There is an Elvis Costello song on his *Brutal Youth* album that captures last month's economic discussion perfectly. It mentions someone "Reading Das Capital, while watching Home Shopping Club." In more ways than one, this seems to reflect the spirit of our discussion and of many of our views. For example, one way that this statement can be read is that modern economies are already a mixture of both. Nobody in this list really pleaded for total central command communism, and nobody argued for unrestrained capitalism. The arguments were more on the balance than on the extremes. A second interpretation that contributes to the discussion is to reveal how any given culture can be a budding seed for the opposite. Sceptics on the left can smile to themselves with this phrase and conceive of someone "intellectualizing about the values of socialism while living in the vacuous wealth of capitalism." Someone on the right can take it as "dreaming of luxury and freedom while living in the poverty of a brainwashing socialist state." Or perhaps critics on either side could read it as someone "reaping the benefits of one economic system (pick your favorite), and inconsistently asking for the opposite, with no thought given to what this really entails." One benefit of a great pop lyric is being able to interpret it in lots of different ways. Elvis is the master of this technique (for the record, he is unabashadly liberal!) The final way to take in this lyric is just to appreciate the long term inevitability of social and intellectual quality as history continues its slow but inevitable march toward better outcomes. I frequently read history of the world/science/art/societies/etc, and I never fail to be thankful -- considering everything -- to be alive today rather than in any other era. I agree with the majority that our static values color our views on the free enterprise/planned economy spectrum. The MOQ warns us to expect as much. But it tells us more. It also tells us that we should expect and value movement away from today's static patterns in search of undefined yet higher quality future states. In an increasingly borderless world, where economic vibrancy is defined more in terms of ideas than material, higher Quality socioeconomic solutions are extremely likely (though not inevitable). Those economies, whether leftist, rightist or centralist that are able to generate and take advantage of ideas the fastest and the most efficiently and most inclusively with the least long term harm to the environment and intellectual values will be rewarded with economic and social and intellectual vibrancy. Those avoiding or missing out on opportunity will be punished (if not absolutely, then at least relatively). Resources -- material, mental, physical, political, martial, economic and intellectual -- will go to those cultures and environments where ideas can take root and blossom and will flee from those fields more barren. Viva La Evolution! Risky MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
