Music, bicycling, politics . . .and a little science: 2024

Here is an exchange I had with ChatGPT, for whatever it is worth. Notice that I asked it a followup question, to which it also replied. I wonder if its answers were correct.

You said:

Geothermal power moves heat from below ground to the surface. Compare this contribution to global warming with the amount produced by burning fossil fuels. per kilowatt-hour.

ChatGPT said:

ChatGPT

The contribution of geothermal power to global warming per kilowatt-hour (kWh) is significantly lower than that of burning fossil fuels. Here’s a comparison:

Geothermal Power:

Mechanism: Geothermal power involves extracting heat from beneath the Earth's surface to generate electricity. This process does release some greenhouse gases, but the amounts are minimal.
Emissions: On average, geothermal power plants emit around 50 grams of CO₂ equivalent per kWh of electricity generated. These emissions come from the release of trace amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases naturally present in geothermal reservoirs.

Fossil Fuels:

Coal: Coal-fired power plants are among the highest emitters, producing about 820-1050 grams of CO₂ per kWh.
Natural Gas: Natural gas plants are cleaner than coal, but still emit about 450-500 grams of CO₂ per kWh.
Oil: Oil-fired power plants emit roughly 650-900 grams of CO₂ per kWh.

Comparison:

Geothermal vs. Coal: Geothermal power produces about 16-21 times less CO₂ per kWh compared to coal.
Geothermal vs. Natural Gas: Geothermal power produces about 9-10 times less CO₂ per kWh compared to natural gas.
Geothermal vs. Oil: Geothermal power produces about 13-18 times less CO₂ per kWh compared to oil.

Conclusion:

Geothermal energy is a much cleaner alternative compared to fossil fuels in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per kilowatt-hour. While it does contribute some to global warming, the impact is negligible compared to the significant emissions from burning fossil fuels.

You said:

Your answer to my previous question addresses how much CO2 equivalent is produced by geothermal power compared to fossil fuels, per kilowatt-hour, but does NOT address the heat from below ground that is moved above ground in the process. But this, too, warms the atmosphere, doesn't it?

ChatGPT said:

ChatGPT

You are correct that geothermal power involves moving heat from below the Earth's surface to above ground, and this heat can contribute to warming the atmosphere. However, the magnitude of this effect is generally very small compared to the contribution from burning fossil fuels.

Heat Contribution from Geothermal Power:

Mechanism: In geothermal power generation, heat from the Earth's interior is brought to the surface to produce electricity. Some of this heat is converted into electricity, and the rest is dissipated into the environment.
Magnitude of Heat Transfer: The amount of heat released into the atmosphere from geothermal power plants is relatively small. For context, a geothermal power plant might produce around 0.01-0.1 watts of thermal energy per square meter of Earth's surface. This is negligible when compared to the vast amount of heat naturally released by the Earth or the heat retained due to greenhouse gases.

Heat Contribution from Fossil Fuels:

Mechanism: Fossil fuel combustion releases both thermal energy and CO₂, which traps additional heat in the atmosphere. The heat released during combustion is significant and directly warms the surrounding environment.
Magnitude of Heat Transfer: Fossil fuels release a substantial amount of heat. For example, burning one kilogram of coal releases about 24 megajoules of energy, much of which is dissipated as heat, contributing to atmospheric warming.

Comparing Geothermal Heat Transfer to Fossil Fuel Combustion:

Geothermal Heat: The heat transferred to the atmosphere from geothermal power is relatively small. It's typically in the range of 0.1% of the Earth's natural geothermal heat flux.
Fossil Fuel Heat: The heat released by burning fossil fuels is far greater. In addition to the direct heat release, the CO₂ emitted leads to a long-term increase in global temperatures through the greenhouse effect.

Conclusion:

While geothermal power does move heat from below ground to the surface, its contribution to global warming from this heat transfer is minimal compared to the impact of burning fossil fuels. The primary concern with fossil fuels is not just the immediate heat release but the CO₂ emissions, which trap additional heat in the atmosphere and drive significant long-term warming. Geothermal energy remains a low-impact option in terms of both heat transfer and greenhouse gas emissions.

Friday, August 2, 2024

Beyond Capitalism: A Classless Society With (Mostly)Free Markets

PREFACE

In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto. During the twentieth century there were serious efforts to implement its vision of a classless society. The results were uniformly disastrous. When the century ended Communist rule had collapsed in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Although still governed by a Communist party, China had repudiated the Marxist vision even before the Soviet Union disintegrated. Only a few tiny countries like Cuba were governed by people still professing a commitment to Communism.

The failure of the Marxist vision does not imply that "capitalist" countries are perfect. Far from it! It is easy to compile long lists of outrageous problems afflicting these countries.

In the following pages I will to argue that, mixed in with the nonsense in his ideas, Marx got two things right:

First: To achieve an ideal society we must indeed move beyond capitalism. Historical experience since Marx wrote, and a principled, systematic analysis of his ideas, however, indicate that the direction in which he proposed to move away from capitalism was profoundly incorrect.

Second: An ideal society will indeed be classless. But it will not be achieved by liquidating the bourgeoisie by a revolutionary process, as Marx thought. Instead, it will be reached by elevating the proletariat into the bourgeoisie by a process of reform.

As the following chapters will show, my concept of a classless society is one where "bourgeois" values of individual liberty, limited government, and market economics, are pushed to their logical conclusions.

I am interested in discussing the ideas in this book with readers who have questions or comments. Correspondence can be addressed to me by e-mail at pdeles@proaxis.com.

Paul F. deLespinasse
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science
Adrian College
Adrian, Michigan 49221

Now living in Corvallis, Oregon

Chapter 1: BEYOND CAPITALISM

"I propose to beg no question, to shrink from no conclusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead. Upon us is the responsibility of seeking the law, for in the very heart of our civilization today women faint and little children moan. But what that law may prove to be is not our affair. If the conclusions that we reach run counter to our prejudices, let us not flinch; if they challenge institutions that have long been deemed wise and natural, let us not turn back."

Henry George, Progress and Poverty, (1881).

My friend Dewey Larson argued that Einstein correctly concluded that Newton's ideas about gravitation were inadequate. But, continued Larson, Einstein moved our attempts to explain gravity in the wrong direction. To get back on the right track, said Larson, we need to go back to Newton and then move forward in a different direction. Hence, he chose to name his book Beyond Newton rather than Beyond Einstein.

In the following pages I will make a similar argument regarding Karl Marx's program for replacing capitalism. Although agreeing with Marx that capitalism is far from ideal, I will suggest that achieving an ideal society will require moving beyond capitalism in a different direction than Marx prescribed. Also, we must use reforms to implement the necessary changes, not the revolution advocated by the Communists.

1. Problems With Capitalism

The litany of imperfections in today's "capitalist" countries is long and depressing. We often find high unemployment even in good times. We see insecurity even among people who are employed. Recessions, technological change, and unfriendly corporate takeovers constantly threaten to destroy the organizations which employ us. We see poverty that persists in spite of crusades and even "wars" against it. We see incredible economic inequality, billionaires and paupers.

We see violent crimes depriving millions of people of personal security. We see prisons whose former inmates often return to society less prepared for decent lives than when they were sentenced.

We see local environmental blight and large scale trends which threaten the ecology of the planet as a whole, including the climate. We see continuous inflation and skyrocketing increases in debt both in our private lives and in the public arena.

We see neglected and abused children, disintegration of families, rampant sexual promiscuity, epidemics of STD's. We see societies where--reversing Marx's description of religion as "the opiate of the masses"--opiates have become the religion of the masses. In an age of supposed tolerance and of widespread antidiscrimination legislation, we see increases in racial hostility and hatred. Clearly, the socio-economic systems of the developed and industrialized democracies are not perfect. They don't even come close!

I am not contending that these problems exist only in capitalist countries. Conditions are even worse in the "less developed countries" of the third world. Likewise, crime, environmental devastation, and inequality permeated the Communist-run countries. Only after Gorbachev introduced a free press in the U.S.S.R. did the extent of these problems became widely understood. It was no accident that Communist and third world countries have had problems with citizens who want to leave illegally, whereas capitalist countries have problems with people who come in illegally. But the fact remains that capitalism has not only failed to solve or reduce many of these problems, but that some of them are actually getting worse in the developed countries.

Some problems afflicting capitalist societies have been mitigated by private charity and governmental programs: unemployment compensation, welfare, food stamps, medical assistance, and the like.

But welfare programs can have a down side. They can encourage the breakup of even more families. They can make it more profitable for some people to refuse employment than to work, thus depriving them of the dignity, discipline, education, and other "non-economic" benefits of working. Properly structured welfare programs will probably exist even in an ideal society. But many existing programs are probably substitutes for, not examples of, adequate social institutions.

2. Fixing Capitalism's Problems

Capitalism's problems have been addressed by three major schools. One school, urging that today's systems are not really capitalist, wants to restore "true", laissez-faire, capitalism. "Deregulate" everything, get the government "off our backs," limit government to enforcing contracts, policing the streets, and defending from foreign attack, and let markets take care of everything else. I will explain why this strategy is grossly inadequate, and likely to become more so, in chapter 7, "How Much Government Do We Need?" However implementing my own recommendations will produce a society where arbitrary government regulation of the economy is eliminated and nearly all prices are determined by market forces. While mine will not be the society envisioned by the "back to true capitalism" people, many of its features should give them some satisfaction.

A second school holds that capitalism's problems can be solved by doing more of the things that have already been tried, or by doing them better: more or better welfare, more or better social insurance, more or better regulation of economic transactions. These people may have a point. It is difficult to hit exactly the right note in initial efforts to fix serious problems. However considerable time and talent have already been devoted to this approach. Results have been modest and sometimes even disastrous. And the net effect of the various welfare, insurance, regulation, and legal measures taken under this traditional approach is to move society in the direction of the excess centralization found in the Soviet Union and its satellites before their Communist experiments self-destructed.

The third school of thought, that of the Marxists, was by far the most influential during the twentieth century. Communists insisted that capitalism was hopelessly inadequate (though admittedly a step forward from feudalism), and that it could not be fixed by a patchwork of reforms.

Although the Marxists correctly pointed to many weaknesses and deficiencies in capitalist societies, their diagnosis was profoundly incorrect and their prescriptions proved disastrous.

Although capitalism was clearly imperfect, Marxist propagandists exaggerated its vices. They portrayed capitalism not just as bad, but as impossibly bad. For example, they claimed that capitalism produces unemployment and also exploits (substantially underpays) workers. Any system producing either of these results would deserve criticism, of course. But the Marxist charge that capitalism produces both unemployment and underpayment of workers ignores the fact that these two problems cannot exist at the same time. A society where some people are unemployed and others are underpaid can certainly exist. But it is impossible to have a society in which people in general are underpaid and there is also any substantial unemployment. (I will explain why this is so in chapter 5, "Voluntary Associations and Organizations.")

The more important problem with Marxism, however, was the deplorable results produced when it was put into practice. The catastrophic political consequences cannot all be blamed on Joseph Stalin. Without a totalitarian political system, it would have been impossible to create an economic system reflecting the Marxist vision. When Mikhail Gorbachev introduced a free press and democratization, therefore, it soon became necessary to abandon the effort to "build socialism" in any historical sense of the term.

Even with all the "advantages" of its totalitarian political system, the Soviet Union never attained a viable Marxist economic system. The basic reason for this failure is clear. The fundamental problem in Marxist theory is its hostility to markets. In markets, people and organizations are free to buy and sell at mutually acceptable prices, and decisions about what and how much to produce are widely decentralized. Marxists noted the huge economic inequalities existing under capitalism and attributed them to the market economy. But the Soviet effort to suppress markets and to dictate politically the quantities and prices of all goods and services produced terrible results: shortages, bottlenecks, lack of coordination (in a "planned economy"!), technological stagnation, and gross waste of natural resources.

Well before Gorbachev came to power, a healthy, implicitly anti-Marxist trend was already visible in the Soviet Union. The new Constitution of 1977 stimulated officially tolerated calls for "socialist legality," One more step led to the official goal, under Gorbachev, of adhering to the "rule of law." As I will demonstrate in the following chapters, the rule of law requires both a market economy (contradicting a basic Marxist economic goal) and political democracy (contradicting the necessary political means by which Marxists sought to achieve their economic goal.)

The unsuccessful experiments in the Soviet Union and elsewhere thoroughly discredited Marxism as an escape route from the problems of capitalism. To go beyond capitalism we need to move in a very different direction from that proposed by the Marxists.

3. The Continuing Appeal of A Classless Society

In spite of Marxism's colossal failure in practice, it still has one feature which is very appealing: its vision of a classless society. If a class society is one where there are unjust distinctions between various categories of people, few would favor such a society as an abstract goal. Individuals belonging to a favored category understandably might support the status quo from which they are benefiting. But no one would favor a class society from behind a Rawlsean veil of ignorance or "original position," from a pre-birth sentient existence in which one knows the general contours of the society but could not find out into what class or specific circumstances he or she will be born.

Anti-Communists long assumed that the ideal of a classless society was a monopoly of Marxists. It is now high time to recognize that such a society is an ideal with very wide appeal.

Marx himself rather backhandedly admitted this in the Communist Manifest (1848). Attacking "the socialistic bourgeois," he sarcastically exclaimed that their idea of a classless society was one in which there would be "a bourgeoisie without a proletariat." For Marx, this idea was crazy. But Marx's own logic suggests that such a society would be just as classless as the one he had in mind.

Marx explained how a classless society would emerge from capitalism. He saw the history of mankind as a product of class conflict. Each major historical stage was dominated by the class which owned the prevailing form of productive property. A prehistorical phase of "primitive communism" in which nothing is owned is followed by a stage of slavery in which people are the prevailing form of productive property. As a result of the class struggle, society moves upward to feudalism, in which the dominant form of productive property is land and landowners are the ruling class. Capitalism, in which factories are the prevailing form of productive property, then emerges from feudalism.

According to Marx, prior to capitalism there were often many classes, but under the conditions of capitalism they shake down to the irreducible (under capitalism!) number of two. One class is the bourgeoisie, the city-dwelling capitalists, the owners of the factories. The other remaining class is the proletariat, the "working class," whose members have no property and who can live only by selling their labor power to the capitalists on terms which are very disadvantageous to the workers. As capitalism matures, according to Marx, it drives the proletariat into deeper and deeper misery until, realizing where their interests lie with the aid of perspicacious analysts (like Karl Marx!) the proletariat unites and rises up to overthrow the dominant bourgeoisie. It is not clear whether Marx himself thought that the revolution had to be violent or that it could be achieved peacefully via the ballot box. But the dominant Marxist school in the twentieth century argued that violence was a (regrettable) necessity and that those who felt otherwise were "revisionists," i.e. heretics.

In either event, according to Marxism the "revolutionary" overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat does not immediately change the fact that the society is divided into two classes. The difference is that after the revolution the proletariat is on the top (the "dictatorship of the proletariat") and the bourgeoisie is on the bottom. The society is now in a transitional stage, which Marx calls "socialism" to distinguish it from the ideal system "communism," towards which it is heading. Under socialism, there is still a state--which for Marx is merely a mechanism by which one class subjects and exploits the other class or classes in the society. But unlike the capitalist state, the socialist state promotes the interests of the proletariat. In contrast to capitalist exploitation the society now works on the principle, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work." Workers are now to be paid the actual value of their labor, not ripped off as they allegedly are under capitalism. Footnote 1.

Communism, the ultimate Marxist vision, comes when the transitional socialist stage has run its course. By now the bourgeoisie has been "liquidated," an ambiguous term that could mean the physical extermination of its members or merely their peaceful absorption into the ranks of the proletariat. Whatever the details, once the bourgeoisie has been liquidated, all that remains is the proletariat. But classes cannot exist singly! In order for there to be a class, there has to be at least one other class. Once the bourgeoisie has disappeared you therefore do not have a one-class society, you have instead a classless society.

This is not a trivial, "merely semantic" point. To a Marxist this is a qualitatively different society than the previous ones (whether capitalist or socialist). For one thing, since Marx defines the state as merely an instrument for the subjection of one class by another, by definition no such state can exist in the classless society. Thus, the state has "withered away." For another thing, the ruling principle now would be "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" (emphasis added).

Marx thus maintains only two classes are left under capitalism and that if one of these classes is abolished what is left would be a classless society. The class that Marx chooses for the honor of disappearing happens to be the bourgeoisie. But there is no reason in principle why classlessness could not be achieved instead by eliminating the other class, the proletariat.

This is why Marx's wisecrack in the Communist Manifesto is so interesting. By referring to his rivals' desire for a society in which there is "a bourgeoisie without a proletariat," Marx is admitting that there is another path by which we might move forward from capitalism to a (the?!) classless society: by absorbing the proletariat into the ranks of the bourgeoisie.Footnote 2. Only if it is impossible for some reason to eliminate the proletariat could this alternate route be rejected. Furthermore, this alternate route may provide a very different perspective on the nature of a classless society than Marx was able to furnish.

Given the utter failure of more than 70 years of Communist experiments, I submit that the "proletarian" route to the classless society turned out to be impossible. The possibility of a "bourgeois" path to the same goal remains to be determined.

4. The Metaconstitutional Vision

I invented the word "Metaconstitution" to describe my concept of the ideal society, one in which bourgeois values of individual liberty, limited government, and market economics, pushed to their logical conclusions, produce a classless society.

Far from repudiating bourgeois, capitalist values, the Metaconstitution would implement them to the greatest degree imaginable. Individual liberty, political and economic, would be maximized, limited only by government conducted in accordance with the requirements of democracy and of the rule of law. Prices of nearly all goods and services would be determined by the market rather than by central decree. Legitimate property rights would be fully respected.

The basic sense in which the Metaconstitutional society would be classless is that government would have no power to enact or enforce pseudolaws. I will explain precisely how pseudolaws are to be distinguished from genuine laws in Chapter 2. For now, let it simply be noted that the principal defect in pseudolaws is lack of generality. Pseudolaws do not apply the same standard to all actors. Some notable examples of pseudolaws would be:

$100 fine for black persons who sit in the front of the bus.
All Jews not wearing a yellow star shall be imprisoned.
Persons under 21 shall be fined if they consume alcoholic beverages.
Women may not be licensed to work as a bartender; people bartending without a license shall be fined or imprisoned.

To achieve the Metaconstitutional society we must eliminate all pseudolaws. This is easy enough to say, but this will require major changes in institutions: 1) Democratization of all governments (chapter 3); 2) Radical changes in rules regarding the ownership of land and all other natural resources (chapter 4); 3) Abandonment of present strategies for regulating employment (chapter 5); (4) Reconsideration of widespread attitudes regarding the place of work in human life(chapter 8); (5) Establishment of a universal government (chapter 6).

The most controversial change needed to get rid of all pseudolaws is establishment of a universal (world) government. Universal government is not just an additional ingredient casually thrown into the pot because I happen to think it would be a good idea. It is necessary if we are to enjoy a secure democracy. It is necessary if we are to have legitimate property. Its absence is incompatible with the goal of exterminating pseudolaws. I propose to demonstrate that the concept of an "illegal alien" is not only a philosophical abomination, it epitomizes pseudolaw.

5. Metaconstitution Versus Utopia

The reader may wonder how I came up with the word "Metaconstitution." "Meta" means "beyond." "Metaphysics," for example, is a standard philosophical term referring to areas of discourse such as ethics and aesthetics that go beyond the study of our physical universe. So "Metaconstitution" means "beyond a constitution."

Actions can be evaluated on the basis of moral rules and legal rules. Legal rules in turn can be evaluated to see if they are consistent with a constitution. (We call this practice "judicial review".) But constitutions themselves can be created and destroyed, modified and amended. By what standards can we evaluate the adequacy of constitutions and proposed changes to constitutions? A set of principles by reference to which we can evaluate actual or proposed constitutions is a metaconstitution, a vision of the ideal constitution.

In a world filled with billions of people who see things from many different perspectives, there are bound to be conflicting opinions about what an ideal constitution would be like. These opinions do not all constitute a metaconstitution. Some may contain motley sets of desired elements, knocked together with little thought of their mutual compatibility. Footnote 3. Others may propose a society containing some elements that are inherently, not just immediately, impossible. Footnote 4. Such visions should be called Utopias, not metaconstitutions.

A metaconstitution must give due heed to the limits imposed by our natural environment, by the rules of logic and mathematics, and by human nature. (Those proposing to change human nature and not just its particular manifestations are utopians.)

Unlike a Utopia, a metaconstitution does not promise such overwhelmingly attractive conditions that its proponents will rush out to implement it by all means fair or foul, "at any price." And a metaconstitution focuses on fundamental institutions and does not purport to provide a complete, detailed picture of the ideal society and of life.

Most visions of an ideal society are probably utopias, not metaconstitutions. But there probably will be many metaconstitutions, not just one. As the apparent inventor of the word, I have therefore taken the liberty of appropriating the capitalized version of the word-- Metaconstitution--to designate my own vision of the ideal society which wi ll be presented in the following chapters.

6. What Ought To Be Done?

The Metaconstitution presented in chapters 2-8 is my effort to answer one of the three fundamental questions of political philosophy: what ought to be? Footnote 5. Chapters 9-10, on the other hand, discuss a second fundamental question: what ought to be done? How should we go about trying to achieve a Metaconstitutional society? If we ever get to such a society, how should we act to maximize its longevity?

A simple analogy indicates that it is not necessarily a good idea to try to achieve a Metaconstitutional world. Imagine that you are shipwrecked alone on an isolated island, like Robinson Crusoe. You can survive, but your island is not ideal in its ability to supply adequate food, shelter, and clothing. But not too far away across the water you can see another island that clearly would be much better.

So what ought to be? Obviously, you ought to be on the other island. But exactly what ought to be done does not follow simply and straightforwardly from your answer to the first question. What ought to be done depends also on circumstances that you presently find yourself in. Circumstances may make some conceivable actions impossible, and they may determine whether the consequences of those actions which are possible will be satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

Suppose that you do not know how to swim, and that there is nothing on your current island with which you could construct a boat or raft. (This, alas, is just another way in which the island is inferior!) If this were the case, it would make sense to say:

What ought to be?---I should be on the other island.
What ought to be done?--I should stay right where I am and not try to go to the other island!

Or perhaps you do swim, but the water between the two islands is full of sharks. Again, this is something that you should consider before deciding what to do, no matter how convinced you are that the other island would be a better place.

One danger of utopias is their promise of such an absolutely wonderful future that people may ignore the dictates of prudence in trying to bring them into existence. The Metaconstitution--or indeed any vision of an ideal society that qualifies as a metaconstitution--presents no such danger. It portrays a future society that is relatively wonderful, compared to today, but which still leaves people with plenty to be unhappy or worried about. A bad socio-economic system may make decent lives impossible for most people. A good system can make a decent life for most people possible but it cannot guarantee everyone will actually achieve it. There is little danger that rabid Metaconstitutionalists will rush off unwisely to try to bring their blessings to mankind via war or revolution, the usual methods adopted by zealots who are in a hurry.

Chapter 9 explain why reform rather than war or revolution is the only way to go. Even reform, however, is not without its problems as a method of bringing about progress.

Reformers don't work in ideal circumstances. (Ideal circumstances would be found only in an ideal society, i.e. one not needing reform!) Reformers must work within existing circumstances, no matter how bad they may be, and must be content to take advantage of the limited opportunities these circumstances offer to move things in the right direction. No matter how bad current circumstances are, the reformer must remember that it is always possible for unwise actions to make those circumstances worse.

Also, reformers must be careful about the order in which the elements of a better society are introduced. Reform is inherently gradual. All the elements of the ideal society cannot be put into place simultaneously. But sometimes introducing one element of the ideal society into an otherwise un-ideal one may worsen the total state of affairs. In a town with two polluting factories, for example, one may be emitting acid pollutants and the other basic (in the chemical sense) pollutants. Since acids and bases neutralize each other, they may cancel each other out and the net effect on the local environment may be minimal. But if some anti-pollution crusader shuts down one of the two skunk works in the name of progress, the damage done by the remaining factory may be immense.

Reformers, thus, must cope creatively with strong limits on what can be achieved in any given period of time. They must work to overcome inherently conservative public and elite opinion, while fending off criticism from revolutionaries who accuse them of selling out to the status quo. They must cope with the natural tendencies of a society to comply with the laws of inertia and drift.

Most difficult of all, perhaps, reformers must try to persuade people to invest in the future. Reforms can be seen abstractly as actions under present circumstances that try to improve the circumstances we will be working within in the future. Investment requires that we "consume" less in the present in order to be able to consume more in the future. There may be other, shorter run, goals that we could achieve with the same time and resources that we instead must use if we are going to improve the future.

Fortunately, investment is congenial to the bourgeois mentality, and as I have noted the Metaconstitution is an expression of bourgeois values pushed to their extreme limits. Unfortunately, before the proletariat has been liquidated by absorption into the ranks of the bourgeoisie by no means everybody will be supportive of investing in the future. In the non-ideal present there are many who are "lower class" in Edward Banfield's sense, people who will not personally defer any gratification in the interest of a better long run, people who cannot look beyond their noses. Footnote 6. Nor will all of these "lower class" people be poor and powerless. They will include many people in the elites who, living as well or better than they could expect to in any other conceivable society, have no interest in investing, but prefer to "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!"

Present trends in the more "advanced" societies toward family instability and the devaluation of children will aggravate the problems facing reformers. Concern for the future welfare of their children can be a powerful incentive to make both economic and political investments. Parents who are not well off may work so their children will have it better. Parents who "have it made" may still wish to improve society so as to guarantee their descendants a decent future even if they are not similarly privileged. To the extent people do not have children or do not take those children they do have seriously, they have less reason to be concerned about the future of society.

Reform implies a particular outlook towards the past, the present, and the future. Thinking about a desired future state of affairs requires us to study the present in order to understand the specific opportunities for action and the limits thereto that our present circumstances allow. The desire to act effectively rather than ineffectively in the present so as to bring about a better future requires us in turn to take a careful and sustained look at the past. By studying past efforts to bring about desired changes and the actual, often undesired results of those efforts, perhaps we can learn how to act wisely in the present. As Bismarck said once, fools learn by experience; wise people learn from other people's experience.

Reformers owe it to society to go about the job thoughtfully and intelligently. Noble intentions are not enough. We must never forget what the road to hell is paved with.

*******************************

Footnotes

1. Marx's concept of socialism as a transitional stage on the path to communism should not be confused with the socialism which was the ultimate goal of the democratic socialist parties in western Europe. The vision of the democratic socialists was so different from that of the Marxists that it is no exaggeration to say they were two different visions sharing a common name. As Alfred Korzybski, S.I. Hayakawa, etc., repeatedly warned us, "the name is not the thing."

2. Because of the great size of the proletariat, compared to the bourgeoisie, it would be unthinkable to advocate "liquidating" it in the physical sense in which some Marxists seemed to intend for the bourgeoisie. Nor could there be any plausible motive for advocating any such physical extermination of the proletariat. It might be argued that the bourgeoisie had an interest in not being pulled down one by one into the proletariat and that their resistance to this would make extermination necessary. The proletariat, by contrast, has no interest in resisting being pulled up into the bourgeoisie. The moral and political logic of the two cases is thus entirely different.

3. As any economist can tell us, not all good things can be had at the same time because of the "opportunity costs" problem. Robert Nozick has done an especially thoughtful job of pointing out the political implications of this fact in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia (N.Y: Basic Books, 1984).

4. Impossibility exists in two different senses. The term can refer to actions that are never possible, or to those which are not presently possible. It is important to try to be clear about which form of impossibility we are talking about. There is no use in tilting at windmills or breaking our heads against a brick wall. On the other hand, "much historical experience. . . tells us that goals unattainable now will never be reached unless they are articulated while they are still unattainable." (Leszek Kolakowski, in Ann Fremantle, Communism: Basic Writings, New York: Mentor, 1970, p. 389.) Going to the moon was only presently impossible when the Kennedy Administration decided to do this in the early 1960s. By 1969, the impossibility had been turned into a realized possibility. Having one's cake and eating it too is impossible in the other sense, just as is increasing government spending while reducing taxes collected and preserving a stable currency all at the same time. When political leaders promise us the "impossible," we need to ask ourselves which kind of impossibility they are promising before we decide how to respond. The person wishing to convert present impossibilities into tomorrow's actualities may be a statesman who deserves our support. The person who promises to deliver the intrinsically impossible is a demagogue who should be hounded from public life as unceremoniously as possible.

5. These three questions of political philosophy are discussed in my previous book, Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective (N.Y: D. Van Nostrand, 1981), and are, respectively, the subjects of the three final chapters of that work: "Beyond Utopia" (what ought to be?), "Beyond Revolution" (what ought to be done?), and "Beyond Politics" (what is the nature of man?).

6. See Edward Banfield, The Unheavenly City (Boston: Little, Brown), pp. 47-50.

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Beyond Capitalism: A Classless Society With (Mostly) Free Markets

Marxists maintained that highly unjust economic inequality was caused by markets. But the Communist experiments with central planning and suppression of markets produced terrible economic results and were only possible in societies in which individual liberty was strongly repressed.

Professor deLespinasse argues that the economic inequality criticized by Marxists is caused, not by markets, but by the legal framework within which markets operate. He envisions a society which is classless in two fundamental ways but in which all prices, except for those charged by regulated utilities, are set by the interaction of supply and demand.

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Saturday, July 6, 2024

Statement from Thinking About Politics about inflation.

Under these circumstances it is very much in the interest of individual rulers, who love to spend money but hate to impose taxes (in the narrow, overt sense), that people not understand the reasons for inflation. The government finger is often pointed at "greedy" corporations, "money-mad" unions, Arab oil sheiks, bad harvests, and other convenient scapegoats. The most that any of these parties can do, however, is to drive up the price of their own products, and even this can be done only within very strong limits imposed by the market and by the possibility of product substitution. Without government expansion of the money supply, increases in particular prices will always be cancelled out by reductions in other prices and cannot cause an increase in the general or average price level. Still, as in the case of true monopolies, which are always and only created by government action, it is fashionable to speak of inflation as a privately caused problem from which it is government's job to protect us. "Wage and price controls" are thus to inflation as "antitrust laws" are to monopoly, an ineffective remedy based upon a faulty diagnosis of the causes of the problem and serving mainly to confuse the public as to the actual responsibility of government for the problem.

Music, bicycling, politics . . .and a little science

Sunday, September 15, 2024

Aristotle's classification of governments

Saturday, September 14, 2024

The Worldwide Grid: Wiring Up The World For The Age Of Solar Energy

Tuesday, August 27, 2024

A discussion with ChatGPT about Geothermal Power generation and global warming

You said:

ChatGPT said:

Geothermal Power:

Fossil Fuels:

Comparison:

Conclusion:

You said:

ChatGPT said:

Heat Contribution from Geothermal Power:

Heat Contribution from Fossil Fuels:

Comparing Geothermal Heat Transfer to Fossil Fuel Combustion:

Conclusion:

Friday, August 2, 2024

Beyond Capitalism: A Classless Society With (Mostly)Free Markets

PREFACE

Chapter 1: BEYOND CAPITALISM

1. Problems With Capitalism

2. Fixing Capitalism's Problems

3. The Continuing Appeal of A Classless Society

4. The Metaconstitutional Vision

5. Metaconstitution Versus Utopia

6. What Ought To Be Done?

Footnotes

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Beyond Capitalism: A Classless Society With (Mostly) Free Markets

Saturday, July 6, 2024

Statement from Thinking About Politics about inflation.

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