From: ml (mbtlehn@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Mon Dec 06 2004 - 06:34:00 GMT
Hello Mark:
(Interleaved Reply)
::no reply needed::
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Steven Heyman" <markheyman@infoproconsulting.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 12:58 PM
Subject: MD The Quality of Capitalism?
> Hi all,
>
> I know some of you MOQers are not at all interested in economics or
> politics, so I've started a new thread for easy filtering.
>
> A few people here have insisted, repeatedly, that so-called free-
> market capitalism is the highest quality form of socio-economic
> organization. I think that this is an important issue, and would
> like to explore it further.
>
> To get started, I'd like to post an email exchange between Noam
> Chomsky and one of his readers. Please feel free to attack, defend,
> or just discuss any portion of the exchange. If you want to take
> issue with something NC says, I will gladly forward your message to
> him. He's remarkably good about replying.
>
> Here's the exchange, question first, then the reply.
>
> Thanks in advance to anyone who wants to participate. I truly do
> value your opinions, and will welcome any thoughtful comments.
>
> Best
> Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
>
(I am disappointed you chose straw men for this.
The prior posts regarding what was in effect the
"Delphic" strength of greater participating complexity
in choice over that of limited "intelligence" in planned
systems would have been a far better choice.
Also the insistence of using the outmoded notion
of Capitalism when it has been pointed out that we
have not lived in a truly Capitalistic system since late
19 C early 20 C, but are instead in a rather more poly-
morphic system of markets, leaves any further argument
mostly shadow boxing.)
> >Professor Chomsky,
>
> >I recently had a couple of arguments with some people
> about Capitalism.
<snip>>
> BEGIN CHOMSKY
>
> I'd suggest that you transfer this to the Parecon
> forum, which is concerned precisely with this question.
> However, a few comments below -- though, frankly, this
> specific discussion is framed in terms so objectionable
> that I personally doubt that you should even
> participate in it. Some comments below.
>
> >1. Capitalism gives people incentive to produce,
> >innovate, work, both monetarily and in class status.
> >Other systems do not and cannot produce good incentive.
> >(Is there any viable alternative source of incentives?)
>
> Is "capitalism" supposed to be something like the
> system in the US? Or Japan? Or...? If not, we are
> proceeding in outer space. If so, then it is unfair to
> say that the claims are unargued: they appear to be
> instantly refuted even by the most superficial
> examination. Has great science, art, music, etc., been
> produced by people working for money?
(Many to most of the works we know from later
personal periods of late medieval and reniassance
artists were in fact produced under patronage or
comission. Although of course the above confuses
drudgery level production with master work creation
in presumably deliberate obfuscation.
Production by the peasant upon the land was for
survival, in bad times, and for excess to get an
advantage by barter or money in good times, so
even the primative market did provide incentive. )
Is that what was
> driving Einstein when he was working on relativity
> theory in the Swiss patent office, or later at the
> Institute for Advanced Study? Or artists struggling
> for years on crusts of bread in garrets? Or artisans
> throughout history, and today, trying to create objects
> of beauty and perfection? Or parents devoting time and
> energy to raise their children properly (creating
> "human capital," in the terminology of economists, a
> major factor in economic growth)? Or in fact just
> about anything worthwhile or constructive?
(This line of argument seems not so much cart-
before-the-horse, as trying to shove the cart up the
horses butt. The distribution of market excess in
terms of living standard or referential wealth allowed
such efforts as Einstein to be borne.)
The
> unargued claims that you are being asked to disprove --
> a framework that makes no sense in the first place --
> are apparently being put forth by people who have
> not had even the slightest experience, direct or
> indirect, with creative work, now and in the past --
> and by "creative" I do not mean only the peaks of human
> creativity, but the lives of most decent people who are
> not utterly pathological.
(This seems to support that you presented / were
presented with / straw men.)
>
> Suppose that there is some miraculous difference
> between scientists, artists, artisans, parents, etc.,
> and those seeking to produce marketable goods -- a
> near-lunatic assumption, but let's adopt it for the
> sake of argument.
(The overlapping and interlocking markets and
communities of intrest and effort, though generally
similar in their human effect are often vastly different
in their specifics. The publish or perish world of
an tenured academic scientist, while it shares much
of the "subject" continuum on which commercially
supported scientists work is far different from one
another in the funding realm. Grant trolling and the
"expectations management" of that academic world
is different from the "productive pay your way"
expectations of the commercial world.
The coal miner and the artisan too live in different
worlds. Coal keeps the miner tied to a specific
place as long as that remains the chosen work,
while the artisan is often more free to move and find
a different social world in a better economy.)
So take the core of the fabled "new
> economy," for example, what you and I are now using:
> computers and the internet. How were these developed?
> Answer, pretty much like most of science, the arts,
> crafts, etc. All produced in labs, often for decades,
> mostly within the dynamic state sector of the economy,
> with essentially no consumer choice or entrepreneurial
> initiative.
(There is no fabled new economy that is media
buzz as best and no one here is arguing that it
does exist.
While entrpreneurial is not defined per se, the
general "enthusiastic self-starter, do what ever
it takes to follow the interesting work" portion of
the conotative image of the entrepreneur is very
much core to the people who produced the basis
of high tech then , as now, and as in the more
distant past.)
Unless you count the "entrepreneurial
> initiative" of IBM executives who realized that they
> could use public resources, like the MIT Whirlwind and
> Harvard Mark series of computers in the 1950s and the
> work going on in the labs, to learn how to switch from
> punched cards to electronic-based computing, or their
> "entrepreneurial initiative" in relying on government
> procurement (that is, unwitting public subsidy) to
> develop more advanced computers in the 1960s, or the
> initiative of AT&T to rely 100% on government for
> procurement of high quality transistors ten years after
> they were invented (largely using government-produced
> technology, and within a great lab that AT&T,
> theoretically private, was able to maintain at public
> expense by charging monopoly prices, thanks to
> government protection), and so on. I happened to be in
> the electronics lab where a lot of this was going on at
> the time, but even the most casual acquaintance with
> the history of technology, hence the source of the
> modern economy, reveals that this is completely
> standard: people working very hard, all hours of the
> night, because they find their work fascinating and are
> passionately interested in finding out the answers to
> hard questions, just as artists labor often in penury
> to satisfy their inner creative needs, parents devote
> enormous efforts to "producing human capital" (in the
> familiar ugly terminology), etc.
(Perfect description of the opportunistic picture of
cooperation in those with creativity marrying with
those who see a way to exploit such in the market.
A limited-set "planned economy" tends to show
far less creativity, less often than is seen in markets
that allow more possibility for exploiting efficiencies
and effectiveness, as appropriate...)
Most of human life,
> in fact, for anyone who has taken the trouble to
> observe or participate in the world.
>
> One might add that these were also the standard
> assumptions of the founders of classical liberalism --
> the conceptions that those who you are arguing with are
> supposed to revere: von Humboldt, for example, who took
> it to be obvious that people are born to "inquire and
> create," and it is an infringement on their fundamental
> nature to deprive them of this right -- and further,
> that if an artisan produces a beautiful object on
> command, we may admire what he does but despise what he
> is, because he is not a free creative person acting
> from inner creative need, but a tool of production
> controlled externally.
( One might also point out that the current incarnation
of unremarkable Classical Liberals are bust shacking up
with folk who believe the world was created a few thousand
years back and so are not capable of elucidating a version
of market economy that is at all close to what is seen today.
Of couse one could also take one's ritalin and stay on task. )
>
> The more general question is whether it is even worth
> debating arbitrary claims for which no argument is
> offered, and, furthermore, based on assumptions that
> are so massively refuted by even the most casual
> observation, let alone serious inquiry.
>
(In the interest of profound verbal onanism, one can
always explore arbitrary questions.)
>
> >2. The classic - People vote with their dollars, what
> >they like they buy and thus those things are supported.
> >(I actually refuted this one somewhat with the example
> >of the media, we don't exactly WANT to see all the crap
> >on T.V.)
>
> Why do businesses spend hundreds of billions a year on
> advertising? Is it to develop the free markets of
> doctrine in which informed consumers make rational
> choices? Or is it to "create wants," to pursue what
> Adam Smith called the basic objective of "merchants and
> manufacturers": to "oppress" and "deceive" the public?
> All of this seems too obvious even to waste time
> discussing.
>
(Better... markets that successfully compete for
resources survive to continue competing. The
buggy-whip sector is rarely discussed on Wall
Street Week.)
>
> >3. Great intellectuals like Milton Friedman and Adam
> >Smith advocate capitalism, how could I challenge these
> >great minds?
>
(This is simply an appeal to authority and as
such should be rejected out of hand as another
straw man...)
>
> Let's put aside Friedman, out of politeness, and keep
> to Smith, a very important figure. He was pre-
> capitalist in his conceptions, and often quite
> interesting. For example, his basic argument for his
> rather nuanced views about markets: that under
> conditions of liberty they would lead to equality, an
> obvious desideratum. Or his one use of the term
> "invisible hand" in "Wealth of Nations," in an argument
> for what economic historians call "home bias," in
> effect an argument against what is now called
> "neoliberalism" or "neoclassical economics." Smith
> argued that the English economy, what he cared about,
> would be wrecked if British capitalists were to invest
> abroad and import from abroad, but it would not be a
> problem, because "home bias" would lead them to invest
> at home and use domestically-produced goods, and
> therefore, by an "invisible hand," Britain would be
> saved from the ravages of international markets. Or
> his argument against division of labor, and insistence
> that in any civilized society, governments would
> intervene to constrain it, because it would turn
> working people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as
> a human creature can be -- essentially on von
> Humboldt's assumptions.
>
> Yes, Smith is very much worth reading, whether one
> agrees with his interesting work or not. Reading, not
> worshipping on the basis of concocted mythology.
>
>
> >4. "All other systems that have been tried have
> >failed." (Russia, Cuba, this arguement is a joke.)
>
> Yes, a joke, and one in particularly poor taste. And
> capitalism hasn't failed?
>
(Another little piggy house of straw... A discussion of
Bionomics would have been better.)
>
> >5. Capitalism is the only viable system, that's why
> >it's the only one that is still functioning.
>
> First, nothing remotely like capitalism exists. Is the
> US economy, relying crucially on the dynamic state
> sector, a capitalist economy? But putting that aside,
> was it an argument in the 18th century to say that
> feudalism, absolutism, rule by Kings, slavery,.... are
> the only viable systems because they are the only ones
> still functioning? Or in the 1960s to say that women
> can't be granted elementary rights because such rights
> aren't granted in any viable system? Or that freedom
> of speech must be blocked by state power for the same
> reason? This is beyond absurdity.
>
(Another straw, so an easy answer...)
>
> >6. The competition inherent in capitalism creates
> >innovations and produces things that would not be
> >possible in other systems.
>
(Better would have been to point out that the rate
of innovation and the radiation of design is more
extended in market based systems than in a
centrally planned system.)
> Have a look at the actual history of innovation, as
> barely hinted above.
>
(True...compare SOVIET automotive design to
West German 1965-75. Compare Chinese clothing
under Mao to Italy in the same period. Compare
Bulgarian recreational drug selection in the 60's
to California. Compare N Korean electronics to
Japan, now.)
> And also, note the way you are being trapped into
> wasting time. Among rational people -- say, in the
> normal practice of the sciences -- someone who puts
> forth a thesis is expected to provide evidence and
> argument for it, not to just shriek it from the
> rooftops and challenge you to show that it is wrong.
(Interesting, but irrelevant, the forum is e-mail not
peer-review research.)
> The debate into which you are being trapped works in
> quite the opposite way. By participating in it, you
> are immobilizing yourself and allowing free rein to
> those who prefer to shriek from the rooftops. I think
> it's worth asking whether that is a sensible procedure.
>
(Good advice, best stay on MoQ and leave the irrelevant
social fixation asides off the radar.)
> Noam Chomsky
>
>
(Shameless appeal to irrelevant authority...)
::no reply needed::
>
thanks--mel
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