[lbo-talk] Questions about Osama Bin Laden

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Wed May 4 12:45:44 PDT 2011


Carrol: "n other words, bullets would be harmless if no one loaded guns with them. That is true enough, but would, substantively, have you said other thn "This would be a better world if it were a better world."

[WS:} it is possible to reduce anything to absurdity if we operate at a sufficiently high level of abstraction, but that is why I avoid abstraction. It reduces substance to semantics, or philology, as you yourself stated it

My point is a rather simple empirical observation that public investment has produce many useful technologies, from the electrification of the country side in the USSR, to public education, public transportation etc. It follows with another empirical observation that public investment are opposed by the investor class because public goods undermine the profitability of private investments. I then argue that private investors push, mainly through marketing, products that the can profitably sell, and which do not not necessarily advance social well being - which seems pretty obvious. I then conclude that if these restrictions, created by political control of government by the investor class , were removed, e.g. through popular political mobilization, then the production of goods and new technological advances 9such as sustainable energy sources) would take over the production of harmful but profitable goods 9such as SUVs or throw away gizmos.)

The latter is not a speculation, it has been empirically observed in several social historical contexts. So there is nothing terriblly speculative about this.

Now if one believes in some sort of systemic determinism that capitalism is somehow a necessity that somewhat makes people behave in a certain way and there is no alternative - obviously what i said looks like sheer fantasy from that pov. But then I think that this view is a sheer idealistic fantasy and do not subscribe to that pov even a bit.

Wojtek



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