Ray,
How nice to cross swords again. And how nice to chat on FutureWork again.
And you are still prepared, like Stephen Leacock's economist, to jump on
your horse and ride off in all directions. All without answering the point
that: "Socialism and Communism and their spin-offs have proven themselves
to be hopeless at increasing production."
And well you should avoid answering it, for their ability to put potatoes
into the mouths of their peoples is atrocious.
It was the job of the State to support the Bolshoi, the Kirov, the two
Moscow companies (three if you include the Kremlin) and the rest of them -
and they did very well. The people they trained at great expense were often
superior - and they had every reason to be so, for the competition for
these plum positions must have been great.
A very good ballet dancer would be treated like royalty. But, not so the
bulk of the Russian people. The peasants who suffered under the Czar
suffered equally under the Soviets - at least those who were left after the
massacre of the millions.
The Soviet was the country of the very rich and a poor that suffered
deprivation that makes our inner cities look like heaven. As soon as they
were allowed, the Republics got away. As soon as they could, the more able
people dodged around the barbed wire at the borders.
Welcome them! There won't be many peasants, but the well-trained elite will
head for the US and other western countries. That they are available for
American kids is a pretty happy thing for us. That it cost the Russian
peasant who paid for their training a bowl of soup a week we can forget.
You might wonder, occasionally, why the US tries to keep people out by
force - while the old Soviet Union used force to keep people in. Doesn't
that tell you something? Are you able to see what is there behind your
conditioning?
Any able person worth his salt heads for the US. My nephew - an
anesthesiologist - now in Virginia told me with amazement the change. While
back in England the doctors over coffee would discuss football results,
here they discuss their investments.
Once you have been trained at considerable expense to the English or
Russian peasants, go for the money - which you will get in the US. Of
course, I'm glad the kids are going to Russia to study "Stanislavsky
techniques". I'm sure you know that Stanislavsky predated the Soviet.
Maybe you should commend the Czar for initiating Stanislavsky and his
techniques.
But, you won't.
When you properly mention the lead in your bones, a picture floats before
me of a Russian service station "Lead or no-lead, Sir?" Ho, ho, ho!
I'm sorry, Ray, but your God has indeed failed and I can understand the
unhappiness that attends such a philosophical disaster.
But, maybe we will get now to the point - that socialist and communist
economic systems are a pile of junk.That, insomuch as our system copies
them - and it does - so will we become less effective.
Harry
____________________________________________________________
Ray wrote:
Harry Pollard wrote:
One major warning! Socialism and Communism and their spin-offs have proven
themselves to be hopeless at increasing production. The international
conferences to "solve the problems" are loaded who want to "provide proper
services".
Hello Harry,
Long time no read but you are still beating the same horse. Actually the
refugees from the former communist countries are so well trained that they
are doing just fine once they were allowed to take their training and
intellectual
capital and run away to the older and more advanced economies. But all is
not well here.
USA Today pointed out last Wednesday on their front page that America's
computer companies are creating their own Berlin
walls around their hired and company trained help. Sound familiar?
"Mr. Gates tear down that wall!"
Like the stores filled with communist fashions on 34th street in NYCity,
fashions that were considered junk when the old Soviet Union existed are
now high fashion. It's all just politics, hypocrisy and whoever has the
media and money. Communism, like Capitalism has huge problems
but the problems bear little resemblance to either side's rhetoric.
Otherwise American business and Republican Congressman wouldn't
be sounding like apparatchiks when it comes to facing the same
problems that an ulcerous Berlin was in the 1950s before their bloody
wall. Do I think that American businesses would do the same (with
guards and all) if they could, you bet. Read how Truman applied the
same person and process to the Indian problem as had worked with
the Japanese in world war II in Chief Wilma Mankiller's biography.
America didn't win the cold war we just spent the East's young nations
broke and now are in the process of being locked out by the intellectual
capital of their refugees.
And then there is their so called "non creative" artists. Anyone who believes
that should get a life, that crap will just make them seem foolish before
their
children who will be taught by the refugees in every school from
k-conservatory.
My daughter's favorite acting teacher (who is Russian Jewish ) is taking his
most proficient students to Russia next year to study Stanislavsky techniques.
What most people complain about in both Communism and Capitalism is
really culture and convention and is older than both systems. One should
sit down and have a read in literature that pre-dates both. Discussions
about "interest" for example in Roman Catholic literature of the middle ages.
Or have a read in the Nicene and Anti-Nicene Fathers. There is little that is
new in the present. Digitalized libraries and decent search engines will be
the real revolution of the 21st century. It will decimate the book industry
as old rehashed ideas in new form are considered the banal trash that
they are. Politicans will be shown to have switched sides many times
and ignorance and banality will be shown for what it is, mere commercial
entertainment. That will be the real test of Capitalism. What constitutes
real change and expansion?
We had better learn that the stories of the last 150 years here and 70
years in the Eastern bloc were mostly hype and that a nation filled with good
weather and a huge reservoir of natural resources with 200 years of stability
against a group of nations that were barely seven decades old coming from
below third world status was never a fair contest. That it was a contest at
all speaks very highly for these 20th century systems. That they were
violent, murderous and lied constantly is not something that I would
consider new. The lead pollution that I carry in my bones and the problems
experienced by the children on my reservation even today show the
hypocrisy of both sides and the foolish resistance of those who are being
ignored, and exploited, to demanding recompense.
If America doesn't learn to read and be honest about their history, the rest
of the world will (as scholars at Oxford are doing about pre-columbian forest
technology in America) and show us for the provencial fools that we are
turning out to be.
REH
