> You certainly have a point here, though I think you're
> overestimating the impact that authority/democracy/the
> free market has on the mindshare. Dan just makes it
> seem that way 'cuz he's so smart. =) And I think the
> main thrust of his arguments was backed more by the
> scientific method and less by democracy and the free
> market.
Dan just helped me focus the ideas a bit; my comments were by no means about
his particular point of view. I'm exploring this as a much bigger issue in
the book I'm working on now.
> The free market (or whatever) doesn't have perfect
> knowledge nor self correction, but it's the best we
> have right now.
Absolutely true, but I wonder if 500 years from now, we'll seem to our
descendants like slaves to corporations in the sense that we see our
medieval ancestors as slaves to popes and kings. Recognizing that the best
is far from perfect means greater tolerance and encouragement of
alternatives. The great danger, I believe, is the same one that
environmentalists see in a loss of biodiversity -- we lose problem-solving
ability, a degree of collective intelligence, as the diversity of things
like energy sources either dwindles or fails to reach an appropriate level.
I think this is just the argument made about Windows and the more I consider
it, the more correct it seems. For quite a while, I've thought Microsoft
should be punished more for its inhibition of collaboration (by trying to
corrupt the Java standard, as just one example) than its anti-competitive
behavior. I hope it's clear that those are all the same sort of things.
> The name of the game is efficiency,
> the allocation of resources where they'll do the most
> good. To be honest, I can't conceive of anything that
> could be an alternative to the efficient use of
> resources. Can you? From what I can see, the free
> market uses both feedback and collaboration. I'm not
> familiar with the sources you cited, I'd love if you
> could elaborate on some of those other principles.
While I would agree that the goal is maximizing return on investment, when
we assume that the market's feedback is the final arbiter, I think we end up
in trouble, not just because of the market's lack of perfect information,
but because the competitive feedback model itself is imperfect. I'm not
sure I made that clear in the first posting.
And yes, there is collaboration in the marketplace, just as there was
competition in feudal times. But medieval society did not regard
competition and feedback as a legitimate source of authority and I think we
tend to give short shrift to collaborative efforts (the open source movement
comes to mind) by damning their failure to show a profit.
> [snip] no
> purpose is served by putting a huge part of the EU's
> (or the world's) GNP into a solution that is poor when
> compared to other modern solutions.
Agreed, but only in the name of diversity of solutions. Faced with the
unknown long-term effects of fossil fuels, inventing a great diversity of
alternatives would seem to be in our interests. However, only a very, very
speculative market-based argument would let one reach that conclusion. Our
system seems to be concentrating power (no pun intended) in a relatively
small number of big energy corporations, and I think it inarguable that the
result is less innovation.
I appreciate the thoughts. You guys keep me sharp. I hope. ;-)
Nick
