From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Jun 07 2002 - 09:40:20 MDT
Samantha writes
> > Now, of course, afterwards, when you saw that this achieved
> > nothing, it would be necessary for some proper moral body
> > to seize control and censor the companies' activities that
> > violated this ethic. Shades of 1917.
>
> You are talking about something totally of your own imagining
> that has nothing at all to do with what I would suggest.
Here, I think, you retreat to saying in effect, "Oh, I'm not
proposing that we replace capitalism *now*!". Just as when you
continue:
> There is nothing so sacred about capitalism (although that is
> not a proper name for what is really practiced) that it cannot
> in whole or part be questined or that it can be just assumed to
> be with us forever and beyond question.
I agree, we never cling to a *system* just out of loyalty.
Moreover, I hope that you weren't accusing me of wanting
any present way we do things "forever and beyond question".
Indeed you go on:
> > one might admit that capitalism can be pretty evil, but it
> > happens to be less evil than anything people can think of
> > to put in its place. (How else do you explain that every
>
> So far only. It is built on assumptions of scarcity that
> increasingly need not hold.
Quite right. But you see, in earlier posts you make it
clear that we cannot *wait* for the singularity, that
indeed we might not make it if we don't revise things
now!
It seems to me that you want it both ways: you are
so extremely impatient with capitalism, free markets,
and our present institutions (never mind the unprecedented
wellbeing of humankind), that you often sound like it
has to go tomorrow. Yet if I mention the last great
thinkers, e.g. 1917, to try, you think that I'm coming
up with total inventions out of whole cloth. Could you
explain?
> I beg your pardon! I think there are people on this list every
> bit as brilliant as these three stooges [Marx, Lenin, Mao]. :-)
Well, I see your emoticon, but I don't think that you are
really joking. I do suppose that you have the hubris to
believe that you (and people like you) could succeed *at
the present time* in radically reforming society.
And no, those guys were no dummies.
Lee
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