Squeers,

"....as if the human senses, rationalised by the acculturated human mind, comprehended the universe."

I'm with you there.

Rhian,

You are right that junk food and soaps are better than starvation and the Black Death. But such symbols of progress, with all their baggage, are a tad underwhelming for a species that generously refers to itself as "wise man".

Peter,

Freud said: "The principal task of civilisation, its actual raison d'etre, is to defend us against nature."
But who or what will defend us against ourselves?

I'm presently having trouble comprehending the seriousness with which we all take ourselves, and our penchant for working our keyboards furiously like bellows to puff up our egos (I'm the worst offender!) In fact, it's just occurred to me the reason why Houellebecq laughs at everything - perhaps I'm finally getting the joke.

So I'll leave you all to it for a while - all of a sudden, philosophy is giving me the sh!ts.

Dear Peter Hume,

We live in a world where large corporations control most of the wealth. In a socialist economy those large corporations are part of the government. In a capitalist economy those corporations are not part of the government. To the ordinary person working for one of those large organisations it doesn’t make a bit of difference whether the corporation is publically owned or not. It makes a difference whether the person can band with others to form a union. This is independent of the ownership of the corporation. Under Lenin unions became merely transmission lines for government propaganda. In Wisconsin a Republican governor attempted to destroy the unions of government employees. Since one is free to protest in the US many people support the unions, and the governor faces opposition. Here the difference between public and private ownership mattered little to the employees. What mattered is whether they could have a union. In a socialist economy which was democratic they could have a union.

In the United States most sporting teams are privately owned. One exception is the Green Bay Packers, a football (what Australians call gridiron) team owned by the town of Green Bay. The Packers are a very good team and won the Super Bowl last year. To the players, coaches and other personnel employed by the team it doesn’t matter whether it is publically or privately owned. The difference seems to be the fan support in Green Bay is more intense because it is their town’s team, and the town gets the profits or bears the losses rather than a corporation or individual.

Roads, trains and airlines are part of our means of production since they provide the means of transporting people and goods. It seems better to me that our road building be done by government and maintenance of personal motor vehicles be done by privately owned facilities.

In some cases private ownership works better. In others public ownership works better. Whatever the case workers should able to organise freely. It is not a matter of ideology.

Squeers quoted David f:

<I understand ideology as conformity to a belief system which overrides evidence contradicting the belief system>.

Squeers: I think "evidence" is mostly ideological, and that materialism is therefore dubious at best. Materialism is ideological, an empirical perspective, as if the human senses, rationalised by the acculturated human mind, comprehended the universe.

I mentioned Hitler’s condemnation of relativity as ‘Jewish science’ and Stalin’s Lysenkoism. In both those cases the evidence for relativity and genetics was found in hard science confirmed by experimentation. The evidence was not ideological.

"In some cases private ownership works better. In others public ownership works better."

Well that's the issue, isn't it? What is the *principle* by which public ownership could be determined to work better, when both the downsides and the upsides are taken into account?

On the one hand, the principle determining why private ownership works better, is because (putting aside government interventions), private property is held subject to the decisions of consumers as to whether it is being used to serve the wants they consider most urgent and important. There is a direct connection between the consumer and the provider of the service, by way of the price mechanism, which enables the producer to know whether he is serving the wants of the masses of society *as judged by them*. If he is, he makes a profit, which means they value his combination of the original resources more than they value alternative uses of them. If he is not, he makes a loss, and the market process transfers the property into the hands of someone who will serve the masses better.

On the other hand, you have not provided any principle by which the public ownership of the means of production could be determined to be better. The providers of a service will have no way of knowing whether their use of resources satisfies the most urgent and important wants of the consumers, as judged by them.

For example, the "town" of Green Bay didn't own the Packers, the town *council* ( did. The ratepayers must have preferred something else, otherwise taxes would not have been necessary to pay for it. But if they really did prefer owning the team, then there is no reason for public ownership, since they would have paid for it voluntarily.

So without falling back to mere ideology, you are in the same position as the Marxist socialists - persisting in a belief in the political suppression of human freedom that, on critical analysis, you cannot rationally defend, and, with respect, should re-think.

Dear Peter,

Consumers or the users of roads have little or no voice in the way they are constructed. That is also true for water resources, utilities and many other areas. It makes sense for government to do this.

Smith described the ideal market.

No one consumer can make a difference. No one producer can make a difference. The products are indistiguishable. This is true for certain agricultural commodities and true for little else.

I don't wish to argue your ideology.

If a general presumption were available that public ownership is superior, then the Marxists would be right, wouldn't they?

But what have you got, in any case of government ownership, but such a presumption?

Since full socialism is non-viable and non-humane, what makes you think part socialism is in any better position? Why would not the same presumption in favour of public buses that you assert, not also justify the state-held factories of the USSR? Or how do you know that we have public buses, not because they satisfy the wants that the people consider most urgent and important, but because the means to fund them was taken by the coercion that is common to all government revenue?

For example, in NSW last year, the "public" - translation: government - bus service did the equivalent of fifty trips to the moon - EMPTY! http://www.busaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=53112

So you must either assume that government ownership is automatically better, even when it's obviously not. Or your theory cannot explain this phenomenon.

On the other hand, libertarian politics and Austrian economics explains it perfectly. We don't have government buses because they serve the paying public better. We have them because some people are able to get a benefit at someone else's expense without caring about the cost.

Yet that is only one such example from one department of one level of government. Part socialism cannot avoid partaking of all the errors, waste and abuse of full socialism, and is saved from worse only by the morality and practicality made possible by the remaining (ever-dimiishing) islands of private ownership.