On Sep 4, 8:12Â am, The Trucker
verizon.net> wrote:> On Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:06:09 -0700, Fred Weiss wrote:
>> On Sep 3, 6:28Â am, Bret Cahill
aol.com> wrote:>
>>> Anyone can expose GOP "market" economists simply by forcing them to
>>> dodge the two issues most fundamental to economists, land/geo
>>> resources and free speech as a precondition of every free trade.
>
>> "Free speech" as in Red China?
>
>> Btw, by the same Brat-ian "reasoning" is that "free trade" as in N.
>> Korea?
>
> It seems that the GOP pretend econ people always run away into commie
> bating whenever their pretend economics is assaulted. Â
Um no. Bret has said that China has "free speech on economic
issues," while, somehow, the US does not. He has said the
same thing about the capitalistic dictatorship in Singapore.
Singapore isn't commie, and neither is China (anymore). They
are just garden variety Nationalistic police states. At least their
human rights records aren't as bad as real commie states, such as
Mao's. To call this commie baiting is absurd when it is Bret's own
words that have brought it up.
> Oh how they love to
> characterize the abundance of hoola hoops from China as a lack of
> scarcity. Â The reality is the amount of free time -- true freedom of the
> common people. Â
So what we need is more unemployment, is that what
you are saying?
> What is truly scarce is freedom and liberty. Â Republican
> trickle down economics is an abject failure because it is an assault on
> the very thing that is the true objective of economics. Â Latter day
> economics is only fascism that makes a very real error in assuming that
> the maximization of physical goods through efficient use of resources is
> the goal
That is the primary reason there is such a thing as
economics. The first problem of economics is scarcity,
after all. It is the reason human beings trade.
> and that the realization can be had through anointing a new sort
> of "state" in a wealthy and patriotic class.
This sounds like a religious mantra.
> Most broadly, all economics errs when it speaks of labor as a "factor" of
> production as though it were a farm animal or a hammer. Â No economists
> other than Marx and Henry George have come close to focusing on the
> freedom and liberty of man as the goal of economics (i.e. economic
> justice).
Actually, if economics were in any way scientific, its goal
would be to describe, not to advocate religious concepts
such as "justice." Justice is generally a utopian concept
anyway. There is no justice in the real world. "Suffering
is universal" is the First Fundamental Truth of Buddhism,
and that one is merely an empirical observation.
> Marx, of course, got the politics quite wrong or was interpreted
> in such a way as to get the politics wrong; but the goal was correct.
The goal was correct. That depends on how strong your faith is,
I suppose. The goal in Marxism is a religious, moral one,
not an economic one. And the goal itself, of a utopia where this
holds: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his
need," is, in fact, the exploitation of labor he complained about.
Reductio ad absurdum.
> Neither of these two focused on maximization of production, while both
> were focused on justice and hence maximization of free will and choice. By
> seeing labor as human and attempting to free the majority from coercion by
> the minority these two had a proper economic focus.
Again, that's a religious, moral focus. As with all religions,
it is neccessarily the case that the interests of the priestly
class come first.
In the Doctrine of Fascism, Mussolini lays out the goal of
Fascism as the creation of a single organic corporate-state
entity: a single monopoly to rule them all, which is indistiguishable
in practice from the socialist republics.
