Thursday, May 10, 2007
THE ECONOMIC CAKE
From a discussion about whether Sarkozy will do well in which the first respondent predicted economic disaster due to his more free market policies.
This is what is called the scientific method. In a couple of years Sarkozy will have put through most of his programme.Which led to a wide ranging discussion involving the claim that Mugabe was a classic liberal
Then either we will have seen economic paralysis & a far worse functioning infrastructure or we will be seeing succes. If the former the advantages of socialism will be proved. If the latter Tomoh, Tommy Sheriden, Jack McConnell & all the rest of these political parasites will... be on here to apologise.
Mugabe came to power as a Marxist. While the politics of Victorian Europe don't mesh well with the essentialy tribal politics of modern Africa I think he would be astonished to be held up as a free market liberal.
The Irish workers, like everybody else there, are far better off now. They have no desire to be saved from "capitalist exploiters" who make them richer. All arguments about exploitation depend on the assumption that the economic cake is a fixed quantity & that if one group have more another have less. If there is one thing the modern world economy demonstrates it is that productivity is not a fixed quantity & that there is far more to be gained by everyone from enlarging the cake than from trying to grab bits of other peoples plates.
I note Adrian that you are shifting the ground in that "the real point" is not whether he will make the French richer but merely that he is right wing & hence, irrespective of success or failure, wrong.
On this we will disagree. I think the real point of government is to maximise human freedom & wellbeing over time. If socialism, or indeed McConnellism were to do that it would a good thing but even its proponents now implicitly accept that enterprise does this better.
