kissell@spar.UUCP (Kevin Kissell) (02/14/85)
(On the nominal subject matter, we have a simple disagreement: DKMcK feels that the effects of technology on labor are illusory and backs his assertion with the fact that people have been warning about it for some time, yet no real crisis has occurred. I feel that the character of the "second" (computerized) industrial revolution is different enough from the first that such fears are well-founded, but that we are still years away from a crisis point. On to the *real* purpose of net.politics: personal attack and innuendo!) > Now, I'm sorry about the jargon, but it is meaningful jargon which > communicates honestly. On the other hand, you seem to think that a tone of > mockery (or, as Janet called it, a rhetorical sneer) is a sufficient > argument... > > ...Or maybe you'll just refer to John Campbell, and think yourself a > great wit for having done so. > Never considered myself more than a minor wit, Dan'l, though I do derive a certain amount of enjoyment doing a reducto ad absurdum on propositions that I find silly, ill formed, or dangerous. Your articles, while bespeaking considerable devotion to the study of at least one flavor of economic thought, leave me feeling uneasy. My "rhetorical sneer" was in fact an (admittedly obscure) analogy, which I might as well unroll for you all. I think of the Free Economy as something like the Ideal Heat Engine: a model whose usefulness lies more in its tidiness and tractability than in its resemblance to an achievable system. Just as thermodynamics prohibits the manufacture of Ideal Heat Engines, I suspect that social dynamics prohibit the operation of a Free Economy. Political forces seem always to interfere with economic processes, because people are both economic and political animals. You don't need to involve a government to see this: a large family or social group will do. People find it natural to make tradeoffs between economic efficiency and political consensus. This makes your job as an economist vastly more difficult, but I'm afraid that you are going to be stuck with it for a while. In E. E. "Doc" Smith's classic Lensman series of space-operatic science fiction, there was a device known as a Bergenholm generator, which, true to its name, generated a Bergenholm field. Inside the Bergenholm field, there was no inertia. Or to be more precise, there was no inertia when and only when it suited the author's purpose for there to be no inertia. When I read some of your postings, I cannot help seeing your "Free Economy" as a Bergenholm generator that nullifies political forces. Hence the reference in my earlier article. Sorry not to have spelled it out. (Actually, I would have thought you'd have been proud to be compared to John W. Campbell. His editorials were my first exposure to what is now called libertarianism. He may have been wrong, but he was at least ahead of his time.) Not sneering, honest, Baba