Hi Platt,
> Those who see terrible problems in the free market system seem to
> have no solutions other than some form of totalitarianism. The last
> century saw the results of that course of action. Any other ideas?
IMO it's OK that the free market is more moral than communism, but this is not
the point. Pirsig clearly states that the communism (intellectual) would be in
principle more moral, but its mistake has been that it destroys every dynamism
at the social level..
Market is a social pattern. The right to a free market is an intellectual
pattern which ensures social dynamism. I think that we have problems when market
tries the invasion of intellectual patterns. So I think that it's immoral (for
example) for market to own ideas, rather than helping the development of ideas.
And this is happening.
During the cold war, many rights have been granted to citizens and workers and
artists and scientists in order to contrast communism; especially here in
Europe, where the influence of Soviet Union was high.
It seems to me that now that the cold war is over, the only mot is
"productivity"; there's less attention for the individual. I don't blame very
much market for that. It is a social pattern and it's blind to our
intellectual/individual rights. The task to contrast the market is up to all of
us. Not in order to eliminate it: we must find a solution to reduce market to
the role of servant of the individual, and not viceversa.
Ciao
Marco
p.s.
Thanks, Horse.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Platt Holden" <pholden@cbvnol.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2001 9:07 PM
Subject: MD Free Markets
> Hi Horse and Group:
>
> Thanks Horse for the reassurance. Perhaps it's time to get this site
> back on track by discussing the Metaphysics of Quality as proposed by
> Robert Pirsig.
>
> Several newcomers have written posts critical of the free market
> system in general and the United States in particular. Sadly these
> critics have failed to offer any philosophical rationale to justify their
> complaints. To do so, they will have to answer Pirsig who solidly
> supports free markets, as evidenced by the following quote from Lila,
> Chap. 17:
>
> "The Metaphysics of Quality provides the vocabulary. A free market is a
> Dynamic institution. What people buy and what people sell, in other
> words what people valve, can never be contained by any intellectual
> formula. What makes the marketplace work is Dynamic Quality. The
> market is always changing and the direction of that change can never
> be predetermined.
>
> "The Metaphysics of Quality says the free market makes everybody
> richer-by preventing static economic patterns from setting in and
> stagnating economic growth. That is the reason the major capitalist
> economies of the world have done so much better since World War II
> than the major socialist economies. It is not that Victorian social
> economic patterns are more moral than socialist intellectual economic
> patterns. Quite the opposite. They are less moral as static patterns go.
> What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists,
> reasoning intelligently and objectively, have inadvertently closed the
> door to Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling of things. They closed
> it because the metaphysical structure of their objectivity never told them
> Dynamic Quality exists.
>
> "People, like everything else, work better in parallel than they do in
> series, and that is what happens in this free enterprise city. When
> things are organized socialistically in a bureaucratic series, any
> increase in complexity increases the probability of failure. But when
> they're organized in a free-enterprise parallel, an increase in complexity
> becomes an increase in diversity more capable of responding to
> Dynamic Quality, and thus an increase of the probability of success. It's
> this diversity and parallelism that make this city work."
>
> Those who see terrible problems in the free market system seem to
> have no solutions other than some form of totalitarianism. The last
> century saw the results of that course of action. Any other ideas?
>
> Platt
>
>
>
>
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