From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   There are people who think that they speak for the working man. The question   
   to ask these people is, “What do you mean by work?”   
      
   There are many things that are work that someone would claim not to be work.   
   Pol Pot thought that businessmen and professionals weren’t doing real work,   
   so he killed off the entire propertied and educated population of Cambodia.   
   Closer to home there    
   are many people who see art as not work. I know more about the subject than   
   they do, and I can tell that art very much is work. It takes a lot of effort   
   to produce a good piece of art, and that qualifies very much as work.   
      
   Some people see social workers as being parasitical as well. In fact they are   
   doing a valuable contribution. It takes a lot less money to hire a social   
   worker to check someone’s criminal tendencies than it does to lock them up.   
   What social workers do    
   is therefore beneficial to the taxpayer, and they deserve to be treated with   
   respect.   
      
   The academia is frequently accused of being parasitical as well. What we have   
   here is failure of comprehension. Most of what business sells is technology,   
   and technology comes out of science. The true root of prosperity is not   
   business but science; and    
   while business has a large role in it, without science business would be   
   nothing more than exchange of basic commodities at the level it was in   
   Medieval Persia.   
      
   Government – you know everything of which it has been accused. My response   
   is that not all governments are the same. American government is nothing like   
   North Korean government. It does not begin to compare in tyranny and cruelty.   
   In America, the worst    
   abuses aren’t done by the government. They are done by private entities and   
   individuals. Incestuous and violent parents, suffocating communities, corrupt   
   networks in law and medicine, dishonest religious organizations, mafia and the   
   gangs. And while it    
   remains necessary to hold the government accountable to the voter, real   
   improvement in America stands to be gained by recognizing potential for   
   wrongdoing in all entities – both public and private – and confronting   
   that wrong-doing.   
      
   I seek to confront Pol Potism whether it be against propertied people or   
   against creative people and whether it be practiced by government or by   
   private entities. Most of the people they attack perform a function. Not all   
   pursuits are immediately    
   compensated; many take a long time to mature or have a meaning that is only   
   understood through expanded analysis. Art, social work and science very much   
   are work. And it is important that this be recognized.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)