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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (256537)	5/18/2002 1:13:44 PM
From: DOUG H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

So, what's the lesson of this tale? I believe it is that the best of all possible worlds we can hope for is mixed economy, with markets and regulation both being necessary to the mix. And some sort of a recognition that the upcoming shortages of water and other essential commodities need to be dealt with in a system that is more fair than that provided by a "free market" and more efficient than that provided by central government planning. Well said, as a nonrapacious capaitalist my chief villian is the beaurocrat and utopiocrat. However, from my vantage point I can see that power and justice are not intertwined and that when one gets too far from the other, only bad things can happen.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (256537)	5/18/2002 1:26:46 PM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Ray, I'm in a hurry and just popping by my computer, but you may find this description interesting. In hindsight I should have chosen a more common term, but I've been reading a lot of systems thinking books lately so it popped to the top of my head. The rest of your post I'll try and address later. Appreciate the thoughtful reply. It looks like we have a good starting point for discussion. platon.ee.duth.gr “The autopoietic organization is defined as a unity by a network of productions of components which (i) participate recursively in the same network of productions of components which produced these components, and (ii) realize the network of productions as a unity in the space in which the components exist.” (Varela, Maturana & Uribe 1974: 188). The property of organizational invariance is essential as it addresses that of autonomy: being invariant, an autopoietic system does not adapt to the environment, at least until adaptation to environmental features or changes does not menace its organizational invariance. Indeed, an autopoietic system filters, enacts and reacts to the environment in order to maintain its autopoiesis, that is, its self-production. That property is what was initially called organizational closure and subsequently operational closure (Varela 1977, 1979). Therefore the system exchanges matter and energy with the environment, but neither information nor commands nor inputs, because all these concepts, developed by systems theory and first-order cybernetics, refer to some sort of possible orientation or control or governance of the system. On the contrary, an autopoietic system is autonomous and maintains its own identity. Finally, in addition to demonstrating the self-organizing process of a cellular automata reaching a fixed point, the seminal article determines three more important questions. Firstly, autopoietic systems are defined in a physical space, that of cellular biology. Secondly, they are mechanistic and real objects. Thirdly, they must have a clearly identifiable boundary, like a cell membrane, which is independent from either the internal production network or the environment. Finally, autopoietic systems are a large set, which comprises the sub-set of living systems.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (256537)	5/18/2002 6:24:31 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Respond to of 769667

well Ray, I won't go to sarcastic and just ask a question. What is the question about? Well about if you think in terms of numbers the following is a really stupid proffer....... "Michael, when I look at the practitioners of "free markets" and their strongest advocates, I find people like Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay, Michael Milken and other outright criminals. That's what troubles me about "free markets". They always devolve into abusive swindles." The questions. How many times have you been swindled in the tens of thousands of transactions that you have participated in???? What is my personal answer to that question??? Your perspective is always and my life experience is, hmmm when have I suffered from an abusive swindle in the marvelous Free Market American economy. I have shopped thousands of times and bought tens of thousands of stuff and it all worked pretty well or was what I wanted. A few times I've encountered problems and especially with the huge retail chains I got my money back just like they advertised. I build all my own computers and that's a few dozen. I've bought the parts, chasis, software over the internet (200 times), at computer flea markets (100 times) and at huge retail chains (100 times) at commercial resellers like tech data (50 times) at auctions (40 times) I've never been swindled once. So if because you can think of three names of guys who were dishonest out of the millions of folks around your town, your county, your state and the USA and from that ratio of millions to three conclude that "free markets". They always devolve into abusive swindles." Then I by the numbers would conclude that maybe you are just a very unlucky consumer or a really really stupid consumer or just full of stupid ideas or you have no understanding of simple arithmetic. tom watson tosiwmee