Brad, I suppose this is a linguistic problem.
Free markets are part of free association. That should be pretty obvious. Jack and Jill were trying to beat each other to the top. That was the sole purpose of the competition. Like Monday Night Football, they are competing to win, no matter the concussions and broken limbs. Free market competition has as its purpose the satisfaction of the consumer by supplying higher quality goods at a lower price. Whoever best succeeds will have won the competition. Interesting is that competing companies in the market may not want to supply better goods at a cheaper price, but they must - or they go broke. Or they get the guvmint to protect them from bankruptcy - either by internal regulations, or by import restrictions.. Thus are the corporate monopolies protected from whom? Why, from the 280 million or so Americans, whose wishes are the last to be respected. And good people on this list who no doubt regard themselves as reformers and do-gooders seem eager to support corporate privilege at the expense of ordinary people. I feel a bit like Sabatini's Scaramouche: "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." 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 ******************************************** -----Original Message----- From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 4:13 PM To: Harry Pollard Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] A glimpse of medieval Hangzhou and the Song civilisation Harry Pollard wrote: > Brad, > > George suggested in his Law of Human Progress that the Progress of > Civilization depended on "Association in Equality". > > In my courses I use the more positive term "cooperation" rather than > "association" but I think association is better. Equality doesn't mean > we are all the same, which would be nonsense, but that societal > conditions for everyone remain the same. > > Thus, insomuch as association is diminished and inequality rises, so > does civilization decline. Do you think he might have been on to > something? [snip] This sounds good to me, but I don't see what it has to do with competition or "free markets", except insofar as in any particular situation the cooperating persons may decide that whatever kind and extent of competition would be beneficial to all. Jack and Jill raced each other up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down, but got up again to try to beat Jill to the top even though he broke his crown, and caused Jill to trip up and come tumbling after (she got back up too...). ... So, in the end, they got the pail of water even though, if it was not for the competition, they had both been too tired to get off their respective duffs and so would have gone thirsty. But, in their race to beat each other they completely forgot how tired they had been. \brad mccormick --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.548 / Virus Database: 341 - Release Date: 12/5/2003 _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
