Mark
Paul Henry Rosenberg wrote:
>
> Mark Jones wrote:
>
> > Brad De Long wrote:
> >
> > > Can't I just wish for a high-pressure economy in which unemployment is low,
> > > businesses are eager to train, educate, and cosset their workers, and I can
> > > vote with my feet for the most pleasant employer?
> >
> > The problem, Brad, is that you already live in that economy, and the
> > price which the other 90% of humans pays is to live somewhere much less
> > convivial, and they always will until you and I agree to give up a few
> > things and share a little more. That's what social-ism means (social
> > democracy is just a tax-deductible conscience-saver).
>
> I think this is a terribly out-of-date 19th-century view -- and
> puritanical to boot! Today the problem isn't scarcity, but abundance.
> It's overproduction that killing us. And above all overproduction of
> "goods" that are, on balance, more bad than good.
>
> To me, socialism means subordinating the market to the benefit of the
> WHOLE society--including the least powerful of all, the vast majority of
> generations unborn. (Conventional economics, discounting future value,
> says that this vast majority has NO standing whatsoever.) It means
> profoundly DIFFERENT kinds of production -- for durability, social
> utility (rather than individual-only utility), conviviality,
> environmental restoration, etc.
>
> Thinking of socialism from WITHIN a capitalist framework, it looks like
> a lot of the folks on this mailing list would have to be big losers.
> The point is, the capitalist framework SEVERELY misrepresents reality.
> This isn't just a nice little theory we've got folks, it's a FACT.
>
> Just one itsy-bitsy example: under socialism I wouldn't need a car, even
> though I live in the LA Area. In fact, under socialism, we'd be
> building electric cars with a mean lifetime of 20 - 100 years, using a
> FAR smaller resource and labor stream, producing FAR more end-value,
> which would be used on an as-needed, rather than an
> ownership-determined basis. So the LA basin would be a far more lovely
> place to live, as well.
>
> The main thing people would have under socialism that they don't have
> now it TIME -- oodles and oodles and oodles of it. We'd have more stuff
> that lasted a whole lot longer, and a whole lot less MANUFACTURED need
> for rapidly obsolete-junk.
>
> Yeah, okay, I'm more of a utopian anarchist than a dialectical Marxist,
> but without a really inspiring antithesis the whole thing breaks down,
> don'tcha know?
>
> "I get knocked down, but I get up again
> They're never gonna keep me down"
>
> -- My Friendly Local Capitalist Radio Station As I Finish This Post.
>
> --
> Paul Rosenberg
> Reason and Democracy
> rad at gte.net
>
> "Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"
-- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty