Posted 2 years, 11 months ago in the wee hours by oso
Most of my life, my cognition has been infected by idealism. It’s a dangerous tendency from which a lot of power hungry dictators have convinced themselves to do pretty atrocious things. When I looked at the world around me, I didn’t see what it was, nor what it could be, but rather what it should be.
The idea of going through four years of college and finding a 9 - 5 job probably selling or advertising products that no one really needed anyway seemed like a laughable waste of a life … especially considering that crazy race I had to win as a wee sperm. Much better, my thinking went, to travel the world, find out what works best, what the secret forumalas (formulae?) are and get the real work going.
It sure didn’t take me long to realize that the world and the people living on it aren’t exactly in tip top shape. These statements I’m about to write have lost their meaning - the realities they represent - because people chant them like bunnies humping, but: the division between extreme wealth and extreme poverty is astonishing. We are doing away with gigantic chunks of pristine nature which will finally be largely documented for everyone by Google Maps. Malnutrition is a constant fact of life in much of Africa (like right now in Niger) which is consistently ignored by a global class that has managed to create a $100 a bottle culture around fermented grape juice.
In other words, based on what I was seeing (50+ countries by 22) and reading, we weren’t exactly on the fast track to my ideals, which of course, should have been everyone’s ideals right?
Now, I was no dummy. I knew then, just as I know now, that market forces alone do not encourage economic equality. In fact, they often are responsible for exaggerating the difference in wealth and lifestyle between the owning class and the working class. (trust me, I’m trying to stay away from socialist buzzwords) What seemed like the obvious answer to me was democratic government regulation so that economic motivations which lead to greater productivity would be balanced by humanistic ideals which lead to greater social harmony.
I saw this balance working well in many Western European countries like the Netherlands, France and Switzerland (someone buy me a ticket to the Scandinavia!!). I read a great book by George Soros explaining the need to maintain the balance without falling too far on either side. And I had witnessed many Neoliberal governments focus on market forces hoping that greater productivity alone would lead to greater prosperity. And everyone knows that wealthy people = happy people right?
But what I still hadn’t seen was a country whose focus, whose priority, was idealistic humanism. Not in making a society properous with material goods and services, but in making individuals and their society better. In 2003, long after the fall of the USSR and Eastern Bloc, the obvious place to go was a Caribbean island called Cuba.
I know the length of this series is really getting out of hand and it’s probably pretty dry for most of you, but anyway, next post I’ll be doing some gentlemanly trash talking on how Peter and his lovely wife Emily’s depiction of Cuba differed from what I experienced. So I highly recommend reading their entire section on their recent trip there. I also highly recommend this man’s impassioned visit to Cuba to get to the bottom of the Socialist hamburger (I ate many of these).
I hope Peter and Emily are doing well … wishing them all the best on their travels.
I don’t think it’s dry at all. It’s in fact, just another aspect of your thinking on this weblog. That’s why I keep coming, and I’m certain others do as well. I can’t wait to read about Cuba. I think I’m gonna have hamburger during my workbreak.
Cow killer!
So, the EMC is on Windoze.
i saw a report on niger the other night. i’ve seen images like that before, but for some reason this time around it left me pretty disturbed. anyway, i look forward to your thoughts on cuba.
I’m only on XP at work. And in fact, I requested an Apple when I took this job. It took a few weeks to get it. In the meantime, my Dell was mysteriously converted into an Apple desktop. “Ok, fine, we get the point,” one of my co-workers said to me, “here’s your damn mac.”
I like dead animal.
Oso, which Soros book was this?
EMC, I like dead animal too, but the living ones are kinda nice. Yay for carnivores.
I think it’s safe to say the book was The Crisis of Global Capitalism because HP should be studying for finals so we don’t have to worry about his whining about how Soros knows nothing compared to the CATO institute.
Oso,
Allow me to insert politics where it otherwise need not be.
Now, I was no dummy. I knew then, just as I know now, that market forces alone do not encourage economic equality. In fact, they often are responsible for exaggerating the difference in wealth and lifestyle between the owning class and the working class. (trust me, I’m trying to stay away from socialist buzzwords) What seemed like the obvious answer to me was democratic government regulation so that economic motivations which lead to greater productivity would be balanced by humanistic ideals which lead to greater social harmony.
Here we have a fundamental reason why you are a liberal when it comes to economics. If I had to pigeon hole the conservative philosophy of economics and the liberal philosophy of economics, it would be based on the above, liberals tend to stress economic equality whereas conservatives tend to stress economic growth (btw, this is not just a philosophy difference, this is also a voter difference between the two). And as your comments above clearly show, the two views tend to always be mutually exclusive. If you try to increase economic growth, you’re going to start to have income inequality, if you try to increase economic equality, you’re going to start to have less economic growth, since, as we all know, ‘government regulation’ (…and social programs and higher taxes) tends to reduce economic growth (In addition, since the more one pushes for economic equality the less economic growth there is, what eventually results is that you get economic equality, but at the expense of the standard of living. In other words, it is not by making us all richer, it is by making us all poorer that economic equality arises…think communism and so forth).
Of course the two are not always mutually exclusive, but when they are, the conservative leans towards economic growth and the liberal leans toward economic equality.
This fundamental difference is why (among other things), IMHO, Democrats tended to be against Bush’s tax cut, yet Republicans tended to be for it. For the most part, everybody agreed on the economics behind them, but the underlying priorities were very different. Republicans tended to stress the economic growth that would result (they were right, btw) whereas liberals tended to stress the income inequality that would result (which to some degree, also happened).
This is also part of the reason why, IMHO, liberals tend to be sympathetic towards socialism/communism and conservatives don’t. When liberals look at countries like Cuba, they don’t look at them through economic growth eyes, but through economic equality eyes. In other words, they don’t see ‘class struggles’ like they do here in the United States, and they see much more income equality than they do here in the United States, and all of this appeals to them.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are aghast at what they see in Cuba. Since we are looking at Cuba through economic growth eyes, we are seeing a country almost stuck in the Stone Age. So of course this is why economic growth champions like Peter and even Michael Munger, Duke University professor of Political Science and economics, will have very similar experiences when they visit Cuba. In fact, if you read Professor Munger’s account of his trip to Cuba, it is almost identical to Peter’s.
Yet you can read a liberals account of Cuba, of which I would assume your’s will strongly parallel, and they will conclude very different things, yet both, the conservative and the liberal, were looking at the same place, the same experience.
Oh yeah, and as for Soro’s, let’s not forget that the guy is a super billionaire, and so is a lot less worried about economic growth than the common man (after all, if I have 10 billion or 20 billion, it doesn’t make much difference). In fact, the lower down you go on the economic ladder, the more important economic growth is to you (As a poor person, I would care much less how many Bill Gates there are in my country - something that increases economic inequality - than I would about my specific standard of living).
While I don’t want to turn this into an economic discussion just yet, maybe this is a good time for me to forewarn you of what angle I plan to take in our upcoming economic discussion. So here, read this this this this and especially this to see why I think economic growth should be on the top of everybodies economic agenda, and here here and especially here to see why I (as a radical conservative) don’t care at all about economic inequality.
Ok, enough breaks, back to studying for HP….
But HP, you missed my whole point. Which is that I’m no dummy.
Man, wouldn’t that be shitty if people actually called you Professor Munger? Poor guy. Calling himself “Mungowitz” can’t help. I wonder if people ever call him “Mungoditz.” They must. Anyway, you can tell he’s one of those guys who goes to Cuba without any already defined notions of what it’ll be like. Or not.
Hope the finals go well.
And don’t worry, I read all your this’s and here’s.
“Mungoditz” is good, but I haven’t heard it before.
I’ll see if it catches on.
Well, I guess they can’t all be as creative as I am.
Fantastic to see that a conservative professor can have a sense of humor. Now if we can just get you using Firefox.
Hey, Cool beans!!! Michael Munger visited your site!!
Munger is very cool, and very down to earth, I am not at all surprised that he took your Mungoditz so well.
HP,
I’d say you have some brown on your nose, but knowing you, you’d probably take it as a racial joke.
Hiyo!