What I wrote to my family e-mail list:
According the political myths of the day, we live in a world of dualities:
Us and them
Winners and losers
Christians and Atheists
Capitalists and Communists
And on and on. In that two dimensional world the human body only has two
sides. A front and a back.
But let's take the Capitalist/ Communist or (socialist as a stand-in for
communist these days)
What are the qualities of a Capitalist versus the qualities of a Socialist?
Capitalists are directed by the need for capital at all costs. (I didn't
make this up. Bibliography available if you are interested) I got it from
my economists friends including one who was an editor at Fortune Mag.
wrote a best seller on capital and who then became the editor of the Harvard
Business Review. The bottom line for value, as he explained to me, was
whether it was "wealth producing" i.e. made money.
Capitalists don't do a job to be good. They are good if they make money
and that's the sole reason for being good at what they do. If you don't
believe me just listen to CNBC or to the Fox business channel. If it
doesn't make money for the capitalist, they stop being good at that and
try something else. Capitalists are also lover's of things, objects.
Property is pleasure and for its own sake. Property and capital are not
means to the end of personal competence in some activity that is truly
difficult to do other. (boring doesn't count) Personal Mastery is
the enemy of capitalism except the Mastery of making money. The even
write books calling it the Art of Making Money and use it to justify
billionaire greed. Property turns capitalists on and makes them feel
safe. Just read what the Koch brothers say about their property. I'm
not making this up. In capitalism, the house is the bottom line for
being a valuable person, if you are not wealthy, but a believer in
capital-ism.
People who are not in the upper 1% i.e. "bad" capitalists, "losers" etc.
have to find their entertainment, quality of life, etc. through religion.
Religion provides free moral lessons, free moral education for the young
and free entertainment and community. In capitalism, religion is the
poor man's version of a gated community. You have to agree to join and
you have to be accepted to belong.
Europe has the vestige of aristocratic quality in culture. Europeans are
not so good at organization and technique, so the capitalist story goes, but
they ARE cultured. Americans ARE by nature the losers of Europe ("huddled
Masses yearning to breathe free") and the rest of the world. Indians are
the most losers of all because they lost out to the losers of the world.
In capitalism, if you are not a winner then you look for the best bargain.
But the bottom line is: Capitalists won't do anything they aren't paid for
doing unless it is charity or a vacation. If it's neither of those then
it's useless. Charity shows your prowess over others and a vacation is
leisure for the purpose of renewing your commitment to making money.
Capitalists are "on commission" while laborers are one step removed from
socialists since they are on salary and most everyone in socialism is on
salary. As the head of IBM world pointed out and was pointed out again
last week in the NYTimes, corporations are governments with laborers,
management (their version of politicians) and shareholders (their version of
the communist party elite).
In Communism there is only one slate of politicians to vote on accept or
reject and the only people with the power is the party who are the
"shareholders" in the property of the state. They are the "owners."
In both capitalism and communism, the laborer is the underling. The serf.
Capitalism promises a way up through the market but removes education and
incentives by clustering the mass of capital in the upper 1%. Communism
tests people and sends them to school to become experts. Siberian Eskimos
become symphony conductors under communist schools. Serfs become
scientists through superior education through communism, but there is no
market to climb in. There are salaried workers, salaried government
management and the Party shareholders. Party membership is limited.
At this juncture I would point out that the American Governmental system is
neither communist nor capitalist nor socialist. It doesn't have that
system. It has a system of checks and balances that require that everyone
enter into the act of governing. For the last two years the Republican
Party has refused to govern and like the French and the labor unions, they
have gone on strike. They would like to make this about Capitalism and
Socialism but that is gratuitous and a specious argument. (Yes I learned
those words in my father's school at Picher.) I also learned to think in
systems and to not listen to what things are called (names) but to think
about how the systems paralleled one another and to find out what was really
going on.
More tomorrow.
Uncle REH
From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 12:06 PM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION; Ray Harrell
Subject: RE: [Futurework] Back cover blurb
Thank you. Very sporting of you.
KSH
At 10:36 26/10/2010 -0400, you wrote:
Congratulations on your new book Keith.
REH
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 10:21 AM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION
Subject: [Futurework] Back cover blurb
FWers might be interested in the back-cover blurb for my new book, A Species
in the Making. I might mention that further evidence for the quickie route
to speciation (see below) has accumulated since I wrote the book a year ago.
Keith
"Mankind, like millions of other species in the past and the present, is
constantly evolving and faces the same fate as all the others. He will
either go extinct or he will speciate -- divide into two species.
Furthermore, as in almost all of the other 4,000 mammalian species, a
significant degree of evolutionary adaptation and consolidation of specific
attributes within the species is due to the female's selection of the
qualities she sees in the male she wishes to partner and have children with.
Whether a species divides by the slow accumulation of mutations or whether
by a sudden event -- perhaps the random incursion of a new gene or genes --
the possibility of the human species dividing, hitherto unthinkable, is now
being taken seriously by more than a few contemporary biologists. It could
happen via sociological divide or as a result, or opportunity, of scientific
research. Whichever the route, and whatever may be the present-day
religious, cultural or political attitudes to this possibility, tolerance
towards a new species will be irresistible sooner or later if we are to
retain our present high degree of scientific curiosity. This will be
especially so if a new hominim species promises to be more able than its
predecessor to survive in an increasingly complex age and fast-changing job
structure."
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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