ROG:
Perhaps you are a bit behind in your reading. In 1776, the intellectual
theory and concept of labor markets and economics was created by a certain
Adam Smith in the book *An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth
of Nations.* In it he explained how it was that division of labor and free
market exchange could lead to the efficient creation of wealth.
DMB:
You make a good case, but I think your reading selectively. Even Adam Smith
warned against what was called then "moneyed incorporations". Jefferson
warned of their increasing power as well. Today's corporations have far more
wealth and power than either of them could have ever imagined. Also, in Adam
Smith's time the European powers were deeply engaged in building colonial
empires, the slave trade, there were no child labor laws, worker saftey laws
or consumer protections. So this "efficient creation of wealth" was
predicated on the exploitation and misery of others. Further, just because
economies can be intellectually analyzed doesn't mean they are intellectual
in and of themselves. Using your logic, the fact that geology textbooks
exist would prove that rocks are intellectual. An Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of Earthquakes? But as I said, you make a good case and the study
of ecomonics can be every bit as intellectual as any other field of inquiry.
ROG:
Don't forget those other socialist (or once socialist) human rights notables
such as Rwanda, Cambodia, China, North Korea and the USSR. If I am not
mistaken, in their pursuit of the socialist vision, they exterminated three
times as many people as there are inhabitants in Canada.
DMB:
This is precisely the area where I suggest you need to empty your cup. The
nations you list here can't fairly be compared to Western democracies for
historical and cultural reasons, as I explained in detail with respect to
the USSR, which is far and away the most Westernized nation on your list,
but still can't rightly be compared. It apples and oranges. The existence of
democratic socialism requires certain stages of development. Just as is the
case with individual people, there is no way to skip stages or otherwise
avoid a step by step evolutionary process. Your list includes nations with a
very long legacy of brutal repression and a culture, just like a person,
can't be transformed overnight. Nations that have tried to defy this
principle, or more likely, falied to recognize it, have quickly reverted to
the old ways. This is the real cause of the exterminations and genocides.
Its the reaction to socialist ideals, not the ideals themselves. This is
precisely the concept that defies conventional wisdom and that apparently
can't fit into your already full cup.
DMB: (previously)
France and England are examples of a good mix. They were
the home of the Enlightenment and have the longest traditions of modern
democracy.
ROG:
Gee, I thought it was England and the United States. I could have sworn
that
the declaration of 1776 and the subsequent republic established by the
constitution was considered the first true democracy (at least since the
failed attempts back in ancient Greece). I also seem to remember hearing
about how the French revolution turned into the reign of terror, thousands
of
heads without bodies, the Emperor Napoleon and the attempted conquest of
Europe. Correct me though if I am wrong.
DMB:
OK. 1776 was before 1789. Point taken. But again, I was trying to get at the
same point as above, that democratic traditions need time to mature. They
have to grow out of the culture. I pointed to France and England because
most of the major Enlightenment figures were French and English. (And the
Scotts did very well a little earlier than them.) The fact that France's
revolution was followed by a reign of terror, that England was doing its
best to colonized the whole planet and that our own Constitution did nothing
to end slavery only shows how difficult it is to transcend ancient social
level traditions. All the more so for nations without a democratic legacy.
Roger:
Give it up David. A 100 million murders (Stalin and Mao sure were boys!)
and
a lost half-century of social progress for over 60 countries is enough
evidence.
DMB:
Yes, but evidence of what? This is where conventional wisdom failed. You
have to see past the surface, and for god's sake stop listening to Bill
O'Reilly, the Wall STreet Journal and the "scholar" at the AEI. In spite of
all the conservative voices say, Stalin was actually the most powerful Czar
Russia ever had. In spite of what he called himself, his true nature is
revealed in what he did. And what he did was act exactly like a Czar, as if
he owned all the land and all the people who lived upon it. Russian Czars
had done so for nearly a thousand years. How an agrarian based Asian country
with a traditon of thosands of years of Authoritarian Emperors ever expected
to transform themselves into a post-industrial Western democracy is beyond
me. I'm sure that the Enlightenment thinkers and Marxism itself expressed
ideas for which the Chinese didn't even have a word. Such ideals are so
completely alien to them than their attempts at adoption are completely
hopeless. Just as in the USSR, they quickly reverted back into what they
were before the revolution, except the names were changed to fool the
innocent. This is why, previously, I made such a fuss about the word
"nominal". The USSR and Red China was/is socialist IN NAME ONLY. There are
light years of space in the distance between what they call themselves and
what they really are. Reaction explains these murders. Its the social level
giant re-asserting itself.
PIRSIG:
"That is what the Giant really does. It converts accumulated biological
energy into forms that serve itself. When societies and cultures and cities
are seen not as inventions of "man" but as higher organisms than biological
man, the phenomena of war and genocide and all the other forms of human
exploitation become more intelligible." P218
PIRSIG:
"Here up in the sky above him right now were the heads of the corporation
that had prompted the chemistry professor to make that talk to that
fraternity so many years ago. This was the brain center of that corporate
network, surrounded by other networks: financial networks, information
networks, electronic transmission networks. That's what all those tiny
bodies were doing up there suspended so many hundreds of feet in the sky.
Participating in the Giant." 219
DMB:
I'm curious about the "financial giant" that you serve. Would it be Aurthur
Anderson by any chance? Let me know if need somebody to post bail for you.
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