Re: True faiths ( was Re: The true faith )

[Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org>]

tfb@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
> Nils Goesche <cartan@t-online.de> writes:
> 
> > In article <slrna40nb0.7nn.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no>, Preben Randhol wrote:

> > > Capitalism will need to adjust itself in the near future from
> > > the short-term gain view to a long-term view.

> > Funny; ``in the near future''.  This claim is *very* old, but we
> > are still waiting ;-)

> Even restricting one's view to economics alone, look at the United
> States.  We're in the second economic recession in 10 years.  And in
> the time in between, although unemployment was low, wages didn't
> grow.  This isn't much of a refultation of the claim.  Or are you
> just arguing that capitalism still exists?  If so, that's not much
> of an argument.

And "wages" and "unemployment" are forcibly supposed to be related to
the manner of ownership of the results of production _how_?

[You're probably _not_ amongst the clueless on this, but I find it
tremendously irritating when people get spectacularly worshipful about
"capitalism" when they're clearly thinking about things that aren't
forcibly related, such as when concepts of "private property" and
"free markets" could apply equally well under arrangements such as
"mercantilism."]

The notion that it makes sense for "capitalism to adjust itself" to
something when capitalism is an _economic concept_ seems just
spectacularly silly.  It's a _definition_, and definitions don't
adjust themselves.
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