Mel: High quality post. I especially liked your observations about 1) how government meddling prolonged the great depression and 2) the moral aspect of pain. The latter was specifically noted by Pirsig:
"If you eliminate suffering from this world you eliminate life. There's no evolution. Those species that don't suffer don't survive. Suffering is the negative face of the Quality that drives the whole process." (Lila,29) Platt > mel > a profit based economic system (and ultimately they all are > in operation, which I'll get to in a minute) can be sustainable > in much the same way as an atmospheric system can be > sustainable. After all it's not like an atmospher has high or > low pressure, still or wind, clear days and world-rocking > storms. --a joke, but you see the point. > > Animal populations do the same thing, oscillate. Equilibrium > is merely operation in an 'average range' sense...more an > intellectual myth than a useful reflection of the real, as much > artifact of a conceptual snapshot in time as anything. > > Operational economy is a dynamic, emergent social behavior > as seen in its agregate. Economics is an intellectual attempt > to model the economy to try and understand it. Don't confuse > the two. > > Theintellectual attempt is a very young endeavor, but a few > centuries old and there may have been significant boom-bust > cycles over millenia that crashed whole civilizations, 'composting > and fermenting' them into fodder for the next wave of aggregate > behavior by people. Like the life-cycle of stars. > > Best we not get too attached in the long run to thinking we have > somehow escaped that same behavior. > > However, returning to my assertion that all economies utilize > profit. The Rus merely used theirs to fund too-large a military > for their profit-load, hence it's collapse. Chinese (post 1949) > went through numerous cycles as they discovered their > economy was barely manageable for anything but four-out-of- > five years of farm surplus to feed their population. > > All the while the people kept working, individually, to create > what was in aggregate a shadow economy based on trade, > barter, 'illegal' buying and selling, and that "wild market" economy > was eventually recognized, (I'd love to know by whom) as a more > vital part of the probable success of stability for China than the > old five-year and great-leap planning could achieve. > > > gav > > of course i am presuming that we all consider depression and war things > to > be avoided. (general assent here?) > > > mel > Not so fast...depression, at least the 'great' one, was a composite > entity > of the natural wave-trough motion of oscillation magnified by a clear > case of "central planning" intervention by government. They did in all > sincerity the best they could for all the right reasons and achieved the > worst possible outcome because they made all the wrong moves. > > War is just the violent response of societies for any of several reasons > and a much longer more complex discussion. Although there is some > good that comes from the effort, oddly enough. > Population mixing, cultural inter-fertilizing, subsequent trade, better > after-the-fact understanding, knowledge exchange, etc. > > The PAIN of an outcome doesn't make it 'wrong', just individually > undesirable. > > thanks--mel Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
