From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Sun Oct 23 2005 - 23:43:36 BST
[Arlo previously]
Why is morality not an aspect of products and services?
[Platt]
There's not a great moral issue on whether to buy Aquafresh or Crest
toothpaste.
[Arlo]
Are you saying that there are no marketplace issues other than this? Why do you
think Pirsig felt the market was swamped with "junk", if it was really
something as simplistic as "which toothpaste" to buy? Why did Pirsig feel that
SOM thinking led to an absence of Quality in both production and consumption?
[Platt]
So long as free choice remains in the marketplace, it tends to be self-
correcting from a moral standpoint. It's intellect's interference in the
marketplace (social level pattern) that's the problem with regulation
piled on regulation so that it's a wonder anything gets produced. Witness
today the shortage of oil refineries due to such intellectual
interference.
[Arlo]
It wasn't very "self-correcting" to Pirsig. He felt people needed a better
language to correct the junk production and consumption brought forth by SOM. I
agree.
[Platt]
I didn't get the impression from ZMM that the whole book was about poor
products and services. My impression was it was about reality seen through a
classic or romantic lens..
[Arlo]
Yep, a "reality" that denigrated Quality in production and consumption to a
"stylized veneer" overlaid on objects. Quality, Pirsig points out, begins with
the connection of the craftsman to his/her labor, and the object of that labor.
The cycle is complete with a consumer base capable of seeing that Quality as
something more than "style syrup".
[Arlo previously]
And look at what world most people lived in. Hardly one I'd want to go back to.
"Free from government interference", maybe, but enslaved by necessity and
servitude.
[Platt]
Yes. Thanks to capitalism, technology and the free market, living
conditions for most people are much better today.
[Arlo]
Not at all. Thanks to restrictions placed on capitalism by minimum wages,
workforce safety regulations, injury compensation and society demanding
responsibility in production. If not for this, people would be no better off
than 1890. Witness the lack of these regulations in popular overseas production
companies. Long hours, little pay, sweatshop conditions, no health or injury,
and the destitute conditions this creates. Take a trip down to Tijuana, Platt,
where Coke and other American corporations operate "free" of "government
interference". Far from creating a great city, it is a polluted, impoverished
city where people have nothing to look forward to but 5 cents and hour and 80
hours a week of toil. If you think the absence of "government interference"
creates more freedoms for people, I take it you are planning your retirement in
Tijuana?
[Arlo previously]
Are drug lords enriching the culture? Is "enrichment" relative, like you seem to
indicate?
[Platt]
Well, I guess to some they are. To me, no.
[Arlo]
So, relativism is relative? If "enriching the culture" is relative, then I take
it pretty much everybody enriches the culture. Which makes it meaningless.
Pirsig is no better than a drug lord in this respect. Well, to you maybe, but
since its all relative, that doesn't say much.
[Arlo previously]
So, Pirsig defied human nature with his decision to author and publish
outside of money and fame profit? Let me ask you straight-out, since you've
avoid the question every other way. Was whatever motivated Pirsig unnatural or
natural?
[Platt]
Unnatural in the sense that most people work to make money. I presume
Pirsig also needs money. I presume you do, too. Are you suggesting there's
something immoral about that?
[Arlo]
I know how much you'd like to sidetrack the question, but I'm not going to bite.
If Pirsig acted unnaturally in authoring and publishing ZMM, how did he come to
this unnatural act? Genes? Social upbringing? Culture?
[Platt]
As I said, the free market is self-correcting in that products and
services not wanted don't survive. To you there may be a lot of junk on
the market that you wouldn't buy. Same for me. But to believe that somehow you,
or I or Pirsig ought to step in and eliminate what we consider to be junk would
be a step away from freedom -- the highest good in the MOQ.
[Arlo]
Hehe, now you're just yankin' my chain. No one said he, nor I, nor you, should
"step in an eliminate" anything. But, like Pirsig, I think that people need a
better language, one that sees Quality, to correct the amount of junk in both
production and consumption.
Arlo
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