From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Bailing Out (rant) (was: Re: Freedom of Re
Date: 1 Sep 92 01:08:43 GMT
Organization: University of California, Irvine

In article <17ucmiINNhgk@stanley.cis.Brown.EDU> SL500000@brownvm.brown.edu (Robert Mathiesen) writes:
>Actually, what Murray says -- overburdened by its own greed and corruption, the
>system fails of its own accord -- may already have begun, just as it has in the
>USSR.  The two superpowers may have succeeded in putting one another on the 
>economic ropes.  I'll be very surprised is unemployment ever decreases, or the 
>economy ever improves in my lifetime.  I'm 50 today, and it's been downhill 
>ever since I was old enough to notice.  -- Robert

I've wondered about this since I was in elementary school.  You always
hear things like "There will always be a little inflation in a healthy
economy" and "There will always be unemployment" and "There will always
be poverty."

The first one is the stupidest.  There will always be inflation?  In
physics, this is what is called an unstable equilibrium.  Give it a
little push in one direction, and it will start to run away from you.
The problem that is never addressed in school (and that most elementary
school kids bring up) is that this cannot go on forever.  Eventually,
you will get to the million-dollar hamburger.  This is not a good
premise by which to construct a logic system that attempts to model the
real world.

Basically, what I'm saying is that this is not now and cannot ever be a
steady-state system.  It has GOT to collapse sooner or later (I usually
go one step further and state that patriarchy itself is not steady-state
and must collapse, but you can take that or leave it).  Quite literally,
it has probably been downhill ever since the burning of the Alexandrian
library, only we haven't been alive long enough to have witnessed this
decline first hand.  

The last two can be used together with another to point out a <P ^ ~P>
contradiction.  Democracy likes to say (at least this one) that it is
for the people.  It also says things like this, that there will always
be poverty.  How do you define poverty?  Not having any money to get the
things you need, of course.  That presupposes the existence of a class
of people that DO have what they need.  Does this then mean that
democracy is not for the people, but for the people who are in the camp
of Haves?  Consider it as a more familiar question, only recast
slightly: if a student fails, doesn't it really mean the teacher failed?
If the system is not sufficient to prevent the creation of a substantial
substratum of underpriviledged people, then doesn't this mean that the
system failed?  Or does it mean that it matters who you ask when you ask
if the system is a good one?  And does this then mean that democracy is
good only to those for whom democracy has been good?  And what value is
there in a circular definition like this? 

You can't sustain a system like this forever; it is NOT a steady-state
system, or even an adiabatically changing one.  Within less than ten
generations, it has already gone from bad to worse. 

A system like this, and unfortunately most others since -- let's face it
-- this glorious land of ours is just not all that different from most
other places, will not work well for a significant fraction of the
people who live under it -- and I'm talking a damned BIG chunk.  Where
do we draw the line as to how big this fraction can be and still call
the system "good?"  Is "good" then a function of whom you ask?

It's all bullshit.

Blessings,
Janis