If one wants to bring about an old-fashioned liberal economic utopia, it will not be industrialised.
Nice outline, but wrong conclusion. Cathedrals, pyramids and other giant projects show that industrial-scale outcomes are possible with other social models.
The fallacy is to assume that it's top-down centralised micromanaged planning, or nothing - in other words that we've exhausted every possible cultural approach to managing big resource extraction and processing projects.
I don't think this is true. In fact the problem now is to invent new kinds of social organisation which mix the sustainability of subsistence cultures with the dynamism and inventiveness of explorer cultures.
I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm also not convinced it's impossible.
No, it's the right conclusion, because, you have to remember that when he was writing "liberal" meant "Manchester liberal" and thus the quote could be rewritten from modern understanding as:
If one wants to bring about that cliche of a glibertarian economic utopia, it will not be industrialised.
We still have some taxes and a few social services, but it hasn't exactly been happy time for neo-Keynesians.
It's true that glibertarian utopias have a habit of imploding, but I'm not sure he's suggesting that.
Er - haven't we had the industrialised cliche glibertarian utopia for the last couple of decades?
Only in Somalia...
ThatBritGuy:
I know it seems odd now, but back when he was writing, "liberal" really did mean something different, much closer to glibertarian than it does now.
Metatone:
After Reagonomics?
It's amazing, really, because in the 1960's Galbraith was ready to pronounce neoclassical marginalist economics dead. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
The fallacy is to assume that it's top-down centralised micromanaged planning, or nothing - in other words that we've exhausted every possible cultural approach to managing big resource extraction and processing projects. I don't think this is true. In fact the problem now is to invent new kinds of social organisation which mix the sustainability of subsistence cultures with the dynamism and inventiveness of explorer cultures. I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm also not convinced it's impossible.
I would be very interested in reading about any possible models you might have in mind. ... all progress depends on the unreasonable mensch.(apologies to G.B. Shaw)
Nice outline, but wrong conclusion. Cathedrals, pyramids and other giant projects show that industrial-scale outcomes are possible with other social models. The fallacy is to assume that it's top-down centralised micromanaged planning, or nothing - in other words that we've exhausted every possible cultural approach to managing big resource extraction and processing projects.
That doesn't mean large structures can't evolve without markets or centralised planning. Historic non-Western cities prove that point - cities may be supported by trade, but they're not necessarily defined by it.
I think the push away from industrialisation is more complicated. It's a mixture of opportunism, social snobbery, class war and a desire to emasculate unions, and an understanding that capital is much better at making more capital when it doesn't have to deal with real things in the real world.
But there's a more basic metaphor. The only real currencies in economics are physical commodities and trust.
If you build a hyper-competitive system where no one can trust anyone else, sooner or later - completely unexpectedly - trust evaporates, and the system implodes in a spectacular display of fiscal paranoia.
If you're running out of physical commodities at the same time - that's also not a good thing.
Just so, what I'd like to see is a more distributive model for energy generation (which makes sense if you need multiple 'small' green generators --solar/wind--as opposed to one big ole nuclear reactor or coal burning / oil burning power plant). In fact, moving to a more conceptual plane, the distributive model is part and parcel of what drives the open source movement. A great essay that delineates some of this is the Cathedral & the Bazaar, documenting, among other things the 'subversive' Linux author's working method. The lead graph is a pretty compelling argument for a completely different approach to 'centralized' software development.
Linus Torvalds's style of development--release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity--came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here--rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches (aptly symbolized by the Linux archive sites, who'd take submissions from anyone) out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.
I wanted to find a low priced green e-vehicle that would get me from a-b with a decent speed and decent range and wouldn't cost me a fortune.
Zap car came immediately to mind, but after doing some research and test driving I wasn't happy: 11,000 MSRP for a car that advertises 45 mph, but barely runs 35 with the wind at it's back, and on steep uphill grades was even slower. Worse the range couldn't even let my wife do a roundtrip to our daughter's highschool and back (about 60 miles). It was a deal breaker. So I started hunting around. What I found was a veritable ecosystem of garage mechanics building their own e-vehicles by gutting light weight Hondas or VW bugs and filling them with standard batteries. For about $8000 I could find a ride that was notably cheaper, faster and further than the Zap vehicle. Or I could build my own. Once the basic engineering principles are mastered and the parts obtained (and most good junk yards and auto supply stores would have what you need) an e-vehicle can be converted or built from scratch for easily $10,000. One that is cheaper than Zap, goes further and is faster. So why does the centralized manufacturer suffer by comparison to the home hobbyist?
A couple of explanations are possible. A big one: the main cost of the vehicles is offset initially by effectively reusing a chassis. Labor and other overhead is absorbed by the person working on his own conversion or doing a kit. A lot of the same thing goes on in the bazaar model of software development. The labor turns out to be something of a labor of love; not many millions were initially made by the intellectual tinkerers who put together Linux; and yet, in terms of value, it's pretty staggering to think of the value of the Linux OS now. What corporations want to do is lock in that future value by centralizing the development of their 'product'--in point of fact the ONLY way they can think of safeguarding their 'product' is through a centralized process. That's ultimately why Linus's methodology was subversive. He didn't bother to safeguard anything. He left it wide open. I think we can make that same shift in terms of agri-business and energy production. Perhaps even big ticket items like home building (earth ships) or autos (re-vamped e-vehicles), but it will take the 'risk' of foregoing a guaranteed profit. And a lot of tinkering by cooperative communities, no doubt :-)
