[MD] Science - Delusions in Search of Theory

[Andre Broersen]

Platt to Andre:

No, you are intellectually dishonest. You ignore his conclusion and are
still in denial that the free market is "superior" to socialism.

Andre:
Pirsig is talking about the WORKINGS of the free market system as making it superior to those of the socialists Platt. It works better because it is a 'Dynamic institution' (the vocabulary of which had eluded the conservatives as well as the socialists...remember?). This dynamic institution, Pirsig argues, is part and parcel of Victorian SOCIAL economic patterns as distinct from socialist INTELLECTUAL economic patterns.

 From the MOQ perspective, Pirsig reasons that, as far as static patterns go, Victorian social economic patterns are MORALLY INFERIOR to socialist intellectual economic patterns. Within the MOQ this reasoning needs no further explanation.

But hereby the conclusion you so vehemently defend is not reached yet. And I know this has been suggested to you in the past but I'll give it another go.

'Any static mechanism that is open to Dynamic Quality (in this case we are referring to the free market system) must also be open to degeneracy-to falling back to lower forms of quality'(LILA,p227)
Pirsig's observations on these (with regards to New York, in LILA) speak for themselves.

And here we move toward an MOQ 'conclusion' (which is always provisional):

The trick is 'to obtain static and Dynamic Quality SIMULTANEOUSLY' (p,226, Pirsig's emphasis)

So from a MOQ point of view (i.e. not from a capitalist or a socialist point of view) it would seem that the solution lies in a combination of some of the two. Finding the mechanisms by which a balanced society grows and does not degenerate. But, as Pirsig says, these are difficult, if not impossible to define.

Attempts in both the East and West are well on their way. To give China as an example, this has, slowly but surely introduced what may be termed an 'intellectually guided market economy/ free enterprise system'. In the West I can think of worker cooperatives, worker participation schemes, non-profit or profit sharing businesses etc etc.

I do not need to remind you Platt, which world power has emerged first and strongest, out of the bursting of the Western (US) financial bubble, despite Chinese (intellectual) warnings as early as 1998 and again in 2002 to top US financial advisers and bankers (from a talk show on CCTV9).

Platt:
Mutual understanding doesn't mean mutual agreement as you seem to think...

Andre:
The path towards...hopefully. But with you one can never tell.