From: TA0SHK1%NIU.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu (Stephen H. Karlson 753-6980 (815))
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Subject: Privatizing Marty
Date: 2 Oct 92 21:52:00 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

Marty Rosen recently posted a lengthy response to a response I made
to another lengthy post.  It includes the following statement:

> nobody else bothered to respond (to me) at all

Even before the current survey and fake mail manias hit the list,
other members of the list found some topics, including political
economy, out of bounds.  Perhaps we should continue this argument on
private mail (Or, if Wisconsin play a hockey match at Bowling Green,
Marty could buy me a ticket and meet the train at Fostoria and we
could swap viewpoints in person.)

I have read through Marty's post and intend to respond to it with
all the details filled in later, privately.  Send me a private mail
if you wish a copy of the response.

Just for fun, here are public responses to a few of Marty's claims:

> Steve invokes his faith in the ease and inevitability of capital formation

Faith?  Marty, you've been carrying on about companies laying off
workers and closing plants in some of your earlier posts.  What is all that
idle capacity if not evidence of the ease of capital formation?  If it were
difficult to form, would it be idled so readily?

> "I'm not sure that 'state-supported capital formation' is the
> key,"

Unless I misread your post, you did propose some link between state-supported
capital formation and non-miraculous growth.  I question your hypothesis.

> In fact, of course, economic development under the repressive czarist
> regimes prior to the Russian Revolution was far behind development in
> Germany and Japan.  State-supported capital formation in the USSR
> beginning in the 1920s ...

Did anybody note the pompous tone of that?  Actually (and I will document
these points at length in the private reply), the Russian economy of 1900-
1914 industrialized rapidly and was on the verge of matching German and
Japanese growth rates.  Russia exported agricultural products.
Real manufacturing wages fell after the 1917 putsch and returned to 1913
levels in 1967.  The Soviet Union had to import agricultural products,
because Stalin and company destroyed agriculture.

> He may want to explain why it is that China, where confucianism
> confucianism originated ... hardly led the industrial revolution.

Greater minds than ours have puzzled over the same thing.  McNeill's
_The Rise of the West_ draws its title from the observation that China
was the source of the best science and mathematics until around the 1600s.
The "west" became preeminent in such fields, as well as in commerce,
thereafter; coincidentally, concurrent with the Reformation.

> Incidentally, I take issue with the newbie-influenced poll that rated Bill
> S. as a more staunch conservative than Steve.  More often than not,
> Steve's posts are founded in some kind of analysis (albeit usually
> misguided).

We're reading different sources, Marty.  I'm providing the documentation in the
private post.  I don't often make a claim I can't support.  Bill S.'s
conservatism may be of a different form.  He was educated at Quigley South
Preparatory Seminary and the U of Chicago.  I went to a Milwaukee high school
and the University of Wisconsin.  My attitudes evolve from arguing with
people and working out what makes sense; I don't have Bill's instinct for the
"correct" retort, which you characterise as "reactionary one-liners."

Bill, by the way, is about to begin the term at University College Cork.  He is
not amused by giggles either.

Speaking of misguided analysis, Marty, what's your next move?

Steve Karlson

Luff 'em and leave 'em.
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