[Grovenet] The Iraqi View

[David Morelli]

Ron,

Darn, I thought that we were moving toward a consensus.

You are correct that our Economic system can be tremendously wasteful  
and I may have made a case for an economic system other than  
capitalism, but I didn't say anything about the political contest of  
democracy vs despotism.  Karl Marx may have postulated that economic  
communism required political despotism, but he was wrong in that  
concept.  Democracy does not require capitalism, nor does capitalism  
require democracy.  I will accept that private property and human  
rights can coexist favorably sometimes, but not always.  After all,  
slavery is a property rights issue and a human rights issue.

Dictators are not efficient in the long term.  By their nature they  
have to be short sighted.  Every day they have to prove their power  
through their military displays and through the viciousness of their  
secret police.  They may be able to provide a general state of  
security, but they cannot release the middle class to create broad  
based wealth without allowing for freedom of speech.  So they can  
only have two classes, the government approved wealthy class and the  
broad based poor class.  And even then they have to waste tremendous  
energy keeping competitors from rising from among their own cohorts.

This country is pushing toward the two class system as well.  And to  
remove the middle class will require stronger government control over  
our basic freedoms, using things like the "Patriot Act" and  
centralization of the news industry in the hands of the government  
supported wealthy class.

Democracy can be an inefficient political system.  Capitalism can be  
efficient at delivering the lowest valued goods to the most people  
and the highest valued goods to the most wealthy people.  However  
neither is required by its nature to look at spiritual, moral, or  
environmental issues.  This may be part of the reason that some  
people wish to mix religion and politics.  We have the "Religious  
Right" and "Liberation theology", while other parts of the world have  
Islamist movements.

By the way,
http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.htm

Mussolini didn't have any more success with the Italian rail system  
than any other Italian government.  He just had a better PR telling  
everyone that he had more success.

David

On Sep 11, 2007, at 8:26 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:

> You just made the case of every anti-democratic head of state! And  
> it's valid if history says anything. Our sort of "democracy" is  
> exceedingly inefficient and expensive. Historically, we rape  
> resources whether they're cheap labor, minerals, forests or the  
> harvest of the sea. We consume them at a rate far exceeding that of  
> most nations. We spend billions on hammering Iraq where millions of  
> lives  could have been saved in other places and millions of  
> Americans could have been educated and prepared for a significant  
> role in life for the same money.