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To: Raymond Duray who wrote (19005)	5/16/2002 2:16:13 PM
From: smolejv@gmx.net	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Amen, Ray. dj

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (19005)	5/16/2002 2:24:20 PM
From: Mark Adams	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

The 0.1% Retirement Fix executive summary: article describes the link between real productivity and long range forecasts. kiplinger.com BTW, nice concise response. I have a good measure of respect for both you and Oblomov.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (19005)	5/17/2002 6:51:01 AM
From: Oblomov	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Ray, I never said that you were a communist or a socialist. You do, however, share a viewpoint with many Marxian (note, Marxian rather than Marxist) critics of U.S. capitalism. What's so bad about being a Marxian, anyway (other than the fact that it makes you wrong -gg-) ? I used the term "Marxian" in a purely descriptive context. If you are a man of the left, why would you not want to acknowledge as your philosophical forebears the anti-Stalinist Marxists Dwight MacDonald, Paul Goodman, Daniel Bell, C. Wright Mills, Clement Greenberg, or Andrea Caffi? They wouldn't have had any trouble with the "Marxian" or "Marxist" labels. Had I been my current age (34) in the mid-50's, I might have been one myself, merely to be a member of a scintillating intellectual circle that stood in opposition to the bland, boosterist conformity of the mass culture. But, as fate would have it, I grew up during the 70s and 80s, when the mass culture itself had skillfully co-opted the revolutionary rhetoric of the Marxists. And so, everywhere in my youth there were advertising messages about the Nike "Revolution," complete with its own revolutionary theme music, or hamburger chains that insouciantly remarked that "sometimes you just gotta break the rules..." It's not surprising that the dot-commers of my generation thought and spoke in millenarian terms at the height of the tech mania. The solutions to the problems you raise, in my view, are not political solutions. Politics operates within a cultural context, and given that our culture itself does not permit worthwhile political discourse (instead, what we have is pointless "left" vs. "right" disputes and name-calling), it's not clear to me how simply taking political action is going to produce positive results. The culture has to be changed first. In fact, I believe that fixing the culture would also fix many of the issues you raise, obviating the need for political action. I think that your claim is disingenuous that you are just here to express concern "that as an independent investor, I am at a distinct risk of being cheated, robbed and have no recourse... that I and millions of other honest citizens are at a distinct disadvantage to those who would prefer to cheat." I think that you have a political bug, and an axe to grind, as is evidenced by the fact that ALL of your postings over the past several months are on political topic boards. There are some very bright people on SI, but if you really would like a challenging political discussion, there are a few websites (leftist and rightist) I could direct you to, where the flimsy arguments you construct here would be derided. But maybe that isn't what you are looking for.