> [Chris to Khaled] > As for the answer I don't know, but I do believe balance is the key. > > [Arlo] > As do I. What you see often here from some is the classic "Good v. > Evil" battle continually recast, sometimes over the > "individual/collective" question, and here over the DQ/SQ question. > That is we are told that DQ is "freedom and glory and goodness" while > SQ is "stifling evil and suffocation and the cause of all suffering". > DQ becomes, as you suggest, simply another word for "God", and SQ > becomes of course "Satan". > > I don't think Pirsig sees it this way. I think DQ and SQ are cast > together like the eternal Yin-Yang, inseparable, mutally dependent. > > Pirsig himself says as much. "Without Dynamic Quality the organism > cannot grow. Without static quality the organism cannot last. Both > are needed." (LILA) > > The goal would seem to be to create a system that while open to the > greatest amount of DQ possible, the system reflects the static > latching needed in order to sustain the Good things so achieved. > > There is also a myth here that the "free market" was on the verge of > creating a veritable Utopia when big, bad guvermint came in an ruined > things. There is a reason why there was a social mandate to reign in > the "free market", and that was the low quality of life experienced > by the great majority following the "unregulated success" of the turn > of the century. The market had created enormous wealth for Carnegies > and Pullmans and the barons of industry, but the Chicago River was > turned into a festering swamp of coagulated blood and rotting flesh. > Miner's wives saw their husband's bodies dumped by the door of their > shack and told to move out. Children were working 16 hour days in > dangerous jobs, and earning less each week than the cost of a loaf of > bread. Even moving into the 20the century, business dumped toxic > chemicals without concern for any local populations, and when they > were indicted here they simply began dumping their toxic chemicals > wantonly across the border. In West Virginia, a mining company > knowingly sent miners into silica-laden mines without the proper > protection (too costly), and reaped huge profits while the miners > choked to death on their own blood. Prior to public education, poor > children had no chance of ever going to a school, education was > reserved for the wealthy. > > It was these conditions that moved people to demand regulation, it > was not imposed by some evil outside agency, it was demanded by the > people after witnessing the realities of an "unregulated market". > Wage laws, child labor laws, workplace safety laws, pollution > regulations, disposal regulations, all these were the result of > people coming together and saying that our vision must be on greater > concerns than simply "wealth production". But they did not do away > with the "free market", they did not abolish private enterprise and > entrepreneurship, rather they moved towards balance, and it is that > balance which has led to the material quality of life in the West.
After extolling the virtues of "balance" Arlo then proceeds to present a typical Marxist one-sided view of American economic history. If one is really interested in balance, there are plenty of sources on the internet to provide it. For example: "Political entrepreneurs and their governmental patrons are the real villains of American business history and should be portrayed as such. They are the real robber barons." http://www.mises.org/story/2317 By why bother accurately portraying history or pointing to the benefits of industrialization if your agenda is to advance socialism? Pirsig is clear: "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." (Lila, 17) Marxists can run, but they can't hide. Platt 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/
