tom?> ... "profit" which by it's very nature implies that some will
tmo?> gain while others lose.
harry> When a trade takes place, both sides are better off (have made
harry> a profit) or they wouldn't have traded.
This is metaphysics.
jay> Economists DO NOT STUDY REALITY.... It's about a religious cult
jay> of economists chained in their chairs...
Or theology.
harry> I'm a radical advocating a completely free market...
john> There is no such thing as a "completely free" market and for
john> that matter no such thing as markets without their embeddedness in
john> other social institutions.
Indeed. The notion of a "market" is a putatively useful abstraction of
one or two variables. One of the few things we know surely about the
human central nervous system is that its complexity dashes any hope of
characterizing human behaviour or aspiration -- any of the emergent
phenomena we to which we allude when we speak of "human" -- by such a
poverty-stricken calculus except in statistical aggregates or in such
extreme contexts as pain, fear or bare survival.
One of the reasons that we on FW have so many difficulties envisioning
a future for work is that, over two or three centuries, we have
gradually become locked in to a notion of work cut to fit the
Procrustean bed of such simplistic notions as "markets", "labor" and
"profits". It is very hard to develop any insights that conflict with
the revealed truths evinced by the successes of what we loosely call
"the system".
Some kinds of "successes" are more so than others. I'm reminded of a
story told me: Bob and Alice were contestants on a TV quiz show. The
game was that they would take turns thinking of words that ended with
"th". The one to pronounce thae last "th" word, leaving the other
contestant unable to think of another, would win. The game went like
this:
A: with
B: both
A: moth
B: lath
A: hath
B: fifth
A: sixth
B: seventh
A: eighth
B: ninth
Etc. etc. etc...
A sort of "success", one that outsmarted the context and destroyed the
game. In the biological domain, refined sugar is a similar "success",
making possible the marketing of edible products that are uncoupled
from and subversive of the biology of nutrition and even from (and of)
the social phenomenon of eating together. Addictive substances are
another example.
I submit that capitalism and "markets" as we've known them for the
last 100 or 150 years are just such a success. And by defining
ideology and dominating social infrastucture, this malignant success
subverts constructive evolution of social economy.
Why have we adopted, I might say, fallen for, such an ossified frame
of reference? Well, we like simple explanations and sometimes we need
them to cut a Gordian Knot. And there's the seven-to-nine
limitation. But more to the point, there's the flush of success, even
if it's a subversive, destructive success like refined sugar or the
chance discovery of induction on the TV game show. Permit me another
anecdote:
I once did a blacksmithing demonstration for a group of 8- or
9-yearolds. Roaring flames in the forge, glowing bars of iron, massive
tools, clanging hammers, showering sparks and slicing and squashing
iron like putty. The kids were silent and awestruck despite my opening
gambit of encouraging them to interrupt at any point with
questions. Except one little guy who pointed to the hook I was making
and said, "How much does that cost?". An odd question but I answered
it at a 3rd grade level and went on. He interrupted twice more, to ask
how much, first the anvil and then some other thing, cost.
After the kids were gone, I was chatting with the woman whom I'd asked
to be present to ensure that none of the kids did anything dangerous
while I was concentrating on the demo. I remarked that there was at
least one bright, attentive kid in the group. Her part had been to
watch the kids closely and now she pointed out that the questioner had
appeared to be the least bright child there, perhaps by a substantial
margin. But if he had problems understanding what was going on, he had
learned one thing that was a success, that was not wrong nor typically
evocative of ridicule, whether or not he understood what was going on:
to be concerned with the cost of somthing. And so he had a single
string to his bow of social graces, one that would not incur wrath or
rejection, one typically evocative of approval, and that was to ask
how much somthing cost.
A one-dimensional "success" in a highly multidimensional, complex
system is, like cancer, a disaster for the system. In our case, the
system is most certainly not "The Global Economy", but the highly
evolved biosystem of which we and all our social institutions are
inescapably part. I submit that our implementation of coporatist
capitalism and it's drive for "completely free markets" is such a
successful disaster and the dialogue on what we might do now or next
is dominated by people who have, laboriously and at great expense,
learned to ask, under all circumstances, "How much does it cost?"
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Nova Scotia, Canada
URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html
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