From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Sun Sep 13 1998 - 01:31:38 MDT
Max More wrote:
>You've probably already seen my suggestion of a change to "Practical
>Optimism".
>Do you like that one?
Yup! :)
>>The very concept of ownership is, IMO, political.
>
>I'm toying with the idea of dropping the name "Self-Ownership" in favor of
>"Personal Autonomy" or something like that. As you say, the concept of
>ownership is primarily political, although it has been used in psychology
in a
>sense like the one I wanted. For instance "own your emotions" does not mean
>that you have property rights in your feelings, but that you accept them
rather
>than pretending that you don't have those feelings, or avoiding dealing with
>them. The term "autonomy" comes with philosophical baggage that I don't want,
>but non-philosophers won't be carrying that baggage.
I like Personal Autonomy better than I like Self-Ownership, for the reasons
I've already mentioned. What sort of baggage are you referring to here?
Oh, and on a related note: Why Perpetual Progress? Boundless Improvement
seems clearer to me, if only because you'll never see a debate topic:
"Resolved: Improvement is bad."
>Some other "moneyless resource allocation system" could easily
>be a
>market. Money may not be necessary to markets--in the past we had barter, and
>in the future we may have something not yet conceived. If it is a
centralized,
>coercive allocation mechanism then it certainly is not a market. But
>markets in
>the open sense I mean do not necessarily use money, nor any of the existing
>institutions.
>
>[snip]
>I've added to the end of one paragraph to stress this point further:
>
>"Future markets
>may not use money, may replace banking and corporations with other means. Our
>support for markets means support for any effective implementation of
>spontaneous orders in the economy, not a defense of any existing
structures as
>optimal."
While *I* understand what you mean, I would argue that your use of the term
"market" is not only at odds with my understanding of its definition, but
the working definition of most readers. :) A market is a decentralized
system for resource allocation, yes, but this is true in the same sense
that a square is a rectangle. For example, Legg's proposed "neuronomy"
would certainly be decentralized, but it would be an abuse of the term to
call it a market.
>If this is favoring one particular technology, then it's an extremely general
>kind of technology. I don't see that as much different from favoring the
use of
>reason as an effective means of knowledge, or optimism as a psychological
>approach.
I agree to the extent that I can't imagine a centralized system of resource
allocation that works better than a decentralized system. This is why I
think "Spontaneous Order" is a great principle. If there were another word
that meant "decentralized resource allocation systems of all kinds" then
I'd certainly throw in my support for that, but "markets," in my book, are
only one species of that particular genus.
-TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO LIVE-
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