At 5:33 PM -0400 10/13/98, Ed Weick wrote, in part:
>
>The point I would make is that economies have to be powered by something -
>that is, they have to have a dominant institution which enables them to
>function. While it is true that, in the past, mankind was not subjected to
>gain and profit as these now exist, it is also true that people were
>exploited as beasts of burden who could be beaten or even killed at the whim
>of their overlords. In comparison with the economic institutions of former
>times, I would take the market any day.
As Henry George (and others) have pointed out, the lot of the wage
slave in an economy where there is a surplus of labour is no better and
quite often worse than that of a chattel slave. In such a society (i.e.
one loike ours), the marginal wage tends to be what will keep the
worker going until tomorrow- enough to fill his stomach however
crudely. In most chattel slave societies, there is an incentive to keep
the slaves in good physical condition, and there is often a moral
imperative to take care of them when they are too sick or too old work
to work.
In our country, welfare tends to sets the limit. In many countries
there is no limit. North American couples often need three or four jobs
to approach their oparents' standard of living. So far as material
things go, this may be part of the inevitable winding down of excessive
consumption, but even if so it is being done most inequitably and at
the expense of all of the rest of life.
I am actually a great admirer of the market system, but two
prerequisites for its effective function are perfect competitition
(practically non-existent) and perfect information- almost as rare in
the world of ubiquitous advertising and the corporate media. Like
Marxism, the free market has never been tried.
Caspar Davis
