Ray,
Don't think George ever mentioned the invisible hand. Certainly not in
his major books. I must say I can't understand the difficulty about the
concept of the invisible hand.
What it says is that if each individual member of the community is better
off then it can be said that the whole community is better off. Is this
something difficult to understand?
Curious.
A clear understanding of what is private property, and what is common
property, is absolutely essential to a free and prosperous society.
When you take time off from the chorale to make your own clothes, and
build your own furniture, I will know that you don't believe in comparative
advantage.
Harry
******************************************** Henry George School of Social
Science of Los
Angeles Box
655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818
352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242 http://haledward.home.comcast.net
********************************************
It seems to me that you all are arguing the
superiority of your own particular system as nature. Keith
claims nature for trade and demands a rock bottom (gold) while Ed talks
relativity and processes (flow model) on the other hand Keith gives Ricardo
a sort of environmentalist bent where everything will take care of itself if
you just remove all the dams from the river. Except modern
nation states that deal with civil authority as a balance to diversity and
that accords strength to civil contracts based upon equality rather than
authority pleads the case for dams to remove floods and make cities and
housing possible. Chris claims that Ricardo was
misunderstood. Then we get a fight over
interpretations. It is all so biblical.
I suspect Ricardo, Smith, George and
others who talked about invisible hands were speaking as Egyptians who had a
natural ebb and flow in the Nile that served them well for the longest
single state in the history of the world. But that
does little for the complexity of the present. We live in a
world where wealth is accruing in the hands of the elite and where they are
also struggling to gather the finest of everything to themselves and giving
to the church the egalitarian purpose of serving the cultural and welfare
needs of the poor. "If you want music, go to church!"
as was said by a policeman in a recent comedy. We might
remember that it was Alfred North Whitehead that said that it was the
"Ultimate Abstractions that taught us the meanings of things" and music as
well as math are one of those "ultimate abstractions."
The Scandinavian states are more secular or
perhaps just less diverse so their overall secular instrument serves the
needs of the whole population better. The same is true of their
cultural institutions which were marveled at not long ago when their state
sponsored orchestras visited New York. All of the complaints
about the decay of the state as advanced by both Keith and Harry does not
seem to be the case in a smaller population and a less diverse
one. Remember where Harry is in California is a ferment of
diversity, cultural and economic change. Hence "give us a hero."
I think the real point here is that Canada and
the US are special cases nothing like England or elsewhere except maybe in
the beginning throes of the European Union which is beginning to resemble
pre-Bismarck Germany. We forget that Germany was a series of
small states at war with each other and that they didn't want to join any
more than Norway wants to join Europe today. The issue here is
more complicated than Ricardo or any of the economists have thus far dealt
with. Canada and America is extremely irresponsible to its
citizens preferring to replace them with immigrants who show them what
"shits" they are for complaining about such things as healthcare and
education. Immigrants who were trained in the schools of
America's old enemies and who carry the cultural bug of that system in their
training. Not logical at all but myths are hard to
shake.
I suspect that they are reacting to their
cultural myths out of fear. It seems that most of them
suffer from a Judeo Christian inability to think logically about big systems
while making peace with the everyday life. Christianity has the
same problem when they confess their sins, lay them off on God, get
forgiveness and continue to be irresponsible. They then state
the ideal as the goal while ignoring it in their lives and getting
forgiveness for ignoring it. So nothing is ever seriously
tested, especially the ideals. No one ever deals with the
possibility of an ignorant, angry God who has lost control of his
creation. Or how illogical that is in the contemplation of
eternal realities and transcendent omniscience. Their
description is not of an omniscient, benevolent being by any
means. Petulant might be a better description.
Abortion is a perfect example. The
ideal of life. So perfect that even masturbation is
killing. Birth control is out of the question. Of course
abstinence is the key for everyone but the poor male who was given
the hormones (by God) not to be. Well then
discipline. But the best disciplined is also the most likely to
have his life shortened by a clogged prostate. Is it any wonder
that we have among men a plague of prostate cancer today in civilized
society? Why would it be any less logical that mastery of any
part of the body would include cleansing any more than
digestion? But we are not doing so well with food and
digestion either. We give up Mastery and
skill preferring ignorance and faith.
Sex is another. Christian attitudes
towards sex are dysfunctional and mired in the middle class. The Roman
church's answer was the hierarchy which made children of the masses and
celibate (sexually ignorant) fathers who would progressively interpret the
texts.
With massive literacy Catholics are now reading
the bible and starting the history of the church all over again with the
abuses of the early church. Might I say that it is
the "abuse" of the child in the act of growing
up. Protestants stressed reading, like the Jews and outran the
Catholics until the present. Only wealth and power balanced
their not being overrun by the world. Mike Hollinshead blamed
this on nonconformist theology. I suspect it simply had to
do with literacy in the masses. When Islam stressed
literacy they too excelled in math and science but they had an elitist
reaction from the wealthy and once more made the poor
illiterate. How interesting the that Taliban, those demons, were
again stressing literacy for the poor while the approved war lord today have
once again put the people safely "in their place." If
we were to look at the history of the first seventy years of America we too
could find Taliban like abuses in the treatments of groups. The
communists in China used to put the heads of drug addicts along the road to
break the addiction to opium brought by the West in exchange for
tea. There are no heroes here but plenty of demons.
Today we have a great turmoil in the world as
protestants envy Catholic's certainty and create their own little world with
mega churches, a semi hierarchy and their own schools. The
answer, I believe is not a pendulum but a historical evolution more akin to
Democratic decline into despotism. Meanwhile the elite
wealthy have collaborated by absorbing the complex secular culture as their
turf and making it economically unavailable. That has driven the
masses to religion for culture, welfare and community. A Baptist
is a Baptist no matter where in the world. All they need to do
is move their letter from one church to another and they have full voting
rights in the congregation. All they need to do to be a member
is swear allegiance to the sovereign of the Baptist church. Its
free and they make a big deal about that and the forgiveness before the big
Kahuna because the payment was made for his anger. But
does the system work? Well, it is certainly less murderous than
the coliseum and is more sensitive than "let them eat
cake." But is it a really intelligent
system?
Keith, you are seeing some anti-intellectual
elements appear in England. That is not surprising as the
breakdown of Empire caused immigration into England and diversity
appeared. The answer to diversity in the Western tradition
is the liberal secular state that guarantees equal rights, availability of
education, community development, healthcare and the right to work for
the best potential of your talent. That is the
balance to religion and what keeps religion from turning
cancerous. It is also the balance to unfettered trade and
greed. Everything is about balance and not about
nature. Humanity decides balances and bases the answers on the
current situation both in the human and natural worlds.
Today we are a planet alive with a coming
change in the magnetic poles that severely effects the environment and yet
we can't even decide how to take care of our poor in an environmental
situation of our making. Nature is beyond our
imagination. That is a problem with the current
myths. We can't seem to consider all humans as potential
rather then considering them as things to be economically
exploited. Personally, I think modern "classical" economics is
as cancerous in its needs as is runaway religion. I also believe
that assigning nature to human activities is always a very dangerous
proposition. That is not our gifts as animals compared to the
rest of the animals. The silliest thing of all is the
concept of property. The only property is Intellectual
property that you arrive and leave with. Everything else
belongs here. Everything else is about negotiation, wisdom and
the courage to be who you are to the best of your potential and to find your
peace with your fellow humans.
REH
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by
AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.541 / Virus
Database: 335 - Release Date:
11/14/2003
