The Scientific Genius of the Invisible Hand vs. the Incompetence
of the Philosopher
This is a pair of texts I originally wrote in French in reaction to others views -
to display them here I just corrected the tense : "you" to "him".
The first
was in response to the "lessons" on economics in a website
by a philosophy
teacher, titled "Philosophy and Spirituality".
I'm sorry to disappoint him but his philosopher's presentation on
economic issues contains a lot of stupidities as he ventures here
far from his area of expertise. Admittedly, the notion of stupidity
is relative, on the scale of intelligence degrees.Then, which level
do I refer to, to call it this way: to the necessary level of
intelligence to roughly understand the working of the economy, and
the causes of the major trends of evolution of the world economy in
the last century. This is a very complex problem that requires an
elaborate thinking. But this understanding roughly exists, there are
many people who mastered it. The competence (the intelligence level
together with the relevant knowledge for this problem) exists in a
number of people, but not in him. In short, he does not understand
the world in which we live. Of course this is a quite common
situation: most other people do not understand it either, but the
problem is that despite this he pretends to judge everything, which
fatally misleads him. The relevant assessment of the level of error
lies not in its comparison to the average ignorance of the crowd of
ignorant people like him, but in comparison to the competence of
those who had the chance to analyze things properly, and thus also
to the intrinsic intelligence of what guides the world, that can be
identified to the famous Invisible Hand idea usually attributed to Adam
Smith (but it does not matter to me what he really meant). The
world is governed by a certain intrinsic intelligence hidden in the
complex system of economic relations, and its prosperity stands on
this intelligence, whether he likes it or not. Admittedly the
intrinsic intelligence of this invisible hand has defects, which can
be measured by their effective painful consequences that violently
shake the world. In this measure of their concrete observable
consequences, these defects are indeed huge. But what we need to
admit, as bad as it is, is that this lack of intelligence of the
invisible hand, is only a lack defined relatively to the real
challenges that the economic system must deal with. But the
intellectual level of these challenges, and the actual requirements
of intelligence for which the current intelligence level of the
invisible hand is violently found to not suffice, is very far beyond
the level of thinking of the average people, who in their
incompetence would venture to judge this.
The consequence is that if a person lacking the necessary skills,
would venture, based on the observation of the presence of serious
defects in the economic system, defects which must exist somewhere
since terrible effects are observed (due to processes he does not
really understand), to constrain and modify the functioning of the
system according to the miserable understanding he was of it, he
would most probably make the intelligence level of the invisible
hand that governs the world, heavily fall down to his low personal
level, that is much more miserable than the level it is now, which
would make it much more seriously unable to cope with the stresses
and challenges of the current reality in all its complexity, and
therefore would most probably lead to major disasters, much more
serious than the initial object of his initial accusation. Such is
the tragedy of the Soviet experience borne on the wings of good
intentions of love and brotherhood among men, who thought they could
ignore the necessities of the intrinsic science underlying economy,
which transcends the individual intelligences of the vast majority
of people. The invisible hand once broken, nothing could work
anymore.
On the universally pervasive genius of invisible hands in
nature, beyond the economic sphere
If such considerations might surprise, I can point out that they are
finally no way magical, nor even specific to the field of economics.
This is a universal character of nature, as science reveals to us.
The laws of physics and technology
In fact, the universe is everywhere governed by intelligence, an
intrinsic rational intelligence of things preceding its discovery
and use by man. I mean first of all the laws of physics. These are
mathematical laws, both complex and quite elegant, that is,
relatively simple (somehow) and wonderful in their depth, compared
to the richness and complexity of all their consequences, although
perceived as inaccessible to the intelligence of lay people. They
are deeply great, and did not need (wait for) us to exist.There are
many situations in which people intuitively understand the behavior
of familiar things, in other words they implicitly know by intuition
the mathematical laws that govern the relations between the
different appearances involved, so that, whatever the complexity of
the underlying fundamental laws (that can be called invisible hands)
at the origin of these effects, these do not appear as invisible
hands in one's eyes. For example, one is used to see the fall of
objects dropped in the air or placed upright on a point, or to see the ability
of birds to fly, and this familiarity gives good ways to
figure out how exactly this will happen, so that, while not
understanding the origin of the laws of mechanics and gravitation
are the root of it, these phenomena are not called by him invisible
hands. But there are other, more unusual circumstances, where
intuition is wrong or unresponsive, not giving correct expectations
on the sequence of events. These events following other kinds of
visible causalities than the familiar ones, may seem magical. This
may then be called an invisible hand. You might thus, if you like,
consider the "invisible hand" which rises balloons filled with
helium or hydrogen up to the air, seemingly defying the laws of
gravity. It would also be, if you like, an invisible hand that keeps
standing on its tip a fast rotating spinning top around its vertical
axis. One might still say "I do not believe in the invisible hand
that keeps standing on his tip the rotating top. Actually, it
finally turned out to fall". Yes, but it fell because it no more
rotated fast enough, and it remains true that while the rotation is
fast enough, it remains well up, which a naive intuition cannot
explain.Who can rise his mind up to the world of mathematical
abstractions, to express the formulas of mechanical laws and
properly carry out calculations, can in this way understand the
origin of this strange power of rapidly rotating tops, to keep
standing on their tip. To who is not able to rise to the world of
abstractions, this phenomenon remains an enigma.
The work of physicists is to attempt to discover the laws of physics
as they are, not as we want them to be. Anyway there is no choice:
as the goal is to use this knowledge to produce new technologies, an
invention of the laws of physics as they seem according to some
impressions that do not conform to reality, will never be as desired
the basis of a working technology. To be able to improve a given
technological device, requires to first understand the real
underlying physical laws, with an intelligence level relevant to the
level of sophistication of the techniques and the inner workings of
the physical system considered. Namely, an intelligence able to
account for the functioning of this instrument. Who would try to
modify an instrument according to what appears in the hope of
improving it, without the necessary skills, has no chance to improve
it in reality, regardless the evidence of the dysfunction observed
in the use of this instrument.
The laws of biology
But this is not all. We already know that after the physical laws
that govern the universe and all matter of which our life is made,
there also is, even before man ever started to be interested in it,
still another underlying complex, extremely sophisticated science,
that we are still far from having understood all the features, but
that also pre-exists us, and, in all its necessary details that we
still do not know much, governs and constitutes all our life.
Another great invisible hand thus, that is hidden but without which
no life on earth would be "rationally explicable."I mean, biology in
all its dimensions and in particular its genetic component.In fact,
our genetic heritage is the expression of a whole intelligence, a
whole intrinsic science, which has gradually developed and
accumulated over hundreds of millions of years without the need for
any explicit will or awareness of an actor, but by the works of that
still other invisible hand again, the one of natural selection (a
mechanism whose plausibility of its final result can be more easily
understood roughly, even without knowing the intermediate details).
This genetic heritage daily manifests its genius by all the
operation and development of the body from embryo to the adult, its
capabilities of protection and repair ...
The laws of algorithmic and software engineering
We can also say that the result of the ingenuity work of the
programmer, namely the software, acts as an invisible hand in your
computer, which ensures that the functions take place as expected.
If you find that a program crashes, you may be tempted to insult the
invisible hand, to say that it does not do its work. But if the name
of that you venture to put your nose in the program code, find this
or that not pretty and modify according to your mood without
understanding significant portions of what the programmer did an
why, the science deployed there, this will most likely make it run
even worse.
Plato's cave
The notion of invisible hand is certainly not a scientific concept
in a strict sense (science never spoke of invisible hand), but
should not be confused with blind faith. It is the expression of a
work of popularization. The Invisible Hand is the hand which, in Plato's
cave, acts in the back of the prisoner outside his field of
vision and is therefore invisible to his eyes, but has the ability
to manipulate the shadows projected on the wall. This hand however
invisible for people chained with their eyes turned towards the
shadows, is not invisible to the scientist, who has freed himself
from the chains. He sees, he knows, he understands, he works with,
he might even control it in the limits of the possible which he is
aware of. It is totally practical for him. It takes the form of a
mysterious belief for the ordinary people, to which it looks all the
same as any other possibly wrong belief, with the notable difference
that it works because it is the shadow of a knowledge that exists
elsewhere, outside his own mind, a knowledge which is "abstract" for
him.In fact, the very concept of "abstraction" might sometimes just
play the role of an insult by the ignorant to denigrate some
knowledge that is not his. Things that seem abstract to lay people,
may seem concrete for scientists who know their real concreteness
that may even be harder than that of things that lay people usually
call "concrete". Because material things and sense perceptions are
perishable, while theorems remain forever.
However I do recognize, unfortunately that there are a number of
libertarians who simply believe in the invisible hand without
bothering to understand it, and that is so pitiful.
So what is the problem of the economy?
However, these observations do not bother anyone. Why? Just because
nobody cares, as the ordinary public has no motive to be personally
interested in it. We know that lay people cannot claim to make a
computer by themselves. If this is all right, well, it is simply
because nobody needs to try. Everyone relies on a small team of
engineers working on the design of the next generation of
processors, and is rather happy about it. However, many people need
computers, thus need this science of making computers exists. But it
just needs to exist in a very small minority for the benefits to
extend to all. And similarly for so many other hardware and software
technologies.
But when we switch to the economic functioning of society, a big
problem appears. What is the problem? It is that many people are
naturally (and in a sense, quite legitimately indeed) subject to the
temptation to care about its way of working, since they knows quite
well how faulty it is. While it is clearly quite faulty indeed, but
the problem is that these people who can legitimately notice and
complain of its dysfunction, usually lack the necessary ability to
properly understand the causes and find solutions. Since it is also
clear that those who currently control the beast and have the power
to modify its operation are likely to not do it in favorable ways to
the public interest, the people would have some sort of legitimacy
to control them back. But the fact that those who control it misuse
it, does not imply that other people probably filled with much
better intentions but usually less competence, would necessarily be
good advisers on the most favorable methods to the actual
accomplishment of their best intentioned goals (for the common
interest).
However, the play of representative democracy unfortunately comes
here to lock this system, where leaders willing to exploit the
people just need to select the decisions to take from what both
serves their personal interests and pleases to people, from the
point of view of their miserable competence (eventually distorted
into the desired direction) to present as good in the eyes of the
people the decisions favored by decision makers in their real
consequences, even if their actual consequences are contrary to the
motivations of their official justification.
And I'm sorry to see that in his approach as a philosopher and the
presentation of his arguments led by the poor mere traditional tools
of the philosopher, he makes like many others the demonstration of
his blatant incompetence in economics which he pretends to judge, an
incompetence that inevitably misleads him to proclaim nonsense,
insofar as he refuses to recognize it and to refer to more competent
opinions.
Finally, here are a few explanations why the scientist
(mathematician, physicist) is certainly better qualified than the
philosopher to talk about economics. It is that science (including
mathematics and physics) is to study complex systems formed from
elements regardless of their nature. But the specifically economic
problems in economics, is precisely the one interested in the
overall behavior of the economic system. It is an example of a
complex system, where the very question considered is that of its
overall performance and consistency beyond the specific tastes and
colors of each of its individual members. And this is especially a
system that handles and performs many accurate calculations about
abstract numerical quantities (money).
To not confuse this with any approval of the current content of
the academic discipline
My purpose here is not to praise the specific content of economics
as currently taught at universities, which might as well lack
relevance, use inadequate modellings, imitations of scientific
practices whose authors may lack the necessary scientific skills.
Neither to request a blind faith to some official experts. I myself
did not follow any economics training in a university setting, but I
developed many ideas on my own, inspired by my interest in
mathematics and physics. So I managed to develop some independent
understandings of economics similarly to how I managed in maths and
physics.
On the relevance of a "hard science" style of approach rather
than a "human science" one
In one of the texts, this philosophy teacher states "The economy
does not exist in a realm cut off from everything else, because
its object is not separable from the complexity in which it
actually exists."Well, precisely, usually, the methods and
tools developed by science with (more or less) mathematical modeling
works, are the best able to grasp complexity, while the traditional
approach of the philosopher is deeply unable of it. As for the
collective consciousness and attitudes, the best that can be
expected of them is:
- For some aspects, to be rational, for everything to work best.
- For other aspects, be something else than rational, especially
the tastes and colors of what we love to do in life, that
somehow develop in another universe than what the economical
science is here for. These just need to be treated as free
variables from the viewpoint of economical theories. Their
specific contents need not be specified, but the one need is to
verify that the theory has a proper way to do this integration
of these other aspects in the form its free variables. If this
is properly done, then the economic science will be articulated
with the real world without contradiction.
The remaining (unfortunate) possibility is that of anti-rational
attitudes, that is parasitic effects. These can either be
- Positively foolish attitudes pushing to break the invisible
hand and thus lead to bad effects, that may range from small
ones to horrible ones and misery like those of the Soviet Union.
- The effects of logical gaps in the economic system, the lack
of proper mechanisms and proper information : people making
wrong choices because the information of which choices they need
to make that will best serve their real needs is missing. For
example, the effect of inflation where people are influenced by
their acceptance or refusal of a given salary by looking at its
nominal value while forgetting its real purchasing power. Or
young people making wrong choices of which studies to follow
because of false ideas or lack of information on which ways can
best serve their chances to find a job. Then an important
purpose of economical science is to try, when possible, to fill
these gaps, and design better information systems that will help
people to become more likely to make the right choices for
fulfilling their true respective goals. For example, to make
more fluid markets (by helping offer and demand to find each
other), and to redesign monetary and financial systems to make
them more stable, with less noise (thus less risks of mistakes).
"But the current state of extreme fragmentation of
knowledge does not favor linking knowledge. Economics therefore
can only present a fragmentary view of exchanges; and since only
the living whole is real, homo economicus is a pure concept
whose relationship with the real man is very elusive .... "
The eventual reality of such a problem, that is, the possible
extreme difficulty of subject, is no sufficient justification of any
claim to present any alternative approach other than scientific, as
more relevant than those that scientists, if they are genuine
scientists, would implement. In other words, as a true science is a
science that could best encompass all necessary considerations, if a
problem cannot be handled this way (if there cannot be a proper
science for it), this does not mean that any other approach would be
better.
"The definition of goals does not belong to economic
science, neither does it belong to any science."
It depends what he means by "the definition of goals". In a sense,
the goals don't need to be defined because they are obvious : each
person already, naturally, knows what he needs. Questions whose
answers are obviously given by nature as soon as needed, do not
require any science to answer them, so that the impossibility for
any science to compute the answers independently of the natural
perception of these answers, does not constitute any effectively
problematic gap in the scientific study. The scientific approach can
successfully handle these aspects as free variables in its
theoretical models.
In another sense, the definition of goals is clear : it consists in
the systematic search for the best compromises between the
satisfaction of the various individual needs whose data is the one
we just mentioned.
In some aspects, there are sciences which do give effective
information about the conditions for such global improvements, with
the help of some very obvious guesses on some general needs of
people. For example, climate science essentially determines the fact
that we need to fight against the releases of greenhouse gases that
causes global warming, since the predictable consequences of these
releases are clearly harmful to the world. So the goal of reducing
the emissions of greenhouse gases, is a goal determined by
environmental science, based on the fact that the predictions this
science makes about the consequences of these emissions, will
clearly have an overall bad taste in human concerns : we do not need
either a scientific nor any other kind of approach to discover that
hurricanes, droughts, floods, and any other kinds of environmental
disasters and degradations are bad things and that we must set it as
a goal to reduce them, because this is basically obvious.
Otherwise, the question of goals can rightly be resolved in most
situations : since the goals are defined by each person for one's
own concern, and that, most often, no State should have the right to
judge so as to rightfully force a purpose other than those. By
adequately inserting individual goals as free variables into the
optimization process of free markets, the invisible hand of the
market can usually manage to find an optimal compromise between
them.
There are some harder cases of purposes to handle, such as improving
education. Then, a scientific approach by comparative and
statistical survey including levels of intelligence, culture, and
personal achievements among people who have followed different
educational systems, could help identify which educational methods
should be favored. But still it is a difficult subject. Because
there are different paradigms in conflict with each other, between
the bureaucratic paradigm of passing exams without wondering if it
means something ; the paradigm of philosophers who have their own
conception of "education" that is to "think in a philosophical way",
insisting that education should be protected from any productive
concerns ; paradigm(s) of scientists that may disagree and reject
the "philosophical
way of thinking" as a sort of bullshit or religion away from
genuine reason, that should not have any more right to be
authoritatively forced on people than any other religion, and
considering that if "productive" purposes may indeed not be the
best, philosophers have nothing better to offer instead but
self-complacency for the wastefulness and sterility of their own
thoughts.
"Since the knowledge of science as well as of
economics in particular, are unable to explain the very
principle of their objects, which resides in life, while they
are in the unreality of their formal and partial representation"
This remark is neither original, nor even relevant, for scientists
often have to deal with such kinds of problems, and manage them
quite well and correctly with visible success. It may be, depending
on cases,
- searches of relevant modelings (relevant concepts) to a given
experience that was not well handled at first, but that one
strives to precisely approach in new ways that aim to give more
ways to correctly say what can be scientifically said, while the
actual consequences of the uncontrolled part will be small
enough (within some range of approximations)
- or take the form of free variables, whose existence can simply
be admitted for the problem considered in the general case in a
way that remains valid regardless of the actual value of these
variables.
As for the fundamentally creative and unpredictable aspect of
humans, well, this is precisely one of the essential reason for the
principles of liberalism (individual freedom) that "systematically"
gives a space to innovation : to let each individual the space for
inventing new things, new products, new working methods...
The laws of classical mechanics, solid mechanics and Newton's
gravitation are unable to explain the principle of their objects,
which resides in quantum phenomena, fundamental interactions and the
curvature of space-time. This still does not invalidate them in the
field of approximation where they are relevant. The same can go for
economics.
Here comes the traditional essentialist error
of philosophy, obsessed with the question of substances of
everything, and believing that the knowledge of these substances
would be always needed, while the real problems are far away, ie lie
in complexity and the modelling of this complexity, which is the
work of the scientist and where the nature of all substances are no
more relevant (while even if they were it would not ensure the
existence of any better way).
Of course it may be that some traditional economic models become
outdated, as the modeling which was chosen loses part of its
relevance in front of a new phenomenon taking momentum. But again,
this is something ordinary in science : it is revise the past
theoretical models, replacing them by new, finer ones that can take
account of newly discovered processes. For the purpose of the
economics is always to understand the processes that happen often
and in large scale, and whatever their complexity, with enough work
there must be some way to analyze it in terms of models which
systematically encompass most of the diversity of possible details
and leaves the remaining ones small enough to be safely neglected.
Of course, in all this discussion, a fundamental problem is the
distinction between science and pseudo-science. If some official
science happens to be in fact (more or less) pseudo-science,
supports to it should end, while its errors should not be blamed on
science. Science is a hard work that is not always easy to be done
properly but there is no alternative anyway.
The site refers to Maurice Allais. Without knowing exactly what he
is worth in the field of economics (well I know he is an Economics
Nobel laureate but I am not sure how meaningful is this distinction,
since I do not trust the current economical science to be a well cleaned-up science),
I think it may be interesting to remember that in physics he is a
notorious crank claiming to refute relativity theory. We must
remember that pseudo-physicists of this kind are usually mere
amateur thinkers unaware of the weakness of their thought, eager to
denigrate mathematics and "abstract" reasoning, to the height from
which they are unable to rise, which they insult as "abstractions
emptied of substance", while they believe much more firmly in the
naive but illusory impressions of their direct senses, emptied of
mathematical structuring effort.
Conclusion
The spiritualist philosopher claims to focus on an ideal of humanist
society (as if others did not also wish everything to go best), but
his only real difference from what he claims to differ is his
intellectually sclerotic mind trapped in poetic clouds : his
ignorance of the economical mathematizations flying into
abstractions, which explain (and provide the way to fairly assess
the value of) the work the invisible hand of the market. Thus, his
irresponsible ignorance of what has allowed the economy to prosper,
taking us out of the former misery. He considers the prosperity and
relative consistency of today's world as a necessity (something
granted) from which he thinks himself entitled to demand more and
more, as something natural.
He has trouble understanding (he neither can nor want to understand)
that in reality, it is not natural, in terms of the logical consequences
of his miserable understanding of the world. That, what
his "ideal" is trying to build by his naive methods, once
implemented in practice, will actually kill some essential mechanisms, and
thus will necessarily lead to collective misery and general chaos,
or towards the horrors of the Soviet Union.
To resolve many of the defects that appear in the economy, requires
a truly scientific mind can properly handle abstractions, that the
spirit of the ordinary philosopher does not have. So I have
processed this scientific analysis and have explained elsewhere my
solution, that you can understand if you also have a logical mind,
otherwise you can passively wait for its technological arrival ...
It might be not easier to explain economics to a spiritual
philosopher, than to explain the theory of relativity to an ape. Of
course this is not any absolute claim. But what I mean here is that
the question of who is really right, is not reducible to its
observable effects in the ridiculously vain field of abilities to
convince a philosopher
imbued with the traditional claim of philosophers to judge in
their way so many things they do not really understand. Thus,
that any attempt at "reasoned" dialogue with him, to the
satisfaction of his perception of what seems "reasoned" to him, may
just be a loss of time. Indeed, remember how academic philosophy has
welcome Marxism as a highly respectable thought not so long ago !!!
On the debate between liberalism and antiliberalism
Excerpt of a
reply I wrote to someone else:
It is a pity that his last message has partly abandoned the merits
of the technical discussion, to satisfy itself to invoke some big
words, old slogans and principles. Because even the best principles
remain largely futile and meaningless as long as they do not come
with the proper precise application methodology to the multitude of
specific real problems. However I will try to answer them in an
attempt to deal with some obstacles that could actually occur at
this introductory level, although knowing that the resulting lack of
precision severely limits the room for debate.
So in my view there is NO "Point number 1", but a logical system
integrating various ramifications, which finds its profound
coherence (a kind of unity) in the precise manner in which its
various more or less crucial components are arranged, and in their
ability to logically treat a wide variety of situations.
This minimum complexity of theories, irreducible to any great
slogans like "point number 1", is normal in science, including
mathematics and theoretical physics (which also I try just to
simplify and expose the foundations), where the most fundamental
concepts cannot directly be formulated by naive means (in the
language of common experience whose usual character gives naive
people an illusion of simplicity) but may actually require some work
to be apprehended: eg the fundamental equation of general relativity
is very short and elegant but requires much study to understand the
language in which it is expressed. But, while the axiomatic approach
may still be relevant to some scientific subjects, where a specified
list of first principles determines everything (it plays a crucial
role of determining consequences), this usually fails in the hands
of the rest of society (including religions and academic philosophy)
that turns it into a play of illusions whose main role is to fit
with and excuse the author's simplicity of mind that cannot handle
any complex problem, and distract the attention of the reader from
his inability to correctly draw any non-trivial logical consequence
from any given list of principles or data. The too exclusive focus
on the search for first principles comes then at the expense of the
care to apply them rigorously and extensively enough to give them a
sense.
Of course I sympathize with the desire of the public to easily
understand everything in an easy and direct slogans starting with a
few trivial ideas that suffice to check things without risk of
error, but unfortunately this is not always possible. It is up to
men to make an effort to adapt to the partially irreducible
difficulty of truths they wish to understand, it is not up to the
truth to fit the requirements of their intellectual laziness.
But in fact, if there is an approach doomed to remain utopia
(Marxism, anarchism), it is primarily this: to pretend to change the
world by a movement of intellectual laziness (not perceived as such
but simply adapted to the intellectual level of the "broad masses"
which it aims to excite the enthusiasm of), that merely invoke
simple "principles" (whatever they are) that break down by ignorance
some partial solutions currently available, and do not take the
necessary care to understand the structure of the needs and
solutions in a sufficiently complete and accurate way to be
functional, and to actually constitute a real progress compared to
the previous structures to be discarded.
This is why I reject the confusion with anarchism, although at first
glance my proposal has strong anarchist characters. But great
principle, even the best ones, alone remain vain, while the key lies
in the precision and complexity of the structures of proposed
solution, yet for what I happened to read about men, I have found no
worthwhile logically consistent concepts (technical components of
solutions, to the satisfaction of my mathematical mind). In other
words, in my opinion, the reason why anarchism or Marxism could not
be put into practice, is because it is NOT a theory. Because it is
literary, poetic things, made of feelings and "principles"; instead
of a theory worthy of the name in the scientific sense of the term,
which must be something logical, precise, rational, adequately
structured for the complexity of the problem at hand.
Namely, once again, I reject any idea of starting by destroying the
structures of existing solutions. My plan is to build new, more
coherent, flexible and decentralized structures (somehow simpler,
somehow more complex), which by their better performance and
reliability will naturally leave the old structures obsolete. So the
old structures will not be destroyed by some destructive brute
force, but abandoned because of the advantage of referring to a
better information system.Without the prior construction of a more
efficient system, the destruction of the old one would not hold and
would not be any progress.
The term "anarchism as a political system" is a contradiction in
terms: to speak about a system (political or otherwise) you must
specify its structures. Rejection of existing power structures (if
this is the definition of anarchism) is not a system but a lack of
system, a vacuum (which nature abhors), a nonsense.
On the other hand, I to find agreements with classical liberalism,
which actually contains some logical structures of functional
solutions appropriate to some aspects of the complexity of reality,
and I do integrate them together with some further structural
components to address other aspects of the complexity of real
problems that were not adequately addressed so far. (In this case,
logical structures having the ability to emerge and spontaneously
manifest their benefits, being available as software, without need
to be driven by any central authority)
Let us quote his "definition" of liberalism: "The policy favoring
the richest", the traditional favorite anti-liberal insult, that he
implicitly admitted as an evidence without even feeling any need to
justify or to open a debate on this subject. (In such terms,
absolute monarchies or the Soviet empire would be liberal regimes
since they have dominating classes monopolizing wealth and power of
a country ...).
Clearly, nobody could miss such anti-liberal slogans that dominated
the media, and yet, since the wholesale collapse of the Soviet
Union, public opinion not only in France but also elsewhere ended up
to be roughly a half or a slight majority right-wing (in favor of a
certain liberalism). But how to explain this trend, in this
anti-liberal view ? Seriously, would a majority of voters aim to
"favor the richest"? This is an interesting question to ask to those
who define liberalism in this way, and to which they do not seem to
have often responded.
Although I did once find an argument to promote a
liberalism defined in similar terms, although perceived a
little differently, and especially not missing any highly moral
justifications. But it's still a minority. Most people favor a
liberal (basically, the right people) have another conception of it.
It is therefore obviously insufficient to repeat again these
anti-liberal slogans admitted as an evidence, for them to be
accepted by everyone.
Therefore more correctly, liberalism is defined by the presence of
some specific types of economic structures, and the absence of
certain other types of structures. It should not be mistaken (as
Marxists do confuse it by games of multiple definitions), with any
kind of unquestionably indivisible whole equivalent to the blanket
approval of all the injustices currently produced worldwide. After
that, the question of what types of structures "favor the richest,"
and to what extent (opinions on the details of this may vary),
requires a thorough analysis to make sense of the debate. Reducing
the debate to the question of "favoritism" between different classes
only distinguished by how rich is everyone, would be a very
simplistic approach, far from describing the diversity and
complexity of aspects of the economy, the advantages and
disadvantages of each structure or political decision.
The debate is classical. Let us recall a famous reply:
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing said:
Mr.Mitterrand, when listening to you (as I listened with interest),
one is convinced that what needs to be done is not what you propose. First (...) I
always find shocking and offensive to give oneself the monopoly of the heart. You
do not have, Mr Mitterrand, the monopoly of the heart, you don't have it (...) the
French community has been working in the right direction, since a few years, we
have made our country (...) a modern industrial power (...) what I propose to do
is to serve the same goals of social justice as you. I am convinced that if I am
elected as President, the elderly, workers at the minimum wage, the young (...) will
experience the same achievements that you aspire to. But I would do these
achievements from a growing economy, while you have the idea, strange indeed,
to make these achievements from a broken economy. There is no social progress
in France if we do not continue to develop the modern economy, and the
fundamental error, in my opinion, of your policy proposal (...) is to break the
instrument, that is to say, to offer a program of French economic policy which no
comparable country does, because they have seen the implementation of such
techniques and solutions and they know very well that it stops economic progress.
(...) We discuss the means because the goals of justice, I think they are the same.
But if I really had to define the liberalism that I advocate in
terms of values and principles, then it would be basically the
list of the following values:
- Freedom and tolerance: let everyone be victim of one's own
stupidity rather than of yours;
- Responsibility : to develop logical structures of
responsibility in order to ensure as much as possible that the
consequences of each fault will fall back onto its author rather
than onto anybody else (and the same for the opposite effects :
to let the benefits of each action come back to their authors).
- Precisely distinguish, in all its subtleties, between honest
and dishonest activities (such as the different ways of earning
money) to block the dishonest ones;
- Efficiency: better do things in the easy and efficient way
than in hard and wasteful ways;
- Flexibility and diversity: adapting actions and solutions to
the diverse needs and abilities of humans and production
processes, the diversity of situations.
In contrast, from a liberal point of view, anti-liberalism is
defined by a system of anti-values described as follows (that will
be exaggerated here for the sake of clarity):
- Jealousy: misery consists in knowing the existence of
wealthier people than oneself;
- Paranoia: all the world's ills (and liberal views) are the
result of the conspiracy of big bad
wolves
bosses, that just need to be eradicated for the problems to be
solved;
- The law of the stupidest : the stupidest are right because
they are the most numerous and they cry the loudest; so they are
entitled to decide everything
- Dilution of responsibilities: let nobody be responsible either
of oneself nor of anything;
- Standardization of humans : condemn as intolerable any idea
that any kind of natural, innate diversity of human characters
or skills can exist; or, if it exists, have any practical effects
that the right education system should not set it as its highest
purpose to forcefully erase : all people (including the most
clever who either don't exist outside some artificial and evil
social construction, or anyway don't deserve any specific
attention or understanding, since they are already priviledged
by nature) must comply with the conception of life, economy,
public education and public employment system, established by
the majority of idiots for their own use.
- Race to the bottom, on both material and intellectual levels,
cutting the heads that stand above others : the education system
must be the same for all, to the reach of all minds, and must be
identically forced to all (filling and dictating many years of
their lives) in order to give equal degrees to all. As it is
intolerable to consider any reality of diversity between levels
of intelligence and merit of the people, no difference in income
can not be tolerated either. But implicitly in practice, as not
all people can comply with the "elitist" ways and intellectual
levels of the most intelligent, all people must therefore
inevitably conform to those of the stupidest.
- Totalitarianism: there is no problem to submit the entire
population to slavery, nonsense and misery: the only thing that
matters is that the brutal tyrant whom they shall serve must be
made of paper instead of men, so that their enslavement neither
serves the will nor the interests of anyone. Indeed this is the
way for the world to be perfect, for justice to be saved from
any impurity, and thus for any possible criticism to be
silenced, all people becoming suddenly happy and satisfied by
virtue of the absence of any big bad wolf against whom they
could come down to the street to shout against. Incidentally,
some privileges can be granted to some, as long as we can
imagine that all initially have equal opportunities to benefit
them, like in the lottery. So goes for example the system of
baccalaureate subjects, with its way of choosing one and the
same surprise subject on which all will be judged each year ;
where everyone has equal a priori expectable chances that the
removal of the value (counting) of one baccalaureate problem due
to leaks of the subject on the internet by anybody in the
country, will act in his favor or against him ; as well as equal
risks of being prevented from arriving on time to the exam and
thus getting a zero at this exam, due to a delay of the train
one needed to take for arriving to the place of exams at the
right time, thus making suddenly evaporate into the clouds all
the value of all the diligent year of learning and preparation
to this exam.
- It would be intolerable to consider that there was anything to
understand of the economy that is not readily accessible to all
minds, because everyone should have an equal right to judge, so
that the the most childish conception should be set as the
standard and ultimate truth. Namely, that the economy is a cake
that fell from the sky yesterday, and its only problem is how it
should be shared, and that it is the strongest guys filled
yesterday from the previous cake, who currently come to pick the
largest share of the new cake. Instead it is obviously necessary
to share it equally, assuming that the cake will keep the same
total size. But above all there is no question to this last
point, even if, the new more egalitarian sharing mode once
started, it fatally results in a destruction of the cake,
leaving only misery to share equally. It suffices indeed to put
this misfortune on the account of natural accidents, or denounce
it as a dirty trick of villain capitalist speculators plotting
against the nice social policy.
- The main demand to strike for : money! to not bother trying to
imagine anything else. Secondary claims: statutes, rights. But
especially "rights to get", not "rights to do". In other words,
the main purpose should be to restrict the possibilities of life
(what we fear: risks of change, unemployment, poverty,
exclusion, ...) and to ensure a stable income, and never to
expand them (explore the wealth of creativity, initiatives,
opportunities for innovation). To remain as much as possible and
still and frozen. Never mind how the demanded money should be
used : anyway, it would be too complicated and therefore dirtily
elitist to bother to imagine that there are several
non-equivalent possible ways to use it. So just follow the
simplest way (and therefore the most democratic) : throw this
money out of the windows. Never mind how this money can be found
either. Just set it in stone as a law, to require the state to
provide this money and these statutes. It's called the "social
advances". It is up to the state to provide this money, even if
it does not exist and needs to be borrowed, sending back a
double amount of the bill to the next generation (because of
interest). Then the latter will just need to go down the streets
in the name of the unshakable (unquestionable) preservation of
these very "social rights" and "advances" that were so
victoriously acquired for all by the valiant strike actions of
the past, and to break what will remain of the so ruined
economy, in order to stand as the poor innocent victims of the
evil ushers of logical necessities.
(A Russian joke : during the Bolshevik Revolution, an elderly asks a young,
"What do you fight for ? - We fight so that there will be no more rich ! - Really ?
In my time we fought for that there would be no more poors ! ")
Finally also a number of injustices and aberrations observed are the result of
some force of things taking place due to the absence of any currently available
tools to avoid them, and are not in the ideal of anybody, despite claims of the
Marxist propaganda that always wants to put any problem as the guilt of some
mega-nebulous entity of "liberalism", "globalism", "capitalism" or "neo-liberalism",
pseudo-concepts whose globality only express the intellectual laziness of those
propagandists who dismiss any effort to distinguish anything among the multiple
mechanisms involved, what works and what does not.
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