[MD] Shouldn't we be, like, revolting ?

[Ham Priday]

Hi Platt [Chris mentioned]-- 



Not only do the MoQists think they should be revolting, they ARE revolting!

At 2:22 PM on 10/2, Chris Ivarsson said to Bo:

> The reason why I see it as the most natural thing in the world
> for a MOQist to sympathise with the general ideas and themes
> of Marxism is because it can be categorized as a recipe for
> rearranging social patterns to serve the intellectual level:
> something that is evolutionary moral in the MOQ view.

Earlier you had said . . .

> I take my cue as to what marks the intellectual vs. society
> conflict from Pirsig:
>
> "The New Deal was many things, but at the center of it all
> was the belief that intellectual planning by the government
> was necessary for society to regain its health." (Lila, 22)
>
> The same belief is active today as witness the Wall Street
> bailout bill just passed in our Senate.

Platt, how is it possible for Chris to use Pirsig's philosophy to support 
Marxism, while you use it to support Capitalism?  It just goes to show that, 
like statistics, a quotation in the hands of a clever politican can be 
construed to justify any position.

Both of you might find F.A. Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' of interest.  (Platt, 
I know you're aware of this book, published in 1944, because you mentioned 
the title a few days ago.)  I'll be running a condensed version of Hayek's 
chapter "The Great Utopia" in next week's Values Page.  You could almost 
imagine he was talking about the bailout in this excerpt:

"Democratic assemblies cannot function as planning agencies.  They cannot 
produce agreement on everything - the whole direction of the resources of 
the nation-for the number of possible courses of action will be legion. 
Even if a congress could, by proceeding step by step and compromising at 
each point, agree on some scheme, it would certainly in the end satisfy 
nobody.

"To draw up an economic plan in this fashion is even less possible than, for 
instance, successfully to plan a military campaign by democratic procedure. 
As in strategy it would become inevitable to delegate the task to experts. 
And even if, by this expedient, a democracy should succeed in planning every 
sector of economic activity, it would still have to face the problem of 
integrating these separate plans into a unitary whole.  There will be a 
stronger and stronger demand that some board or some single individual 
should be given power to act on their own responsibility.  The cry for an 
economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward planning. 
Thus the legislative body will be reduced to choosing the persons who are to 
have practically absolute power.  The whole system will tend toward that 
kind of dictatorship in which the head of the government is position by 
popular vote, but where he has all the powers at his command to make certain 
that the vote will go in the direction he desires.  Planning leads to 
dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of 
coercion and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to 
be possible. ..."       --[F.A. Hayek: Road to Serfdom]

Warm regards,
Ham