Dear Roger,
In reply to your 29/10 15:16 -0500 posting:
Whether you INTENDED to legitimize (in the sense of justify)
wealth or not, is not relevant for the question whether you did.
I had the impression you did (unintentionally?) and used that
impression to answer Platt's request to to prove my statement
"that the 'free enterprise global economics' is a system of ideas
developed on behalf of the privileged to legitimize their (my
and your) privileges".
May I remind you that this discussion started with your statement
of 17/9 21:15 -0400 that "we are a very wealthy people .... due
to our values of ... freedom and creativity".
I 23/9 23:51 suggested an alternative explanation that you didn't
particularly
like (the G-word).
I also wrote then (and you agreed 23/9 23:10 -0400):
"Whenever a society ... develops internal inequality of any kind
... some will feel privileged and others will feel
underprivileged. Regardless of luck, virtue or whatever being at
the root of the inequality, the privileged will develop systems
of ideas to legitimize their privileges and the underprivileged
will develop systems of ideas to legitimize redistribution."
So the legitimacy (justification/morality) of wealth WAS an issue
between us. How could you NOT consciously intend to take a
position regarding this issue?
Both wealth and social quality are fine with me as container
concepts. It won't change my conclusions to use one rather than
the other.
We may agree on: Wealth (and social quality) is not immoral
(illegitimate) in itself, only its distribution is, when not in
proportion to individual effort.
"If your products and services are not valued by others," not
only "the possibility certainly exists that they indeed HAVE NO
SOCIAL VALUE." In my opinion they have BY DEFINITION no SOCIAL
value then. Why else would we call it SOCIAL value? Your "advice
is to do whatever is possible to change these self defeating
patterns". My advice to Platt (and you) "to try and see the world
from the eyes of people whose products and services are NOT
valued by others" was intended to help you see that they are more
often than not in a position in which they are simply unable to
change these patterns. They may even have to beat a military
superpower to do so... They are simply part of the pattern that
includes both wealthy and poor. In the rare instances in which
they manage to emancipate themselves, they do so at the expense
of others (outcompeting them in one way or another). By this I
don't discount by any means the very real success of the social
pattern of values as a whole (the pattern including both wealthy
and poor) in creating more wealth than any alternative social
pattern of values anywhere in sight.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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