Diversity (was Brad De Long does...)

Jessica nsnerep at nscad.ns.ca
Wed Jul 22 09:14:44 PDT 1998


Hey, Chuck. How are you? And hello to others on this list - I'm new here, but not new to everyone on this list, I suspect.

Chuck Grimes wrote:

<snip>


> See, I think what is going is a little different than a battle between
> communist utopias or capitalist utopias gone bad. I strongly suspect
> these problems arise across the political-economic spectrum, because
> of the top-down structuring itself. The analogy I want to use is
> agriculture. In a monolithic agricultural economy, or one crop system,
> all it takes is one pest to destroy the crop, and hence the system. In
> a more diversified agriculture, with multiple crops, some for export,
> some for feed grain, some for human consumption, one pest only kills
> off one crop or it takes a more complex combination of pests and
> natural disasters to ruin the system.
>
> So too with socio-political and general economic structures. The more
> multi-leveled, diversified, and complexly differentiated, the more
> stable a system is under stress, change, and assaults of various
> kinds.

It seems to me you have essentially concluded that, if the problem is top-down structuring, the solution must be more top-down structuring. Are you arguing for a different top-down structure, or against top-down structure in general? Am I misinterpreting your post?

Jess



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