> People who talk about different possible “economic systems” are merely
> displaying their ignorance of economics. It’s like saying why don’t we
> have a different physics, or a different chemistry, because we don’t
> like the old one?

I'm glad you put it this way... because then it becomes easier to explain your egregious error in not understanding the *emergent* character of all developing phenomena: especially including the bourgeois economic system, which has only been dominant in the world for the past few centuries. For that matter: what sort of "economics" did our cavemen ancestors practice, 100.000 or 200.000 years ago, hmm..? In fact, your sort of reified thinking leads directly to widespread howlers like seeing cavemen as living in 'nuclear families', etc. (of course), and even seeing Fred Flintstone as being a fine working class exemplar of our paleolithic past...

For that matter, how can the understanding of simple or even complex chemical reactions explain the 'wonder' of the myriad life processes going on all around us? Or mere 'supply and demand' explain the workings of the "Global" world economy..?

> Underlying the idea of different economic systems is the idea that
> there is really no such thing as universally true propositions of
> human action, no such thing as reason, or economic science.
> Everything is just a matter of opinion, of “ideology”, and no-one
> has any more claim on the truth than anyone else.

Indeed, there's no such thing as "human nature" -- as it is posited by the ideologs of the "Free Market"; only human *social* nature: which is conditioned by the evolving society we all live in. Fred Flintstone very much did NOT think as we think today, in many ways. Nor did people of the medieval period, for that matter. And the fact that you fixate on the ideology and technique of one historical period (your own, of course) as being the epitome of all that is human -- besides being hubris of among the most obtuse kind -- blinds you to the true, emergent, evolving nature of Reality itself.

Well friends, my wife and I are away for a couple of days of quiet and sunshine.
Grim,
if what you say about the break-up of large social entities is true, I think the phenomena is matched by the increasing wealth and power of stateless corporations.
I'm persuaded that out best hope is for some kind of world governing body; a world of disparate states will kill each other off, and we do live in one goldfish bowl. If we can model climate change, we ought to be modelling global humanity and how it can be maintained sustainably and equitably. Paradoxically, I believe a world society would re-enliven cultural distinctiveness. All cultures are at present suffused with the serum of capital and their distinctiveness consists only in their relative wealth/impoverishmnet and how they market themselves.

Gilbert,
I've asked direct questions above; if you want to contest the charge of syllogistic thinking you'll have to address them.

Grok,
Marx did believe in human essence/nature/species-being. And his idea of social evolution was not an item of faith, or even a grand narrative (Engels promoted that). His dialectic was more a "negative" dialectic a la Adorno; a logical model of the primary driving force of humanity, ownership of the means of production.
I'm not sure the picture of revolution you conjure up sounds like much of an improvement on revolutions of the past. If there ever is a reformed economy I suspect it will have to be a peaceful transition born of necessity. Global human decimation is much more likely, I fear; in which case they'd be nothing to stop the whole process repeating itself in a debased form.

But gotta run..

*In short, unless we steer the ship, we will not be pushed where we want to go.*

In short, with the wrong captain, he could take us right into
the rocks!

I don't think tht you have thought this one through very well, GH.

So I'll give you a couple of simple examples, from 100'000

We take things like pencils and ball point pens for granted. They
are cheap and we want them to remain so, even in your society,
where you want everything produced locally.

The Discovery Science channel last weekend showed how both these
items are made. The product might be simple, but the machinery to
automate the processes, is quite complex and certainly not cheap.

It makes absolutaly no economic sense, to duplicate this kind of
machinery everywhere, tie up capital in buildings, machinery, just
to produce small volumes. All you would land up with, is very
expensive pens and pencils.

So who would be the ultimate losers? Consumers of course. Which
means all of us.

That is just two products, out of 100'000

Dear Grok,

I support or find excuses for no criminals.

In the elections to the Constituent Assembly the Social Revolutionaries got 27% of the vote, and the Bolsheviks got 18% of the vote. Not willing to abide by the election results Lenin had his supporters turf out the constituent Assembly. He established the dictatorship. Lenin's Cheka murdered people because of their class identification which is not very different from murdering someone because they are a Jew or a Gypsy. Lenin founded the first gulags a few months after he took power. Lenin brought back censorship which Kerensky had eliminated.

Lenin remains scum, and you remain blind to his criminality.

> What we have under capitalism is analogous to what Aristotle
> called "chrematistics", or acquisition for its own sake.
> "Economics, unlike chrematistics, has a limit ... for the
> object of the former is something different from money, of
> the latter the augmentation of money. By confusing these two
> forms, which overlap each other, some people have been led to
> look upon the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum
> as the final goal of economics"

As the above demonstrates, what the bourgeois apologists fixate on as being some sort of "universal truth" (and thus true for all time) is in fact merely a very animal tendency (amongst others) to "accumulate" resources (nuts, meat, gold, etc.); but taken to an extreme under the present system of capital accumulation. They make the mistake of seeing this one aspect of animal nature in our society as being necessarily always the same in dimension, duration and quality, etc. -- when it's in fact a deadend in its present, hypertrophied state, due to the fact that private individuals are allowed to make self-interested decisions concerning what are more and more obviously the public means of production.

> Your suggestion that there are "universally true propositions of
> human action", including "economic science" is, imo, true, but
> you seem to be saddling human nature with an ignoble chrematistics
> rather than a virtuous spirit of "economy". Indeed it is today
> uncontested in vulgar circles that Man is "by nature" insatiably
> acquisitive. This is arguably not so; Man's nature is distorted by
> capitalism

What these people are doing is choosing to emphasize whatever human/animal characteristics suit their social position best; and so of course they emphasize greed/accumulation as they need it -- and other traits as they need them, in other situations. And need I say this is highly hypocritical -- not to mention extremely un-scientific.

*due to the fact that private individuals are allowed to make self-interested decisions concerning what are more and more obviously the public means of production.*

Sheesh, those "evil" people, actually allowed to make decisions
for themselves. We'll have to get out the socialist hammer and
knock them back into the mould which we want them to live in.

Control freaks waving the socialist banner, is the real problem
that we face. Luckily they are few and far between. The world
has seen the outcome, if they are given any say at all.

Dear Poirot,

Yes indeed, population increased in India in the last couple
of hundred years or so, as it has elsewhere. There are many reasons,
for one, less plagues, less wars, better nutrition, etc.

Moving foods like potatoes, maize, tomatoes and various other
crops around the globe, had its effects on population. The
development of vaccines, antibiotics and other medicines has
also had a dramatic effect.

What we as a species have ignored to some degree, is the effect
of all these things on population. In India for instance,
they have around 2.5 % of the world's land, yet 17% of the population.
So pressures are enormous.

Last time I checked, still only about half of Indian women were
using family planning. Too many people remains there no 1 problem
and its not getting better.