: A person should have the right not to work.
: The result of the person's choice not to work, however, cannot be the concern of anybody but the person not working.
: Hence the freedom to starve.When at the point of a gun a hoodlum demands from a person "you money or your life," in your words it cannot be the concern of anybody but of the person who is held-up. Hence the freedom to be shot. I call this blackmail. By the same token, socially engineered hold-up, stating "your labour, or death by starvation" is a social blackmail.
We all enjoy freedom to die, whether by starvation amidst a plenty of food, or by any other means. This freedom can never be taken away from us. However, there is a subtle difference, I think, between choosing to die by starvation and being starved into employment.
: The right to food issue is just a part of (or a step to) the tried-and-failed communism experiment.
: What about shelter? air? water? These are all necessary to each human life. Should these be covered also?
Well, what about it? What about cars? Yachts? Castles? Should these be covered also?
I have a feeling that you are missing my point when you ask what should be covered. When you take out the Life Insurance, your funeral expenses are covered. Then you may ask: What about loss of limbs? Theft? Fire? Loss of income? Should they also be covered?
We are talking here about prepayment for food staples which was never on the minds of the communist experimenters; if it were it might have succeeded. There is nothing to stop us from having prepaid shelters also. The main reason for prepayment is the economy of it. Secondly it would do away with food banks, and thirdly, it would do away with the resentment of the taxpayer to be the keeper of his unwilling-to-work brother.
: Also, different people have significantly different needs for food and shelter.
: A male 6' 5" tall may eat 3 times as much as a 5' 5" female.
: Who decides who is rationed more? I'll bet the people on that commitee eat better than your average Joe (or Ivan).
When you go to a buffet restaurant which advertises a smorgasbord meal for $10, how does the restaurateur ration the amount of food that each person eats? How does he prevent the wastage? Does he sit on a committee monitoring how much Joe or Ivan consumes? By the same token, when sitting beside a fellow-passenger weighing 250 lbs, on an airplane, while oneself weighing only 125 lbs, who is paying for the extra baggage of 125 lbs?
Here again you seem to have missed my point. A Life Insurance premium e.g. is based on actuarial tables, and includes all the expenses that go into erecting life insurance building, its maintenance, utilities, salary of its employees, bonuses, coffee breaks, theft, wastage, etc. A premium for Prepaid Food Staples Plan would be similar in structure and very well cover a male 6Æ5" tall, eating 3 times the average.
: Communism didn't work folks. Give it up.
I donÆt know how did the word "communism" sneak into this discussion. I guess that you have low immunity to the communist virus. Communism failed for two reasons: it forced its people to work and it was a ruthless dictatorship. It practiced what Christianity preached, to the extreme: "the man who will not work shall not eat." It tried to build the workersÆ paradise here on earth, and rewarded every hard working person with a medal of a "hero of work." Whoever shunned the hard work was labeled as a social parasite and banished to the forced-labour camps in Siberia for re-education and indoctrination.
Perhaps, here again you have missed my point: freedom NOT to work makes you immune to dictatorship, whether coming from the right or from the left. It also provides immunity against the virulent strain of the communist virus. The Universal Prepaid Food Staples Plan sets up the stage where such freedom can flourish. Thus, donÆt praise the work ethic too much or else the communists will get you!
Walter Prytulak
