[108327] in Cypherpunks
RE: H-WEB: N Chomsky on Hayek & 'inevitable' Dictatorship
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Burnes - Denver)
Fri Feb 12 03:07:10 1999
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 00:53:22 -0700 (MST)
From: Jim Burnes - Denver <jim.burnes@ssds.com>
To: Blanc <blancw@cnw.com>
cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
In-Reply-To: <000201be5650$b0cab680$238195cf@blanc>
Reply-To: Jim Burnes - Denver <jim.burnes@ssds.com>
On Thu, 11 Feb 1999, Blanc wrote:
> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 21:53:57 -0800
> From: Blanc <blancw@cnw.com>
> To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
> Subject: RE: H-WEB: N Chomsky on Hayek & 'inevitable' Dictatorship
>
> Sayeth Jim Burnes:
>
> : Its really a pity that Chomsky has come to this. His theories
> : on linguistics are groundreaking.
> ..............................................................
>
>
> It is a strange thing, that someone with so much knowledge in linguistics that his theories can be
b> considered groundbreaking, nevertheless can fail to appreciate the
concepts which were the subject > of that speech of his.
Non sequitor. I understand them as concepts. To appreciate them one
would assume that they had meaning in the context of the real world and
not simply the same tired old marxist (or should I say elitist) tripe
rehashed in purple prose.
>
> Perhaps he understands very well, but despises what he sees. Just because a person can understand
> the concepts of the free market doesn't mean that they will value them, right. Different values,
> different goals. Or I should say different resentments, different goals.
>
Say what you like. "Command economy" is a catch phrase for the triple
godess of communism, socialism and fascism. It is fundamentally
incompatible with any concept of freedom of the individual because the
economy is the sum total of free people making millions of decisions about
how to run their lives. What to buy, how to save, what to smoke,
what to read, what coffee is best, etc ad nauseum. To view the
economy is separate from this conglomerated activity is to apply
a kind of 19th century dialectic to it. Here we have the people,
here we have the economy.
They are one in the same.
Trying to command an economy then is as farcical a notion as trying to
command the wind, sun and rain. Trying to dictate economics is as deluded
as declaring the value of pi to be 17 on even-dated Tuesdays. The only
thing that can be achieved by such meddling is to induce market
distortions. The market detects such distortions and routes around them.
If so much power is brought to bear that the market cannot route around
the problem, the market leaves. This is why, as PJ O'Rourke states,
Russians are boiling rocks for soup (or used to).
This is not to say that we have to reinvent western society from the
ground up. It seems to work well with a reliable english common
law legal system. That seems to be its basis. Much less and its
difficult to sustain business investment in the chaos that ensues,
very much more and you have a legal spider web with lawyers as the
spiders.
its time to sleep,
jim
