galiel

Note, please, that I specifically stated that paliative redistribution of resources was neither the solution nor the focus of my comments.

"Overcome" implies the kind of confrontational approach that I oppose. Capitalism is still the best balance we have experienced, in the economic sphere, between personal freedom and the necessary restraints of cooperative community. Capitalism, however, in its current USian incarnation, is highly pathological. It needs fixing, not replacing. For more information about people and organizations that are laying the groundwork to do just that, I recommend checking out
<a href="http://www.divinerightofcapital.com/" target="_blank">The Divine Right of Capital</a>
<a href="http://www.businessethics.org/" target="_blank">The Council for Ethics in Economics</a>, in particular
<a href="http://www.businessethics.org/keidan.htm" target="_blank">Keidanren Charter for Good Corporate Behavior</a>
<a href="http://www.chaord.org/" target="_blank">The Chaordic Commons - the life's work of Dee Hock, founder of Visa</a>
Actually, detailed logistical plans to deal with these issues have existed for decades. Only within the past twnety years have we had the actual technology and the abundance to implement them.

Again, the issue is not to "something-ize" anyone. I think part of the problem is that you and I are thinking in different time-frames. Just as scientists routinely spend their entire professional lives contributing to research that will not be completed within their lifetimes (for example, work on finding cures for devastating disease), so I anticipate that this kind of dramatic change in the vector of human history is not something that can, or should be done in a hurry.
These are symptoms, not causes. Having witnessed it first hand when Answer Sadat flew to Jerusalem and started on the road to peace, you would be amazed how people who have harbored deep hatreds against each other for generations can turn on a dime.

On the other hand, we have seen, in the former Yugoslavia, the terrible price of artificially, externally imposed, enforced co-existence.

So?

Until twenty years ago, talk about providing basic needs to all people was just theoretical. The vast majority of people in the world are unaware that this changed in the early 80's. Thousands of years of religion gave no indication that a mere couple of hundred years of scientific development could achieve so much.

Most certainly not, and I would not wish to be seen as trivializing it. However, great, earth-shaking changes have occured in various realms of human endeavor, and they have inevitably ocurred in precisely the areas where, because the problem seems so intractible, few people had dared to dream.

Abolutely true, and I am advocating a much more holistic, inclusive, respectful and gradual process than that.

Tell that to the creators of the American Republic.

True idealism is not naive. Gandhi and MLK and Madison were tremendously practical and pragmatic in their uncompromising commitment to achieve change. Constraints are not a bad thing, they redirect energy in productive directions. Wild-eyed pollyanna's do not change the world, but neither do "former" idealists.

Final note: IMO, there is value in the "great idea" that extends beyond its ultimate achievements. As Teddy Roosevelt said,

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits that neither enojy much, nor suffer much, because they live in that gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

I am 43 years old, and I will stack up my bitter disappointments, unexpected betrayals, glorious failures, unlucky breaks and overambitious complexities against anyone's. But I am more determined than ever to leave this world having done my best to make it a better place than when I entered it.

Knowing, as I do, that the means are there, only the will is lacking, I can hardly do less.

Celsus

Galiel,

I can't see how you read "overcome" to mean a confrontational sense, when my second statement was "2) Overcome specific geographical and transactional obstacles" But anyway, "overcome" as in "transcend".

This relates back to capitalist allocation of resources. If you notice, successful capitalist firms conglomerate around areas where monopolistic control is possible. They do it because of the profit motive, quite simply. (Do you understand the evolutionary principles behind institutional economics? - Institutions capable of doing what you seek cannot carry them out without the right social support mechanisms) So the "will" cannot exceed this motive unless it is subverted. I suppose the links you provided are attempts at this. Noble, but given the dominance of firms in global financial flows, it is a much more difficult task to suddenly rise up and implement technology everywhere. If it were only a matter of will, the UN or World Bank would already be carrying out your plans in various experiments around the world.

Now as for your "detailed logistical plans". Care to cite some references? For agricultural production to be sustainable, it must not be in the hands of corporations, because high unemployment, especially in the Middle East, means that secure employment outside agriculture is rare (see the link to my other post on Middle East unemployment)

Agreed.

I wasn't saying they were symptoms. I was outlining constraints.

Twenty years ago? 1982?? Back up this assertion, please. Most attempts at meeting basic needs followed immediately after the independence waves of the 1960s. Some were extremely successful, and this more or less correlated with economic growth (Although Cuba and Kerala are examples of meeting basic needs without the economic growth).

As for your faith in social metatheories, good luck, you'll need it.

Joel

Sabine Grant

Bonsoir everyone....
If we are to uphold freedom for all, we have to respect the pluralistic character if this nation and others. The secularisation of any structure may be beneficial to eliminate religious strife which paralyzes the system, but people MUST be allowed and encouraged to pursue their spiritual path.
The concept of a god cannot be erased from the mind of any man in any forceful way. We can remain free beyong emprisonment thru our thoughts.

I always remember the words of a Separatist Basque prisonner " they have my body and they blinded me from ever seeing a blue sky... but I remember the color blue and I can paint the univers in my mind... I am free".

Any kind of repression and oppression leads to resistance. That is the beauty of our passion for the freedom to think.

galiel

joejoejoe,

Haven't been ignoring you, just running up against the frustrating limitations of this board again, in particular the lack of threading, which makes it difficult to maintain sub-thread dialogues within a broader multilogue discussion. I'll try to condense things down and still make the specific back-and-forth clear:

Apologies, my misunderstanding in the context of the OP's aggressive ideas.

(re: capitalist reallocation of resources, the profit motive, noble but naive sentiment,s etc.)

This is a bit beyond the scope of this thread, but I see that as putting the cart before the horse. A fundamental rejiggering of capitalism, fixing things like corporate structure to serve people, not paper shares, and building in imperatives beyond profit only, while maintaining the fundamentals of free markets and creating true equal opportunity, John Rawls theory of justice, etc. In short, I don't look at the way things are nowand figure out how to shuffle the cards. It clearly won't work that way. First, it is necessary to create a full deck. Then we can make sure the mechanisms exist to facilitate (not dictate) the dispersal and decentralization of means.

It is also important not to underestimate how the excelerating pace of technological development and the breathtaking impact on humanity will rejigger things by its very nature. The world will be a very, very, very different place just twenty years from now-- almost unrecognizable.

Just as most people are unaware that Malthus ain't gospel, so most people are unaware of the tsunami of technological change that is gathering force and bearing down on us even as we speak. Many things that seem impossible, expensive, or impractical today will be trivial tomorrow. This, too, is topic for a separate discussion.

(re: having the resoures, means and know-how to provide for all humans on Spaceship Earth)

I'm happy to provide the info. The ethics in business links I had in my bookmarks since I visit those sites often, this will take a little longer, since I read most of that material offline (on those neat old things we used to call "books"), I will post them as soon as I track 'em down like the data they is.
[/QB][/QUOTE]

I've been toying more and more with the idea of setting up a personal weblog so that I can communicate all these distinct but interwoven ideas more coherently and thoughtfully, and discuss reactions to them with readers, kind of a limited conversation but with more signal and less noise. Stay tuned, and thanks for the utterly engrossing conversation.

Celsus

Galiel,

I think this needs a new thread. Feel free to butt in on a discussion Gurdur and I have been having <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=44&t=002203" target="_blank">here</a> to see where I'm coming from. (Note that this thread originated from <a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=44&t=002170&p=7" target="_blank">Follow up on "More feminist stuff"</a>.) I'll warn you in advance, I'm very dismissive of analysis from the neoclassical framework, which derives its methodology from 19th century deductivism, and requires a lot more empirical basis to make it credible.

Joel

dangin

I'm not dismissing you. I wasn't analysing your contribution at all. I was talking about breaking rules. You haven't.

avalanche:ix

i actually concur on some level. what i plead for is the development of neurological aids, cheap, mass-producable implants that increase the rational capacity of undesirable elements such as theists.

harsh? yes. neccesary? absolutely. the planet is suffering under our dominion, it is time we put an end to the waste, and organize our species in a civilized and rational manner. by force if neccesary.

this is not about hate, it's about efficiency and the future.

dangin

Resistance is futile, join the collective?

avalanche:ix

i'm not saying there wouldn't be individualism, quite the contrary, just us giving people the proper rational faculties so they can function normally.

you have to admit, wasting hours of your sunday in church is hardly efficient, not to mention all the brain cycles dedicated to religion.

Gurdur

*sigh*
You have extremely odd ideas of neurology, psychology, psychology of religion and ethics.

Actually, I'm tempted to say stark raving bonkers.

Let's see why:
When people form attitudes, usually they build most upon some version of their parents, or a mirror-image, plus some tweaking to resolve contradictions or missing elements that are emotionally important to them.

No atheist is necessarily more "rational" than a theist.

Theism on the whole is not necessarily irrational, it's simply mistaken, quite a different kettle of fish; and unless you understand the difference, you will not understand religion.

And you blame theism for all that's wrong: a complete mistake.

More than that, you fail to grasp completely why many people accept the institutions of religions, without accepting completely all the particular religion.
It's because, on the whole, they feel the need to have a symbol of ethics - a symbol of what is good, as an aim and goal, or inspiration.

Now onto neurology: just how do you imagine implants can increase rational thought ?

Twaddle. By the way, who gets to build the implants ?

This idea has being mooted in various forms since the middle half of the 19th century. It has even been attempted on several occasions.
Each and every time the idea is mooted, it either is ignored, put into practice or disproven.
Each and every time it has been put into action, it has failed miserably.

Now what do you think we learn from that ? hmmmm ?

Naw, it's about psychology, cognition and ethics. Oh, and practicality.

[ December 14, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>