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| capitalism - the unknown ideal | 2007-07-06 06:33 UTC |
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It's summer - the time that the minds of the parents of school age children turn back to their reading lists. Being on a fairly long business trip, I thought I'd have some extra time to catch up on reading. This turned out to be untrue, but I did get some reading in on the plane, and a little more since I got here.
My current selection is "Capitalism - the Unknown Ideal", primarily by Ayn Rand. It was written when her career was in full swing, and includes articles by a few others, including Alan Greenspan. And what better place to read about the undeniable virtues of laissez-faire capitalism than India! This is a place that, despite some empty propaganda to the contrary, has clearly rejected the concept of economic rights and has left each individual to his or her own devices. I can see the bustling city out the window of the back seat of this plush Toyota SUV in which I'm riding. Hold on a minute, we're stuck at a traffic light among a haphazard array of rickshaws and motorbikes, and there's a 4 year old rapping insistently on my closed window -- very distracting -- OK, we're off again, horn blaring. Much better. Ayn's just not connecting with me -- she seems to make quick, unsupported assertions, followed by internally consistent but isolated logical discussions, and frequently invokes the names of Hitler, Stalin, and others, seemingly to elicit a strong reaction from her readers. I remember that she's from the Soviet Union, and must know more about these baddies than I do. She also tends to quote liberally from her earlier books and articles, and not from much else. Her treatments of the value of individual rights are appealing, and her portrayal of the use of "the common good" and other economics-rights doctrines as the basis for tyranny and oppression is interesting and believable, but the nagging suspicion that she has omitted or perhaps obscured something important tugs at me throughout. Off to the left, across a few piles of rubble and litter, I can see several makeshift lean-tos, each constructed by placing a plastic tarp across the tops of two parallel fences about 8 feet apart, then hanging regular blankets down the sides to the muddy ground, forming walls. Bright colors, nicely done. There are some depressed looking dogs lounging outside - fairly healthy looking - not mangy, and each appears to have all four legs. Rand argues that a system that allows each individual to pursue what he or she wants to the extent of his or her abilities, while providing a framework for the interpretation and enforcement of contracts and protection from physical violence, results in the optimal condition for all people. There is no such thing as wealth, goodwill, welfare, etc., that is owned by the community, but rather all is owned by individuals. It is individuals who are served by society (in the manner described above), rather than the other way around. Exceptionally talented individuals will, in their quest for personal gain, throw off amazing benefits for all the other individuals in the form of technology and other advances. Less exceptional indviduals will enjoy less, but will be much better off by virtue of being around the first group, and each will get everything that his or her less exceptional talents allow. The most deserving indviduals will quickly and naturally acquire most of the wealth, and everyone else happily snaps into place. Fortunately for some, the people with money are free to dispose of it as they wish, and out of pity will provide some money to those who are in desperate need of it, because they're nice. But they don't have to. But they can, because it's their money. Meritocracy - difficult to dismiss. Then it hits me -- what's missing is human nature! Not that part of human nature that makes people do selfish things and take advantage of powerful positions, but rather that part of human nature that makes it so that people *need* stuff, not want, but need, and also that part of human nature that makes people be helpless infants, infirm, old, that part that makes them want the best for their children and that part that makes them die. That's what's missing. Briefly, the system she describes makes sense if everyone has equal bargaining power and can take or leave any deal on the table. But when someone has to have something like food, clothing, shelter, etc., then the equation changes in a way that defeats the neatness of her system, it seems to me. Lots of people need things, some more than others. Further, are we to assume that the children of these most talented people are also the most talented? If Rand wants us to believe so, then she conceals a strand of eugenics that most would find objectionable, to say the least, and in any event the kids would not have acquired wealth through their own merit, which is an essential part of her system. If not (and I think our experience confirms not), then she has a problem -- what happens to the money when the parents die? 100% inheritance tax? I've heard that advocated, but not by her - maybe I need to keep reading. Such a tax would sit in stark contrast to her otherwise hands-off ideal government, and I'll be impressed if she navigates through that bear trap of an inconsistency. If there's no tax, then the money goes to the kids, right? But what that means is that generation #1 is a meritocracy and generation #2 is an inheritocracy. A fool and his money are soon parted? Maybe so, but just because you're not talented enough to make lots of money and change the world doesn't mean you're a fool. In Rand's world making lots of money is the destiny of the bestest people, but I don't hear her talk about those who merely have the guile to hold on to lots of money, mainly by manipulating money-less people who are beholden to their own unmet needs (and therefore to those who can meet them for a short time), and not by improving the world. Maybe I need to keep reading, so I will. This post is getting long - I'll continue with another later. |
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| powells bookstore | 2007-06-14 23:17 UTC | ||||
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| from science and sanity | 2006-07-04 23:41 UTC |
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"Imagine that we are engaged in a friendly serious discussion with some one, and that we decide to enquire into the meanings of words. For this special experiment, it is not necessary to be very exacting, as this would enormously and unnecessarily complicate the experiment. It is useful to have a piece of paper and a pencil to keep a record of the progress. "We begin by asking the 'meaning' of every word uttered, being satisfied for this purpose with the roughest of definitions; then we ask the 'meaning' of the words used in the definitions, and this process is continued usually for no more than ten to fifteen minutes, until the victim begins to speak in circles --as, for instance, defining 'space' by 'length' and 'length' by 'space'. When this stage is reached, we have come usually to the undefined terms of a given individual. If we still press, no matter how gently, for definitions, a most interesting fact occurs. Sooner or later, signs of affective disturbances appear. Often the face reddens; there is a bodily restlessness; sweat appears--symptoms quite similar to those seen in a schoolboy who has forgotten his lesson, which he 'knows but cannot tell'. If the partner in the experiment is capable of self-observation, he invariably finds that he feels an internal affective pressure, connected, perhaps, with the rush of blood to the brain and probably best expressed in some such words as 'what he "knows" but cannot tell', or the like. Here we have reached the bottom and the foundation of all non-elementalistic meanings--the meanings of undefined terms, which we 'know' somehow, but cannot tell. In fact, we have reached the un-speakable level. This 'knowledge' is supplied by the lower nerve centres; it represents affective first order effects, and is interwoven and interlocked with other affective states, such as those called 'wishes', 'intentions', 'intuitions', 'evaluation', and many others. It should be noticed that these first order effects have an objective character, as they are un-speakable--are not words." - A. Korzybski UPDATE: What Al didn't mention is the sucktastic tedium that bursts forth as soon as the victim realizes how many words will need to be defined, as well as the tendency to use increasingly short definitions as the scale of the excercise unfolds. Maybe people in the 1930's had much longer attention spans and less other stuff to do, but nowadays, I think attention lapse (possibly accompanied by affective disturbances such as acute irritation) will set in long before one reaches the first order effects. It's cool to think about it, though. |
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| go sane | 2006-06-27 03:22 UTC |
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It's summer, and the thoughts of all parents turn to things that they could never get to during the school year. For myself, I'm assigning the works of two largely discredited 20th century authors, Ayn Rand and Alfred Korzybski. I was in post secondary school for a number of years, and the only in-school reference I heard to either one of them was a law professor saying something like "and then you've got Korzybski and all that crap..." partially under his breath during a lecture.
I have an old copy of Korzybski's Science and Sanity (or, more correctly, "Excerpts from Science and Sanity") that I've been half-heartedly trying to read for about 20 years. I could never get past the introduction, which is hard to follow, and seems a little self-important. I do find the general concepts of his work compelling (as I currently understand them -- a criticism of the human tendency to categorize, a rejection of the validity of binary logic in most real-world situations, and the inherent limitations of human language in thought), as well as the slogan I see repeated by modern-day proponents: "The map is not the territory". Wish me luck with this one - the reading is difficult, and the author has been run out of the halls of academia. There's also the nagging suspicion that a wholesale adoption of Korzybski's teachings would lead to more or less total mental paralysis. I know even less about Rand, but have had several friends who admired her work. Admittedly, I've always been a little suspicious of the whole thing, but that's not entirely fair, since I haven't read it. I've been looking for electronic versions of her work (readable on a Palm OS smartphone) without luck, but I did find an ascii version of a piece called Anthem at project Gutenburg. She wrote this early on, and it's a short story about a futuristic totalitarian communal society where servitude, obedience, and a complete rejection of the individual are the rule, and one man's discovery of individuality (and one woman's discovery of servitude and obedience to an individual rather than a society). It's a quick read, and, taken as a light work of fiction, is not bad. Looked at from a moral or philosophical perspective, it seems sophomoric and a little repugnant -- she sets up at least two false dichotomies (individualism is either everything or nothing, people are either virtuously individualistic or irredeemably wretched), and uses the classic "straw-man" approach of setting up a contrived and impossibly vulnerable villain (in this case, the society and its benighted elders) and knocking it down in a display of righteousness (the escape and self-realization of the protagonist). To be fair, this is an early work, and it's actually refreshing to read when you consider that it was written by someone who had experience in the Stalinist USSR (I think she did, from reading her biography). I may have to break down and procure paper versions of her later works, but I'll get to them somehow. |
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| satanic verses | 2005-01-14 22:44 UTC |
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Just finished Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. I liked it very much - couldn't resist the inevitable discussion about the fatwah with some of my Islamic friends. One opinion is that the Ayatollah provided some of the best marketing that any writer could ask for. Probably true, but a bit more extreme than I would hope for if I ever got off my butt (or on it, as the case may be) and started writing. Anyway, if you can stomach the blasphemy, I recommend this one. It streched my vocabulary and sent me looking for a good palmOS based dictionary. I didn't find one that could keep up with Mr. Rushdie, but I did hook up with iNoah from Ars Lexis which is pretty cool as long as I have an internet connection. |
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