From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Nov 05 2002 - 16:02:32 MST
On Monday 04 November 2002 13:43, John K Clark wrote:
> ...
> I agree, but the most important word is "useful". Do you really think
> socialism is a friend of the poor? India and Japan were about equally poor
> 50 years ago but India embraced socialism and Japan went capitalist. Today
> India is still poor but Japan is not, even though it has far less natural
> recourses than India. One system fought poverty, the other did not.
>
Did India embrace socialism? I haven't heard much that indicates this is so.
I know that they had a few attempted autocrats, but this proves nothing.
We've got one now.
> An even better example, a textbook experiment that you seldom see in the
> real world is in the two Koreas. In this experiment you have the same
> people the same geography the same language the same culture and the same
> economic starting point 50 years age, zero, but half embraced capitalism
> while the control did not. Today one is a world economic powerhouse, the
> control is still stuck at zero.
I don't think that anyone considers communism to be a from of socialism. Most
countries that have tried it haave swiftly swung into an absolist form of
despotism. Communism, despite it's claims, is basically a centralist
doctrine, where socialism seems rather agnostic on centralism.
>
> >any system which favors real human liberty is basically desirable,
> > I think
>
> Again I agree, but remember, liberty and equality are mutually exclusive,
> the more you have of the one the less you have of the other.
True within limits. But if most people are straving, then only a few have any
pretense of liberty.
> Personally I think equality is a second rate virtue, you can't have too much
> truth or freedom
Not sure about that. Should businesses have the right to lie to their
employees? to their customers? to break contracts?
If so, then what about people? Shouldn't they have those same rights? If a
person does something and it's a crime, should a business be free to do it?
>or justice or happiness, but you can have too much equality.
>
> John K Clark jonkc@att.net
>
> PS: I changed the title of this thread, extropians-digest V7 #302 did not
> seem particularly catchy to me.
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