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Proof Breeze is a Socialist
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Topic Started: May 25 2009, 01:35 AM (342 Views)
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Deleted User
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May 25 2009, 01:35 AM
Post #1
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Deleted User
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Let's get breeze out of the closet on his socialist beliefs.
Are you a socialist-creationist or a free-market evolutionist?- Quote:
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Is life fundamentally bottom-up and randomly designed or top-down and intentionally designed? Are you a socialist-creationist or a free-market evolutionist? If you reject this dichotomy and instead view yourself as a socialist-evolutionist, how can you justify arguing for the power of self-organization and unintentional, benevolent design in biology and against it in economics?
In 1776 Adam Smith argued in his Wealth of Nations that a wide variety of high quality products did not come about through the action of governments, but rather from the industriousness of individuals. Smith’s “invisible hand” did not work by the design of a benevolent creator but through the self-organizing nature of life itself.
In his recent book, The Mind of the Market, Michael Shermer points out that Smith’s bottom-up vision of the world was countered in 1802 by William Paley’s top-down revision in Natural Theology where he argued that the intricacies of an eye could only be the product of a benevolent creator just as the intricacies of a watch could only be the product of a fastidious watchmaker.
In response to Paley’s top-down story, Charles Darwin’s 1859 book, The Evolution of Species, explained life’s self-organizing capabilities in line with Adam Smith’s earlier bottom-up explanations. Life began with single-celled organisms and gradually evolved into more complex, intelligent beings. Individual ants with the right stuff self-organize their colonies for the greater good. The queen ant is not a commander ant. The colony just consists of individual ants instinctively following their nature.
The arguments of Adam Smith and Charles Darwin are linked more deeply than just their bottom-up commonality. They are bonded together by a belief in the unintended nature of benevolence in economics and evolution. Smith argued “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
Likewise, Darwin did not view “natural selection” as the result of benevolent intention, but rather as the result of random deviations in genetic code. Some deviations were beneficial and some were harmful. Those species that got the beneficial deviations prospered while those that got the harmful ones died out.
The Reverend Thomas Malthus did not share this benevolent view. His Iron Law of Population predicted population growth would outstrip growth in the world's ability to feed its expanding population. His view that humanity was doomed to forever live in poverty on the edge of starvation gave "the dismal science" its malevolent moniker.
Karl Marx also felt that the world left to its own devices would result in disaster. Without governmental guidance from above, capitalism would destroy itself and ultimately lead to a new world order of socialism where government would control and organize production just as God directly controls and organizes the creation of each new species.
Karl Marx and William Paley tell a consistent, socialist-creationist story of life controlled through top-down, intentional design. Their view contrasts sharply with the free-market evolutionist story of Adam Smith and Charles Darwin who see a world of self-organizing, bottom-up, unintentional benevolence.
If you reject this dichotomy and instead view yourself as a socialist-evolutionist, how can you justify arguing for the power of self-organization and unintentional, benevolent design in biology and against it in economics?
This should merit some more boring but slap-happy
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ngc1514
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May 25 2009, 01:45 AM
Post #2
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You're assuming breezy is going to read it, Chris.
Based on his history here as I've seen it over the last couple months, I'd not bet on it.
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Deleted User
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May 25 2009, 02:23 AM
Post #3
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Deleted User
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Even blocked, he can read the titles of threads.
It was just a hook. I've been arguing the same theme for years. This guy, Larry Arnhart, has an entire book on it: Darwinian Conservatism. Here's the gist of his argument: Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Charles Darwin:- Quote:
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I have been reading The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, edited by Knud Haakonssen and just published by Cambridge. The concluding essay by Haakonssen and Donald Winch, "The Legacy of Adam Smith," confirms some of my thinking about how Darwin and evolutionary ethics (particularly in the work of Edward Westermarck) fits into the Smithian tradition of thought.
One of the strongest arguments for Darwinian conservatism turns on the intellectual links between Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Charles Darwin.
While libertarian conservatives look to Smith as their intellectual founder, traditionalist conservatives look to Burke. The intellectual friendship between Smith and Burke shows the fundamental compatiblity of libertarian and traditionalist thought. When Darwin worked out his theory of the social evolution of morality, he relied on the moral philosophy of Smith (as well as others in the Scottish Enlightenment). This continuity between Smith, Burke, and Darwin manifests the moral philosophy of conservatism as rooted in the evolved nature of human beings as moral animals. The work of conservative thinkers like James Q. Wilson (in The Moral Sense) builds on this ground.
Burke's first letter to Smith (September 10, 1759)can be found here. He wrote to praise Smith's book The Theory of Moral Sentiments. "I have ever thought that the old Systems of morality were too contracted and that this Science could never stand well upon any narrower Basis than the whole of Human Nature." He thought Smith's book had done that. "A theory like yours founded on the Nature of man, which is always the same, will last, when those that are founded on his opinions, which are always changing, will and must be forgotten." In his review in the Annual Register, Burke observed: "The author sseeks for the foundation of the just, the fit, the proper, the decent, in our most common and most allowed passions; and making approbation and disapprobation the tests of virtue and vice, and shewing that those are founded on sympathy, he raises from this simple truth, one of the most beautiful fabrics of moral theory, that has perhaps ever appeared." Burke then quoted the entire first chapter of the book entitled "Of Sympathy."
In The Descent of Man, Darwin elaborated his evolutionary theory of morality, which can be found here. He was guided by Smith's moral philosophy, and he quoted the opening remarks about sympathy as the natural power of the human mind for sharing the feelings of others as the ground of moral experience. He then showed how this natural human capacity and the moral sentiments could have evolved from social instincts and human reason.
So as I argue in Darwinian Conservatism, this shows us how a conservative defense of traditional morality can be rooted in a Darwinian science of evolved human nature.
The moral sense is not a product of pure reason alone but is rather a humanly unique capacity for moral judgment that combines social emotions and rational reflection. As social animals, human beings have evolved to feel social emotions and to seek social approbation. As rational animals, human beings have evolved the cognitive ability to reflect on present actions in the light of past experience and future expectations. Consequently, human beings can plan their actions to satisfy their social desires for living well with others.
Recent research in neuroscience is uncovering the neural basis of moral experience in the brain, and it confirms the moral philosophy of Smith, Burke, and Darwin in showing how morality requires a combination of moral emotions and moral deliberation in the service of our social instincts.
Contrary to those conservatives who fear Darwinian science as a threat to morality, Darwinism actually shows the natural grounds of human morality in the nature of the human animal. In this way, Darwinian science supports the conservative commitment to traditional morality.
Herbert Spencer picked up on this theme but his Social Darwinism was largely misunderstood. Fredrick Hayek was big on cultural and economic evolution, arguing for the emergence of a spontaneous social order from the complex, dynamic interactions of individuals.
A good review of the state of evolutionary economics is Eric D. Beinhocker's Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics.
Of course, reading only the title, breeze won't learn all this.
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Mike
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May 29 2009, 04:59 AM
Post #4
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I have read enough of Bruce's posts that i can say with certainty that he does not match the definition of socialist. That label seems to be a favorite of Chris's these days, despite the definition being posted several times on this forum. He must be frustrated.
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Deleted User
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May 29 2009, 07:16 AM
Post #5
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Deleted User
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Breeze is a social(ist) con. Enough said.
I will admit, Mike, you better fit your definition of socialist than breeze does.
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