From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Mon Sep 15 2003 - 18:41:28 BST
David,
David said:
What you say about central planning: Always easy to dismiss something becaue of history, but in a way history does not repeat itself. So maybe tomorrow central planning would be useful. Or perhaps if you go further back it was good, e.g. when everyone makes a plan to use the same size railway lines. Or today when we fail to use the same broadband width and it is highly inefficient. Would you agree? Got to be careful with thinking new=better.
Matt:
Oh, no. I would never want to think that new equals better. No, the central planning I'm talking about isn't "everyone should use the same size railway lines". The central planning I'm talking about is the central planning Friedrich Hayek talked about, not a few prudent things, but the whole economy. If I remember my Hayek right, his "The Road to Serfdom" is pretty much the last word on centralized planning, but what isn't clear is whether some sort of social welfare state, ala many European nations, is ruled out. My political cards are that, like every other sane person, I'm all against Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism, but all for universal healthcare. If the Canadians can do it, why the hell can't we?
So, maybe someday centralized planning will present itself as a reasonable option. I doubt it, but who really knows. And the someday where it might be possible is a someday far, far away from here. The point about looking to history for lessons is that we have historians who try and dig up the causes of these kinds of things. If the social and political climate hasn't changed enough, then it may be reasonable to think that the same kind of catastrophe will happen again.
But, I will say this in case you don't know. The other day when you were talking to Andy about Darwinism, you mentioned that the climate in England had to do with the angle you were taking, and Andy, rightly, replied the same. The same applies here: an attack on centralized planning from an American generally means a lot more than it does from a European. Americans lived through the "Red Scare" here, where in Europe the good lessons to be learned from Marxism were generally learned while eventually setting aside the revolutionary spin (along with the crummy metaphysics, but what politician really cares about that?). So "socialism" as a term doesn't carry the negative weight there as it does here.
Matt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Sep 15 2003 - 18:42:45 BST