The God of the Machine - Tranche 34
Chapter XVII, Excerpt 1 of 3
The Fiction of Public Ownership
The phase “according to his needs” has no application in a productive society. It is an idea limited to the conditions of wild nature, in which primitive man lives on whatever he can catch. The collectivist is incapable of understanding this because his concept of ‘collective’ has no dimensions. The collectivist society is ‘planned’ for a world of two dimensions, in which nothing is conceived as occupying space or causing displacement . . . in which there is no energy, neither kinetic nor static.
The problem is to define the conditions necessary to a productive society. They must answer to the world of physical reality; nothing may be assumed to exist which does not so exist; nor may any aspect of physical phenomenon be excluded. The confusion and vagueness of terms always found in collectivist theories is not accidental; it is a reversion to the mental and verbal limitations of the primitive society it advocates, the inability to think in abstract terms.
Public ownership is fictitious; its verbal terms do not correspond to reality, to the conditions of time and space. When the collectivist rejects private property from his theoretic economy, he excludes material phenomena which mathematics recognizes by the third dimension. With the third dimension, cubic measure is possible; and the construction becomes capable of solid content. Real physical energy cannot exist except in a three-dimensional world, nor could it have been conceived abstractly.
The Fiction of Public Ownership
The phase “according to his needs” has no application in a productive society. It is an idea limited to the conditions of wild nature, in which primitive man lives on whatever he can catch. The collectivist is incapable of understanding this because his concept of ‘collective’ has no dimensions. The collectivist society is ‘planned’ for a world of two dimensions, in which nothing is conceived as occupying space or causing displacement . . . in which there is no energy, neither kinetic nor static.
The problem is to define the conditions necessary to a productive society. They must answer to the world of physical reality; nothing may be assumed to exist which does not so exist; nor may any aspect of physical phenomenon be excluded. The confusion and vagueness of terms always found in collectivist theories is not accidental; it is a reversion to the mental and verbal limitations of the primitive society it advocates, the inability to think in abstract terms.
Public ownership is fictitious; its verbal terms do not correspond to reality, to the conditions of time and space. When the collectivist rejects private property from his theoretic economy, he excludes material phenomena which mathematics recognizes by the third dimension. With the third dimension, cubic measure is possible; and the construction becomes capable of solid content. Real physical energy cannot exist except in a three-dimensional world, nor could it have been conceived abstractly.
In today's society, "the needy" apparently "need" cell phones with internet access, and health insurance, and now college!. All paid by "the government" of course, which really means those of us who are productive enough to pay taxes.