[lit-ideas] Re: From today's paper
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 18:54:34 +0900
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 6:25 PM, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> Benign-sounding social programs designed by crooked legislators to feed
> profit to their cronies and supporters. Eternal vigilance is the price of a
> well-run distribution of wealth.
>
Here we can agree, except perhaps the assumption of "crooked legislators."
Some are, some aren't. But that is only a modest qualification. At least
periodic vigilance is, indeed the price of a well-run distribution of
wealth.
>
>
>
> Question 2: What would do more to increase the freedom of the average
> individual than a system that provided education, health care and a decent
> retirement as basic human rights, thus weakening the force of wage slavery?
>
>
>
>
> First, I don't think there is an average anything.
Fine by me.
>
>
> Second, I don't think a system (of any kind) can, by itself, increase
> freedom. In fact, the absence of some systems may actually increase human
> freedom. As William James observed, "A system is an overly obstinate attempt
> to think clearly." In the hands of the exploiters and buccaneers, a system
> can be a very pernicious thing indeed.
>
Here I must disagree. What freedom would we enjoy without the systems that
provide the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the places we live, the energy
we consume, the Internet through which we communicate? How would any of us
survive without the care that human infants require, provided by systems
called families? How would we learn to read, to calculate, to perform
well-crafted experiments, to practice the arts or crafts that delight us
without the systems that educate us?
The question is not system versus freedom but how to construct systems that
maximize freedom while minimizing the harm that greed, anger and obsession
do. I don't believe for a moment that we can perfect human nature. The best
we can do is pursue the line the Founders took in writing the Constitution,
create institutions that check the worst aspects of our nature while leaving
us free to do what we will with the better parts.
John
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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