[MD] Are we the people stupid?

[Platt Holden]

> [Platt]
> > What's your problem with self-interest?

> [Khaled]
> Unfortunately every self interest we have seen has been a the expense of
> your interest and mine. It's a zero net gain.

Do you mean when you buy a computer from a profit-seeking. self-
interested company like Apple that you gain nothing? I don't think so. 

> [Platt]
> > What's wrong for working to satisfy yourself?

> [Khaled]
> The problem is that most people DO NOT know what satisfaction is? A
> phantom illusion they keep chasing. The hamster in the ever spinning
> wheel.

How do you know most people are chasing phantom illusions? I  don't 
know what satisfies other people. I don't presume to know what's better 
for them. Priests used "caring about others" to justify the 
Inquisition.  When someone criticizes the lawful goals and lifestyles 
of others, I recall Pirsig's caution: "There are so many kinds of 
problem people like Rigel around, he thought, but the ones who go 
posing as moralists are the worst. Cost-free morals. Full of great ways 
for others to improve without any expense to themselves." (Lila, 7) Of 
course, you have a point about hamsters since the scientific SOM view 
of humans is that we are glorified hamsters--no better really than any 
other animal. 


> >  How come you never address the Dynamism of capitalism compared to
> dull" socialism?

> [Khaled]
> First you have to show me Capitalism that thrived WITHOUT government
> welfare, protection and subsidies.

To answer, I turn to Pirsig:

"What we tend to forget is that, unlike the European aristocrats they 
aped, the American Victorians were a very creative people. The 
telephone, the telegraph, the rail road, the transatlantic cable, the 
light bulb, the radio, the phonograph, the motion pictures, and the 
techniques of mass production-almost all the great technological 
changes that are associated with the twentieth century are, in fact, 
American Victorian inventions. This city is composed of their value 
patterns. It was their optimism, their belief in the future, their 
codes of craftsmanship and labor and thrift and self-discipline that 
really built twentieth-century America. Since the Victorians 
disappeared the entire drift of this century has been toward a 
dissipation of these values. (Lila, 17)

Platt