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

[Platt Holden]

Hi Ham,

> 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.

Except Chris doesn't (and can't) use quotations from the MOQ to support his 
Marxist mindset. 
 
> 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]

Hayek's "The Road to the Serfdom" ought to be required reading in every 
Economics 101 class. Fat chance in today's leftist-sotted academia.

Thanks for the above excerpt. 

Warm regards,
Platt