[lbo-talk] Missing the Marx

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Fri Dec 31 10:34:48 PST 2004


You want to play this dame, central planning brought us the gulag, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, etc. It's pointless, Charles, yoiu've made your choice: you want universal poverty with a low but solid floor and generalized repression. I'd like generalized prosperity and liberty, I don't see how to get this without markets. But you pretend I favor capitalism. You kind of overlook the fact that one point on which we agree is the abolition of private property. So, if you don't want to get stuck with the cellars of the Lubyanka -- you don't, do you? -- then spare me the Irish potato famine.

Btw the atom bomb was triumph of government planning.

jks

--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:


>
>
> andie nachgeborenen
>
> -clip-
>
> Markets are harsh and brutal and a bit cruel --
> that
> is why we need the welfare state and unenemployment
> insurance, but otherwise you do go all Soiet. And
> whatever Chris and Charles say, I know a lot about
> the
> Societ economy, and believe me, you don't want
> exploding TVs, long lines for stuff you don't want,
> shoddy everything if it's not military, and so
> forth.
> Yeah, it tottered along for 60 years. But if that is
> the criterion, markets are a lot older. We do want
> everyone fed and housed, but we don't have to get
> rid
> of markets to do that.
>
> ^^^^
>
> CB: Markets have failed to feed and house "everyone"
> for the 300 years of
> their dominance. Not only that , it has brought us
> exploding Pintos,
> exploding nuclear bombs, exploding twin towers,
> short lines because masses
> of people don't have the money to get stuff they
> want, this in the rich
> nations of the market's jurisdiction. Somehow market
> ideologists exclude the
> poor nations, for which the market is every bit as
> responsible for the state
> of, from their scoresheet for the failures and
> accomplishments of that
> warmed-over Invisible Hand concept,
> "self-organization" through the price
> mechanism. Who are you trying to kid ? A bunch of
> people with partial
> knowledge blindly "integrating" it, blind men
> feeling the elephant to
> describe it ( with apologies to the blind), is more
> efficient at information
> gathering than a conscious effort at centralizing
> and integrating it all.
> This is basically a preference of guesswork over
> scientific method.
>
> Even more, marketeers' (why this has to be
> mentioned, I do not know)have as
> their main goal their own profiteering, not
> fulfilling the needs and wants
> of people. They attend to the latter only to the
> extent that they must
> consider it to make the most money.
>
> People's wants don't just popup out of nowhere
> spontaneously, to be hunted
> down by entrepreneurs. See Michael Dawson's book.
>
> Shhhesssh
>
>
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>
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