RE: [Futurework] The poverty of nation-states

[Harry Pollard]

Ray,   You said: "First of all, if the government ran everything in a business like fashion they would bankrupt business."    That's an oxymoronic statement if I've read one!   Apple ran a closed operating system and held it tight. Microsoft didn't.   That meant that there were 50,000 programmers working the MS OS and 1.75 working Apple (or something like that).   I would say that Apple from the beginning has had a much better system than MS - or it did. I haven't compared them lately.   The just played it close to the chest - and lost.   Oh yes - Huxley in his foreword to the second edition of "Brave New World" wrote that if he were to re-write the book it would be decentralist and Henry Georgian.   We have you surrounded.   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 ********************************************    From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ray Evans Harrell Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 1:59 PM To: Keith Hudson; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] The poverty of nation-states Sorry Keith,   Buts its the emotional stuff like this that makes me doubt your science.   First of all, if the government ran everything in a business like fashion they would bankrupt business.   Business couldn't compete.   It is the government's job to take up the slack and create a situation for private initiative that allows personal freedom and gives us the greatest entrepreneurial creativity.   Otherwise there is no reason for the inefficiency of a sector with too many companies just to provide jobs.     There is no earthly reason for Micro-soft compared to Apple except that most people use Micro-soft and there is an investment in the physical capital by all of us.   Apple is better at graphics, as good at word processing and immune to viruses.   But the best doesn't win, just the best seller wins.   The government has been much better at developing cures for diseases than the pharmaceuticals and private social security will be more vulnerable and cost more than the government run programs because there is no need for profit in the government programs, only efficiency.   What is interesting is that Harry's "the best for the least effort" assumption here is a perfect reason for socialism but socialism has its problems with motivation and human freedom.   Capitalism does also but we have historically chosen Capitalism, the Micro-soft Windows, version of running a society and we all use it because we all use it.   But there is not superiority to corporations in fact they are feudal in their structures and regressive.   To call them the future is frightening and a retreat to the old feudal aristocracies based now on money rather than weapons.   But weapons will make a comeback once they take over the police and armies.   I can't imagine you are even contemplating such a barbaric society.   Second of all, the articles that Sally has been putting on the list for years never seems to have gotten through.   But at least Edward Deming and Japan should.    Japan has NO natural resources and no way of making money other than their culture and the culture of their government.   Their little cottage natural industries are like national treasures that they protect just to prove that they are "human" like the other farmers of the world.   But Japan is different.   China has natural resources Japan has almost none, but Japan is the second largest economy on the planet.   How come?   Even with all of the terrible stagnation I have relatives who are more comfortable living in the quality of life in Japan, a country they don't even speak the language, than they do in this Western paradise.     Japan understands that all capital is ultimately human and used Deming to automate the drudgery.   The world has beaten them up with their stories about trade but Japan is still Japanese and that is the most frustrating thing for all of the world economists who try to knock down the door and destroy the culture in the name of world markets.   Don't get me wrong I don't idealize the Japanese, they are often chauvinists of the first order and would have done away with the rain forests in a moment just because they could and were efficient enough to use every single piece of trees leaving nothing to renew.    But they set a very high standard for the rest of the world in art and now in music and in technology.    Their knowledge of world cultures makes the average anglophile seem well Anglophilic.    One of my friends calls the Japanese the British of Asia.    So what does Sally and the Japanese have to do with this?   Simple, the corporations and money you claim for these wealthy dunderheads is coming about because of an accident of most of their births.   Automation or Robotomation that puts consumers out of work and increases the wealth of the few beyond owning 80% of the wealth of America is the beginning of America as a banana republic.    Unless there is a change in paradigm from the one you are suggesting, the human race is cooked.    Another point is in the ghettoization of the Elders of a society into a permanent state of relaxation into the grave.   Instead of freeing people from profit to work on the health and wealth of a nation we turn the Elders into a permanent consumer that eats himself to death on the beach.   Instead of someone vital like Keith Hudson, we get whimpering complainers who love their white pants and polyester shirts and go to the opera a couple of times a year as long as its Verdi.    I'm not suggesting working them to death, but suggesting that a creative solution to finding how to make their last years pleasurable and productive through social opportunities is far superior to paying them for relaxing, eating and dying.    Community service would not be such a bad thing.   We could give credit for taking care of the Grandkids and other family things as well.    The original purpose of retirement was to get them out of the work force.   Today's workforce is not only smaller because there are fewer people but because there are much fewer jobs (as Sally subtly points out with her articles) of the drudgery type and we haven't figured out how to pay people for quality of life non-profit jobs that create great societies.   Simply giving money away is to create a lazy wealthy society just like all of the slave societies.   I would even prefer the silliness of Brave New World to such depressive entitlement.    We should work to create an expectation for human development and encourage the best in people while knowing that some won't succeed with some but stressing the fulfillment and value of continuing human development and sharing as people finish their lives on this plain.     But we it will take a paradigm shift away from the last three hundred years of abuse, robbery and hyper technological development.   We will have to discover a more symetrical society that stresses balance of all of the elements that make sanity attractive.    Instead we get the Stephen Hawking version of mobility.     Ray Evans Harrell      --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. 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