Re: 48 Nobel Laureates Endorse Kerry
From: Jonathan Kirwan (jkirwan_at_easystreet.com)
Date: 10/04/04
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Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 23:04:54 GMT
On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 21:23:01 +0100, John Woodgate <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk>
wrote:
>I read in sci.electronics.design that Jonathan Kirwan
><jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote (in <p583m0prhp9csl3a3ch5h3f7l37i37gq73@4
>ax.com>) about '48 Nobel Laureates Endorse Kerry', on Mon, 4 Oct 2004:
>>The group that is roughly the diametric opposite of the one that
>>bolsters the accumulation of wealth and power into fewer hands, I
>>suppose. This is neither Democrat or Republican, in the capital-letter
>>(proper noun) sense.
>
>Sounds awfully like Old Labour, in British politics, to me. Does he
>believe in:
>
>"To secure for all the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of
>their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be
>possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of
>production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of
>popular administration and control of each industry of service."
I don't think that would play all that well here in the US.
>.... the notorious wording of the former Clause 4 of the Labour Party
>Constitution. For 'common' read 'Government'. For 'popular' read
>'Government'.
>
>It doesn't say that now. Even these democratic socialists have found
>that governments are VERY BAD at running businesses. One might infer
>that businessmen are VERY BAD at running governments, and there is some
>truth in that, at least in a democracy.
Actually, the important detail about "bad at running" or "good at running" isn't
at all about whether or not governments are good or bad at anything. What
decides this is whether or not there are clear and objective goals described and
well-set objectives believed to move in the right direction towards those goals,
together with a self-correcting monitoring process to help evaluate progress and
reset the objectives. One can do just as badly in this regard with private
enterprise performing a public service as with a public service performing that
public service, if the goals aren't understood well or if their is no crafted
system to evaluate performance and make appropriate course corrections.
For example, if the goals of public power supply systems are well described,
objectively stated and clear, and there are appropriate measurement tools
designed to help adjudicate progress towards those goals as well as deviations
from the desired course set by them, and finally a mechanism for self-correction
that will improve, change, or otherwise modify that measurement to continue
perfecting it's ability to measure what's desired to *be* measured according to
those goals, then I suspect that either government OR private enterprise can do
the day-to-day job of keeping it running well. And, I believe, neither of these
groups (government or private enterprise) is any good at serving some public
purpose without oversight and those bits in place. Government will serve ITS
PURPOSE without oversight and so will private enterprise. And while the
problems caused by them aren't the same problems, neither of them has all that
much in common with what actually serves the public better.
Which puts the problem right back into the laps of the governed. We have to get
involved and to care and put our time in, like it or not. Nothing runs well
without continual attention and prodding. We can imagine that we've shifted our
own responsibilities to guide our own lives by believing that someone else can
be made the "responsible" party to act on our behalf. But the sad reality we
cannot escape is that doing so only means we've abrogated our responsibilities,
not shifted them. Those responsibilities still rest on our collective
shoulders, we've only just deluded ourselves into believing that we've done well
by letting someone else say they've taken them on.
So government can do a terrible job. So can private enterprise. Both can do
good jobs, as well. It's more about how involved we remain in monitoring and in
keeping the natural tendencies of each artifice from succumbing to their
positive feedback systems that move them far away and afield from what we
believe they should be doing. The negative feedback we need to apply simply
takes our time and effort. No escaping it, whether private or public. It's the
price of living in a society with common, scarce resources.
We need to be engaged, much as we'd like to just get on with our own lives.
...
Nader's been long involved in product safety; general and agricultural workers'
rights; environment; political reform; free political speech; immigration;
opposing consolidation and unlimited accumulation; civil liberties; and in
general fighting for the interests of those without the resources themselves to
fight or to adequately educate themselves about how to find solutions to their
problems.
When Ralph was much younger, there was an attempt to get him to sleep with a
prostitute so that it could be used as a tool against him. He'd first showed up
in the mid-1960s as a rumpled 32-year-old lawyer and freelance writer. He then
published a rather technical, automotive study called "Unsafe At Any Speed." It
didn't even sell particularly well... at first. But it really pissed off the
executives at General Motors. So much so that they actually sent out beautiful
women to seduce him to use for leverage or discredit and hired detectives to
follow Nader around, supposedly looking again for blackmail leverage, and
similarly came up empty-handed. [The Corvair was a popular car. The only
problem, Nader said, was that when you took a sharp corner the car would flip
over and kill you (for complicated reasons about how the rear suspension let the
wheels buckle inward.)]
Nader helped popularize the idea of product liability, I think, for good or bad.
And he has since challenged various forms of corporate abuse, natural gas
pipelines, radiation emissions from television sets and X-rays, and hazardous
working conditions in coal mines. He hired a bunch of college students who then
worked to force the Federal Trade Commission to actually *do* something useful
for a change. (Of course, since then many others have worked hard to undermine
the FTC's power and action and if this agency does anything at all today that's
any good, what little is there is probably largely to Nader's credit and that
group of students.) He also helped report on and lobby for government oversight
of our food, air, water, banks, nursing homes, crops, land, and mental health
centers.
And that's just brings up to the early 1970's. He would probably summarize
himself as working "in the public interest." In fact, here's his page on that:
http://www.nader.org/public_interest.html
That'll give you a definite flavor for what he's about, now.
I'll be voting for Kerry, despite some ambivalence. The Bush administration is
quite simply a terrible disease that has to be removed and its effects rapidly
cauterized. Hopefully, we'll then be able to find some compromise ground with
its supporters here in the US, in which they can live in peace with the rest of
us right-thinking folks who are out busily saving them, despite themselves. ;)
Jon
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