Ed Weick:
..................... However, I would
> reiterate that capitalism is now so firmly entrenched in the culture of our
> society that only very radical social and economic change could expurgate
> it. It probably isn't worth it. The pain of such change would likely far
> outweigh its value.
>
You explained us brilliantly how people may change their environment.
They good at it. Slavery and feudalism was entrenched a few thousand
years longer than capitalism, not to mention the huntin/gathering
stage that went on probably for 50 K years. Some entrenchment!
Change occured
before in fact fairly peacefully - the initial revolutions in 1917
Russia, and say 1919 Hungary, were bloodless. The problem only
started when the ignorant/uninformed forces of the status quo take
to arms. But if most of the people are well informed about the aims -
even these mighty forces have no chance: eg the defeat of the Shah,
most of the east-european changes.
> As I suggested in my previous posting, I don't believe that it is capitalism
> that needs to be changed. I believe it is us. We need to shift our values
> away from what I called "emulative and competitive conspicuous consumption"
> to something that is more broadly based on the common good and the plight of
> our fellow men.
.... then you have no capitalism anymore by definition. You cannot
convince a capitalist to be an effective capitalist with the above
principles, it's impossible. He gets broke. Convince him, that
he may enjoy the same standard of living, without the constant worry
about enough growth, guilt, loss and isolation in a non-capitalist
system.
> How we produce goods and services will then not matter,
> except that we will still need to be efficient in how we go about it. How
> we consume and distribute them will matter a great deal.
>
> Ed Weick
>
>
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