Re: Ganja

[Rob Schaap <rws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day Dennis,

>On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, boddhisatva wrote:
>
>> 	Isn't being pro-marijuana being pro-market?

Well, certainly being pro-market means you gotta be pro-Marijuana.  That's
all very well, but you also gotta be pro-kiddie-porn.  The fabled price
mechanism has wrought its magic on the net in this respect, or so *Time*
told us (admittedly in the great campaign to domesticate the net, a
technology not produced directly by capitalism, and therefore one without
the necessary inbuilt control mechanisms).  But our privateers blithely
make sweeping exceptions to their theory here - only, you'll notice, by
*denying* people access that the price mechanism would otherwise afford
them.

Much more rarely do they offer access that mechanism would otherwise deny
them.  And the rare exceptions (security, law'n'order, and sometimes
education) are usually merely externalisations of bourgeois costs.

>Oh but we're all pro-market nowadays. I, for example, am a great believer
>in the marketplaces of radicalism, direct action, union organizing and
>ruling-class-bashing. I

.... got overly excited and accidentally hit the send button with a
punctuating sweep of the oratorial arm?  Well, if your own rhetoric can't
move you, it won't move anyone else, eh?  Anyway, I reckon this
'market-place of ideas' talk is hegemonic cancer.  We're talking use values
here, and use values only - which is why you don't meet too many rich
radical, activist, union-organising dissenters.

I'm blathering - I obviously have work to do and I'm obviously distracting
myself.

So I'd better stop.

Happy May Day drinkies to all,
Rob.