Ray,
Don't think George ever mentioned the invisible hand. Certainly not in
his major books. I must say I can't understand the difficulty about the
concept of the invisible hand.
What it says is that if each individual member of the community is
better off then it can be said that the whole community is better off. Is
this something difficult to understand?
Curious.
A clear understanding of what is private property, and what is common
property, is absolutely essential to a free and prosperous society.
When you take time off from the chorale to make your own clothes, and
build your own furniture, I will know that you don't believe in
comparative advantage.
Harry
********************************************
Henry George School of Social
Science of Los
Angeles Box
655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: 818
352-4141 -- Fax: 818 353-2242
http://haledward.home.comcast.net
********************************************
It seems to me that you all are arguing the
superiority of your own particular system as nature.
Keith claims nature for trade and demands a rock bottom (gold) while Ed
talks relativity and processes (flow model) on the other hand Keith gives
Ricardo a sort of environmentalist bent where everything will take care of
itself if you just remove all the dams from the river. Except
modern nation states that deal with civil authority as a balance to
diversity and that accords strength to civil contracts based upon equality
rather than authority pleads the case for dams to remove floods and make
cities and housing possible. Chris claims that Ricardo was
misunderstood. Then we get a fight over
interpretations. It is all so biblical.
I suspect Ricardo, Smith, George and
others who talked about invisible hands were speaking as Egyptians who had
a natural ebb and flow in the Nile that served them well for the longest
single state in the history of the world. But that
does little for the complexity of the present. We live in
a world where wealth is accruing in the hands of the elite and where they
are also struggling to gather the finest of everything to themselves and
giving to the church the egalitarian purpose of serving the cultural and
welfare needs of the poor. "If you want music, go
to church!" as was said by a policeman in a recent
comedy. We might remember that it was Alfred North
Whitehead that said that it was the "Ultimate Abstractions that taught us
the meanings of things" and music as well as math are one of those
"ultimate abstractions."
The Scandinavian states are more secular or
perhaps just less diverse so their overall secular instrument serves the
needs of the whole population better. The same is true of
their cultural institutions which were marveled at not long ago when their
state sponsored orchestras visited New York. All of the
complaints about the decay of the state as advanced by both Keith and
Harry does not seem to be the case in a smaller population and a less
diverse one. Remember where Harry is in California is a
ferment of diversity, cultural and economic change. Hence
"give us a hero."
I think the real point here is that Canada
and the US are special cases nothing like England or elsewhere except
maybe in the beginning throes of the European Union which is beginning to
resemble pre-Bismarck Germany. We forget that Germany was a
series of small states at war with each other and that they didn't want to
join any more than Norway wants to join Europe today. The
issue here is more complicated than Ricardo or any of the economists have
thus far dealt with. Canada and America is extremely
irresponsible to its citizens preferring to replace them with immigrants
who show them what "shits" they are for complaining about such things as
healthcare and education. Immigrants who were trained in the
schools of America's old enemies and who carry the cultural bug of that
system in their training. Not logical at all but myths are
hard to shake.
I suspect that they are reacting to
their cultural myths out of fear. It seems that most of
them suffer from a Judeo Christian inability to think logically about big
systems while making peace with the everyday life.
Christianity has the same problem when they confess their sins, lay them
off on God, get forgiveness and continue to be irresponsible.
They then state the ideal as the goal while ignoring it in their lives and
getting forgiveness for ignoring it. So nothing is ever
seriously tested, especially the ideals. No one ever deals
with the possibility of an ignorant, angry God who has lost control of his
creation. Or how illogical that is in the contemplation of
eternal realities and transcendent omniscience. Their
description is not of an omniscient, benevolent being by any
means. Petulant might be a better description.
Abortion is a perfect example. The
ideal of life. So perfect that even masturbation is
killing. Birth control is out of the question. Of course
abstinence is the key for everyone but the poor male who was given
the hormones (by God) not to be. Well then
discipline. But the best disciplined is also the most likely
to have his life shortened by a clogged prostate. Is it any
wonder that we have among men a plague of prostate cancer today in
civilized society? Why would it be any less logical that
mastery of any part of the body would include cleansing any more than
digestion? But we are not doing so well with food and
digestion either. We give up Mastery and
skill preferring ignorance and faith.
Sex is another. Christian
attitudes towards sex are dysfunctional and mired in the middle
class. The Roman church's answer was the hierarchy which made
children of the masses and celibate (sexually ignorant) fathers who would
progressively interpret the texts.
With massive literacy Catholics are now
reading the bible and starting the history of the church all over again
with the abuses of the early church. Might I
say that it is the "abuse" of the child in
the act of growing up. Protestants stressed reading, like the
Jews and outran the Catholics until the present. Only wealth
and power balanced their not being overrun by the world. Mike
Hollinshead blamed this on nonconformist theology. I suspect
it simply had to do with literacy in the masses.
When Islam stressed literacy they too excelled in math and science
but they had an elitist reaction from the wealthy and once more made the
poor illiterate. How interesting the that Taliban, those
demons, were again stressing literacy for the poor while the approved war
lord today have once again put the people safely "in their
place." If we were to look at the history of the first
seventy years of America we too could find Taliban like abuses in the
treatments of groups. The communists in China used to put the
heads of drug addicts along the road to break the addiction to opium
brought by the West in exchange for tea. There are no heroes
here but plenty of demons.
Today we have a great turmoil in the world as
protestants envy Catholic's certainty and create their own little world
with mega churches, a semi hierarchy and their own schools.
The answer, I believe is not a pendulum but a historical
evolution more akin to Democratic decline into despotism.
Meanwhile the elite wealthy have collaborated by absorbing the
complex secular culture as their turf and making it economically
unavailable. That has driven the masses to religion for
culture, welfare and community. A Baptist is a Baptist no
matter where in the world. All they need to do is move their
letter from one church to another and they have full voting rights in the
congregation. All they need to do to be a member is swear
allegiance to the sovereign of the Baptist church. Its free
and they make a big deal about that and the forgiveness before the big
Kahuna because the payment was made for his anger. But
does the system work? Well, it is certainly less murderous
than the coliseum and is more sensitive than "let them eat
cake." But is it a really intelligent
system?
Keith, you are seeing some anti-intellectual
elements appear in England. That is not surprising as the
breakdown of Empire caused immigration into England and diversity
appeared. The answer to diversity in the Western
tradition is the liberal secular state that guarantees equal rights,
availability of education, community development, healthcare and the
right to work for the best potential of your
talent. That is the balance to religion and what
keeps religion from turning cancerous. It is also the balance
to unfettered trade and greed. Everything is about balance and
not about nature. Humanity decides balances and bases the
answers on the current situation both in the human and natural
worlds.
Today we are a planet alive with a coming
change in the magnetic poles that severely effects the environment and yet
we can't even decide how to take care of our poor in an environmental
situation of our making. Nature is beyond our
imagination. That is a problem with the current
myths. We can't seem to consider all humans as potential
rather then considering them as things to be economically
exploited. Personally, I think modern "classical" economics is
as cancerous in its needs as is runaway religion. I also
believe that assigning nature to human activities is always a very
dangerous proposition. That is not our gifts as animals
compared to the rest of the animals. The silliest thing
of all is the concept of property. The only property is
Intellectual property that you arrive and leave with.
Everything else belongs here. Everything else is about
negotiation, wisdom and the courage to be who you are to the best of your
potential and to find your peace with your fellow humans.
REH
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