Hi dynamic developers
Not sure where to jump in. I'm not really interested in the politics
here, but I guess it's unavoidable to get there eventually.
My main concern is, and have been for some time, Platt's use of MoQ
arguments to back his personal beliefs. You may think they're clear and
water-tight, but they're not. Take this one for example:
"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)
Here, he's talking about ECONOMY, nothing else. It makes everybody
*richer*, i.e. they get more money. He says nothing about other things
that are important to people such as the long term environmental effects
of such a market.
If the free market continues to run things, it will probably hit the
wall during this century, after which it will be more economically
rewarding to take environmental effects into account.
That free market may be dynamic, but it's still just a *social* pattern.
I.e. it doesn't use any intellectual reasoning. The only goal it has,
the only *value* in that market, is money. So any intellectual reasoning
any individual may use is solely used to acquire more money, i.e. to
blindly follow the incentive of the society.
On the other hand, another group of people have used their intellect to
look into what the free market, if allowed to continue, will bring in
the future. And this future doesn't look very bright.
So, in MoQ terms, we have the dynamic social pattern "the free market"
on one side and we have the intellectual pattern "the environmental
movement" on the other. And the MoQ clearly states that the intellectual
pattern is more moral, because a higher level pattern *is* more dynamic
than any lower level pattern can ever be.
The culprit of Platt's reasoning is a little strange thing about the MoQ
when applied to human societies. It's the "personal freedom" vs. "bonds
of society". The MoQ levels doesn't make it very easy to understand
that, and Bo's recurring XXX doesn't make it any easier.
The individual person also includes intellectual patterns, but the
society does not. Then how is it moral for a society to constrain a
person? Make her pay taxes etc.
According to Platt, the highest moral is the individual freedom of each
person. But if that was the case, why did people start building cities
in the first place? Wouldn't it be most moral if everybody just lived by
themselves and spent their days exercising their individual freedom?
People started building cities to protect themselves from gangs of
bandits only interested in personal short-term gain (hmm, what does that
remind me of??). So the cities, legal societies, was in fact a way to
gain *more* freedom. Freedom to create jewelery and other things
attracting bandits.
Granted, societies have changed considerably since then, but I don't
believe for a moment that Platt most of all would like to live
completely outside it. He wants the legal protection of it like
everybody else, so all his claims about the individual freedom being
more moral than the bonds of society falls pretty flat right there.
Magnus
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Quoting Christoffer Ivarsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
>>> Speaking of controversial things, the above wiki article rightfully
>>> cautioned:
>>>
>>> "Much of the debate about poverty focuses on statistical measures of
>>> poverty and the
>>> clash between advocates and opponents of welfare programs and government
>>> regulation
>>> of the free market. Since measures can be either absolute or relative, it
>>> is possible
>>> that advocates for the different sides of this debate are basing their
>>> arguments on
>>> different ways of measuring poverty. It is often claimed that poverty is
>>> understated,
>>> yet there are some who also believe it is overstated; thus the accuracy of
>>> the
>>> current poverty threshold guidelines is subject to debate and considerable
>>> concern."
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Platt
>> Fair enough. Still, there is no reasonable way of denying that there is a
>> large amount of people in the US that lives under horrible circumstances,
>> and that this in combination with the virtual non-existence of Good social
>> welfare leads to growing social differentiation. And it is not exactly
>> controversial to link crime and poverty together, and then we can take a
>> look at the crime-rate in the US... My point still being that a welfare
>> state provides a better social climate for everybody, and the relative loss
>> in the Dynamic aspect of the market in no way outweighs the benefits of a
>> safe and stable society. The dynamic aspect isn't strangled by some Good
>> Static Latching.
>>
>> Regards
>> Chris
>
> Fair enough. You've summed up the issue well I think. We could debate all day
> about the alleged link of crime and poverty and the relative loss of DQ when
> government lessens liberty. But, I doubt if we would change each other's
> beliefs
> much, if at all.
>
> Regards,
> Platt
>
>
>
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