At 10:11 PM Thursday 4/13/2006, Nick Arnett wrote:
On 4/13/06, Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>
> Well, I don't think it really has to go that far. A system that claims no
> more than the best representation we've seen so far is all that is
> fundamentally claimed.
Dan! My *premise* was that I hear a lot of liberal capitalist
fundamentalism. You don't get to change my premise by saying that something
else is claimed. You only get to argue against my premise. I really do hear
it and I'm not comparing liberal capitalist democracy to known
alternatives. The idea that it is the best we've done so far is orthogonal
to what I'm saying. I have no problem with the idea that it is the best
we've come up with so far. That may well be true.
Being the best doesn't mean something is good or complete. Sometimes the
best is fairly awful.
Let me make a comparison to religion. Let's say there are a whole bunch of
Christians who believe that they have the best theology around. Some of
them think that having accomplished that, it must remain unchanged forever.
Those are the fundamentalists. Others agree that it is the best theology
around, but they don't believe it can remain frozen as it is. Those are not
fundamentalists. That's what I mean by fundamentalism.
>
> But, as those who work with church charities know, combating hunger, or
> massive destruction, like that seen in New Orleans, cannot simply be the
> responsibility of charity.
I'm confused. What does this have to do with what we're talking about? I
didn't propose "charity" as a replacement for liberal capitalist democracy.
> I believe that networks, in the many meanings of that word, are already
> > demonstrating the incompleteness of economic fundamentalism as it exists
> > in the western world today.
>
> If it is fundamentalism, then it has to be in opposition to a concrete
> system, not the view that is still hazy. If you think that the present
> understanding of politics and economics is inherently flawed, and that
> there
> are concrete empirical examples of this, then I'd be interested in seeing
> them.
I haven't suggested that the *understanding* of modern liberal capitalism is
flawed. I said that modern liberal capitalist democracy isn't the best we
can do. There's a future out there. Some people think that the political
economy won't change in any significant way, or if it does, it'll be for the
worse; that there is no possibility of a system that is better than the one
we have and so all we can do is keep refining it. I disagree, strongly.
What I've seen many times before are general outlines that people see of
> future paradigm shifts. The first one was the one we grew up with....when
> "the times, they are a changing." While change did happen, the present
> doesn't match the '60s vision I remember reading and hearing.
>
> You seem to be talking about such a change that the very ideas of politics
> science, sociology, and economics as organizations of understanding of
> human
> systems will fall by the wayside.
No. The system can change without the way we think about such systems
changing. Socialism can be understood with the same sorts of logic and
analysis as communism, capitalism, etc. I'm saying there's something that
lies beyond capitalism, which is beginning to be visible in networked
systems, which behave qualitatively differently. To make an analogy, string
theory didn't fundamentally change the way that theoretical physics is
approached -- it is still mathematical modeling based on particles, masses,
charges, etc. But it changed *what* they think. Quantum mechanics and
special relativity suddenly found a way to get along, as part of a new,
bigger picture.
>
> But, I don't see this in the same paradigm shift fashion that you seem to.
> I think I told you, I read Kuhn way before he was cool, and misquoted
> everywhere. In my field, there have been two real paradigm shifts in
> 2500+
> years. Since Kuhn's book, I've seen a number of claims to paradigm
> shifts,
> that were overblown, to put it mildly.
Paradigm shifts take a long time. Do you imagine that there's been enough
time for networking (and I mean far more than just the Internet) to be
involved in such changes? I seriously doubt it. What I'm talking about is
the sort of thing that takes decades or centuries. I don't think we've seen
the real impact of networking (and again, I mean much more than data
networks).
So, I'm really curious. How does networking form the basis for a new
> paradigm that is so clearly correct, that those who look at things in the
> more traditional way are fundamentalists?
"So clearly correct?!" Could you argue from your premise any more??? Our
"clearly correct" system has dramatically widened the gap between rich and
poor. It has left millions without health care in a country that has most
of the world's wealth. It makes war on another country based on horribly
flawed intelligence. We had a presidential election with anomalies that
drastically defied probability. I could list all sorts of things that could
become better, but if you already believe this is the best we can do, then
what's the point?
As for what things might look like in the future, I haven't tried to
articulate my intuitions much. However, as I see emergent properties of
networks surprising us in so many ways, I have little doubt that the seeds
of great change are being sown. I think that liberal capitalism will look
to our descendants as backward as feudalism appears to us. Just as there
were aspects of capitalism in feudalism and we have preserved some feudal
ideas in the liberal capitalist democracy, I'm sure that our descendants
will enjoy some aspects of capitalism... but it will be a different system
at some point, with freedoms that we can no more imagine than our feudal
ancestors could. Perhaps the way that we serve corporations and other
capitalist power centers will look to them much as we regard serfs in
service to their feudal masters.
Do you think that an improvement in the economic system is possible
without an improvement in human nature, e.g., replacing the emphasis
on greed with one on honesty and helping others?
--Ronn! :)
"Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country
and two words have been added to the pledge of Allegiance... UNDER
GOD. Wouldn't it be a pity if someone said that is a prayer and that
would be eliminated from schools too?"
-- Red Skelton
(Someone asked me to change my .sig quote back, so I did.)
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