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Re: individuals,collectives and CDSs
John McCreery (jlm@TWICS.COM)
Sun, 11 Aug 1996 12:08:51 +0900
>-- [ From: Timothy Mason * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] --
>I do not know of a single example of an economy taking off without state
>intervention of some kind and/or a high degree of monopoly or oligopoly - in
>England, the state lays the ground during the Tudor era for the apparently
>more laissez-faire policies of the 18th and 19th Centuries. The free market
>myth is, quite simply, empirically unfounded. What is interesting is how
>many intelligent and well-educated people cling on to it in the face of all
>evidence.
>
Tim,
It's interesting that you should point this out. As I thought further about
the CDS model after writing my previous note, it occurred to me that a
classic example might well be the U.S. military-industrial complex, which,
while plagued with corruption and "excessively high" prices, brought a very
nice standard of living to places like Southern California and Southeastern
Virginia (where I happened to grow up). Let me hasten to add that this is
not an argument for military spending per se; in Japan's case it has been
the construction industry; in another time and place it might be
interplanetary exploration and development (I am also a member of the
Planetary Society). What may be the key is, as Mike Shupp suggested a while
back, a society-wide commitment to a vast public project that has among its
byproducts the stimulation of economic growth. But, then, of course, we run
head on into the global ecology question....
John McCreery
3-206 Mitsusawa HT, 25-2 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220, JAPAN
"And the Lord said unto Cyrus, 'Shall the clay say to him who moldest it,
what makest thou? Let the potsherd of the earth speak to the potsherd of
the earth." --An anthropologist's credo
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