Keith,
The temperature is high here. I too like passion but your description of humanity was pure Ron L. Hubbard. Come on over and let us take you out to dinner. If you can afford the ticket I will pick up the dinner check.:>)) REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 4:33 AM To: [email protected]; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Keynes the convert If I may intervene in this exchange . . . . . . At 02:39 12/07/2010 -0300, Mike Spencer wrote: Sandwichman <[email protected]> wrote: > NY Times Sunday Book Review July 11, 2010 > Hayek: The Back Story > By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER > > Last month, a funny thing happened on the way to the best-seller list. > A 66-year-old treatise by a long-dead Austrian-born economist began > flying off the shelves....The economist was Friedrich von Hayek, the > book was "The Road to Serfdom" > > [snip] Thank you, Tom. I have RtS, have tried to read it a couple of times over a decade or two. Never managed to get very far. My reaction was "Life is too short to wade through this polemic." Jennifer Schuessler's piece catches me up, I think, as far as I need to be caught up. I was particularly taken by Orwell's remark, that Hayek "does not see, or will not admit, that a return to 'free' competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse . . . than that of the state." The serfdom attendant on unrestrained corporatism cheerfully does away with one part of traditional feudalism , the obligation of the lord to provide the basic needs of his peasants. And this is the big fallacy of the left-wing. Just as the feudal lord needed his serfs (and one or two stewards in between to do the managerial work), so do corporations need a mass consumer market. Despite the massive inequalities that arise whenever an innovation hits the fan (financial derivatives-of-derivatives being the current case) the very rich still need their symbionts (the fawning professional middle-classes) to help manage the masses and extract money from them. Hate the monstrously rich or powerful if you wish but, human nature being what it is, almost all other individuals (including left-wingers) would take an opportunity were it to be offered. Alluding to my other message to Sandwichman, Hirsch explains why this is so today, and Veblen gives a clue as to how future gross social imbalances may be moderated. Keith Of course, many feudal lords didn't honor that obligation but the canon of corporatist lordship explicitly denies any even vaguely similar obligation in the words of The Prophet: Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible. -- Milton Friedman upon which I've remarked at greater length before. BTW, welcome back, Ray. - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ <http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A 0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0> ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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