Classical Political Economy is a fundamental science, more crucial
than any other science - or the arts. You can't play a flute if you haven't
eaten, and CPE is concerned with how you eat and whether you eat.
So eating is more important than being able to
swim in a flood? There is no hierarchy of values, only time
bound needs that include the need for pleasure, growth, mastery and
significance. People who wait to practice until they
are fed, rarely practice at all. It was the hunger that
drove us, not the feeling of being full, in fact fullness leads to
complaisance and indolence. Your aphorisms are drawn from
incomplete thoughts. You can take the same process and apply
it to any human need. The difference with food is that it is a
limited commodity and therefore can be hoarded, monopolized and price driven
up. Flute playing on the other hand is, even within a concert
hall, a limited to full public good. It is easy to drink or eat
sound. All you need is to be around it. If you can get
in the hall you can free ride to your heart's content. Getting
into a lunchroom means nothing until you get the food in your
mouth. So your parallel is comparing things of which there is no
comparison. It is no more scientific or important for trade to
take place around oranges than it is to give them away. My
experience is more with generosity. Listening to the radio
because you have a receiver is no more paying for what you consume than
stealing into the orchard would be because you have feet. So, the
issue is not need but the ability to limit a commodity and that is what the
study of economics that I have seen thus far is really about.
Contraction rather than expansion, Negativity rather than a positive
outlook and a lack of generousity for your fellow human and all other life as
well. I don't believe they are anymore ruled by instinct than we are
ruled by habit. The key may well be complexity and memory but not
being a non-human I would never be so arrogant as to assume what they
"thought" or what type of consciousness they might have. If
I buried you like a carrot you would die but if I buried a carrot it
would live. Does that make you incompetant or
inadaquate? Yes, as a carrot.
Once that's done, play your heart out.
Not bloody likely. More likely to take a nap. Do
you play an instrument or sing?
Ray
