Hi Chris, My answer to your question is the following passage from Lila:
"From a static point of view socialism is more moral than capitalism. It's a higher form of evolution. It is an intellectually guided society, not just a society that is guided by mindless traditions. That's what gives socialism its drive. But what the socialists left out and what has all but killed their whole undertaking is an absence of a concept of indefinite Dynamic Quality. You go to any socialist city and it's always a dull place because there's little Dynamic Quality. "On the other hand the conservatives who keep trumpeting about the virtues of free enterprise are normally just supporting their own self-interest. They are just doing the usual cover-up for the rich in their age-old exploitation of the poor. Some of them seem to sense there is also something mysteriously virtuous in a free enterprise system and you can see them struggling to put it into words but they don't have the metaphysical vocabulary for it any more than the socialists do. "The Metaphysics of Quality provides the vocabulary. A free market is a Dynamic institution. What people buy and what people sell, in other words what people value, can never be contained by any intellectual formula. What makes the marketplace work is Dynamic Quality. The market is always changing and the direction of that change can never be predetermined. "The Metaphysics of Quality says the free market makes everybody richer-by preventing static economic patterns from setting in and stagnating economic growth. That is the reason the major capitalist economies of the world have done so much better since World War II than the major socialist economies. It is not that Victorian social economic patterns are more moral than socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the opposite. They are less moral as static patterns go. What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists, reasoning intelligently and objectively, have inadvertently closed the door to Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling of things. They closed it because the metaphysical structure of their objectivity never told them Dynamic Quality exists." (Lila, 17) Platt > Arlo, Ian, Platt > > Platt: > >Don't think that's true. I denounce the social pattern of big government > >but support many traditional social patterns like craftsmanship, self- > >reliance and self-responsibility. > > I bet you did that long before you heard of the MOQ. We seem to live in > different worlds. Let me tell you one reason why I don't like the > "help-yourself" part of the American dream. For almost a thousand years we > in this northern corner of Europe- and far longer more to the south - there > was very weak social patterns, no institutions, no real government: only > warmongers and fuzzy honour-codes to keep people in something akin to order. > Self-reliance and self-responsibility was all there was. But new times came, > development continued. From the time of the Swedish Empire and until the > 19th century, institutions continued to grow strong, the governments > ability to gain control continued as well. However, This development didn't > go towards a more totalitarian state, but rather the opposite. In 1921 both > men and women had the right to vote, and it is now, when that happens that > the government may become a most efficient tool for the people. self- > reliance and self-responsibility is still important, and it always will. But > the people decided that if someone should fail, or if something should go > wrong, then there should be help to be gotten. The welfare-state. Moreover, > this is a quite intellectual reasoning that brings this about - if there is > generally less poverty and less fear of poverty in society, why then society > will be a safer place, and everybody can go about their business more > calmly. Then put this into a MOQ context. I believe that what should be done > is to further the development of the intellectual level - I'm sure you will > agree - so, by using s somewhat utilitarian way of reasoning here: if as > many as possible may educate themselves as much as possible, that will > further the development of the intellectual level. So, back to my original > point: If we now have the state, and we can make it work for us, both > working as a frame for social patterns of value and, furthering the > development AND being controlled by - intellectual patterns of value > (reason) then why on earth should we not do so? > > Perhaps repetition. Ah. Well. > > Chris Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
