Tom wrote: > Going through the motions.
Among all the disgusting aspects of our beloved social order, inequality is the hardest one to justify. And, understandably, it's becoming less and less tolerable. Mankiw is no idiot, but even the smartest person would have a hard time with this one. Question for the Economist critic: How come *you* don't come up with a better defense of the 1%, as you demand from Mankiw? Maybe *you all* are just running out of non-ludicrous excuses for it. This type of public self exposure is to me further evidence that the revolutions that socialists have been calling for now appear to many as a real possibility; and they are really possible and then necessary if the many decide so. Years ago (in 2005, about the time my now 8-year old son was born), during the high-flying times of the real-estate boom in the U.S. and Europe, Hans or somebody else (I can't remember now) had the idea of creating a list to discuss socialism. The list went nowhere after a few exchanges. On the Welcome thread I posted this [JH2013 added asterisks for emphasis]: "So, I expect people to grow *exponentially* less and less content with capitalism, and by that I mean the two inherent, but distinguishable aspects of capitalism: (1) highly evolved markets and (2) underlying wealth *inequality*. (I tend to exclude the direct use of extra-economic power as a distinctive characteristic of capitalism, not because I don't understand that markets can't function without property laws and their enforcement or because I don't note that the pursuit of profit has driven the use of extra-economic power to extremes unheard of in pre-modern times, but because -- as such -- the direct use of extra-economic power is common to modes of production from ancient times to modernity. So it's not differentia specifica. Since I know that a similar argument could be made of markets, I admit that my decision is arbitrary.) I personally believe that, as things appear right now, *the assault on inequality is going to take front seat*. Markets will have to wait. That'll be a much slower and gradual process. And the dissolution of the state even more so [JH2013: I now think the dissolution of markets and of the state are sides of the same process, so it'll be simultaneous]. I think that both evidence and logic suggest that these distinctions are crucial and will be decisive in the sequence of events as we move forward. It's very clear in his writings that Lenin struggled with these distinctions a lot in his NEP period." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
