[MD] Dynamic Development at all costs?

[Christoffer Ivarsson]

Hello Magnus

I tend to feel that something is very weird about dragging metaphysical 
arguments into political debates, however, historically this has been done 
quite a lot, and the MoQ, and any metaphysics for that matter, is an 
interpretation model meant to help us identify and categorize phenomena 
around us. I agree with what you say here (perhaps not surprising)  and 
would like to ad that the Dynamic aspect as such, DQ in the MoQ, isn't what 
should be put first or above everything else, and especially not in 
political debates. Politics (in my book) should be dominated by intellectual 
patterns  that work towards achieving a Higher Quality Life for mankind - 
agree?

Regards
Chris

> Hi dynamic developers
>
> Not sure where to jump in. I'm not really interested in the politics
> here, but I guess it's unavoidable to get there eventually.
>
> My main concern is, and have been for some time, Platt's use of MoQ
> arguments to back his personal beliefs. You may think they're clear and
> water-tight, but they're not. Take this one for example:
>
> "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."
> (Lila, 17)
>
> Here, he's talking about ECONOMY, nothing else. It makes everybody
> *richer*, i.e. they get more money. He says nothing about other things
> that are important to people such as the long term environmental effects
> of such a market.
>
> If the free market continues to run things, it will probably hit the
> wall during this century, after which it will be more economically
> rewarding to take environmental effects into account.
>
> That free market may be dynamic, but it's still just a *social* pattern.
> I.e. it doesn't use any intellectual reasoning. The only goal it has,
> the only *value* in that market, is money. So any intellectual reasoning
> any individual may use is solely used to acquire more money, i.e. to
> blindly follow the incentive of the society.
>
> On the other hand, another group of people have used their intellect to
> look into what the free market, if allowed to continue, will bring in
> the future. And this future doesn't look very bright.
>
> So, in MoQ terms, we have the dynamic social pattern "the free market"
> on one side and we have the intellectual pattern "the environmental
> movement" on the other. And the MoQ clearly states that the intellectual
> pattern is more moral, because a higher level pattern *is* more dynamic
> than any lower level pattern can ever be.
>
>
> The culprit of Platt's reasoning is a little strange thing about the MoQ
> when applied to human societies. It's the "personal freedom" vs. "bonds
> of society". The MoQ levels doesn't make it very easy to understand
> that, and Bo's recurring XXX doesn't make it any easier.
>
> The individual person also includes intellectual patterns, but the
> society does not. Then how is it moral for a society to constrain a
> person? Make her pay taxes etc.
>
> According to Platt, the highest moral is the individual freedom of each
> person. But if that was the case, why did people start building cities
> in the first place? Wouldn't it be most moral if everybody just lived by
> themselves and spent their days exercising their individual freedom?
>
> People started building cities to protect themselves from gangs of
> bandits only interested in personal short-term gain (hmm, what does that
> remind me of??). So the cities, legal societies, was in fact a way to
> gain *more* freedom. Freedom to create jewelery and other things
> attracting bandits.
>
> Granted, societies have changed considerably since then, but I don't
> believe for a moment that Platt most of all would like to live
> completely outside it. He wants the legal protection of it like
> everybody else, so all his claims about the individual freedom being
> more moral than the bonds of society falls pretty flat right there.
>
> Magnus