[MD] Are we the people stupid?

[Platt Holden]

[Arlo]
> And also let's not forget "the conservatives who keep trumpeting about
> the virtues of free enterprise are normally just supporting their own
> self-interest. They are just doing the usual cover-up for the rich in
> their age-old exploitation of the poor." Amen.

As usual, the Marxist critical thinker takes a quote out of context 
(and omits the reference). Pirsig continues:

"The Metaphysics of Quality provides the vocabulary. A free market is a 
Dynamic institution. What people buy and what people sell, in other 
words what people value, can never be contained by any intellectual 
formula. What makes the marketplace work is Dynamic Quality. The market 
is always changing and the direction of that change can never be 
predetermined.

"The Metaphysics of Quality says the free market makes everybody richer-
by preventing static economic patterns from setting in and stagnating 
economic growth. That is the reason the major capitalist economies of 
the world have done so much better since World War II than the major 
socialist economies. It is not that Victorian social economic patterns 
are more moral than socialist intellectual economic patterns. Quite the 
opposite. They are less moral as static patterns go. What makes the 
free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists, reasoning 
intelligently and objectively, have inadvertently closed the door to 
Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling of things. They closed it 
because the metaphysical structure of their objectivity never told them 
Dynamic Quality exists." (Lila, 17)  Amen and Hallelujah.

> [Platt to Arlo previously]
> How come you never address the Dynamism of capitalism compared to dull"
> socialism?
> 
> [Arlo]
> I've said I favor a free market. I also believe to remain free the
> market must be regulated.

A regulated free market is an oxymoron -- except to a Marxist critical 
thinker.

 > [Khaled to Platt]
> First you have to show me Capitalism that thrived WITHOUT government
> welfare, protection and subsidies.
> 
> [Platt]
> To answer, I turn to Pirsig: [quote about Victorian industriousness
> snipped]
> 
> [Arlo]
> To answer, I turn to Pirsig.

Khaled is perfectly capable of answering himself without your help.  
But, Marxists are well known meddlers in other people's business. So we 
understand.

(snip)

It was university intellectuals who took over from the Victorians who 
really messed things up:

"In the time that Phaedrus grew up, intellect was dominant over 
society, but the results of the new social looseness weren't turning 
out as predicted. Something was wrong. The world was no doubt in better 
shape intellectually and technologically but despite that, somehow, the 
"quality" of it was not good. There was no way you could say why this 
quality was no good. You just felt it." (Lila, 22)   

And:

"Phaedrus thought that a Metaphysics of Quality could be a replacement 
for the paralyzing intellectual system that is allowing all this 
destruction to go unchecked. The paralysis of America is a paralysis of 
moral patterns. Morals can't function normally because morals have been 
declared intellectually illegal by the subject-object metaphysics that 
dominates present social thought. These subject-object patterns were 
never designed for the job of governing society. They're not doing it. 
When they're put in the position of controlling society, of setting 
moral standards and declaring values, and when they then declare that 
there are no values and no morals, the result isn't progress. The 
result is social catastrophe."  (Lila, 24)
 
Platt