Harry you said,
When you take time off from the chorale to make your own clothes, and build your own furniture, I will know that you don't believe in comparative advantage.
 
 
Reply:
 
I am a cabinet maker and have made plenty of furniture, roofed houses, and built them.    I lived in one of those tar paper shacks for a couple of years when my Father didn't make enough as a school teacher to afford otherwise.   My mother made my clothes and as an Indian I am required to hand make my ceremonial regalia.   All done from a sense of prayer and respect for that which makes it possible for me to be clothed including the plant and animal.  
 
You make a lot of comments that you don't know much about when it comes to where I have come from and done.   I didn't grow up in the same place as you and neither did you me.  I can remember when the highway patrol welcomed Brits to California but turned away Okies at the border.   You should give up being so middle class about it all and come down here and get to know us folks.  We are very nice people and would give you a spot of tea and some fry bread although we wouldn't give you a beer.  We don't drink.
 
REH
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 10:37 PM
Subject: RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade

Ray,

Don't think George ever mentioned the invisible hand. Certainly not in his major books. I must say I can't understand the difficulty about the concept of the invisible hand.

What it says is that if each individual member of the community is better off then it can be said that the whole community is better off. Is this something difficult to understand?

Curious.

A clear understanding of what is private property, and what is common property, is absolutely essential to a free and prosperous society.

When you take time off from the chorale to make your own clothes, and build your own furniture, I will know that you don't believe in comparative advantage.

Harry

********************************************
Henry George School of Social Science
of Los Angeles
Box 655  Tujunga  CA  91042
Tel: 818 352-4141  --  Fax: 818 353-2242
http://haledward.home.comcast.net
******************************************** 
 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ray Evans Harrell
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2003 9:52 AM
To: Keith Hudson; Ed Weick
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Caveman Trade vs. Modern Trade

It seems to me that you all are arguing the superiority of your own particular system as nature.   Keith claims nature for trade and demands a rock bottom (gold) while Ed talks relativity and processes (flow model) on the other hand Keith gives Ricardo a sort of environmentalist bent where everything will take care of itself if you just remove all the dams from the river.   Except modern nation states that deal with civil authority as a balance to diversity and that accords strength to civil contracts based upon equality rather than authority pleads the case for dams to remove floods and make cities and housing possible.   Chris claims that Ricardo was misunderstood.   Then we get a fight over interpretations.   It is all so biblical.
 
I suspect Ricardo, Smith, George and others who talked about invisible hands were speaking as Egyptians who had a natural ebb and flow in the Nile that served them well for the longest single state in the history of the world.    But that does little for the complexity of the present.   We live in a world where wealth is accruing in the hands of the elite and where they are also struggling to gather the finest of everything to themselves and giving to the church the egalitarian purpose of serving the cultural and welfare needs of the poor.    "If you want music, go to church!" as was said by a policeman in a recent comedy.    We might remember that it was Alfred North Whitehead that said that it was the "Ultimate Abstractions that taught us the meanings of things" and music as well as math are one of those "ultimate abstractions."
 
The Scandinavian states are more secular or perhaps just less diverse so their overall secular instrument serves the needs of the whole population better.   The same is true of their cultural institutions which were marveled at not long ago when their state sponsored orchestras visited New York.   All of the complaints about the decay of the state as advanced by both Keith and Harry does not seem to be the case in a smaller population and a less diverse one.    Remember where Harry is in California is a ferment of diversity, cultural and economic change.   Hence "give us a hero."
 
I think the real point here is that Canada and the US are special cases nothing like England or elsewhere except maybe in the beginning throes of the European Union which is beginning to resemble pre-Bismarck Germany.   We forget that Germany was a series of small states at war with each other and that they didn't want to join any more than Norway wants to join Europe today.   The issue here is more complicated than Ricardo or any of the economists have thus far dealt with.    Canada and America is extremely irresponsible to its citizens preferring to replace them with immigrants who show them what "shits" they are for complaining about such things as healthcare and education.   Immigrants who were trained in the schools of America's old enemies and who carry the cultural bug of that system in their training.   Not logical at all but myths are hard to shake.
 
I suspect that they are reacting to their cultural myths out of fear.   It seems that most of them suffer from a Judeo Christian inability to think logically about big systems while making peace with the everyday life.   Christianity has the same problem when they confess their sins, lay them off on God, get forgiveness and continue to be irresponsible.   They then state the ideal as the goal while ignoring it in their lives and getting forgiveness for ignoring it.    So nothing is ever seriously tested, especially the ideals.   No one ever deals with the possibility of an ignorant, angry God who has lost control of his creation.   Or how illogical that is in the contemplation of eternal realities and transcendent omniscience.    Their description is not of an omniscient, benevolent being by any means.   Petulant might be a better description.
 
Abortion is a perfect example.  The ideal of life.  So perfect that even masturbation is killing.  Birth control is out of the question.  Of course abstinence is the key for everyone but the poor male who was given the hormones (by God)  not to be.   Well then discipline.   But the best disciplined is also the most likely to have his life shortened by a clogged prostate.   Is it any wonder that we have among men a plague of prostate cancer today in civilized society?   Why would it be any less logical that mastery of any part of the body would include cleansing any more than digestion?   But we are not doing so well with food and digestion either.   We give up Mastery and skill preferring ignorance and faith.  
 
Sex is another.   Christian attitudes towards sex are dysfunctional and mired in the middle class.  The Roman church's answer was the hierarchy which made children of the masses and celibate (sexually ignorant) fathers who would progressively interpret the texts.  
 
With massive literacy Catholics are now reading the bible and starting the history of the church all over again with the abuses of the early church.   Might I say that it is the  "abuse" of the child in the act of growing up.   Protestants stressed reading, like the Jews and outran the Catholics until the present.   Only wealth and power balanced their not being overrun by the world.   Mike Hollinshead blamed this on nonconformist theology.   I suspect it simply had to do with literacy in the masses.   When Islam stressed literacy they too excelled in math and science but they had an elitist reaction from the wealthy and once more made the poor illiterate.   How interesting the that Taliban, those demons, were again stressing literacy for the poor while the approved war lord today have once again put the people safely "in their place."    If we were to look at the history of the first seventy years of America we too could find Taliban like abuses in the treatments of groups.   The communists in China used to put the heads of drug addicts along the road to break the addiction to opium brought by the West in exchange for tea.   There are no heroes here but plenty of demons.
 
Today we have a great turmoil in the world as protestants envy Catholic's certainty and create their own little world with mega churches, a semi hierarchy and their own schools.   The answer, I believe is not a pendulum but a historical evolution more akin to Democratic decline into despotism.    Meanwhile the elite wealthy have collaborated by absorbing the complex secular culture as their turf and making it economically unavailable.   That has driven the masses to religion for culture, welfare and community.   A Baptist is a Baptist no matter where in the world.   All they need to do is move their letter from one church to another and they have full voting rights in the congregation.   All they need to do to be a member is swear allegiance to the sovereign of the Baptist church.   Its free and they make a big deal about that and the forgiveness before the big Kahuna because the payment was made for his anger.    But does the system work?   Well, it is certainly less murderous than the coliseum and is more sensitive than "let them eat cake."    But is it a really intelligent system?   
 
Keith, you are seeing some anti-intellectual elements appear in England.   That is not surprising as the breakdown of Empire caused immigration into England and diversity appeared.    The answer to diversity in the Western tradition is the liberal secular state that guarantees equal rights, availability of education,  community development, healthcare and the right to work for the best potential of your talent.     That is the balance to religion and what keeps religion from turning cancerous.  It is also the balance to unfettered trade and greed.   Everything is about balance and not about nature.   Humanity decides balances and bases the answers on the current situation both in the human and natural worlds.  
 
Today we are a planet alive with a coming change in the magnetic poles that severely effects the environment and yet we can't even decide how to take care of our poor in an environmental situation of our making.   Nature is beyond our imagination.   That is a problem with the current myths.   We can't seem to consider all humans as potential rather then considering them as things to be economically exploited.   Personally, I think modern "classical" economics is as cancerous in its needs as is runaway religion.   I also believe that assigning nature to human activities is always a very dangerous proposition.   That is not our gifts as animals compared to the rest of the animals.    The silliest thing of all is the concept of property.    The only property is Intellectual property that you arrive and leave with.    Everything else belongs here.   Everything else is about negotiation, wisdom and the courage to be who you are to the best of your potential and to find your peace with your fellow humans.
 
REH  
 
 

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.541 / Virus Database: 335 - Release Date: 11/14/2003

Reply via email to