From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Fri Sep 01 2000 - 11:30:01 MDT
On Fri, 01 Sep 2000, QueeneMUSE@aol.com wrote:
> James Rogers wrote:
> > This is a matter of values and of mathematics.
>
> Excuse me, I misunderstood, given that the fictional argument he used was
> political/socio economic, I assumed he was assigning mathematical values to
> real social problems.
I don't think it is necessarily appropriate to assign mathematical values
to real social problems, rather it is a matter of selecting a
mathematical model based upon personal values. Which mathematical model
is "optimal" is predicated on whether one decides that the future of any
given individual is more important than the future of the entire
population of individuals. Once such a distinction has been made, the
choice is relatively obvious, though still complex.
The biggest problem I think many people on this list have with controlled
markets in solving socio-economic problems is that where there are floors,
there are also ceilings. Suggesting that such a solution is optimal will
obviously grate against people who don't believe in arbitrarily imposed
limits on their own personal expansion. In other words, a lot of people
here are the people who would suffer most in a more controlled economy. A
real socio-economic floor and virtually infinite opportunity are mutually
exclusive concepts, unless the floor is so low that there is essentially no
floor either.
I imagine that switching from a free market to a totally
centralized planning would generate no net decrease in suffering.
Instead, one would merely be shifting the suffering from one set of
individuals to another, though perhaps in a different form.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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