----- Original Message -----
From: Ray E. Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>I enjoyed your post. Your statements about wealth and Madison are also
>the viewpoint of Noam Chomsky who gave a talk on it on C-Span last year.
>Of course it was played at three in the morning.
It explains the support for market economies by western governments!
Western governments are not run by people who believe all those stupid
economic arguments, they are run by people who have a hidden "political"
agenda for market economies: peace.
I am reading Karl Polyani's THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION again, and once
again I am amazed by his powers of observation. He described the exact same
processes we see at work today.
Polyani finds the cause of the first and second world wars in an "acute
peace interest". Sound contradictory? It's exactly the same thing I wrote
about in my last newsletter: free trade and movable capital forcing
governments to be peaceful. [ http://dieoff.com/page168.htm ] GREAT IDEA!!!
But yesterdays problem was that the economic theories were fundamentally
wrong. And when the economic system crashed, it took a hell of a lot of
people
with it: "The dissolution of the system of world economy which had been in
progress since 1900 was responsible for the political tension that exploded
in 1914." [p. 21]
Today we see the global economy crumbling again for the same reason:
economic theories are fundamentally wrong. And once again, I believe
these stupid economic theories condemn us to another century of world wars.
In a decade or so, the rich will fully understand that the ongoing
population
explosion and resource depletion endanger the welfare of their own famlies.
I suggest a global welfare state as a means to relieve the strain on the
planet and provide "needs" to most people. But as you mentioned in an
earlier post, people without work would probably become restless.
It may well be that the market economy is the only "humane" means for the
rich to control the common herd animals. In which case, the rich will be
forced to resort to "inhumane" means of control -- perhaps a new designer
bioweapon capable to hitting the delete key on upwards of six billion
people.
Jay
