From: kebarnes@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: Socialism/Liberalism
Date: 28 Dec 92 13:31:46 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Dec21.125115.27951@mr.med.ge.com>,
gorney@picard.med.ge.com (Felix Gorney Mfg 4-6983) wrote,
among other things:

> ...socialist theories seem to subscribe to the notion that a
> society can be created, and regulated just like any machine. The
> theories of thermodynamics, and statistics are great for building
> machines, and bridges, but they cannot devise or control a human
> society. Much like the weather, and nature, human society consists
> of many STRONGLY interconnected parts. As Sadi Carnot discovered,
> statistical analysis breaks down in systems where the elements
> have more than a weak interaction with one another.

[...]

> ...I have no doubt that many social(ist) 
> scientists will try to find ways to make the theories of chaos,
> antichaos, complexity, and self organized criticality fit their 
> socialist mold. However, I hope that the folly of the socialists/
> liberals , and their theories may one day be relegated to the 
> annals of social alchemy. 

[...]

> ...If a system is on the verge
> of chaos (where these systems seem most efficient) I fail to see how
> any economist can accurately predict it's behavior, especiallly with
> 250 million elements. It is noted [by choas theorists] that a chaotic
> system will organize itself if each of the elements react to only
> 2 or 3 inputs. 
> 
> There is no centralized plan in New York city, yet millions of people
> are fed every day, even when hundreds of companies are doing the 
> work, with nary a few days inventory. Supply, and demand do the work.

[...]

> ...how can anyone think that a few people can  
> devise an entire economy...?

[...]

> 
> Felix Gorney
> 
> gorney@picard.med.ge.com


Mr. Gorney has hit upon the chief flaw of the economic architecture of
Marxism-Leninism which until recently precariously supported the
edifice of military power which was the Soviet Union. In hindsight, it
is easy for those of us in the West who believe in market economics
to see that it was an act of extreme hubris for the central planners
to assert that they could do a better job of operating a working
economy (i.e. managing the fortunes of the people) than could the
people themselves. As chaos theory so elegantly demonstrates, Adam
Smith's conception of the market as an "invisible hand" was ahead
of his time. No individual or government bureau can have enough
information about the state of the economy, even given modern
computers (which the USSR lacked, except through theft) to predict
its behavior in the detail necessary for the vaunted "Five-Year-Plan"
to have hope of success, especially if the government simultaneously
seizes all wealth and redistributes it equally.

Of course, the Soviet power elites would never have allowed THAT to
happen in reality. But as the recent American election attests,
in economics, illusion can BE reality, at least for a while. For the
Soviets, the idea that the vast majority of their national wealth
could be spent on the military under such a centrally-planned system
and they would be able to compete with the ingenuity and determination
of the truly rich peoples of the West, the illusion and its aftermath
may last well over a century. For the "democratic socialists" of the
West, who believe that government subsidies equal compassion, the
illusion is crumbling even now.

We may never achieve a perfect society, and certainly not a perfect
economy, given that chaos theory can be analogized to both. A perfect
society in which government mandates we do good to one another,
rather than punishing us, however imperfectly, for our various degrees
of wrong, is not an ideal to be hoped for. Neither is a classless society.
Our free will gives our lives their moral dimension, and if we could
construct a government to take that capacity for good and evil away,
there would be no more evil, but the good would perish as well.
So it is with the illusion of the classless society. If government
mandates that the high places be made low, and the low places filled in,
before long, no one will bother to construct any more high places.
Instead, all eyes will turn to the government check in the mail, until
the day comes that the printing presses cease, and the paper is
burned for fuel. We need to learn from the misfortunes of others, the
victims of Stalin's edifice of redistribution, so that their loss
was not in vain.

We can also learn economics from chaos theory, as pointed out above.
The "strange attractor" of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of the
marketplace needs_some_governmental regulation, to be sure, as do
other aspects of human affairs, such as the protection of essential
liberty. But we should not be so confident that we can predict the
results of our manipulations of the market, anymore than the TV
weathermen can predict the weather. It kind of makes you glad
there isn't a Department of Weather Control, given the results of
government intrusions into the dynamic system of the marketplace. 

Perhaps our former Senator-turned-V.P.-elect Gore will organize one.

[Standard disclaimers apply.]

Cordially,
-- 
*.x,*dna**************************************************************
*(==) Ken Barnes, LifeSci Bldg.                                      *
* \'  KEBARNES@memstvx1.memst.edu                                    *
*(-)**Memphis,TN********75320,711@compuserve.com**********************
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged
to stick to possibilities, Truth isn't."--Mark Twain
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh