> I challenge you to provide the reasoning that supports your comments. >
Not just the reasoning that supports your comments, but also the assumptions that give meaning to your comments, for William is right to say that without this background, they amount to very little. And I for one would actually be interested in your developed account of why the free market can be (in some qualified sense no doubt, and in virtue of some idea of the necessity of competition for progress) defended from the accusation made against it? William, it might be true to say that 'upon the simplest analysis your blunt and judgmental summations unravel as nothing but disconnected strings of words', although I personally doubt it. The very fact that your 'simplest analysis' of Boris's comment allowed you to move from it to a (supposedly connected) critique of his 'tangle of implications' shows that you yourself cannot have thought as much, implications being the kind of thing that are not normally present in disconnected strings of words. And we can all see the (albeit as presented, simplistic) aim of Boris's comment - given a sympathetic reading of it. Given the natural limitations of email based dialogue when it comes to critical discussion of any kind, perhaps we can help it along a bit, by not immediately stating problems with the 'simplest analysis' we can think of. As we should all be capable of a more 'sympathetic' analysis, that might draw out what is right, or could be right, about a view, this seems a more constructive methodology. Having said that, the onus must surely be on the original writer to give as much help as possible towards a sympathetic analysis by everyone else, and so what say you Boris? R
