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Re: Humanism: Hierarchy In the Forest: inequality is not the same as exploitation.
by John Gelles
30 January 2001 18:11 UTC
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Title: Re: Humanism: Hierarchy In the Forest: inequality is not the same as  exploitation.
James Cumes writes:
 
"As Lasch writes, the rampant market puts
an almost irresistible pressure on every
activity to justify itself in the only terms it
recognises: to become a business
proposition, to pay its own way, to show
black ink on the bottom line.
 
"It turns news into entertainment, scholarship
into professional careerism, social work
into the scientific management of poverty.
 
"Inexorably, it remodels every institution in
its own image."
 
=== end Cumes == begin Gelles' rejoinder ===
 
"Careerism" caught my eye. It was the sin
of socialism more than of the free market
as we know it. In fact the above could be
restated as follows:
 
Rampant  Socialism forces all to fit a
rigid model of class distinction. It turns
news into propaganda, scholarship
and politics and all professions into
careerism, social work into police work.
Inexorably, it squeezes out of our middle
class sentimentality whatever sweetness
civilization has allowed.
 
I know no addressee above would
defend rampant socialism -- although
they migh replace rampant   with
totalitarian
 
And I have not followed this thread
from its beginning; but if we are justifying
inequality on grounds that it can be
benign, I would think the justification
is self evident:
 
    At the very, least we will always have
to award the extras in life to those who
receive them first  while others wait in
line. 
 
    Today those who come first are
chosen by their skill at making money.
Admittedly we could clean up the game
where that skill is employed.
 
    Pure equality would require a lotterty
to decide who comes first, second,
etc.
 
    It is self-evident that a lottery to
replace a contest is not a sure bet to
improve all that is wrong with us.
 
    Nor, I must admit, has the contest
we call free enterprise been well
enough structured to ease suffering
or erase homelessness, poverty or
filth, the way we wish it would.
 
I see no other course for any of us but
to keep trying.
 
Although extreme love of self over others
may be a disease whose cure is a long
way off, one institution we could change
now is taxation.
 
We could substitute saving for it.
This would invite extreme inequality to
coexist, perhaps even to produce,
an absolute end of poverty.
 
The game of business for profit might
be structured to pay off for those who
produced the means to end poverty,
pollution and war.
 
If you say "business", per se, produces
poverty, pollution and war, I answer,
"so does socialism".  And we are back
at square one.
 
John Gelles
 
 
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