The New Judge Bleonard's Assorted Reef Life&Bottom Feeders Message Board

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : The New Judge Bleonard's Assorted Reef Life&Bottom Feeders

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next

To: Father Terrence who wrote (114)	6/10/1998 2:07:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) of 174

Here's tha catch as I see it. Building an industrial economy is messy if it's gonna be done cheap. That's how Europe and the USA got in front during these last 180 years. Russia could have been a titan, but a hundred years of political trounled kept it on the margins. China and Brazil are next in line, but getting rich the old-fashioned way might place an unacceptable load on the biosphere. Especially since it isn't 100 million total people burning coal and making DDT and stuff, but a coupla billion. I respect your idea that with a different philosophy, the chieftains of Easter Island could have staved off disaster. But I think that one of the hidden premises of your trader's credo is tye availability of interlocking foreign markets. Using reasonable sailing technology of the time, the Easter Islanders didn't have much opportunity to build a market! And philosophy alone wasn't gonna outfit them with square-riggers and a good deep-water port. I worry that your emphasis on "philosophy" is an attempt to work around the innate cussedness of the human animal. We are innately tribalistic and mystical. A clarity of philosophy does not suffice in my ever so humble opinion to overcome this,uhm, simple objective fact of our makeup. Yer average Easter Islander is gonna say "Rape philosophy. I want bread on the table and wood stacked by the stove." If you recall, the Leninists used a similar polite fiction to shore up the gaps in Communist theory. If we can only get the Worker's Paradise established, the excellent conditions will trigger a mental phase transition in Homo sapiens. The New Soviet Man will be self-motivated to support and build the Enlightened State. Trouble is, I'm old-fashioned. I think we're thinly veneered baboons with a shadowy grasp of the Sublime. Wahteverthephawk that is. So. We could stall here in an ideological impasse. Or we could both holster the philosophy and chew the fat from a more practical here's whut-we-got perspective. I'm game, are you? :-)

Report TOU Violation

Share This Post

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next