A very interesting piece of journalism indeed.
Taken at face value it corrects the actual mistakes made by the author of a video circulating on the internet (I haven’t provided a link here because there is one in the Forbes article).
At a second glance it becomes apparent that the way we understand money/wealth somehow influences our entire Weltanschauung (the way we see the world)
Yes, one can legitimately see public schooling as a ‘wealth transfer’ but only if you look at it from an accountant’s point of view. As an engineer/sociologist I see society as a mechanism/organism: if you feed/grease/power all its limbs/wheels it works a lot better, to the benefit of all parts/people concerned. Same with the fire department, DOD, etc. and including health care. Strange how nobody protests against money spent on the police though…
Ceausescu, Romania’s ‘beloved’ dictator, had a somewhat equivalent policy. He divided the whole workforce in two: the ‘directly productive’ – the workers themselves – and the ‘helpers’ – all the rest. And he said that the workers are the most important because they were the ones who performed the ‘really important’ actions – so they were payed better – while the helpers were considered mere accessories. And this is why the engineers, the scientists, the teachers, the doctors, everybody that didn’t produce something with their own hands were paid less than the all-mighty ‘worker’.
By concentrating too much on ‘money’ we get to make the same kind of mistake. Consecrating ‘classes’ of people – ‘directly productive’ vs ‘helpers’, ‘haves’ vs ‘have-nots’ – is detrimental to the entire society and eventually to all its members.
A perfunctory glance at the entire history is enough to convince us that a uniform society is a dystopia and that a highly divided one is too unstable for it’s own good.
And no, the solution is not more government sanctioned wealth transfer but more opportunities. A really free market coupled with a decent – decent not lavish – safety net works wonders. Look at what happened in Germany and Sweden after they freed the labour market. Bzw, do you know that Germany still doesn’t have a minimum wage? They have just started considering it because the wages have become so low as to depress the internal economic demand – the ‘down side’ of importing many foreign workers who accept very low payments.
Rich/successful people should not pay more/bigger taxes, they should just not use tax havens/loopholes and pay decent wages to their employees.
Poor people should stop whining, make good use of whatever opportunities they can find and stop believing/voting for the ‘wind-bags’.
It’s that simple. There is no magic solution that could be implemented by one side only or by partisan politicking but with a minimum of cooperation things could be brought back on track in almost no time.
Reason, consciousness or morality?
What is it that makes us really different from the other primates?
I tried to suggest earlier that reason is certainly useful but somewhat over-hyped while “Dubio” might have been what Descartes had in mind when he coined “Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum”. So what is ‘reason’? Nothing but the ability to compare two or more alternatives. The point is that you have to have those alternatives in the first place AND at least a criterion, a yardstick, to use when trying to choose between those alternatives. And for those of you who love etymology “reason” and “rationality” come from Latin were “ratio” basically means ‘taking into consideration’.
Let’s see now what ‘consciousness’ is about. Experts seem to have a hard time trying to decide one way or another. You have here a 14 pages long dissertation about ‘how to’ and ‘how to not’ define it. I’ll look someplace else for help. There is an evolutionary biologist turned philosopher who says that we are not only conscious (every living thing is) but “self-conscious”! His name is Humberto Maturana Romesin. In a nut shell his arguments are that anything that has a membrane separating an inside from the outside and is able (to a certain degree, of course) to choose what passes through that membrane and what not is ‘conscious’, in the sense that it is somehow able to determine what is good and what it is bad for itself and act accordingly. Humans, says Maturana, are not only conscious but self-conscious: they not only do the choosing but also ‘watch’ themselves doing it. ‘Self awareness’ in plain English.
OK. So we have self awareness to supervise the ability to choose. Why keep on looking for anything else?
Well… you remember the ‘criterion, the yardstick to use when trying to choose between the available alternatives’, don’t you? Where do you get this criterion from? OK, self-awareness might help here in the sense that ‘preservation of self’ might provide a quite valid one. ‘Does it serve my interests? Is it helpful for my survival? Then it must be good!’
In fact this is exactly what Nietzsche said when he justified his Uebermensch’s actions: “What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.” And where did this attitude drive Nietzsche himself, and some of his followers – Hitler among others? To disaster?
Are you troubled by this line of reasoning? Do you feel that the relentless pursuit of your own interest is legit? Do you believe in Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’? You’re not alone!
Unfortunately you’re not right, either. According to Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, Darwin never said/wrote such thing: it would have been contrary to the very idea of evolutionism. “Fit”, in this context, means “adapted” – not strong, trained, etc. and being perfectly adapted to your medium actually means you are not able to survive to the slightest modification. For those of you who have some trouble accepting this consider the notion of ‘just in time’ management: carrying additional stocks, anything more than what is necessary right now but enables you to adapt to a malfunctioning in the supply system, is considered unacceptable costs. Same thing with ‘being fit’, the fitter you are – the more adapted to a certain medium and only to that medium – means you make a more efficient use of the resources at your disposal BUT that your ability to cope with an eventual change in the medium you are living with is proportionally lower. Consider the giraffe: it has a competitive advantage over other herbivores because of it size and ability to forage on trees but if the trees become higher or disappear altogether it will be the first to die of hunger.
Rephrasing Mayr, evolution is not about the survival of the fittest but about the demise of the unable to adapt. And what has this to do with our problem? With the relentless pursuit of one’s own interests, NO MATER WHAT? The real problem is right there, at the end of the previous sentence. Following one’s interests is a very legitimate business, as long as the actions of that individual do not endanger the community of which that individual is a member.
One of the most important contributions Mayr made to evolutionism is the notion of ‘Biological Species Concept’. Bluntly put, this is about the species being the object of evolution and not the individuals. When it comes to individual HUMAN beings this is rather hard to accept given their huge adaptability but we should keep in mind that Mayr was speaking about biology while individuals evolve ‘culturally’ and ‘socially’: they adapt, themselves, their communities and even sometimes the medium they live in, by cooperatively using information gathered in time, by themselves and by their ancestors. It is rather easy to understand and accept the fact that a newborn has absolutely no chance of survival without some grownups taking care of him but the fact of the matter is that nobody, absolutely nobody – no matter how strong, wise or both – can survive, let apart evolve, alone. Just think about what Robinson Crusoe had to endure and he was stranded along with some technological artifacts AND with a considerable selection of the information accumulated by the humankind until the time of his misfortune.
This whole thing is getting rather long so I’ll try to wrap it up. My hunch is that it is morality – our ability to get along with each other – that really makes the difference between us and the rest of the primates. Without morality we would never had been able to cooperate, we would be forever embroiled in a constant struggle akin to what is going on in a chimpanzee or baboon troupe. Even more, morality not only creates conditions for cooperation but also sets the rules for competition – without which social adaptability and hence evolution and survival would be impossible.
Please comeback for updates on this, I’m not completely satisfied with it but I have to leave it for now – I have to take care of my material side, dinner has to be cooked.
For me this article, if the allegations are true, proves a lot on things.
Boeing ‘selling used parts as new to the Pentagon’ means not only that the the lust for money is strong as ever but that it has reached a new dimension: it seems that consequences don’t matter anymore.
After all it is one thing for Lockheed to bribe some foreign officials – who might had abused their positions – to buy something of an otherwise excellent quality and quite a different one to overburden the defense budget of your own country, to say the least – assuming that the used parts were of the same quality and reliability as the news ones would have been.
American companies – supposedly operating in the freest and most transparent market in the world – perpetrating such practices cast a dark shadow on the future of the whole planet. In the light of these happenings one can only wonder about what is going on in the more ‘opaque’ areas of the Earth….
Legislation without social consent is akin to window-dressing. After the Lockheed scandal the whole world supposedly ‘tightened the spigots of corruption’. So what? Nowadays people question some of the President of the US ‘s actions while on the international arena Siemens, for example, has attracted the lime-lights.
The notion that corruption is something that has to do exclusively with the public employees is half backed. While I may accept the idea that maybe the Japanese officials involved in the Lockheed scandal asked for kick-backs themselves – a practice revived nowadays in some ex-communist countries – I am convinced that nobody from the Pentagon is guilty of anything more than, at most, having too much trust in Boeing. In fewer words it becomes clearer that in quite a lot of instances the active corruption comes from the private sector, specially so in countries were it has the upper hand – precisely the civilized democracies that the most parts of the Earth try to emulate. Maybe these people should exercise more discretion about what attitudes to adopt and what to have second thoughts about – the most important of the latter being the indiscriminate lust for money that has been the first western ‘obsession’ to have been globalized.
I need to end this in a more optimist key. Traian Basescu, the current Romanian President – who is not above suspicion himself – puts it very clearly: “‘Corruption rests with two sides. I do not want to change responsibility, but it must be shared and assumed. A corrupt civil servant cannot be corrupt if they do not have a partner to put money into their hands, a ministry cannot pay by 50 percent more if there is not a consultant to sustain what the constructor says: Yes, we’ll raise the bill’.” and “‘I believe we must, first and foremost, leave hypocrisy behind. The state alone cannot be corrupt, it has a partner, if there is corruption. The state alone cannot be non-performing, it has a partner. Let us together assume what we have to do. The easiest thing for the private sector to do is to criticise the state and the easiest thing for the state to do is to show indifference to the problems facing the business environment.”
Now even if the translation is not very good the message is indeed clear. Swim or sink together. Either we all understand that we cannot go on this path much further – every step in the wrong direction will provoke additional pain on the return trip – or we’ll have to face really dire straits at the end of it.
But the direction we chose depends on nobody but US.
“M-am saturat” de Andrei Plesu.
Da’ chiar, oare din cate guverne, fronturi de salvare nationala, parlamente, echipe de consilieri prezidentiali, etc. a facut parte Plesu pana s-a saturat?
Nu ca n-ar avea dreptate, asta nu. Tot ce a scris in articolul asta e perfect adevarat iar indignarea lui e perfect justificata.
Ma gandesc totusi ca mergea si un pic de autocritica…zic.
Cum dracu de mai functioneaza ceva in tara asta?
Daca asa e la privat la stat cum o fi oare?
Disclaimer: Am primit chestia asta prin mail si cica e o situatie generica, nu descrierea vreunei firme anume: “orice asemanare cu un caz real este o pura intamplare!”
Am primit bancul asta pe mail si mi s-a parut ca se potriveste:
Vine limuzina sa-l ia pe Papă de la aeroport. Şoferul ia bagajele, le bagă in portbagaj (şi nu erau chiar puţine)…
Papa aştepta si nu se urcă….
– Sfinţia Ta, vă rog sa poftiţi.
– Ştii fiule, pe mine nu mă lasă niciodată nimeni să conduc maşina…
Lasă-mă de data asta tu, te rog.
– Sfinţia ta, e imposibil. Mi-aş pierde slujba.
– Te rog, şi să ştii ca sunt extrem de generos….
Şoferul până la urmă cedează. Papa la volan. Calca acceleratia… şi 120 Km /h.
Şoferul:
– Sfinţia Ta, vă rog, puţin mai uşor, ne prinde poliţia.
Papa, nimic. Bagă tare si… 160 Km/h.
In spate, masina poliţiei, ding dong, ding dong.
Papa opreste şi lasă geamul in jos. Vine poliţaiul, salută, şi rămâne cu gura căscată….
Se intoarce la maşina de poliţie. Ia staţia şi comunică:
– Sunt 1435. Dă-mi-l pe şefu…
– Care-i treaba, bă?
– Şefu, nu ştiu ce să fac. Am prins pe cineva cu 160 km/h.
– Arde-l.
– Nu cred că pot, e tare.
– Cine e bă, primaru?
– Nuu, mai important.
– Un guvernator, senator ceva?
– Şefu, e mai tare!
– Cine e bă?
– Cred că-i Dumnezeu, şefu! La volan e Papa!
Cica puscariile romanesti sunt pline de telefoane mobile.
Detinutii posteaza filmulete pe Youtube sau fac tot felul de excrocherii, fiecare dupa cum il duce mintea. Si nu, chestia cu excrocheriile nu e un caz izolat, nu doar la Colibasi se intampla asta ci si la Giurgiu sau la Bacau.
Cum ajung telefoanele mobile in puscarii sau in aresturile politiei? Simplu. Duse de oameni, contracost bineinteles. De politisti, de preoti … Si se pare ca cel putin o parte din aceasta activitate este ‘centralizata’…
Bineinteles ca situatia trebuia sa primeasca si o reactie. Mai intai una de natura ‘statistica’: fenomenul a fost studiat ca amploare si ca dinamica, 10 000 de telefoane confiscate in puscarii tot anul trecut si 8500 pana la 1octombrie anul acesta.
Si atunci ce facem? Recalificam personalul din puscarii? Ii invatam cum sa reziste tentatiilor atunci cand sunt abordati de ‘apartinatorii’ care ofera cate 250 de euro pentru fiecare telefon transportat ‘inauntru’? Cam complicat… Nu mai bine rezolvam problema cu o masinarie? Nu? Totul a inceput de la niste ‘dispozitive’ – telefoanele mobile, rezolvam problema tot cu un dispozitiv – de bruiaj de data asta!
Si uite asa viata noastra este controlata din ce in ce mai mult cu ajutorul aparatelor: ajungem la puscarie nu pentru ce facem ci pentru ca vorbim ce nu trebuie la telefon, o data acolo in loc sa ne potolim continuam activitatea infractionala cu ajutorul acelorasi aparate si nici macar statul nu e in stare sa isi controleze angajatii asa ca pentru a rezolva situatia face apel la alte aparate, la cele de bruiaj de data asta.
Asistam deja la un salt calitativ, daca pana la nivelul asta aparatele erau folosite pentru comunicare – individual, iar fiecare individ avea ocazia sa isi exercite liberul arbitru si sa folosesca comunicarea dupa propriile sale norme etice – de data asta aparatele, cele de bruiaj, vor fi folosite in masa si ‘distructiv’ – nu mai comunica mimeni, nu se mai tine cont de bine si de rau.
Si noi, spectatorii intregului fenomen, dam vina pe ‘aparate’ in loc sa intelegem ca este exclusiv responsabilitatea noastra, a celor care le folosim, sa dam sens moral actiunilor noastre.
Iar unii dintre cei care mai inteleg cate ceva dau vina pe ‘ochiul dracului’: ‘Deh maica, daca a vrut sa faca si el un ban…?!?” De parca banul n-ar fi si el tot un fel de ‘aparat’, tot o ‘unealta’ menita pentru a fi folosita de catre om si nu de a il impinge, unealta pe om, in ispita…
nicichiarasa 