Hi David!
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.
ROG:
Their size is relative and does not constitute a problem. The important
thing isn't that they are wealthy or powerful as long as they do not use this
power to exploit or monopolize the system and thus use that power to reduce
free enterprise rather than foster it. This means that other competing
institutions and factions must be powerful enough and diverse enough to
counteract any coercion. GM, for example, has to compete with Ford, Toyota,
unions, US steel producers, the Highway Safety Institute, Consumers Union,
State Farm Insurance, the trial bar, Harley Davidson, AMTRAK, Southwest
Airlines, and various acts of Congress and Government Bureaucracies
concerning the environment, fair trade, etc. The founding fathers of America
did NOT want to limit special interests, but to hold them in check with
competing interests. I do not understand your issue here. Is it that the
checks and balances are imperfect? (they are -- but one must consider the
alternatives)
DMB:
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.
ROG:
The theory deals with markets created via free division of labor and free
exchange. Slavery, colonial theft and forced child labor (by emloyers or
parents) are antithetical to free enterprise. These are all examples of
exploitation and involuntary coercion.
DMB:
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:
Good point. Emergent systems are most likely not what Pirsig would consider
4th level. However, the theory doesn't just describe it, it also provides
knowledge on how to foster free enterprise as well as on how to improve it
and preserve it. Thus, I would argue that it is now at least as intellectual
as any other economic theory.
DMB:
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.
ROG:
OK, fair enough. I concede the point that nations with a solid tradition of
liberal democracy have a much better (in fact very good) human rights record
when experimenting with socialist ideas. Cup emptied.
Help me refill it though. What are these required stages in your theory, and
what kind of democratic socialism are you arguing for? Mixed systems where
most business is free enterprise, supplemented with core government-owned
industries (such as banking, utilities and medical care)? Or something else?
What nation is closest to your ideal and why?
I am assuming that your definition of socialism does involve the common or
state ownership of land and the means of production? If yes, how does the
state acquire such assets?
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.
ROG:
Ha ha. You know that I am championing the morality of freedom and the
absence of coercion in my economics. Dishonesty, fraud and collusion are all
distortions or abuses of free markets.
Thanks!
Roger
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