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

David Stockhoff · 01 May 2011, 20:01 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sun, 01 May 2011 16:01:03 -0400
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <4DBD9605.5010106 at io.com>
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	<4DBD9605.5010106 at io.com>
Message-ID: <4DBDBBFF.6090603 at verizon.net>

Exactly. But there's nothing inevitable about exclusion from 
democracy/humanity.

On 5/1/2011 1:19 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
> 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.
>


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