Eva Durant wrote:
> Anyone who uses the winners/losers biological
> evolution argument for the development of human society
> is ready to blame the failures of social structure
> on human characteristics, and ready to condemn
> sections of society, rather than to condenm
> inefficient social structures. A straight
> and sinister road to fascism.
Interesting thought but the economists who wrote the "Winner Take All Society"
define this issue in the reverse. The ones pushing Winner/Loser or Social
Darwinian "Creative Greed" solutions blame the social governmental structures
as not
being efficient in their very nature. According to them, only the private
companies
that have to live by the free market "natural selection" competitive process
have the
potential for efficiency, which is often interchanged with "productivity"
although
that is a confusing use of the two words.
I think a very good discussion could be had on this competitive issue but
we must first give up our predispositions for a genuine exploration of the
principles and processes involved. For example,
1. how do private "clone" companies keep from using up the resources available
in their all out pursuit of "natural selection?" (competitive advantage)
2. what about the contradiction between the necessary simplicity of "economies
of scale" and the complexity of truly innovative solutions to complex social
and cultural problems within their economic projections?
3. The same as 2 except the issue of expensive R & D which companies never
really have the money to do unless in a monopolistic situation. (with the
drug companies in the U.S. as a prime example. They have a "productivity lag"
in the development of new drugs not unlike the same "lag" in the development of
new theatrical and film products. The price to recoup their initial investment
is beyond the ability of the consumer to pay. In that case private HMOs
function like the government in keeping down costs except to the satisfaction
of no one.)
The propaganda of the left is amply criticized in the media in the West but a
truly
non-military economic competition between structures of the far left and right
has never
happened so we can't really call Capitalism, Socialisms, Communism or any other
economic ism scientific or Darwinian in that sense IMO.
On these lists, whenever
I have questioned the proponents of these isms as to the data on their
successes
and failures in competition, they have not been able to answer apart from the
military
component. In the case of the far right, their ideals and an example of a
successful
use of those ideals in real world has been very "Christian like" in the defense
of the
system and the failure of everyone to live up to it.
As Ed Weick pointed out last year on this list. Such "scientific" economic
writings as Marx and others are less science and more philosophy in spite of
the Complexity Engineer's love of Huyek's writing structures. If I remember
right Ed said that they didn't really qualify being called Economists in the
modern scientific sense. But Ed will have to say whether my memory is correct
or just all in my head.
REH
