NP PRC-related

[calbert at tiac.net]

Doug:


> Actually, profiting from organ sales in the world today is capitalist
> behavior, made possible by the capitalist system that governs the
> world economy and virtually all national economies (with the possible
> exception of North Korea, and in its external trade arrangements even
> N. Korea operates within a capitalist system).

This is disingenuous. In spite of the wide variety of socio/economic 
structures extant, you would simply fudge them all as "capitalist" to 
further your argument....but even given this rhetorical deceit, the 
world's nations are still governed by human beings exhibiting human 
nature in its infinite variety, and in order to accurately determine the 
net influence of capitalism, you would be obliged to factor out that of 
"nature"......

> It's true that trade and commerce go back to the earliest beginnings
> of history(commercial records being the first written records), but
> capitalism doesn't, it's a later development that was, in fact, spread
> throughout the world by the Europeans who devised this system.

So, on the basis of this kind of logic, can we safely assume that 
greed and exploitation did not exist outside "Europe", until 
introduced by Mr. Charlie? And not in it, prior to the development of 
"capitalism"?

> Comparing national atrocities is going down the slippery slope; the
> Western powers, U.S. included, hardly have the moral high ground in
> this regard,

STOP RIGHT THERE....Now cite me two instances of such "national 
atrocities" which even begin to compare to the "engineered" famines 
in the USSR and the PRC in the past century.......You are currently 
down about 40 million victims - GO!


 and only a media propaganda machine as powerful (if not
> more so) than anything Orwell imagined lets U.S. residents feel smug
> and complacent and better than those terrible people in those horrible
> places somewhere else --

as much as I detest the mainstream national media, they ain't that 
good. US residents travel far and wide, they don't need anyone else 
to spell out any comparison. And the human tide continues almost 
exclusively in one direction - TOWARDS the US.....what media 
MACHINE duped them? Or is it far more likely that they had their fill 
of their local utopia and booked?

 I don't feel particularly comfortable in a
> society that lets homeless people die in the streets and lets young
> children suffer because of a lack of nutrition, shelter, medical care,
> etc., right in front of our eyes.

Who does?....but where are you going in order to spare yourself the 
misery?.....Don't go to North Korea - they are starving, in huge 
numbers.........Don't go to China - they'll beat your dog to death in 
front of you (pet ownership is tres bourge, of course, and the 
"system" can't generate DOG FOOD).....Cuba? Well - get ready to 
take your turn behind the oxen, and then wait.............and for the 
love of ....., don't  get AIDS there.....but I guess as long as 
EVERYONE is sharing in the misery, its OK - and such a system 
should be adopted world wide..... 


  The markets for those human organs
> are primarily in the U.S. and Western Europe, after all, where people
> are quite happy to use money and privilege to profit from the
> suffering of less fortunate people far away (cf. Pynchon's vision of
> the colonial far away from the white-domed capitols of the Metropole).

Hmmmmmnnnnnn....just how many organs would be available in 
these markets if the Chi-coms weren't so enamored of capital 
punishment and "corpses as profit centers" (Ironic item - back 
during the Stalinist purges the families of executed "criminals" would 
be issued a bill for the bullet driven behind the ear of their loved one. 
Now THAT is cost accounting turned up to "eleven".)? How many 
slaves would have been supplied to the western world without the 
ready co-operation and promotion of arabic and african slave 
"collectors"? How far from NYC do the slaves currently in bondage 
in the Sudan toil?


> One of the things I especially like about Pynchon is the way he cuts
> through that sort of argument (dodo vs Nazi genocide of the Jews,
> capitalist v. communist) and blames the systems we erect to manage
> human affairs -- the market system of capitalism being one of those
> systems. He makes very clear in GR that markets cross national
> boundaries along with the War that generates profits to fuel the
> markets. 

You're stubbing your nose on the acorn.......it is the "systems" we 
erect, and the vain hope which promotes them that Pynchon 
twits....ALL of them.....just as none have a monopoly on "the answer"
neither do they have one on the culpability for continuing failure....it 
is the aggregation and (ab)use of POWER which Pynchon 
proclaims (to the extent that he scolds at all) against....
 
> I stand by my earlier statement:  Greed and exploitation obey no
> boundaries, as long as the political, economic, and social systems we
> erect use greed and exploitation to motivate and manage the way people
> behave. 

Economics is, at its core, simply the study of rational behavior 
chanelled towards "self-interest", and how this "aggregates" from the 
basic household model to the larger polity. As such it considers the 
role that such self interest (some call it greed) plays in the area of 
asset allocation.

Capitalism simply argues that capital needs to achieve a certain 
"critical mass" to be "efficiently" utilized, and argues for the right of 
individuals to generate such "cms" and employ them in the pursuit of 
their "self interest". We are engaged in a debate which tries to 
establish whether, on balance, such a system is "superior or 
inferior" to AVAILABLE alternatives - and I would suggest that the 
supers are enjoying the upper hand here..... 


The qualification calbert wonders about is necessary, because
> there are other ways to motivate and manage behavior --  love, trust,
> family and community bonds, spiritual values. (They can work very
> well, and have done so at times in the past, until some greedy,
> exploitative mofo comes along and spoils it.) 

Remove individual incentive, and, as history will show, an economic 
system ceases to generate necessary surplus goods, which form 
the capacity to invest in what economists refer to as "common 
goods", services, which though necessary, may not be "efficiently" 
addressed in a for profit context. Even in the realm of "common 
goods" capitalist systems have proven superior generators of such 
benefits to existing alternatives. And this is why I love economics - 
those who would rail against the process of "privatizing" such 
services are blind to the fact that economic laws will very likely prove 
the proponents of such policies wrong. Common goods, by 
definition stands outside the "profit matrix".... 


> Pynchon shows us in his fiction rare moments when people
> manage to break through and treat each other decently, despite their
> enslavement to the system.


Love is just as integral a component of human nature as greed - call 
it the "counterforce".....


love,
cfa
>  calbert:
> [snip]
> 
>