Max B. Sawicky wrote:
>... If we all began the
>quest for income from the same starting
>point, and the determining factors were
>luck, innate abilities, and industriousness, I
>wonder how many would favor altering the results
>of such a process, beyond the mundane ones
>of moderating the extremes or ensuring some
>minimum standard of living to all.
Why is it that after reading just a few classics of sociology and
anthropology in my wild youth (not to mention a smattering of literature), I
feel like a visitor from outer space when I read Max's words or some of the
other contributions to this thread. THE QUEST FOR INCOME . . . God, I hope
they don't make it into a movie. (I can almost hear the sound track, now:
dum-dum DUM dum, dum-dum DUM dum...;-))
Forget about luck, innate abilities and industriousness on the one hand and
equality on the other hand. What about the idea that the cash nexus is a
new-fangled will-o'-the-wisp, anyway? I couldn't resist dipping into a
little Marcel Mauss (The Gift) before writing this to reassure myself that I
hadn't dreamed it. Yes, there were (are?) people living in (shall we say)
"non-capitalist" arrangements. We even may be some of them, ourselves --
simply not keeping as diligent records of our non-market exchanges as of our
market exchanges.
What about the suggestion that even much of what *passes* for market
exchanges are ritual activities that are then given the respectible cover of
market exchanges? What, then, does luck (innate abilities, industriousness,
equality of opportunity or equality of outcome) have to do with it? And how
much is just totem and taboo wearing a bowler hat?
How come this thread doesn't address the question of "potlatch capitalism"
or some other hybrid variety, instead of insisting on a false dichotomy
between two versions of idealistic rationalism, market exchange and central
planning?
Or did the anthropologists and sociologists just make it all up and we're
all really descended from Robinson Crusoe?
(I left the truncated "ut" off the end of the subject line. Maybe the
truncation of utopia was apt.)
Regards,
Tom Walker
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