From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 20 2005 - 17:21:10 BST
[Arlo previously]
Boy oh boy. Here we go again. Arlo, despite saying or suggesting anything
of the sort, is the Big Evil Liberal coming to take away your freedom.
[Platt]
If national health insurance which you support isn't a restriction on the
free market, I don't know what is. In most such plans you can't even chose
your own doctor, a classic case of taking away your freedom.
[Arlo]
Never said I support taking away your freedom to choose your own doctor.
Everyone should be able to choose their own doctor, its just that everyone
should also be able to see a doctor, or get the care they need when they need
it. As I've said countless times, the ability to see a doctor and get healtcare
shouldn't be a "market commodity". Perhaps you can tell me why you feel only
those with enough capital should receive healthcare? Is that so we can let the
poor die off?
[Arlo previously]
Neither Pirsig nor I would support "banning" junk from the market, but give
people a means to see Quality and the junk would disappear.
[Platt]
As Pirsig has clearly stated, what's junk to you may be treasure to me.
[Arlo]
So then, it's all relative. You are a relativist. You keep saying we can't make
Quality statements about things, that the entire MOQ boils down to "if you like
it, it has Quality". Is that right?
So then what was the point of ZMM? Pirsig was clearly critical of production and
consumption. Quality was at the heart of fixing the problem he saw. The whole
MOQ evolved out of the desire to "fix" a problem. If that problem was merely
"Pirsig's opinion", than I don't see what the point of this all is.
Pirsig in ZMM, "Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can never
see anything through the concrete and brick and neon but he knows that buried
within it are grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the manners that will
convince themselves they possess Quality, learning strange poses of style and
glamour vended by dream magazines and other mass media, and paid for by the
vendors of substance. He thinks of them at night alone with their advertised
glamorous shoes and stockings and underclothes off, staring through the sooty
windows at the grotesque shells revealed beyond them, when the poses weaken and
the truth creeps in, the only truth that exists here, crying to heaven, God,
there is nothing here but dead neon and cement and brick."
That's a fairly non-relativist condemnation of the currect cultural crisis,
isn't it?
[Platt]
(in claiming again I am agaist the free market, Platt offers as proof my support
of...) National health insurance for one. Burdensome business regulations for
another. Progressive taxation for another. The list is endless.
[Arlo]
So, the only way to truly support a free market is to make everything a market
commodity? Should we discontinue support for education, and see school on the
free market, so that the rich can attend the "Ferrari" schools and the poor can
just jump right into a life collecting the rich's garbage? We'd have to abolish
libraries too, since they offer goods that are for sale on the "free market".
Only those with money should have access to books, yes?
So, healthcare is something that I feel should not be a market commodity. As for
"business regulations", I can read history. I'm well aware of the gross "lack
of freedoms" posed by unfettered business. Unless you want to argue that more
people were "freer" back in 1890 than today? And, progressive taxation, I'm
actually more in favor of abolishing income tax altogether and implementing a
consumption tax.
[Arlo previously]
So, now "jobs" and "culturally enriching" are both relative. Tell me, why
are these things relative? Are you the arbiter of what's relative and
what's not?
[Platt]
No. But you seem to be want to be the arbiter of what's quality and what's
junk.
[Arlo]
Then who declared them "relative"? What about them makes them so? And other
things "not"? And you avoided my question, are drug lords "enriching the
culture" by virtue of their desired product and amount of sales? Is that a
relative answer too?
[Platt]
Why do you hold out Pirsig to be like Jesus Christ? He would be the first
to laugh out loud at your wish that everyone be like him.
[Arlo]
More evasiveness. Actually, I am holding him out to be nothing of the sort. I
think what motivated Pirsig is at the core of all of us. It is you, in your
need to show how man is by nature motivated only by "profit" and the need to
bring capital and power to him/herself and his/her family In YOUR world,
Pirsig is the rare exception who's motivation to Quality rises above "money and
fame" that casts him as an abberration. My point all along was that the Quality
that Pirsig was moving towards in authoring and publishing, the "point of a
book like this", should be something the culture promotes and encourages as
"natural". Instead, we tell people that following selfish interests of
"personal profit, power and fame" are the "norms", and even something to be
proud of.
[Arlo previously]
But, hey, what's a "funeral procession" or two if you can get your meat a
buck per pound cheaper.
[Platt]
What about freedom to choose? That's my highest priority. I think that's
Pirsig's, too, as I've explained a number of times.
[Arlo]
The whole point of ZMM was that people were choosing without a means of seeing
that Quality is a real part of the world. And this is where all the junk in
production and consumption originated, and caused those Interstate funeral
processions. Pirsig offered a way out that has nothing to do with changing the
"freedom to choose", but enriching the dialogue so that Quality was the focus
of the choice. Since, as you've said repeatedly, the MOQ has not gained
universal acceptance, I can only conclude that people are still producing and
consuming in a free market with no recognition of Quality. Are you suggesting
that what Pirsig wrote about in ZMM has been fixed? How?
Arlo
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