Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

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.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (24499)	4/11/2002 12:19:55 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I saw part of the Commanding Heights and it is excellent. Though after a while, I found Jeff Sachs rather smug. He may be right about markets, but he didn't sound very compassionate about the suffering caused by economic reforms. It's still a dismal science, at least if you're in the reform business.

To: Ilaine who wrote (24499)	4/11/2002 3:51:36 AM
From: frankw1900	Respond to of 281500

Turning to your argument. I am perfectly happy to concede that great numbers of people in the world are misled by unworkable ideas. The question is, how do you change their minds? Man is, more or less, a rational animal. If men are led astray by foolish ideas, it's not because they intend to be foolish. Quite the opposite. I've written here before, our reason is handmaiden to our emotions. We only hold onto ideas which have, for whatever reason, "emotional resonance" or emotional commitment. Huge emotional commitment to a set of ideas necessarily blinds us to other ideas - they are pale, faint, not worth serious examination. The experience, I said, is analogous and similar in sensation to falling in love - nothing is as important as the beloved. This seems to be how intelligent people can be really stupid. You get people to change their minds by giving up the emotional attachment and this can be quite difficult if the attached emotions are strong like love, hate, exaltation, etc. Sometimes, if applying the idea again and again always results in failure, folk will give it up (as we say, in disappointment), especially if others around them are also experiencing the failure. Economics and politics at their intersection are very emotionally influenced by primitive ideas basic to the nature of most of us like greed, altruism, hope. This, coupled with the emotional and abstract characteristic of money and the complexity of decent economic description makes for a lot of misunderstanding and flawed policy. Economic history is the ugly stepchild of social science. In other words, it's really a cat's breakfast and you have to know a lot and go blind reading. This might interest you: levy.org

To: Ilaine who wrote (24499)	4/11/2002 5:56:29 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

"Commanding Heights." It's awesome. I had read the book. I just watched "Part two". It sure brought back memories of the '60s and '70's when I was reading Rand, Hayek,Freidman, et al. I was full of piss and vinegar, and was trying to change the world, which was changed without me. Now, as the show illustrates, partial Capitalism has won out. I think of all the people I knew then that believed that Socialism was the future of the world. Most of them still believe it, people don't give up their ideas very easily. The major "hole" in Economics today is money. It has been written about a good deal, but never defined and explained. I came up with "The Theory of Money" in 1975 and never tried to publish. The history of non-academics getting anywhere is more dismal than the science. John Kenneth Galbraith had a PHD from UC Davis in the ''30s, and had his first book on economics ignored because the Ivy League profs considered it on the same level as a Home Economics PHD. So Galbraith published his books in the future to the general audience and became famous.