From: Dehede011@aol.com
Date: Tue Oct 22 2002 - 10:13:34 MDT
Charles,
In attempting to define how you would go about constructing a
mathematical theory of capitalism you sort of illustrated one of the problems
we have had with socialism.
Most folks don't recognise that we have approaximately a 200 year
history of socialism. There is a book called Heaven on Earth that is a book
place to start on that theory.
Yet, the facts are fairly simple. Over the last 200 years socialism
has had ample time to theorise on every aspect of their system. They have
installed that system several hundred times in socialist communities and
several dozen times in socialist nations. What have been the results?
Sometimes the communities or nations have remained in the hand of well
meaning theorists (I suppose they were) and have ended in failure having
fleeced the people that were true believers and invested their capital,
thought, or labor into the system. Sometimes these failures were long drawn
out but failures in the end.
Sometimes the communities or nations have been controlled by thugs. I
don't have to explain those to you the examples are numerous -- Stalin, Mao,
Hitler, Tito, Mussolini, Pol Pot, etc.
In the case of China they seem to have suffered a dictator but also in
the end had the dictators release the economic sphere in order to hold onto
their power. However the persecution of the populace continues.
It is a long sorry 200 year record of total failure. It has gotten to
a point that if you point to an example of a socialist nation that is not a
failure then we are justified in replying "wait." I listen to conditions
within various nations that tend toward socialism and have never seen one I
would wish to live in.
On the other hand, what ever short comings we have had in the
development of capitalist theory you can't fault our results. You can try
but with our shortcomings we still out perform the socialist.
There is one other dirty little secret about the sorry record of
socialism. It isn't as well founded in theory as the proponents would have
us believe. Go to von Hayek's Road to Serfdom, he devastates their theory.
How can this be? Most folks don't spend a lot of time checking out
socialist theory so if the the socialist say things that sound good it
passes. Von Hayek takes those theories and analyses them. The theories come
up short -- very short.
Ron h.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:42 MST