I recently came to a conclusion that general malaise, misery, violence, dog-eat-dog competition, poverty, dysfunction, chaos, and general suckiness is a natural condition of all forms of life, be it animal or human. Everyone from a lowly mouse to a human being toils to survive and he dies, either falling to exhaustion, disease, or predators. That is the way it has always been.
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Moving away from politics...
I note that my house -- due to the tendency of all things to drift from an ordered to a disordered state -- becomes, to varying degrees, messy everyday. Dishes don't wash themselves, alas.
I also note that I clean it, to varying degrees, everyday restoring equilibrium between 'oh my god!' chaos and obsessive compulsive order.
That is the way it has always been.
As a human being, I find order - to varying degrees - to be in my best interest. It helps keep my life in a state of equipoise, it makes it harder for vermin to find nesting places (and allows me to intercept their efforts early - for example, by using a hardening foam to block access routes mice used to enter my home), it contributes to my mental and perhaps even physical health.
Order is, all things considered, a very good thing indeed.
So good that it's worth maintaining through an endless anti-entropy effort (note to physics geeks: yes, I know this isn't a precise application of the principle, please hold those corrective emails).
Of course, decay wins in the end. As the man crooned, back when you were young, "rust never sleeps." One day, the sun will go nova. Perhaps long before that an asteroid on the order of 99942 Apophis will roughly kiss the Earth hello forcing humanity to quickly adjust; perhaps by going away altogether.
If this endless (and, ultimately, losing) battle against rust, disorder, decay, unwashed dishes, the center not holding and so on is such a useful endeavor within the small confines of my house, how much more useful is it, I wonder, in the wider world?
I wonder.
If for example, "investments in human capital" -- one of the things you assert to be more important than typically "radical" prescriptions -- were made, I imagine that people who are now considered surplus, or "lumpen" as you prefer, would no longer be quite so superfluous after all.
That would contribute a good amount of counter-chaos action.
Would you support a realistic program to bring this about? Or perhaps, content to sip a glass of wine while sitting by the window like a low tech Bond villain (do you have a cat and a swivel chair?) would you say 'why bother? It will all fly apart anyway. That is the way it has always been.'
.d.
"I've come to hate my own creation. Now I know how God feels."
Homer Simpson
...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/