Dear Rog,
I'm glad you appreciated 23/9 23:10 -0400 my 23/9 23:51 +0200
posting for it cost me half a weekend and a lot of displeasure of
my wife to write it. No wonder you found me throwing too many
concepts in too few sentences at the end for I was running out of
time.
You write "Not sure if I agree with the international
exploitation concept as primarily an issue of 'receipt of stolen
goods'." What do you think international exploitation is then?
For me exploitation is mainly local/national and international
exploitation is mainly a result of unfavorable terms of trade for
the South. These terms of trade are accepted by our trade
partners in the South because they can shift the burden to those
they exploit. This burden consists of working hard for miserable
wages and being at the mercy of world market conditions for
uncertain and temporary employment (as land and other means of
subsistence are monopolized by the elite).
You wrote 17/9 21:15 -0400 "we are a very wealthy people .... due
to our values of ... freedom and creativity".
I suggest alternatively that you naturally value freedom and
creativity as you historically are a selection of greedy and
resourceful people from everywhere and that your wealth is simply
due to your flocking together AND to your valuing of wealth over
a lot of other things (a characteristic commonly called greed).
Maybe it is only natural for immigrants from mainly very poor
conditions given the opportunity to start a new life in a new
country to go on (over)valuing material wealth for a couple of
generations after having beaten their poverty and collectively to
create a pattern of values in which wealth is more central than
at average in the rest of the world.
I don't understand why you react facetiously to that suggestion
with "Yea, and teaching someone to fish can be called
'propagandizing youth to destroy the lives and freedom of our
gilled friends.'".
Game theory (as far as I know it) only presents models for
biological patterns of values. As long as the possibility to
identify with a group isn't part of a theory, it can't be a model
for a social pattern of values and as long as the possibility to
identify with ideals or systems of ideas isn't included, it can't
be a model for an intellectual pattern of value. Game theory as a
basis or morality (which you -I'm glad- don't propose) implies
gross reductionism.
With friendly greetings,
Wim Nusselder
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