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globa[chat]ion
ronya
Arrrrrf.the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
Arrrrrf.the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
But the point for my present discussion is this. We each have our own fancy. Not believing that we are saved already, we each should like to have a try at working out our own salvation. We do not wish, therefore, to be at the mercy of world forces working out, or trying to work out, some uniform equilibrium according to the ideal principles, if they can be called such, of laissez-faire capitalism. There are still those who cling to the old ideas, but in no country of the world to-day can they be reckoned as a serious force. We wish--for the time at least and so long as the present transitional, experimental phase endures--to be our own masters, and to be as free as we can make ourselves from the interferences of the outside world.
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I see three outstanding dangers in economic nationalism and in the movements towards national self-sufficiency, imperilling their success.
The first is Silliness--the silliness of the doctrinaire. It is nothing strange to discover this in movements which have passed somewhat suddenly from the phase of midnight high-flown talk into the field of action. We do not distinguish, at first, between the color of the rhetoric with which we have won a people's assent and the dull substance of the truth of our message. There is nothing insincere in the transition. Words ought to be a little wild--for they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking. But when the seats of power and authority have been attained, there should be no more poetic license.
We have, therefore, to count the cost down to the penny which our rhetoric has despised. An experimental society has need to be far more efficient than an old-established one, if it is to survive safely. It will need all its economic margin for its own proper purposes, and can afford to give nothing away to soft-headedness or doctrinaire impracticability. When a doctrinaire proceeds to action, he must, so to speak, forget his doctrine. For those who in action remember the letter will probably lose what they are seeking.
The second danger--and a worse danger than silliness--is Haste. Paul Valery's aphorism is worth quoting: "Political conflicts distort and disturb the people's sense of distinction between matters of importance and matters of urgency." The economic transition of a society is a thing to be accomplished slowly. What I have been discussing is not a sudden revolution, but the direction of secular trend. We have a fearful example in Russia to-day of the evils of insane and unnecessary haste. The sacrifices and losses of transition will be vastly greater if the pace is forced. I do not believe in the inevitability of gradualness, but I do believe in gradualness. This is, above all, true of a transition towards greater national self-sufficiency and a planned domestic economy. For it is of the nature of economic processes to be rooted in time. A rapid transition will involve so much pure destruction of wealth that the new state of affairs will be, at first, far worse than the old; and the
grand experiment will be discredited. For men judge remorselessly by results, and by early results, too.
The third risk, and the worst risk of all three, is Intolerance and the stifling of instructed criticism. The new movements have usually come into power through a phase of violence or quasi-violence. They have not convinced their opponents; they have downed them. It is the modern method--but very disastrous, I am still old-fashioned enough to believe--to depend on propaganda and to seize the organs of opinion; it is thought to be clever and useful to fossilize thought and to use all the forces of authority to paralyze the play of mind on mind. For those who have found it necessary to employ all methods whatever to attain power, it is a serious temptation to continue to use for the task of construction the same dangerous tools which wrought the preliminary housebreaking.
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twitch.tv/tehsloth
the Depression completely collapsed the globalization of Edwardian era. The world has never returned to that level, even today. Keynes is suggesting the political forces underpinning why, in a 1933 essay.
Yes, the Middle East is less developed than the West solely because of Islam. Yes, fundamentalist Islam is representative of all Islam. Yes, Religion is definitely distinct and easily separable from Everything Else.
And now I'm all worked up and can't go to sleep.
Oh ok, cool.
Should I make next chat about Electrical Engineering @Irond Will (maybe @Abdhyius)
you know the joke, the worst enemy of the heretic is a heretic of another sect? the target of that quote are the pro-compromise atheists
"When did economics become all about the numbers, man? When did it stop being about the music??"
no mods, no masters
only chat
There is no escaping Geth.
AI is eternal.
yes
(mechanical engineering. Electricity is mostly magic to me.)
Hobbes wins again, the bastard
I don't know enough about mechanical engineering that's beyond what any engineer learns.
Computer Engineers stop doing physical things at Dynamics and Thermo-Fluids
I was listening to A Thing about Abenomics -- about how Japanese women basically all drop out of the labor force when they get preggers -- and they Christened a new term.
"Womanomics."
The hits just keep on comin'.
well I don't know even that yet. But I've only been doing this for a year.
Unless you count Multisim.
Abd in six months' time:
I think that's already the title of the science-oriented My Little Pony spinoff
n
Would be educated again
I should be able to agree more than once.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
?
I recall reading about one of the super fancy / expensive restaurants in NYC that only accepts cash...and all I could think is 'yup, the IRS should get right on that'.