"Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe

Jeff Wilson · 01 May 2011, 17:19 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Sun, 01 May 2011 12:19:01 -0500
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
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Message-ID: <4DBD9605.5010106 at io.com>

On 5/1/2011 12:08 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> One could establish a democracy under the rule of law. But I see the
> basic principle.
>
> I don't see how it extends to poor Chinese people whose water supplies
> are poisoned by melamine simply because Americans want plastic things
> and China is unable or unwilling to protect the Chinese from the effects
> of corruption and environmental pollution (can I call it "environmental
> corruption"?).
>
> There's a lot going on there between arm and nose in such a case.
>
> At any rate, as far as that word "impossible"---I doubt anyone has
> really tried doing avoiding injustice on a large scale without excluding
> certain classes of people as nonhumans. And those that have tried have
> been shot.

Your suggested democracy under the rule of law does this: people outside 
the democracy's rule are not given equal protections to those within. 
This allows exploitation of those without by those within, which is 
where the principle extends to or at least abuts the poor people in China.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

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