[EMAIL PROTECTED] (cmueller) wrote:
> Which brings me to Rodney's suggestion: "Perhaps at some point we
>can all be invited to express what we wish to get out of the list."
>Exactly. What do we want to "get out" of the list? I'll volunteer what I'm
>looking for: Public-policy insights that can help the policymakers of the
>world's 200 countries do a better job of solving their most pressing
>economic problems, i.e., poverty, crippling concentration of land ownership,
>environmental damage, corporate monopoly, and so. My guess is that we'd
>learn a lot more about these great policy issues if we could somehow
>persuade the quietest of our members--including those for whom English is a
>2d or even a 3d language--to give us the benefit of their thoughts and
>experience on them.
I'm trying out the new list address, by the way
([EMAIL PROTECTED] ) So I hope this surfaces without incident.
I joined this list seeking people who were thinking about the direction
that society is going, hoping to find a discussion of the mechanics of
the interactions of society, employment and technological change, and
people who were anticipating and planning for the profound changes
I saw as imminent, which are already starting to occur. I have never
felt that I knew enough about how economies really work (as opposed to
how economists say they do) to make any recommendations, but I hoped
to encounter people more expert than me, and learn from them.
As I've mentioned before, my early concerns about the future of work
mainly centred on the fact that noone seemed to be talking about it
at all, and finding this list was for me a great relief in itself.
Now, I think that the public dialogue is well engaged, and it's time
to start making concrete suggestions about what kind of future we want
to end up with, and how to migrate toward it effectively and painlessly.
I still feel that a sort of sleeves-rolled-up engineering approach,
with lots of computer modelling, and lots of critical review of model
assumptions, is the way to go at vetting proposals for reconstructing
the relationships between work, income, and society. I've seen a lot
of ideas go by, some of which sound pretty reasonable, and some which
raise a lot of questions. I just feel the world economic system is so
bloody complex that without modelling, there's no way to predict the
ultimate result of a major adjustment.
The goals you've listed are laudable, and I imagine everyone can
concur with them. I guess my concerns might be expressed something
along the lines of assuring a future where all people can reasonably
expect a life in a benign and hospitable environment, balancing access
to an equitable share of the earth's resources with an understanding
of their responsibilities in maintaining the health of a fragile
and vulnerable ecosystem; where hope, art and intellectual freedom
can thrive. Easy for me to say, eh?
-Pete Vincent
