Thanks, Robin. I like your analysis and I don't recall ever seeing it stated that way before.
[email protected] wrote: > In reply to John Berry's message of Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:05:35 +1300: > Hi, >> I find it incomprehensible that anyone could seriously support >> communism/socialism and actually be talking about the same thing that >> created some of the greatest atrocities that have ever occurred and been so >> dysfunctional as to then fall part. >> >> So if that is not what you mean, if you are not championing the murder and >> oppression of humanity then say so. >> >> There are many positive examples of something that could be termed positive >> examples of socialism in the west, socialistic health care practiced in most >> places seems more attractive than the capitalistic version in the US being >> just one example and you don't need to watch Michael Moore's "Sicko" to >> recognize it. > [snip] > There is a trap that almost everyone falls into. It is the assumption that the > situation is dipolar, when actually it is quadrupolar. > > Rather than just "left" and "right" there is also an "up" and a "down", or > perhaps a better analogy is the 4 points of the compass. > > If East and West are collectivism and capitalism, and North and South are > totalitarianism and anarchy, then all forms of society fall somewhere on the > plane thus described. > IOW, there is an economic axis (E-W) and an order (or control) axis (N-S). > > The worst atrocities appear to be committed by peoples that tend toward the > N-S > extremes. The most prosperous and happiest societies tend toward the centre. > > In the N-S direction, you need some measure of control, but not so much as to > stifle the individual. In the E-W direction you need freely flowing trade, > with > some government interference in some cases. Sigh... I can't resist throwing my 25 cents into the fray. Regarding stifling the individual ... It is, unfortunately, the gap between rich and poor which drives people to work hard to become rich -- it's that gap which drives them to work harder than the bare minimum needed to maintain their current lifestyle. Consequently it is exactly the inequity of capitalist society which makes it work so well, in economic terms. If you eliminate the gap, you eliminate the incentives at the same time. Conversely if you allow people to "lock out" others from climbing above their current stratum you also eliminate the incentive to work harder than the bare minimum needed to just get by. This one of the reasons monopolies and hereditary landlords are both bad. Unfortunately there's nothing "fair" or "moral" about capitalism and, from a utilitarian point of view, it's not clear that unbridled capitalism comes anywhere near maximizing total happiness (to put it mildly). I've long felt that socialism has the "moral high ground", in terms of fairness and just generally being pretty good for more people. But if you want economic efficiency, what you probably need is laissez faire capitalism combined with strong antitrust laws and draconian inheritance taxes. (You need that last one to prevent the rise of hereditary landlords, who provided much of the impetus for Karl Marx's view of the world. Hereditary landlords are leeches on the body of a capitalist economy, as Marx recognized, but to get rid of a leech it is not necessary to kill the patient.) Anyhow this is totally off topic, and I send far too much stuff to Vortex which is off topic already, so I won't be responding again on this thread. The arguments I just gave are certainly no more than half baked but I'm not going to try to bake them fully in this forum. > > By trying to see everything as only E-W, the economic aspects are frequently > confused with the "order" aspects. > > To take two examples from the real world, China and the US, I would say that > China is currently approaching the centre on the E-W axis, from the > collectivist > direction, but is still rather strongly totalitarian on the N-S axis. > > With the new administration in Washington, the US is approaching the centre in > the E-W direction from the capitalistic side. In the N-S direction, it isn't > yet > clear (to me) what direction the new administration is going in, but the > previous administration was clearly going away from the centre in the > totalitarian direction. > > Regards, > > Robin van Spaandonk > > http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html > >
