Gilbert, I thought it was a very good article. It made clear the underlying connection between Hegel and Taoism. I see where you are coming from now in seeking the middle path between extremes, hopefully the one of harmony and balance. The criticisms are harsh but interesting.

However I do not agree that the two extremes are represented by communism or collectivism on one hand, and “capitalism” or crony corporatism on the other.

I have already shown why it’s a false dichotomy to presume to identify “co-operation” with government – were the gulags or gas chambers an excess of co-operativeness? It’s nonsense.

And it is invalid to identify “competition” more with voluntary transactions than state transactions, since voluntary transactions do not take place unless they are mutually beneficial, while all state actions are zero-sum, depending on a coercive institution based on a claim of a monopoly of force and threats. No-one doubts this critique is true in relation to non-democratic states. But the addition of majority opinion does not make any material difference.

The way of balance does not require us to accept the prerogatives of gangsters, or protection rackets, or emperors, or armies, or states, as one of the ‘givens between which The Way seeks balance.

With respect, the Taoists’ understanding of the harmony of ying and yang was sounder than yours. Lao-Tze said that government, with its "laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox," was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and "more to be feared than fierce tigers.”

“The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished — the more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.” : http://mises.org/daily/3903
His formula for good government was “masterful inactivity”, for then the world "stabilizes itself."
As Lao Tzu put it: "Therefore, the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves—"

His follower “Chuang Tzu reiterated and embellished Lao Tzu's devotion to laissez-faire and opposition to state rule: "There has been such a thing as letting mankind alone; there has never been such a thing as governing mankind [with success]."
‘Chuang Tzu, moreover, was perhaps the first theorist to see the state as a brigand writ large: "A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes a ruler of a State." Thus, the only difference between state rulers and out-and-out robber chieftains is the size of their depredations.’

To say that we should seek “balance” between authoritarian government and crony corporatism is mistaken. There is no reason to expect that these, or a mid-way between them, will balance or harmonise legitimate conflicting interests.

Rather, balance requires that we seek the minimum of arbitrary aggression and let people harmonise their own interests using society’s spontaneous *consensual* mechanisms. Force is justified to stop aggressive force or fraud, that is all, which eliminates the justification for about 90 percent of our government. It is not justified to effect forced redistributions or paternalistic meddling, which describes all of socialism, crony corporatism, and the so-called middle way of our current bloated big government.

The idea that government is needed to engineer the fine detail of people’s lives, values and behaviour is like saying that government is needed to help water flow down-hill. Liberty and responsibility, supply and demand, profit and loss, work and leisure, savings and borrowing – these are the way to harmonising people’s naturally conflicting interests – not the destructive bullying meat-axe approach of more know-it-all central planning wrongly re-named as “balance”.

> About 48 years ago while working at the Johnson Foundation of the
> University of Pennsylvania I programmed a computer simulation of a
> simple ecosystem with data from the Canadian Arctic. The system
> consisted of fox, rabbit and grass. The resulting picture of the
> variation of the fox and rabbit population were two almost perfect
> sine waves out of phase with one another.
> Posted by david f

Surely you know about the work on animal populations and their fluctuations around chaotic attractors (the [predictable] number of attractors sensitively depending on the animals' reproductive rates), done by Robert May back in the `70s..? Google for it.

It's amusing to see how a partisan of an earlier stab at a dialectical understanding of Reality -- taoism in this case -- also feels that their hoary old belief system remains far above the crass 'materialism' of more modern-yet-threadbare philosophies -- and the mucking and grubbing in the cesspool of human existence they purport to get a handle on. But of course, this old claim is just more Idealist nonsense: put to us by people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of today. In other words: it's an affectation, generally, of a section of the soit-disant 'middle classes' of the imperialist West, taken from the (conveniently) 'inscrutable' East, for thoroughly pedestrian (and transparent) reasons.

And in fact, no taoist is ever going to solve the problems of the world, with their insular, subjectivist navel-gazing, focusing on individual enlightenment and/or salvation. Marxists however OTOH, intend to do *exactly* that (barring the imperialists making good on their threat to blow up the planet): because we understand *exactly* how the world ticks (more or less). And it does very much indeed start in the muck.

Quark Quark.

> I'm sorry, grok, but I'm going to have to take issue here with your
> fanboyish adulation of Marx...
...
> Oh, come on! This is as foolish as the loons who acclaim Ayn Rand
> as the greatest thinker of all time.

A definition of 'fanboy-dom' would be the claiming of qualities for someone else which are patently false -- this being apparent to just about everyone else... Right? And definitely in the case of Ayn Rand [I couldn't even finish reading the "Atlas Shrugged" someone lent me back in the `70s, it was so ridiculous. I dropped the book in disgust when the rich bozos began their world-stopping 'capital strike' down in "Galt's Gulch"... Someone please tell me how it ends!! (NOT) ;] this would indeed be so: seeing as the entire raison-d'être of this poisonous creature and her vicious entourage was as a wholly negative reaction to the perceived menace of 'communism'. There was and is no positive (that's a, I say, that's a PUN, son!) purpose whatsoever to Rand's destructive anti-project, however much its proponents try to dress it up and take it out into polite society.

In fact however, the *positive* message of scientific socialism would be just about the exact opposite of the entirely negative project of anti-socialists -- then as today. Unfortunately, since you clearly don't know a thing about marxism, there's not much I could say to convince you of the complete blank you've shot here against Marx -- other than to insist you read something by or about him, written by marxists.

In other words: everything I wrote earlier about Marx is essentially TRUE. No lies. No guff. He WAS the real McCoy.

> Marx didn't even finish his own magnum opus, and spent most of his
> life leeching off far more successful and accomplished people like
> Engels.
> Posted by Clownfish

This part isn't even worthy of a reply. The man _suffered_ for the Cause. Too bad he didn't finish; but science remains a collective work-in-progress regardless. We all soldier on.

Good points Grok,
one does wonder, since we're at "the end of history", why its priests/bean-counters need to invoke ancient mysticism to defend a nihilist-materialism, or god of indifference (free trade), though to be fair, the bourgeois elite also invokes the Christian God for those who favour protectionism. I doubt Peter Hume is one of these, he seems to be a purist who wouldn't suffer anything to compromise his ideal--leave if to the "benevolent" invisible hand to exact justice. The same justice Lao-Tse was so enamoured of; what a sublime simile, btw: "...like saying that government is needed to help water flow down-hill"; What sublime indifference to the vicious struggle this implies! As if Lao-Tse or Peter Hume could ever imagine themselves reduced to such a fundamental struggle for survival! But of course it's the basest hypocrisy, lies and condescension they both purvey from their privileged stations. They'd be all in favour of government protection if such conditions prevailed over "them". Perhaps PH would care to explain how he (or Lao-Tse) would preserve his monopoly (supposing he had or has one {probably only a petite bourgeois empire: read "ideology"}) without the rule of law and the military to back him up! As if we've ever had or could have genuine laissez faire.
While you're at it, PH, let's deconstruct this precious trope "collectivism" you and your ignorant ilk love to invoke? Marx's philosophy was actually predicated on genuine individualism! As opposed to the alienated, delusionary egotism you and Lao-Tse love to fetishise.
I'm not surprised you and GH have so much in common. It's a marriage made in heaven.
Dear Glok,
it's "oink oink", not "quack quack"