
> me to war?
> 
> And rephrase. If the government is so evil, so inept, so malicious, 
> so enslaving, so bungling, so preposterously "bad", then why should I 
> (1) believe them when they tell me "my nation is threatened", (2) 
> believe that they have the solutions, and (3) are able to actually 
> act out those solutions?

Government is neither "evil" nor "bad" nor "malicious" in carrying out its 
legitimate function of protecting society. ("Inept," "bungling" -- yes.) 
The answer to your questions is contained in Lila. The fact that you ask 
them at all is explained as follows:

"In the battle of society against biology, the new twentieth-century 
intellectuals have taken biology's side. Society can handle biology alone 
by means of prisons and guns and police and the military. But when the 
intellectuals in control of society take biology's side against society 
then society is caught in a cross fire from which it has no protection." 
(Lila, 24).   

> [Platt]
> Typical lattee liberal distortion.
> 
> [Arlo]
> "Lattee liberal". Clever. Was that the squalking bite on Limbaugh today.

You ought to know since you listen to Limbaugh all the time  So maybe you 
prefer "Mercedes Marxist?"

> But let's take a look and see how "distortive" I was.
> 
> [Arlo previously]
> When this happens on the community level, as it has in Finland and 
> Japan, public education is fully successful.
> 
> [Platt responded]
> Right, like it was in Communist Russia, Socialist Italy and Nazi Germany.
> 
> [Arlo's distortion?]
> So Finland and Japan are one-step away from mass graves and genocide 
> because they value education as a community?
> 
> [Arlo]
> Gee. If that's a distortion, Platt, then tell me what point it was 
> making OTHER than what I said? What purpose did it serve to evoke 
> "Nazi Germany" in the context of showing how a country like Finland, 
> that values education on the community level was successful? What 
> parallel did you hope to make? For what purpose?

Answered in another post. 

> [Platt]
> I guess those who hold Reagan in high esteem are stupid in your book.
> 
> [Arlo]
> No more and no less than those who hold Carter in high esteem are 
> stupid in your book. So what's your point?

Point? The egotism and avowed superior intellect of liberals and 
secularists who are probably looking down their noses at the crowds  of 
religious, gun-loving, white racists cheering the pope.